Cosmosis

@rey_king:

Oh, for the love of...

Daltar was becoming increasingly thankful that what passed for security was a ramshackle affair at best on this planet; it was likely that the "officers" who were trying to accost his volatile passenger were really just glorified enforcers for whatever cartel had claimed this sector. That meant they likely wouldn't give more than a halfhearted pursuit, assuming that they managed to get into orbit.

"Hey, hey," he called out to his new friend, as he lowered the landing hatch and clambered aboard the Aphelion, "You only paid for transport for one; and I am not helping you take hostages. She stays!" He primed the liftoff engines and crossed his fingers that no one else had been given launch clearance, because he certainly wasn't about to try to request it, under the circumstances. "The sooner we get you to the arena, the sooner you can take that aggression out on someone more your size! And for the record, I have no idea why the arenas are on the moon, but if you want to get there, I suggest ditching your impromptu date before her friends bring up any heavy artillery."

@rey_king: Will post soon; got caught up in something.

@rey_king: Daltar's stood back, arms folded, and watched the unfolding brawl as it spilled out of the cantina. The attackers weren't exactly being sporting, but it was obvious the "kid" could handle himself. The Delossian never took claims of divinity at face value; he met plenty of beings who had simply assumed such titles, as well of those who very well could have had a deity for a parent. Either way, if his client couldn't handle a bunch of drunken rowdies, it wouldn't have been very responsible of him to offer passage to an arena full of professional fighters.

"The arena, huh?" Daltar stepped forward, accepting the bit of Earth currency and gazing at it dubiously. You didn't tend to see much of that anywhere other than Earth, but it was possible he could pawn it off on some xeno-anthropologist for higher than its usual value. Besides, getting his passenger to the arena would likely consume less fuel than cooking a meal. "Well, you look like you can handle yourself. The arena's not on the planet; it's up there." He pointed his thumb in a generally upwards direction, where Eristes' moon glowed against the night sky. "My ship's over at the spaceport, just a short walk, and I can get you up there, no problem. Just don't expect me to stick around; that's not really my kind of place."

@rey_king:

Daltar was no stranger to violence. He had his share of scars from a life led on the wild side of space, but seeing this kid fend off an attacker much larger than him with what appeared to be fire breath was pretty memorable. Briefly, he wondered if that had anything to do with his choice of drink.

Violence, however, had a tendency to be contagious, especially in places such as cantinas on lawless planets. As the smuggler began to follow his new client to the exit, brawls broke out all over the bar. The staff tried to restore some semblance of order, with a combination of yelling and blaster fire, but it was beginning to look like happy hour was over. Daltar casually put a bolt of plasma between the shoulder blades of another alien that was chasing Kegen towards the door, stepping over its prone form and out into the street.

"Hey, hey, slow down," he called out to his new friend. "If you run out of a fight like that, people are going to assume you have something valuable and come after you. Name's Daltar, by the way; I'm a specialist in discreet transportation. Now, who are you, where are you going, and what's it worth to you to get there?"

@rey_king: Want some company?

Daltar sat in a shadowy booth at the back of a cantina, nursing a drink that was illegal on 237 planets and pondering the deeper mysteries of the universe, the main one being whether his current savings would enable him to keep a sufficient buzz going until he landed another contract. Eristes was kind of a mixed bag, that way; the almost total lack of laws on the planet proper meant that there were ample opportunities for ones such as he to ply their trade, but it also meant that competition for jobs tended to be pretty stiff, as any spacer with a semi-functional ship and a flexible moral code knew that this was where the action was.

His reverie was disrupted as he noticed the new arrival. Even in a place such as this, that catered to species from virtually every spacefaring civilization, this one stuck out, due to his seeming youthfulness and odd choice of beverage. He didn't look entirely at home or at ease here, but he could afford to drink, so maybe he could afford for someone to fly him someplace more to his liking. A nice, simple passenger transport, particularly one where negotiations weren't being conducted during a running gun battle with a dozen hunters, sounded good, right about now. The Delossian pushed his heavy frame to its feet with surprising steadiness for one of his lifestyle habits.

"I'd say your choice of drink tipped me off that you weren't from here," he said by way of greeting, as he sauntered over to Kegen and gave him a casual wave/salute, "but the fact that you don't have green skin or two extra arms made that clear. You look like you'd rather be somewhere else. I have a ship; if you've got payment, we should chat."

@the_mechanic:

Daltar was, at least in his own opinion, a pretty non-judgmental guy. He generally tried to avoid forming too strong of an opinion of any planet he did "business" with; as long as they worked in something negotiable and didn't ask too many questions, they were good people, in his book. That being said, he found Mechanicus to be exceedingly...weird. He'd been to planets where the technology was so advanced that having one of the inhabitants attempt to explain it to him gave him a headache, and he'd been to some so primitive that they considered the man who came down out of the sky on a metal chariot to trade with them to be some kind of deity of commerce, but he couldn't think of any other world that consciously placed strictly-enforced limitations on the level of their own technology.

That being said, the technology they did produce could be pretty ingenious, for all its limitations. They also had an abundance of natural resources that inhabitants of less fertile worlds were willing to pay top credit for, especially when it came in under the radar of governments who preferred keeping all such materials under their own tight control. So it was that he found himself once again stepping off of one of the bizarre steam-powered craft that ferried passengers from the orbital station that was as close as most starships could get to the planet without suffering total systems failure to the surface. Even his own personal security had to go through some adjustments, as his usual plasma pistol had been replaced with a odd sort of sidearm that produced powerful bolts of electricity. He certainly wouldn't want to go up against a squad of Centurions with it, but as he was about as likely to encounter those here as he was to encounter a single purple unicorn that granted wishes, it sufficed.

He made his way through the crowded and slightly chaotic streets of the trade quarter of Cogopolis, brushing shoulders with both locals and a smattering of aliens who shared his willingness to put profit above comprehensibility. Ultimately, his path would take him to the shop of a local merchant who had a penchant for finding precious metals that, while rare on this world, were unheard of on most others, in the hopes of finding a shipment that would set him up for comfortably for the immediate future.

@green_sentinelx: So...you're definitely more of the kind of space police that go after major threats to galactic civilizations, as opposed to small fries who just make a living getting things that people probably shouldn't have into the hands of people who probably shouldn't have them, right?

I'm asking for a friend, of course.

@wildvine: I thought it was great, but then, you've always been your own harshest critic. :P

If Gothic had a functioning spaceport, it'd be pretty popular.

Yep, just gonna set my navcomputer for someplace very far away from here...preferably someplace with liberal liquor laws...