Recruiting on Hushrim

The Maephin's long ears twitched as a breeze slipped through the open window and coiled inside the room. Ralus sipped at his beer and pretended to be interested in the two unopened messages on his micropad. The alien across the table from him gave a slight smile, lips curling back to reveal a set of neat, flat teeth.

"Have you ever been to Hushrim before, human?" she asked.

Ralus put his micropad into his pocket and knocked his beer back. "First time."

The Maephin nodded, flicking an insect with her ear as she cupped her own drink in both dainty hands. "I've never been out of the system. Just Hushrim and Makd. It's probably always going to be that way."

Ralus waved for another beer and then tapped the Unity patch on his flight suit. "You could always join the Unity as a mechanic. I've seen how Maephs work in zero-g. We could use some good tinker tots on our ship, at least, if not the other ones on patrol with us."

"Tinker tots?" the alien asked.

"Maephins. That's the nickname someone gave you a while back. It kind of fits."

"You think they'd hire me as a mechanic? I've only been to space a few times."

Ralus shrugged, eyeing the short little alien. Her humanoid body stiffened at the casual scrutiny. "As a private contractor, probably. They aren't keen on hiring soldiers that aren't even four feet tall, but the navy likes its ships to work, so there's that. There's probably room for you to negotiate before we head out in the next few days if you want to hitch a ride as a contractor."

"I'll have to think about it," she said after some thought.

"Of course," Ralus offered. The server came over and scanned the pilot's micropad for payment. It chimed merrily and flashed a withdrawal sign. Ralus took his beer and gave the Maephin another once-over.

She was probably about thirty, though with this particular species there was a wide scale for looks. Regardless, her height was pretty average for her species at just over a meter, probably a few centimeters shy of one twenty. When she had taken her seat across from his earlier, her ears were about level with his sternum.

"Hey, are you listening human?" the alien asked, flicking her ears impatiently.

"I wasn't. Say that all again."

The Maephin's ears went back in an annoyed way. "You miss a lot for someone whose ears are always open," she said, pursing her lips.

"Is that all?" Ralus joked, taking a drink. The beer here wasn't half bad compared to some of the other bridgeless systems he had been to.

"I asked what you're doing on Hushrim."

Ralus shrugged. "Just taking some leave, I suppose. It's better down the well than stuck on Aether with repairs going on. Some fresh air is nice every now and again."

"So you're just going to drink while you're here?"

Ralus shrugged again. "Not much else to do at the space port unless I want to find a tour guide to take me out into the country. Besides, the beer's actually pretty good for a change."

"Do you want to go to a brewery, then, human?" asked the alien hesitantly. "There are a few in the port, but there's a really famous one in the next city over."

Ralus looked at his micropad and tapped the timer symbol. It flashed 2:21:45:19.

Rolling the idea around in his head, he figured he wouldn't be doing anything noteworthy if he stayed here. He had nothing to lose getting shown around a foreign planet and drinking some good beer, even by local standards. At the very least it would be mixing things up from his usual sit-down-and-relax-alone adventures.

"Why not," the pilot said, knocking back his drink in one long drag. "I've got a couple more days here. I might as well get a tour from one of the locals."

The maephin grinned cheekily and picked her drink up with both hands, doing her best to finish it without putting it down. She got most of the way there before coming up for air.

"I can't let you get that far ahead of me already, human," she announced in a breathless voice. "Us maephs don't go down so easily." She managed to finish her drink off on the second attempt and then hopped off the chair, slightly oversized for her frame. Here in the space port, most of the furniture was made to split the difference between the local population's average height and that of visitors. It managed to make things comfortable for neither set, but was sort of charming in its own way.

"My name's Ralus," the pilot said as he ducked the doorway of the bar.

"I'm Yelna," replied the maephin as she tapped the device in her hand. She started off down the street, weaving through a stream of mismatched and unkempt maephs returning to the space port from the dockyards in orbit.

Ralus noticed that there was no real pattern for foot traffic on his planet. Everyone just walked in whatever direction they felt like with no rhyme or reason. Lanes formed on occasion when hundreds of people moved in the same direction, but for the most part the maephs just bumped into each other and went along their way.

They didn't even appear to care that Ralus was literally twice their size as they went about their business. He had a difficult time keeping pace with Yelna as she twisted in and out of contact with her kind like some sort of combat training dummy. It was easy to keep sight of her from his vantage point over the locals, but she constantly outpaced him.

They eventually made it out of the main street and onto a covered avenue with less traffic. Ralus caught up to her as she stopped and waved for him to hurry up.

"You haven't been here for long," she joked.

"No I haven't. Is it always like that?"

Yelna nodded, continuing to their destination. "Offworlders think we're rude, but it's just easier for us to slip in and out of the way than to try and organize into lines and get held up at every corner like you do."

They continued down the avenue to a station where hundreds of maephs milled about waiting under a series of bright time boards. Apparently, they were taking the train system.

"Do I need a pass to use this?" Ralus asked.

Yelna pointed up to the closest board where the time ticked down in white lettering. "This one is free for use. It's also got more capacity than the others and big benches, so you'll have room to sit down. Otherwise, we'd have to try to fit you into a seat made for a maephin." Looking at the alien's thick frame, he thought he might actually fit if she was the standard.

They waited as several magni-rail trains came and went, a veritable sea of maephs dodging around them without acknowledging they were even there. Ralus checked his timer after a while.

"Are you sure I won't fit in another train?"

"You have to go to the port authority to get a train pass. They'll give you one, but since you're in the military it'll take a few hours to get it approved," Yelna explained. "It'll only be a little while longer."

Ralus looked back up at the board. "Are you from the place we're going?"

"No, I'm from Tutimra."

"I take it that's a city here and not a planet," Ralus stated.

"It's on the far side of Hushrim. The city we're going to is called Fundis. I moved there before I came to Giddonmas and got a job as cargo jack for the space port."

Ralus looked around and watched the maephs return his curious gaze for a moment before looking away. When he came to Yelna, she flicked her ears idly, looking back at him.

"You're a lot more, uh, friendly than most people here."

Yelna cast a look across the milling crowd around them. "Most of these people don't like foreigners. They think you're all too big and pushy; you're mostly disrespectful to us because we're so small. But I don't particularly mind; the money is good and there are some of you who drink as hard as we do."

"So you're just tolerating me, I take it," joked the pilot as Yelna gave him a sour look.

"I may stop tolerating you if you keep that up," she retorted. "You're not like most offwolrders though, if I'm honest."

A train chime rang out over the station speakers and Ralus peered down the tunnel to their left. A bright orange glow preceded the train rounding its final bend, accompanied by the warning lights on the platform. The crowd obediently squeezed back over the blinking row of lights and continued to mill about aimlessly.

The train came to an abrupt halt on the platform and the doors rose, allowing the fight for space in the cars to begin. Yelna grabbed Ralus by the pocket and he followed her in, watching her literally shove people out of the way to get him through the tide of short, purple-skinned aliens.

He ducked to get onto the train, crouching as his hair brushed the ceiling. A handhold hit him in the face when he turned to see where he was supposed to sit down. Yelna stood beside him, trying to contain her laughter as Ralus decided that he was just going to have to take up two seats to fit anywhere in the confines of the compartment.

With his knees to his chest, he managed to find a position that didn't have something sticking into his ribs. Yelna put a hand on his knee and smirked at him.

"Comfortable, human?" she asked.

"As comfortable as I'm going to get, in any case," he shot back, leaning toward the alien to avoid having to hold his head tilted away from a sheet of metal flanking the doorway. It appeared that a maephin would just sit right under it, but being almost seventy centimeters taller than them put it right where his head should go.

Yelna slapped Ralus's knee playfully and addressed the other maephs sitting across from them. "I'm taking this one to the Foundry. He's going to drink like a maephin tonight."

As if by command, the group of maephs across the car all started to laugh, ears coming straight up in what Ralus believed was amusement or excitement.

"Do you want to party?" one of them asked.

Yelna looked back at Ralus and her scalp pulled back twice. He furrowed his brow and stared at her for a few seconds before she chuckled.

"Do you want to party?"

"The more the merrier," he replied, earning a cheer from most of the car. He hadn't realized that they drew so much attention, despite him sticking out like a Nytix at a funeral.

The train ride was nearly two hours of maephs passing around what he believed were recreational drugs and something that smelled like juice, but wasn't. This must be how they relax after fifty-hour shifts in orbit, he thought. Meaphs were known for the extreme length of their circadian rhythm, owing that to the notably long diurnal cycle of their home planet. Routinely, they worked in two-day shifts and then slept or lounged for thirteen or so hours before returning.

Their recreational activities were usually fairly tame, but it appeared to Ralus that he was going to get maephs at full throttle tonight. This was one of their worlds, isolated from the galaxy at large without a mass bridge, populated almost entirely by them.

At the next station, the mass of aliens piled off, excitedly pushing the boarders out of the way as Ralus tried to follow them. Just getting off the train was a trying task in itself. Despite the door being open to the ceiling, Ralus had to almost crawl to get out since there was no forward progress to be made through the boarders if he was crouched.

Maephs behind him helped push and Yelna grabbed him by the collar with both dainty hands, hauling him with surprising strength as she backed up, ears almost wrapped around the back of her head from exertion. He finally made it off the train and cleared the edge of the platform's safety zone.

A cheer went up as he stood, popping his strained back with a groan. His back hurt. His neck hurt. His ass felt like it as been smacked with a meat tenderizer. But, he was no worse for wear it appeared. He stretched for a few moments before finding Yelna waiting for him down the platform.

"Come on, human! If you miss the tram, I'm not coming back for you!" she shouted over the noise of the crowd.

Ralus made his way down the platform with an entourage of maephs forming a wedge in front of him, chatting amongst themselves and laughing, noticeably without any of the drug paraphernalia they'd been passing around on the train.

They caught up to Yelna in short order and the group continued into the station, down a flight of stairs that Ralus nearly had to slide down on all fours, and onto another train. This one was even more cramped than the last, as the compartment was more cluttered with braces and handholds than the inter-city design.

When the pilot finally managed to get seated, it earned him a round of applause from the entire car occupancy of the car who had been watching him struggle. He held his hands together and shook them briefly, accepting all praise as the obtuse, oversized foreigner giving them a first-hand lesson in human stubbornness.

There was an even more zealous and difficult repeat of getting him off the first train when this one reached its destination. The station staff even came over to assist as Ralus made it off the train and spilled out onto the platform in a tangle of limbs with his push-pull team.

Hurriedly avoiding whatever disciplinary action that was on its way, they retreated off the platform and into the station proper, somehow having gathered even more maephs on the last train. Ralus counted almost twenty purple heads bobbing up and down, moving with them directly. He couldn't tell how many there realistically were outside of the tight-packed phalanx in his immediate vicinity, as there was still no rhyme or reason to how they actually got anywhere in crowds.

Eventually, they left the station and spread out along the street, encountering less foot traffic now. Ralus found that he had underestimated their number by about half, given that Yelna was shouting to the back of the group just to be heard and getting only sporadic replies.

"Where is this place?" Ralus asked, looking around in every direction. There wasn't a single identifying sign or feature anywhere. All the buildings looked unique and different, sure, but the streets and walkways didn't appear to actually be labeled in any meaningful way.

"It's not far ahead. Past the white store with with bland sign, up to the right on that street."

"What's the street called though?" pressed the pilot. At the questioning one-up-one-out position of the maeph's ears, he explained. "If I need to call a lift service to take me to a pay-and-stay, where do I tell them to go?"

"The Foundry!" Yelna said with an amused laugh. "You can't miss it!"

Ralus rolled his eyes. "Stupid question, right. How long until we get there?"

"Not too long now. We're stopping at a Vert to get some supplies for the night. Do you want anything?"

"Does bar spend here like it does at the space port?" Sometimes, bridgeless systems had their own fiat currency or monetary systems and abandoned bar as a payment method outside of Unity-owned assets. It never hurt to check if you were actually able to pay your bar tab at the end of the night or be stranded trying to negotiate using a third party to arrange something. That had cost Ralus a lot of bar on several occasions.

"Bar spends as fast or slow as you want on Hushrim." She made a face. "Mostly, anyway."

"Mostly?" Ralus arched a brow.

Yelna was pulled into a conversation and Ralus let the joke go. They entered a store down the street and Ralus sat down outside as the entire group piled in, creating a storm of commotion in what had been an almost deserted room. It appeared to be some kind of grocery or convenience store, based on what Ralus saw through the window.

"Human, do you want anything?" Yelna asked before entering. He handed her his micropad and keyed the remote authentication code so she could use it. "I'm not picky; just find me something that's similar to food at the space port."

She handed his micropad back. "Turlin said he would buy whatever you wanted. How salty do you like your food?"

"Who's Turlin?"

Yelna's ears flicked around and she let out a deep laugh, shaking all over as she walked over to the pilot and put a hand on his knee. She made a few attempts to stop laughing before she actually succeeded, breathing heavily from the two open slits along the back of her neck. She let out a whoop and then straightened up.

"I forgot you're not like us. Turlin is the dark purple one with half of his left ear missing. He's never met a human before, so he wants to make a good impression."

Ralus tried handing her his micropad again. "No, I don't want someone to spend that kind of money on me. Even if it's just snacks and booze, I-"

"Turlin owns a few docks in orbit; he's quite wealthy."

Ralus put his micropad in his pocket and looked inside to find his benefactor. With so many maephs milling around, he couldn't find his mark. "Get me something good and filling, I guess. I don't want to be sick, but I also don't want to drink on an empty stomach."

"I'll let him know." Yelna disappeared into the crowd inside.

Ralus waited for what felt like an hour as the maephs slowly grabbed what they wanted and convened again outside, making conversation with him and generally enjoying their snacks and urging him to eat some. For better or worse, he liked most of it to some degree. One of the candies was obscenely acidic and sweet at the same time and hurt his tongue and throat, but aside from that things went well.

Turlin eventually appeared with a sack of different candies, snacks, and something that looked like a fancy vegetable wrap. It smelled like fried lab meat and synthetic coconut. Turlin handed Ralus the fancy wrap and nodded with approval at his own choice. Ralus took as big a bite as he could without any hesitation. It was good. Spicy, but- very spicy.

Ralus coughed once, but managed to chew enough to swallow without making a fool of himself. "A drink, come on. Void, that was hot. What's that called?" He tasted something sweet now and blinked hard in confusion.

"That's a specialty here," Turlin announced proudly. "It's called a fucking good time."

A cheer went up from the maephs and Ralus figured he was either doing something incredibly smart or stupid finishing the wrap in two bites. It seemed like it was all in good fun. Savory, spicy, then sweet. Whatever it was, it wasn't half bad.

They made it down the street, went right at the white store on the corner, and continued until Ralus could hear a voice on an intercom system in the distance. He looked down at Yelna and she grinned up at him excitedly.

"That's the Foundry. We're almost there."

It didn't take long, even with the short gait of Ralus's companions in the quest to get beer.

The Foundry didn't look how the pilot had imagined. On his home planet of Riva, the breweries were squat buildings with large silos and chimneys. This thing looked more like a military compound. The entire exterior was concrete, save for the windows shuttered with what looked like steel slats. The roof was lined with bright light fixtures that bathed the perimeter of the building in a sort of orange glow.

Despite the stacked nature of the myriad structures in the city behind them, the Foundry appeared to be made for roughly human-height occupants. Based on the spacing of the windows, it was the most likely case that the Foundry was actually a repurposed military outpost from a time when the Unity didn't maintain orbital policing measures for bridgeless systems.

"So, what do you think of it? It's impressive, isn't it? It's the biggest building in the city if you don't count the manufacturing center," Yelna declared with some satisfaction.

"As long as I can fit in the door better than I did on the train, I think it's great." They approached the Foundry with some commotion. Apparently, a human hadn't been expected to show up on an otherwise unremarkable evening with a troupe of off-duty dockworkers and the local owner of a whole dockyard in tow.