CMDR background story
03 Jan 2016BeetleJude
The water is choppy and the boat is leaky. It’s made of reed fibre and it leaks. The coating of bangaloon oil has long since leeched from the surface and Jude used fish oil in an attempt to replenish it. It hasn’t worked well and it smells. So does Jude. Judes hands hurt from barnacle slime in cuts and the slightly caustic saltwater of the lagoons. It’s not a great living fishing the beetle groves but it makes enough to justify hanging around the tightly regulated Hanandroo main 3 terminal area. Much of the surface of the terraformed world is wetland, the ideal place for the marsh dwelling Bangaloon beetle to thrive in.Today is tepid and blustery, but the wind doesn’t cut through the clothes to the skin like the shanty town ports of Hanandroo main 1. That is a miserable place to live. The seals that bark on its harbour side rocks in the afternoon witnessing the great star ships come and go seem clamped and battened down in the same way as the great poly-fabric ship-hangars’ guy ropes. Driving unending cold winds.
It’s warmer down by terminal 3, some way further south. The security are quite careful and suspicious round here, the beetle trade is pretty tightly regulated. It’s in everything though here. Judemagog’s hands are green from handling raw beetle paste, toxic to non-natives of Hanandroo. It’s a mild rush; better than a strong coffee. ‘I’m not dizzy and I can handle my boat’.
Jude sells a little of the part processed ‘spice’ to the more adventurous commanders that make it onto land. It’s a welcome bonus. Processing makes the product into the complex intoxicant and hallucinogen that gives Tranquillity its famous name. Sometimes, on a rest day Jude will go and sit and watch as the interstellar traffic ebbs and flows in the land-side base, back and forth to the great flat horizon of Hanandroo; Tarach Tor; the crossroads of the powers. It’s coming. War is coming and she really, really wants to get off planet.
Before that
The back wall of the building was made from Masswood – a biomodified variant of the Red Mangrove. The clean desalinated water that it extracted from the sodden soil of Tranquillity Bay beaded gently on the surface of the inner wall of the great processing station. People lived here and this moisture was collected with tiny taps driven into the wall, a little like maple sap extraction. The tap points were deeply whorled and over grown, they had been in place centuries. The wall was matted with aerial roots reaching out as if to catch passers-by, integrating into the side and front walls; the metal bulkheads from some long forgotten landing craft - of no design that could be recognised these days. Truth be told this place looked ancient. Tarach Tor’s primary planet Hanandroo had been a very early terraform target, its lack of a moon gave quiet seas and the waters were shallow. The Introduction of Masswood forests created silts and permanent soil, the seeding of life from the great bio-banks on Earth’s moon and at Eden research base deep under the ground of Alpha Centauri created a thriving eco system.
Small Crabs and vibrant poisonous frogs shared this building with the Humans working there. There had been hard times and the Masswood crabs were treated kindly for their sacrifices to the cooking pot in times gone by. Jude was wearing waterproofs today – straight in off the beetle mosses with a large vaguely wriggling sack. “ey-up Boss” An old woman raised an eyebrow slightly and primly gestured with a tiny palette knife to a blue crate with green stains sitting by the desk. Jude deposited the glittering contents of the sack into it grinning broadly, swaying from the lack of pressure. A few tiny glittering beetles made an escape from the crate and skittered a few yards across the floor before being hoovered up by the suddenly lightning fast crabs, which melted back into crevices in the rear wall. Jude made sure her eyes didn’t linger too long on the old crones face, that it was her today was immaterial; the woman, the man the young girl – they all meant the same thing, credits in the account, a place to stay, free spice and food if she needed it. Jude was careful not to interfere with the arcane. The old woman spoke, using the voice of the man; “good haul, 300 Credits today, get some stew while it’s hot. It’s offworld, not fish.” The woman looked past her to another figure in the doorway with a significantly smaller bag of beetles and flashed a smile at Jude.
The Rush
Spice was in Jude's first meal, in her mother’s milk. Spice, the gentle persuasion of its alterations went unnoticed by the villagers. Living in small watermill driven hamlets with surreptitious riches hidden behind shutters. The frameshift capable vehicle used at night; the suspiciously weather resistant coating of the outdoor furniture in the mossgarden; the windows that were not simple meltsand but transalumium. This was the future backwater. Low profit. Not a power target. Not worth it. But the Spice…it was the spice that made the difference and put the blue-green haze over the little town hospital and the gears that seemed to be magic under the watermill.
Just a little beetle living on the moss. This moss was in bread and soup and the paper Jude learned to write on. Paper was apparently so precious that humanity found a way to recreate it wherever they lived. Fibres. Lignin. The soft fluffy parts and the strong roots locking together and making a surface, all you need is water and warmth to cook down those scented heady leaves. The seedbanks despite their brash advertisements and confidence went only so far and moss seemed to be in everything. But that moss turned the hands green and sweet-talked the people. Eating the beetles was only a step – like a prawn really. With all that rice that grew so abundantly on planet the new Hanandrooans had a plethora of familiar dishes to draw from. All green mind. But you got used to it. It was all Jude had ever known.
The Rush though. The Aganippe Rush. Now that wasn’t spice. As far as Jude was concerned it was drugs. Tried it once. Bit of a coming of age thing. Silly and embarrassing.
Aganippe and Tarach Tor seemed to have some connection. Judemagog was aware of the traders that spoke of the distances they travelled and the profits they made. Credits Jude couldn’t imagine getting her hands on were spoken of frequently in the loading bay full of exotic humans in spacesuits tailored for comfort on planet with snap open Remlok helmets attached to their sides.
They joked about canopy breaches and compared loadouts; class 4, class 5 strange weapons that fired with random levels of power and their stories of the fuel scoop and the terror of the sungrazing. Jude was a worker and she kept her head down but it all made its mark. She noticed the boss looking at her. Today it was the Girl. She was sat in a corner playing with a small seal pup. The traders ignored her and went to the large bearded man at the desk by the blue bucket. The man who spoke with the old womans voice. If the traders frowned at the cracked antique voice of the man they hid it very swiftly. A spice factory isn’t a safe place for an offworlder. The girl was chewing on a little green stick as she played with the fluffy seal. Jude felt the inexorable and familiar drag and walk shuffled sideways to the girl at the back of the room.
The green within green eyes abruptly left the pet and turned to Jude, locked on and the bearded mans voice – his real voice - said “you’re going to Aganippe” I’ll speak to you there.
The air on the space ship was dry and tasted slightly of plastic and metal. How could they stand it. The lack of moisture in the air! Jude’s skin was itchy and flaking, irritated by some deficiency or more probably an adequate and nutritionally balanced diet. The food was fascinating to Jude however and the little galley of the T6 trading vessel was her refuge in the few days she was aboard. The colours of the foods were incredible. Freezers that ran the full length of the sector disgorged their contents into her little personal cooker as she wallowed in textures and flavours unknown to her, orange foods and white foods, deep red dried meat samples from some trade run or another at the back of a larder tightly packed and neatly labelled with sliding fronts to the shelves.
Jude was sampling eggs today and she removed one from a case in the chiller then pressed a button to reengage the stowage. It clicked into place with a satisfying ‘snick’ and Jude smiled to herself. The constant hum of the engines was slightly muffled down here in the Galley and she could image herself in a more familiar environment for a few moments sometimes. This was not to be a long lived sensation of pleasure however as the stomach churning lift then pressure of a move into hyperspace signalled another bout of nausea. This was not her little spice marsh canoe. The egg slipped from her fingers and smashed on the floor. It was offworld, all clear slimy liquid and yellow. It’s lack of a normal green yolk turned Jude’s stomach and for a moment she thought she’d throw up, then a loud bang and shudder signalled the return to real space.