Hmm. Thought I'd might as well post a story I worked on through my vacation, but haven't recently done much with it. Should start again soon, though. Not a whole lot of it, but I'll post what I got.
“It’s on the ship.”
The Comm TV showed a well-shaved man in a plain black uniform, standing stoically in front of a camera, presumably. “We’ve investigated all the leads, and we are sure that we’ve found it this time; on an old freighter heading towards the Callifras Spaceport.”
The man in the black suit leaned back in his office chair, which was well-padded with black leather, to the fortunate comfort of whoever wished to sit in it. Rubbing his chin and tapping his fingers on the ebony disk in front of him, the man pondered the message. The whereabouts were confirmed. All they had to do was send in a retrieval team before anybody else did so, and before the ship landed, of course. The man got up, pacing over to the closest wall. He tapped it twice and clasped his hands together behind his back. After a few seconds, the entire wall cleared and suddenly it was a panoramic, breathtaking view of space. Mars was visible in the upper-right, half of the now-green planet in darkness. The man chuckled heartily.
“So much space. And it will all be in my grasp quite soon. Quite soon indeed.”
The man tapped the window twice once more and walked back to his chair and desk, seating himself and propping his feet up on the desk. The window re-darkened behind him.
“Nothing can really stop me now, can it?” He rubbed his hands together. “Funny, one of those apparently reputable diviners sent me a message that sai- Damnit, Buc, are you still on the TV?”
Buc nervously brushed some dust off his uniform and glanced around “Yes, I am still on the TV, sir. Should I possibl-“
“Yes! Go, idiot!” The man glared at Buc until Buc leaned over and flicked a switch, upon which the TV flicked off.
Sighing, he sagged into his chair. He opened a drawer in his black desk and pulled out a paper-thin screen, turning it on. A folder with several files stored away appeared, and he opened one, a message.
Your report is in, done by one of our most accomplished diviners. The interpretation reads:
“Subject is mostly uncontested, but one theme appears and reappears: An unknown with a thousand thousand potential faces, the stench of metal floating above him, and the appearance of a mere pawn. Your greatest enemy, your greatest threat.”
The man frowned. What did that even mean, the ‘stench of metal’, and the appearance of a mere pawn? Nobody who could ruin him would be some weak, small-time player; it just wasn’t possible. Or was it?
“Too many unknown factors, all the time,’ the man said, grumbling. “There is so much only time will tell, and sometimes there is simply not enough time.” The man put a hand over his heart and blankly stared at the clock on his wall, which had just struck 12 PM.
“No, simply not enough,” he whispered quietly.
---
Arn smiled, leaning against the side of the metal ramp that led up to the huge freighter, the captain of the ship talking to an obscure person in a hood not ten feet to his right. The captain knew him, and, like most people, ignored him. Arn wasn’t much of a sight; many of his clothes were more like experiments in sewing than actual clothes, and he was scruffy-looking, even scarred in some places, obvious signs of someone who lived in a rough ghetto where even the environment was the enemy.
Arn was fine with being ignored. More often than not, it simply led to information or an advantage, like now. And the information he was being presented with right now was very curious indeed.
“Are you sure it is locked up?” the person in the hood asked the captain of the freighter. The person was male, judging by the sound of his voice.
“Yes, yes of course. This girl has more twists and turns than a bull-maze, so it’s not like anyone is going to get to get to the center anytime soon,” the captain said, patting the section of the ship’s hull closest to him. “And the safe you provided makes it even, well, safer.”
“I would hope so... who is that?” This time, the hooded man pointed towards Arn. Arn pretended not to notice, staring straight ahead as he was for the past few minutes. The captain glanced over at him and shrugged.
“A nobody. He got taken on by one of those smiths who made it big in the metal-crafting industry, or as big as you can get, anyway. I guess the smith owed him something, or he paid somehow. Either way, don’t worry about him.” The captain turned back to the hooded man, and the hooded man nodded once in understanding and turned back to the captain. Case in point: everyone ignored Arn.
The captain continued speaking, just as Arn had hoped. “Anyways, the item is in the center of the ship, locked away tight, with several locked doors in the way as well. It’s pretty much in the center of the storage rooms, far enough away from the guest quarters. The room it is in is locked by a vault door made out of platinum mixed with asteroid steel: tough as nails and sparkly too.”
Arn knew the captain was bragging, knowing that aside from the hooded man, Arn was the only other person close by, and of course he saw Arn as a dumb scrapkid who probably didn’t even know what they were talking about. Arn may have been a scrapkid, but he was far from dumb.
“Alright, alright. I see. You must not forget that it is extremely important, yes? You know what reward is in for you when get to Callifras,” the hooded man said. The captain nodded several times and smiled. Presumably seeing that the captain understood, the hooded man took one last glance around and walked away.
Arn glanced once at the captain and turned back to watching the empty air in front of him. Soon, the captain would pay for ignoring him, pay with the mysterious item that he had hidden on his ship. Of course, Arn had no idea what the item actually was, but it was opportunity, and opportunity was all Arn had.
Seeing that he was done here, Arn popped his knuckles and broke from his position leaning against the ramp, choosing instead to vault lightly onto it and proceed into the ship.
The item hidden in the freighter would either make it or break it for Arn, and Arn intended to make it.
***
The room that Arn stayed in was a glorified closet, the bed taking up over half of the entire room. It wasn’t even a very big bed, Arn had grumbled when he had first seen it. At least the springs hadn’t snapped, which in Arn’s experience turned a bed into a bed of spikes, more or less.
Wrapping thin white cloth around his hands to form makeshift gloves, Arn contemplated