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“The living quarters are organized in blocks around the ring of the level,” Novara-Lei informed me as she began striding away. I hurried to keep up, pulling my suitcase behind me. For someone whose legs were only about as long as mine, she was freaking fast. “So for room 2670, we need to find the 600 block.”
“Gotcha,” I said, trying to soak up everything she told me. Technically Elora Station was part of the Terratribe Alliance, but I felt like I was in a whole other world.
“So, where is your work contract?” Novara-Lei asked me as we made our way around the ring.
“Oh, a little coffee shop on level 1200. Hallowed be thy Bean.”
There was no missing the sudden flaring and spiking of my guide’s blue feathers. With what looked like some effort, she smoothed them down, running her clawed hand down the back of her head for good measure.
“Is something wrong?” I pressed. I didn’t know a ton about the Navaret people, but that was a literal ruffling of her feathers, and I assumed it didn’t mean anything good.
“I approached that business today for the first time. There are so many businesses aboard Elora Station that one can go many Earth years without visiting them all.” Her voice faded, and I almost wondered if she was going to stop speaking altogether when she finally spoke again. “I will not try to visit that place again.”
The flinty tone to her voice behind the translation made my palms start to sweat. Oh, God. Had I gotten involved in something sketchy? Was this all a scam? Had I been brought here under some kind of false pretenses? It wasn’t like I had money or anything to steal, though.
“Wait, why, what’s wrong with it? Please tell me. It’s a real coffee shop, right?” I pleaded. If I was about to get sucked into some kind of freaking interstellar trafficking ring, a heads-up would have been nice.
“No, no, all is well. It is a legitimate business. A coffee shop, like you say,” Novara-Lei murmured as we kept walking.
I sighed. Well, that’s a relief I guess. But that doesn’t explain her reaction...
“So, what was the problem? Was the coffee really bad?” I joked, still feeling a bit ill at ease.
“The problem was the one working there,” she said, her voice falling to a near whisper. It was so quiet that my translator almost didn’t pick up her next word. “The death-bringer.”
The... the fucking what?!
“Ah, here we are. The 600 block,” Novara-Lei said, changing the subject so quick I got freaking whiplash. I stopped, turning to look at the wall beside us. A large metal door was closed before us.
“Did you receive your block and room key codes?” Novara-Lei asked, smoothing her hand down the back of her narrow head and neck again.
“Oh. Yes,” I said. I pulled the codes up on my tablet, then flashed my tablet’s screen in front of the scanner beside the door. A second later, the metal door clicked and slid into the wall.
“I will leave you here. I must see if my husband requires assistance at the store,” Novara-Lei said.
“Oh, OK. Well, thank you so much for everything!” I said, trying to sound bright and cheery despite the gnawing worry her words were causing me. The death-bringer... What the actual fuck was that supposed to mean? Maybe she got confused. Maybe she went to some other business and got spooked by something there... The only person I knew of working at Hallowed be thy Bean was the person who’d interviewed me, a human woman named Shelly. And, unless Novara-Lei knew something I didn’t, Shelly definitely didn’t seem like someone who would earn the moniker of death-bringer.
“Good luck with your contract. If you require assistance, please find me at my husband’s store. It is called Feathers and Salt. I think I told you it was on the 1114th floor. It is between a Voraskan bakery and a Hadorian gem shop.”
“Got it,” I said, nodding quickly. I already knew I’d be coming to check out Feathers and Salt, and likely the stores surrounding it, too. Heck, I was going to suck up as much of this experience while I was here as I could before I went back to my old, dreary life. Maybe I can even go there later, ask her more about what she meant before... It didn’t really seem like she wanted to talk about it more now, and I definitely didn’t want to hold her up after she’d been so gracious as to help me even though my clumsy human ass had knocked her over.
“Goodbye,” she said with a dip of her head. Then, in a flash of orange and blue, she turned and made her way back to the open centre of the ring. Immediately, a hover-vator car appeared and whisked her away, leaving me alone. Trying to shake her words loose from my head, at least for the moment, I headed through the door to find my room.
This hallway was pretty similar to the open ring I’d just been in. Gleaming silver floors and walls with soft overhead lighting. The smooth surface of the walls was punctuated every so often with doors to different rooms. I walked quickly, sweeping my eyes over the numbers. On my right were the even-numbered doors, on my left, the odd. After room 2625, the hallway turned on a sharp right angle. It did so again at room 2645, the hall turning inward to make the block Novara-Lei had explained. After the third turn of the hallway, I found my room, 2670. Another flash of my tablet had the door sliding open.
As I moved inside, the door clicked shut behind me. Soft, warm lighting, like the hall’s, illuminated the space. It was small, but nice and clean, with a double bed at one end of the room. I headed towards the bed immediately, dumping my suitcase on the ground next to it before turning, hands on my hips, to survey the rest of the space. Beside the foot of the bed was a dark open cube built into the wall. Upon closer inspection, an instructions screen lit up in front of me, directing me through an invisible speaker.
“Please input language,” said a disembodied voice, translated by the translator.
“Terratribe standard,” I responded. I made sure to speak slowly and very clearly. This kind of voice and word recognition tech, at least on Terratribe 1, was notorious for constantly picking up the wrong words. But luckily, this one was way more advanced. As soon as I spoke, the screen in the wall blared letters and words I recognized. After reading quickly, I surmised that the cube in the wall was for laundering my clothes and linens, using a similar light to what I’d seen in the decontamination room. I moved along the wall to a spot where there was another opening in the surface of the wall, and I let out a whoop when the nearby instructions told me that it was for food.
Choose from a pre-determined menu of economically-priced options that the protein transformer will create for you. Or, choose room service from any of the participating restaurants listed below.
The screen flashed, showing list after list of Elora Station restaurants that offered room service. I really should choose a cheaper option from the protein transformer, I thought. But the restaurant offerings were just too fantastic to pass up. I had some savings, plus what I expected to make over the holidays. I could afford a little splurge.
After staring at the list of restaurants for so long I thought I’d go cross-eyed, I settled on ordering from a seafood place. And after that, it didn’t take too long for my food to appear, shunted in little takeout bowls right into my cube, coming from what I could only guess was some kind of crazy behind-the-scenes delivery system. I opened the containers, mouth-watering as savoury fragrances drifted through the air.
I’d ordered a stew made with XrkXrk eel and a sashimi tray featuring raw delicacies that ranged in origin from Terratribe 2 to the ice planet of Belreau 5. As I popped a shimmering slice of translucent pink sashimi in my mouth, I plopped onto my bed, chewing and thinking. Checking out the room, and the food, had been a good distraction... for the moment. But by the time my food was gone, my stomach full, I could no longer ignore Novara-Lei’s weirdness from before.
