The Cantina
As they arrived, each of the Oraki were greeted in turn by the cantina's bouncer, an enormous brute of a human, fully six and a half feet tall, with what parts of his nut-browned skin visible covered in exotic patterns of neon-purple tatoos. To Kestrel, the man nodded, waving him into the Canteena, with a half rumbled, "Have fun, Pinnochio, but yer toys needs ta stay stowed, gawt it?" The first man-machine through the door, he fell back against the wall, leaning there and waiting, at least until the second, Mach, arrived, drawing a blink, and even a gape from the muscle man. "Two uv yinz in a day?" Still, he just stood agape, not making any motion to stop the Oraki as he arrived.
An odder hive of dancing scum and drinking villainy cannot possibly exist, and if it did, it was not likely to be equipped with multiple disco balls sticking out of seeming random surfaces, casting their spotted, colored lights about the room in throbbing, whirling flashes. Nor was the music likely to be the same, with an all Salvorathan band on the stage, in the final stages of tuning up, a sound not entirely unlike the demonic crossbreed of a tactical nuclear weapon and an electric guitar. With a mere early evening's crowd, only a few dozen eyeballs turned to the Oraki as they entered, most out of the habit of sizing up potential trouble, though more than a few stayed in open stares, while a small compliment of human and Salvorathan waitstaff darted among them. At least none had that drilling, hateful stare that some zealots managed. Mostly, they seemed to be curious.
Manning the bar, as Mach approached it, was a single tender, his long, silvery hair tucked behind pointed ears, while ruby eyes flecked with emerald lit up a moment, his sing-song voice calling out over the twanging and crashing of the tune-up. "Ha-la! Na Kel'Ora! The stars, have they perhaps yielded up a challenge to my fair art at long last? What have you come here for, oh Ironman? Is it indeed to test my skill, to see if I can succeed where many another keep has surely failed? To feel my delicate weavings of the spirits upon your tongue? They do tell me you gentlemen have those, right? ... Ah. No? Then what have you come here for, my friend? Ahh, yes, yes, of course. But you may as well sit a spell, and enjoy my elixers, for that comes in its own time here, and if it really is what you're after, he's usually not here until a touch later in the day. So what may I craft for you today?"
And the band exploded into metallic noise.
Space - just another frontier
With the fringe atmosphere of Sabrontir I, a common comm band crackled to life a moment with a brief moment of static, as another ship passed below the Karloff. "Hey, yinz alive up 'der in dat bucket, or is we coming up ta salvage?" At least the voice was relatively friendly, as it addressed the ship, a touch of actual concern in the voice, masking a little bit of the opportunism.
Elsewhere, with the passing of time, more bands and beams came to life, landing clearances being granted for the Franklin and the Souhait, while automatic mechanisms brought them to bear along the partly-finished docking ring, hanging weightlessly in orbit at the geostationary level, the larger ship mated to an airlock, the smaller, arriving in a bay, each granting access to a busy port-side, cargo and parts carts moving here and there amongst a cacaphony of beeps and horns. Chaos in a bottle, it would seem.
Meanwhile, in deep space, several ships continued their slow drift, each almost imperceptible against the background radiation, despite the vast differences in their size, one small and tiny, carrying a single, fae-like creature, the other enormous, and betraying its presence only with a simple, repeated signal in a tucked away corner of the radio spectrum, nearly Morse like in its nature.
