[Zarzakh One-Shot]
“There’s a difference between questioning orders and having questions. So long as I don’t do the former, I can have the latter… Is it really that easy for us to just blindly walk around here and not find something to be curious about? To want answers to? Guess you could argue I’m in the wrong line of work to be thinking like this, but frankly I can’t help myself. Maybe it’s the human in me to be in a strange place and dwell on it’s oddity in my spare time… Right now, there are two things that are a threat to my life, my curiosity - and this station… I wonder which one will do me in first…”
- Kelex Korbound
“Something doesn’t add up…”
September 27th YC 125
Zarzakh - The Fulcrum - Pirate occupied hanger bay
< Lighter flick >
“…Yo! Mind if I bum a cigarette off ya?”
“Hmm? O-Oh yeah… Sure man, here.”
“Thanks… Light me up?”
< Lighter flick >
“…”
“…”
“… Do these Jovians have a no smoking policy aboard their station?”
“I dunno man, wanna go ask them?”
" < Chuckle > If I can find one, sure!… I’m Leron. From the Guristas camp"
“Kelex. Cartel.”
< Firm handshake >
“A pleasure… You good? Looked like you were zoned out when I saw you.”
“…Guess I’m just trying to make sense of ■■■■ right now…”
“Yeah? in what way?”
“Like… Why the ■■■■ are we here?”
“Why not?”
“Just seems a bit too heavy… Even for us.”
“That’s the idea! Ain’t it? With something like this station at our disposal, we can do all kinds of wild ■■■■.”
“… Why?”
“Way I see it? Cluster got way too comfortable with the idea that folk like us are too irrelevant to take seriously. ■■■■■■■ eggers burn a couple of our deadspace complexes and they think we’re the most pitiful thing to ever meet their crosshairs… We could - In theory - make them reconsider that…”
“I get that, but again - Why? Do we really think trying to rise above what we’re already doing is the right idea? What are we trying to expand into? Who are we trying to become…"
“I dunno, rich bastards?”
“We already were! That’s my point! We’re not like the Empires who have to constantly be moving their borders and building bigger and better things… We did just fine slipping through the cracks and milking them for what they were worth… And yeah, people wrote us off as irrelevant. And that worked in our favor. This?.. Makes us too much of a threat, you get me?”
“What? You think the eggers are gonna come kicking down our doors this time? Those assholes outside the station right now blasting each other over nothing…”
“The Empires could do something… When the Nation became too much of a threat? They all put aside their petty fedoshit squabbling to wipe them off the face of the starmap… What’s to say it won’t happen again with us now? They’re just gonna let us squat out here in a station filled to the brim with Jovian secrets? Secrets that could be theirs?”
“Was a different time - Nowadays the empires wouldn’t be able to agree on a pot to ■■■■ in let alone form some joint effort to try and pull us out of this station… Even if they did do that, then they’d just have a new thing to kill each other for! The fact is, we got these ■■■■■■■ people by the balls and they know it… You’ve seen outside. You really think these people wanna deal with the headache of trying to besiege this system?”
“What about Venal? Or Curse? Sure, this place has it’s defensive advantages, but our turf is just hanging out in the open in comparison.”
“Eh, just regions of space like any other… Hell, from the size of this place alone I wager we could relocate both our organizations entirely in this one station.”
“I don’t think there’s a station in this cluster that’s big enough for both the Guristas and the Cartel.”
“This sure as ■■■■ is a contender.”
“Don’t forget we still got these ‘Deathless’ folk that were here before us…”
“What about them?”
“What? You don’t think there’s something suspicious about them?”
“In this line of work? Everyone is suspicious of something…”
“Nah… It’s different this time… We were ‘Invited’ here… Like this is their home and we’re just guests… They own this place.”
“If you ask me, a bullet typically handles any and all ownership disputes in New Eden.”
“You’re missing my point! Who the ■■■■ are these people?! How did they know about this place?… Did the Society of conscious Thought even know?”
“■■■■ man, you’re asking questions I can’t give you answers to…”
“Something doesn’t add up…”
“When does it ever?”
“What’s their angle?”
“Money.”
“These people aren’t like us…”
“Sure as ■■■■ try and talk like they are.”
“Yet here they are brazenly flaunting a Jovian outpost smack dab in the middle of a system sharing a black hole… If money is what they wanted, there’s a million different ways to obtain it… Nah, this goes beyond simple minded greed… These Deathless folk got bigger ambitions than a paycheck… And they seem ready to piss in the drinking water of every empire in the cluster to achieve whatever it is they want.”
“And where do we factor in all this?”
“I don’t know, cannon fodder?… It weirds me out more and more each day… The longer I stay here, the more questions I have.”
“Well it’s too late to transfer out to your nearest Cartel outpost if you’re getting cold feet now…”
“Got that right… For better or worse we’re stuck here… That said, I think I prefer that piece of ■■■■ outpost I was stationed at that was carved into an asteroid. I get chills just walking around in this place…”
“Once we get things up and running? Get a couple of pleasure hubs and arenas going… You won’t be able to tell the difference from here and where you came from. T-Think of it like new shoes, right? It’s gonna be uncomfortable for the first couple of weeks, but once we break them in? Wouldn’t be able to imagine living our life any other way…”
"Well you say that and I now gotta ask if the shoes even fit… None of us belong here and I sense the station knows that.
“You talk like it’s alive.”
“Yeah… Yeah I think it is.”
< Leron tossing his cigarette on the ground and stomping it out >
“Well, either way. We’re stuck here so try to ease up with the questions and just enjoy the ride. Alright?”
< Leron patting Kelex on the shoulder >
“Sure, sure…”
“Keep It real, catch you around brother…”
< Leron walking off >
“Yeah, If either of us live long enough to see each other again…”