Chapter 30: Chapter 29 – Trouble (2)

Sylen kept silent about Omega’s disappearance and only came to the bridge, when Keshnar sent a message that Totora’s men were coming with the container. It would have been too big to drag it through the station itself, so instead of that, it was loaded into a small, barge-like ship. Luckily, the container itself was perfectly sealed, keeping out the chilling, biting coldness of space as the Formium wouldn’t take to it kindly. It was now sitting on the transporting ship's elongated front-end. Watching it nearing the Dawn, ready to dock it into its cargo bay, Keshnar established a connection with it from the bridge of the Dawn.

“What is the hurry for? Take it easy! You almost crashed into the station’s stabilization pillars!” He said after seeing the barge’s erratic and hurried movements. 

“Because they have a limited amount of oxygen in there!” Omega’s answer came with a surprise, shocking Miyon and Keshnar but not Sylen. 

“...” Keshnar was silent for a very short pause, processing his words, before growing out a dozen tentacles, taking control of the Dawn’s systems. To his surprise, the ship was already opening up and ready to receive its package.

“I’m going down to help them!” Sylen said, leaving as fast as she could, not wanting to be questioned why she was so calm about it.

“Wait! What are you talking about?” Miyon finally asked the question from both Sylen and Omega.

“We have refugees in the container.” Omega answered as he arrived and let the container be pulled in by the Dawn’s tractor beams. 

“What the hell…” Miyon mumbled but he found out that his faint reflection from the screens were smiling back at him with satisfaction.

By the time Omega himself came back, Sylen was leading the frightened but mostly healthy slaves out of the cargo hold. Miyon remained on the bridge, constantly watching out for other ships and messages. He was waiting to be warned by the security force of the Alliance… yet that never happened. Keshnar said nothing when he saw the slaves. He just rolled past by them, checking the Formium capsules inside the container. 

“Did you kill him?” He asked calmly, when Omega walked up to him.

“I did.” He nodded, now much more relaxed and calmer.

“Did you see him pop?” He asked again, stretching out and knocking on the intact capsules with a relaxed sigh, seeing they were unharmed.

“You mean?” Omega asked, furrowing his brows as he did not pay any attention to him after he blasted him apart.

“Turning into liquid.” Keshnar said, rolling his beady eyes at him. Seeing Omega’s reaction he opened up a channel to Miyon. “Start the take off. We should be out of the system in an hour or so!”

“I… Roger.” He answered, deciding against questioning him as to what was going on. It was best to leave first and ask questions later in this situation.

“So he survived.” Omega said, letting out a soft breath, crossing his arms. 

“If he just fell into pieces and did not splashed, all around the floor, then yes. You should’ve popped him like a water balloon!” Keshnar said, not really bothered by the facts as they had enough Formium for now to reconstruct the Xanthe completely. “The problem will be how to get more. Well… whatever! I also disliked that pretentious bastard!”

“I can go back and finish it.”

“Nah!” Keshnar jiggled back to him, patting his back with one tentacle. “He already stashed away a part of him, I am sure of that! Even if you pop him now, he would have a backup! Well, whatever! We got what we came for, we just have to escape with it! I am going to come up with a second plan to get more, don’t you worry! You brought back the whole container so…”

“So?” He asked, getting a little curious. 

“It still has all the information; Where it is from, who sold it, etc. Formium containers are special, you know. Totora didn’t have a chance to wipe it clean before you joinked it!” He laughed happily. “I can get to his source directly after this!” 

…

….

…..

Back in the warehouse, the body of Totora slowly gathered itself in a corner, regrouping into his original form, only, way smaller in size. He shook his now murky, much more discolored body and finally reformed his beady eyes atop of his head. 

“Ugh… That damned bastard… That wasn’t his slave!” He cursed, slowly crawling towards the back rooms where he kept his most important assets. After checking on his computers, data and savings he was relieved to see that everything was there. Omega stole nothing important. “Then what did he come back for?” He mused, rolling his black eyes, letting them go around his body. At that moment he was finally noticing the unusual quietness. He knew that his bodyguards were dead… Not a big loss, he paid them to be his meat shields anyway. But… Why was it so quiet? “Where are my pets?” He mumbled, finally realizing that his slaves were gone. All of them. “What the?!” He groaned, rolling out hurriedly and after two, tiresome laps in the warehouse he finally was sure of it. He took all of her slaves. “Damn it!” 

Totora cursed loudly a few more times after his realization. He was not even bothering about the stolen Formium. It was something that could be bought in bulks, you just had to have a friend in a mining corporation. The slaves were much more problematic. It was illegal to enslave someone in the Alliance. Yet it was not illegal to own them. Purchasing and selling of goods were what the Alliance thrived on. Even if it was illegal to produce something, like slaves, it was not illegal to buy them from a place where they were legal. Then you just had to import them in and you could keep them or even resell them. Just keep the strict laws of ‘owning pets’. They had to be registered, healthy and cared for and then nobody would bat an eye.

“Tsk, tsk…” He grumbled as he was rolling towards his hidden panic room. Entering the keycode next to its door, part of the wall slid apart. It was nothing but a thick, metal box, with a leather chair in the middle of it and a giant screen before that. He quickly activated his main computer and as soon as it got online, Totora input the tracer codes of his slaves. He knew then that it was too late already. He couldn’t find them. They simply did not show up on the maps; Not on the station, not on the planet and not in the whole star system. “Cheeky little bastard!” He jiggled and soon he was initiating an interstellar call. “You robbed me from the one… no, two things that I can’t report you about!” He chuckled, seemingly in a weird but amused mood.

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To Omega’s luck, not that he would care about it, Totora was someone who was used to dealing under the table. He liked having the best profit possible… So… He obtained the Formium from a friend, who let him have a ‘displaced’ shipment for a very cheap price. If he goes and reports that he was robbed and it gets uncovered where it came from…? And by whom…? He would be in deep trouble with the Merchants’ Associations. Which was the ruling force of the Alliance. Not to mention the ‘friend’ who would also find himself in hot water… He would surely come after him. Same with his slaves. He bought them from the Wuulfharn slavers directly. When registering them, he took a little shortcut in… paying some necessary fees of the mandated ‘Pet Ownership Registration’. The dead guards? Nobody would bat an eye, it was in their contracts that this could happen at any time. The station remained undamaged and that was what most people cared about. 

“Speak.” A deep and aggressive voice echoed out from the computer’s speakers while no image came up on the big screen. 

“I was robbed.” Totora said, stopping his body from trembling. Only the power behind the male voice was grading enough to his freshly reformed senses. 

“Bwahahaha! Why should we care? There are no insurances on the goods, jelly!” The owner of the voice laughed with a sneer and Totora felt that he was about to cut the connection. 

“I am willing to pay double!” 

“Hmm. Listening.” The voice said after a short pause.

“I want them back and I know who took them! If you can capture them too, and bring them to me, I am willing to pay triple the price!” 

“...”

“Quadruple!” 

“Send the data. We will deliver the goods in a month’s time.” The deep voice agreed. Now it sounded much, much more friendly than a minute prior. As soon as Totora sent over the details of the slaves, the Formium, Keshnar, the images his camera feed recorded, the Dawn’s signals, everything that he had access to.

“The video feed is barely usable.” The Wuulfharngrumbled as it was riddled with distortion and static noises.

“Yeah…” Totora grumbled. “Somehow the moment that guy arrived it my system went haywire.”

“The ship’s data is at least usable. I am going to contact you when we get the goods.” He said as he terminated the connection.

“Hah! Let me see how you are going to act when you become my slave, Keshnar!” He laughed, already expecting the good news.

…

….

…..

It was two days later, in Totora’s Emporium. He was still organizing his inventory, cleaning up the mess that was left behind by Omega’s outburst. New guards were standing ready and the now hired janitors were cleaning up the mess.

“My savings…” Totora moaned quietly, sulking by the loss of his free labor force. Employing others always came with troublesome contracts and the obligation of paying them in time. And he hated giving out money.

It was amongst his incoherent mumbling when the door to his Emporium opened up and a hooded, tall and lanky figure walked in.

“Sorry but we are closed for now!” Totora sighed, going and welcoming him. “But if you have something specific you want…”

“Your memories.” A dry voice said as a gray hand reached out, grabbing onto his jelly-like form, lifting him up into the air, even from afar. 

“Not again!” He moaned but it was different this time. His guards didn’t react as if they were not noticing the strange thing that was happening in the middle of the warehouse. 

Totora was dragged through the air as he landed in the figure’s grip in the end. His fingers sank into the jelly-like body of his as he started to ripple like the surface of a lake when a stone gets dropped into it. The composition of his body was getting softer and softer as he was giving out gurgling, muffled noises constantly. While the figure was trying to extract information from him, Totora’s body couldn’t handle it and he popped with a loud noise. Greenish sludge and water splashed onto the ground around the hooded man but none of it stained his body. 

It was that noise that shook everybody else present, bringing them back to reality. It took them a few seconds to realize what they were watching was the truly dead body of Totora. It was still bubbling in the middle of his own Emporium yet the hooded figure was already gone. For Totora’s people, it seemed as if he simply died from nothing. They were distraught, not because of Totora’s death… but because who would pay them now?

By the time the station’s forces arrived to investigate it, the hooded man was already in his teardrop-like ship, traveling through an Astropath. He picked up traces of a similar power that he had access to. He couldn’t extract much from Totora before he expired but he knew of two things; Keshnar, another jelly-like creature and Dawn, a cargo vessel. He was still unsure if the traces he caught onto was from another servant, doing the bidding of the Creator or the target he was assigned to find. But at least it was a lead that he could follow.

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