Chapter 3: Outpost

Readers' Choice: [Torbus bends down and washes his hands in a gulley of shallow rainwater. Then, he turns away from the bandit and looks up towards the Delian military outpost. He figures with a few more hours of sekora-light he could hike up the hill and rendezvous with his handler before dark.]

Torbus tramped through the muddy square and fallowed field away from the bandit's plastic cage. When he reached the bottom of the outpost's hill, the winds shifted and carried the curdled smell of shit away with the sugran's wild screams. The lights of Valpon became white dots behind Torbus as he climbed the hill. An excited braying up ahead, like a rising staccato, disturbed the drumbeat of his footsteps. A melkora herder, rounding up her flock for the night, had already noticed Torbus and was waiting for him to approach as the herd's twitching spines shined iridescent in the late sekora-light. 

"Be-long light, fren," the herder called out. Torbus lazily looked away from the flock towards her but continued walking. "Judd's gwards shoot anyone, yanow. Judd knowin' ya come to?" Her elongated drawl distracted Torbus' from his calves, which had started to burn ascending the slope, and reminded him that fate seemed intent on bringing him back to the sour smell of melkora in their reproductive phase and the company of beepers¹ who were too dumb or too broken to mind being covered in shit and meiotic discharge. The sooner he could get to the outpost, the sooner he could get out of Valpon. 

That sentiment grew only stronger once Torbus was inside the outpost. The guard standing post did not shoot nor question who or why Torbus had come. He left his post at the gate to lead Torbus to the messhall, where he said that Captain Judd always was at this hour. With bloodshot eyes, slouched shoulders, and dragging his feet, Torbus assumed the guard was drunk, high, or both.

"Whatevers ya do, don't be too serious. Lead with a joke. Or better, a funny story." Truncated with a swallowed burp, the guard grinned widely at Torbus, turned and slouched back towards the gate. 

Torbus stepped into the messhall. The air was thick and hot compared to the evening breeze outside. The smell of grilled flesh and fermented fruit analogs, probably local skolla and yenni, overpowered even the cigarette smoke curling up in strands from the soldiers up into a cloud near the angled ceiling of the hall. Torbus lit up his own cigarette and took a long draw as he watched the farcical Captain smacking the backs of two soldiers, or maybe guests, who then spit water from their mouths across the room at a woman sitting in a chair. She was dressed like kitchen staff and couldn't have been much past twenty. From the placid look on her face, Torbus guessed she had learned this game ended sooner that way.

Judd cackled as the water pattered on the floor, and swung with both hands at the spitters' heads. "You'll never get her spraying so much. Make a stream!" he said around the cigarette in the corner of his mouth. The Captain leaned back in his chair and scanned the crowd. His brow narrowed when he saw Torbus. "Are you the electrician? Finally. We haven't been able to watch the feeds all day since Joesep pissed on the console, damn him."

1: Beepers is an offensive derogatory term for BPDs, Breeding Program Defects, an unfortunate label used to cover a wide range of developmental irregularities in humans grown in artificial wombs as part of many early colony's populating initiatives.

CHOOSE (Leave a comment below or message me somewhere to vote for which scene comes next.) 

E) "Torbus Belgran, sir. Colonel Jivo sent me. You have orders for me?"

[Defeated and disillusioned, Torbus has no patience for the Captain's spectacle or to play games. He wants to get the hell out of Valpon and hopes his orders will take him somewhere he can leverage some type of opportunity.]

F) "I'm not an electrician. But I do know the fastest way to find a sugran... go to the big and tall store."

[Torbus conjectures that playing along with Captain Judd's lewdness will facilitate his time and interactions at the outpost, so he can leave Valpon as soon as possible.]

UPDATE: Readers chose F.