Proficiently Awkward
Professional Cynic
The cloying staleness of recycled atmosphere was the ever-present perfume of a drifter colony; Enceladus 9 was no exception. From the flattened scrap-metal ‘ground’ to the towering, obsolete mechanical obelisks that served as a pantomime of living accommodations, it reeked of poorly filtered oxygen. Of spent fossil fuels and the crisp sterility of artificially created conditions. Beyond whatever cultural quagmire of languages – the languages of the ‘citizens’ residing on the orbiting bastion – was the constant static of nuclear generators. An unending, sizzling riot of technology. A wan, source-less light shivered over every nook and cranny. It was some trick of engineering or alien technology, but the false daylight left nothing to shadow. It was eerie, almost cartoon like in the manner the light cast everything in a sharp relief. And the lights never dimmed, setting Enceladus 9 forever at noon-time brightness. Even so, the drifter colony was a listless, unrelieved grey. Not even the wonders of nuclear-powered daylight could make it look appealing.
Streets and walkways were paved with the hammered decks of interplanetary ships, old cruiser docking stations – whatever scrap metal could be dredged up from the limitless cosmos. And things were ever being added. Salvage. The empty shells of ships. All of it was haphazardly welded together in an unending, glistening metropolis. Residences were crafted from stacked shipping containers or the hollowed out bulk of out-of-date cruisers, civilian and military alike. None of it matched, however. There was not a single known sentient race whose technology hadn’t contributed to the odd mash-up. Bits of space stations from the Milky Way Galaxy. Andromedan fission reactor shells. Even bits of Cinntak engineering – a queer bio-ware that was more living organism than steel.
And amid all the fracas lay the marketplace. Which was about the only reason any respectable interstellar traveler would chart a pit stop on Enceladus 9. There wasn’t a thing in the galaxy that couldn’t be bought or sold on a drifter colony. That wasn’t to say it was a nefarious sort of place…but neither was it on the up and up. Every soul mad enough to make a permanent existence on a drifter colony was desperate. Desperate to buy, desperate to sell, and plain desperate for survival. You couldn’t grow food on top of cold steel; hydroponically grown vegetation was nearly priceless….often going for as high a price as a replacement anti-gravity core, or a handful of nubile concubines. So, in an effort to draw traders, the marketplace itself was the only stretch of steel where an outside ship could dock. Dodging hawkers and criers advertising their wares was impossible. And it was in this particular conundrum in which Icarus Quill currently found himself.
Streets and walkways were paved with the hammered decks of interplanetary ships, old cruiser docking stations – whatever scrap metal could be dredged up from the limitless cosmos. And things were ever being added. Salvage. The empty shells of ships. All of it was haphazardly welded together in an unending, glistening metropolis. Residences were crafted from stacked shipping containers or the hollowed out bulk of out-of-date cruisers, civilian and military alike. None of it matched, however. There was not a single known sentient race whose technology hadn’t contributed to the odd mash-up. Bits of space stations from the Milky Way Galaxy. Andromedan fission reactor shells. Even bits of Cinntak engineering – a queer bio-ware that was more living organism than steel.
And amid all the fracas lay the marketplace. Which was about the only reason any respectable interstellar traveler would chart a pit stop on Enceladus 9. There wasn’t a thing in the galaxy that couldn’t be bought or sold on a drifter colony. That wasn’t to say it was a nefarious sort of place…but neither was it on the up and up. Every soul mad enough to make a permanent existence on a drifter colony was desperate. Desperate to buy, desperate to sell, and plain desperate for survival. You couldn’t grow food on top of cold steel; hydroponically grown vegetation was nearly priceless….often going for as high a price as a replacement anti-gravity core, or a handful of nubile concubines. So, in an effort to draw traders, the marketplace itself was the only stretch of steel where an outside ship could dock. Dodging hawkers and criers advertising their wares was impossible. And it was in this particular conundrum in which Icarus Quill currently found himself.