Ravens of Eternity

139 The Flow of Coin, Pt Felothi stepped through the doorway and into the small, dingy hab. The door slid shut behind him with a SWISH.

He carefully slung the rifle off from his shoulder, then stepped in a wide alcove set into the wall to the right of the door. He set the rifle down and leaned it into the corner, then began to undo the various cords that held his robe tight.

Once they were loose, he pulled his beltknife away and hung it on some pegs inside the alcove. He placed it alongside three others – one taller and a little more stylish than his, while the other two were smaller and child-sized.

Just off beside that were a number of modest robes hanging from a handful of hooks. Similar to the beltknives, there were robes of various height here, with two of them clearly shorter than the others.

He wound up his loose cord and hung it up on one of the open hooks. Then he unwrapped his blood-red robe and hung it right over his cords. All he wore now were his plain cloth underwraps.

Felothi sighed deeply as he looked below the robes, where piles of his old tools sat. They were gathered up in various boxes and containers, and did little more than collect dust and debt.

“Fah! You’re home!” said one of Felothi’s children.

The young boy ran down the entry hallway with arms open and tried to hug his father. He was still a fledgeling, and so only came up to his waist. Because of that, Felothi simply knelt down and hugged his son back.

“Long day in the Lower,” he replied. “You been behaving yourself this cycle?”

.....

“Helped Mah with a few things, so yes,” the boy replied.

“Well, best not let her down and keep helping her.”

Felothi let go of the boy, then urged him back towards the hab before he stood back up with a groan.

He followed his boy down the hallway and into the rest of his hab.

The living space before him was a fairly standard one, at least for this size of hab unit. It was a large circular room with a few doorways off to the sides. Each one connected to adjacent rooms – private quarters, hygiene pods, mealprep stations, and so on.

Along one end was a large circular screen with some comfortable oversized pillows in front of it. Felothi’s son jumped into the pile and watched a show on the screen. It was a comedic animation about friends that kept fighting with each other every cycle, but always forgave each other by the end.

On the other end of the main room was a curved desk with a terminal on it. A female green-scaled Drogar sat in front of it, and was completely absorbed by her work. She barely even noticed that her husband had even come home.

Felothi walked over to his wife, leaned on the wall next to her terminal, and greeted her happily.

“Hey Mah,” he said.

“Fah,” she replied, albeit absentmindedly.

“You ought to step away from the terminal for a bit and chat.”

“I’ve got too much to do right now. I’ll be done in about ten minutes, though.”

“Just take a break. No-one’s gonna know.”

She rolled her eyes at his comment. She needed to take her work seriously. The last thing she needed to do was slack off. And worse, get found out she slacked off.

“I’ll know,” she replied. “Besides, I’m only a few units away from meeting my quota. After that, we’ll have enough to meet this week’s needs.”

“Damn, great work,” he said. “All the more reason why you ought to take a break.”

“No. It’s all the more reason why you ought to take less breaks.”

“That’s not fair! There’s nothing I can do out there! I spent ten years learning VigDim Machining, and now all the VigDim’s are obsolete! I can’t force anyone to hire someone they don’t have any use for.”

His wife stopped working and turned towards him for the first time. Her eyes were bloodshot and tired, and she rubbed the soreness out of her fingers as she talked.

“You’ve got tons of skills,” she said, “and there’s tons of work to do. Don’t tell me there’s nothing you can do.”

“Of course there’s plenty of work,” he said. “Doesn’t mean I can do ’em all! And I might have tons of skills, but I don’t have any that they want. It isn’t easy for me. Or for a lot of people like me.”

Frustration started to fill her as he spoke. To her, it sounded like he was simply making excuses in order to avoid his duties. She waved at her terminal, then chided him with abandon, her tone cold.

“You think I knew how to even use this when I started?” she said. “No, ‘course not! The company taught me, gave me the time to figure things out, and now I’m basically an expert. It didn’t take long and it wasn’t a pain. All I had to do was put in the time.”

“Fine. You enjoy your work then.”

He groaned before he lifted himself off from the wall, then headed over towards the large screen across the room. On the other hand, she turned back towards her terminal, and muttered audibly into the air.

“If you think I’m enjoying myself, you’re delusional,” she said.

He spun around when he was halfway across the room. His voice was filled with exasperation. For whatever reason, he just couldn’t get her to realize how tough things were for him.

“And you think I am?” he said. “I keep saying it’s tough out there, but you won’t believe me. Just listen to Senator Savoth – he knows how bad things have gotten for us, and keeps talking about getting us help.”

She turned around in her chair as well, and faced him. It was clear that the anger was rising in her as well. Her voice was strained as well as annoyed.

“Savoth. What a joke,” she said. “He says many, many things, but actually does zero, zero things.”

“How can you even say that?!” he argued. “He pushed that Small Clan Support bill through, and that helped us buy that exact terminal you’re using! If it wasn’t for him, you wouldn’t be working at all!”

“Sure, I’ll concede that. He helped us, helped a whole lot of clans in his district... three years ago! When was the last time he actually put something in our hands, huh?”

Felothi was taken aback, and quickly shut up. There wasn’t anything he could say in Savoth’s defense. His wife was pretty much right – he hadn’t done anything to help them lately.

But at least he was fighting for them. Right?

“I’ve got things to finish up,” she continued, “so make yourself useful and fix us a meal.”

“In a little while,” he said. “Still a bit early for that.”

They turned their backs to each other and grit their teeth in silence. He moved towards the large screen, and she went back to her small screen.

Felothi switched the view on the screen from whatever random program to a more informational one. Or, at least, it purported itself to be so.

“Aww, Fah!” said his son. “I was watching that!”

“You should watch this stuff instead,” Felothi replied. “It’s way more useful than those trash anims.”

A well-enrobed Drogar came onscreen and listed off the happenings of the week in a perfunctory, logical style. But yet he injected his own opinions into what should have been a purely factual reporting.

“Our ‘Cast has received anonymous footage of the supposedly imprisoned humans here on Taloren Prime,” he said. “And what you’re about to see is incredibly disturbing.”

The screen flicked to a high-altitude spy video, but it was focused directly on the Federation prisoners’ courtyard. There, numerous humans and Drogar sparred against each other with military precision.

“What we are seeing is the formation of a secret army,” said the reporter. “A genetically enhanced subset of humans, but being trained to neutralize Drogar like us with brutal efficiency. I’m deeply concerned about this, and you should too.”

The image lingered on three humans fighting against a single Drogar, who fell to his knees after receiving a relentless attack from all sides. After a few moments passed, it was replaced by some footage from the parliamentary vote that occurred cycles earlier.

“Also earlier this week,” he continued, “the vote on one of the most irresponsible and dangerous pieces of legislation was halted yet again. Thank our heroes led by Senators Konleth and Savoth for stopping that insanity. Imagine having borders without the proper defenses! How preposterous! Imagine if you didn’t have doors to your hab – anyone could walk in and take whatever they wanted!”

The screen flicked to a scene of red-robed Drogar protesting at a city block somewhere. They all had anger deep in their eyes, and they wielded multiple weapons from beltknives to rifles.

“And the ongoing protest by the Imperium’s most loyal subjects have begun to bear fruit,” the reporter said. “Here they are, among one of the many streets where they voice their concerns about incursions against our great Empire. But they’re repeatedly told to be quiet, to leave – and threatened with deadly violence if they don’t.”

The Drogar on screen looked dead on, and with a low, gravelly voice concluded his segment.

“We clearly live in an extreme tyranny,” he said. “And we need to fight to restore the Empire.”

Felothi’s wife suddenly spoke while the reporter continued with his story. Since the screen was rather loud, she decided to try to speak over it.

“Did you at least earn something for the clan this cycle?” she asked.

Felothi lowered the screen’s volume in order to hear her properly.

“Yeah,” he said. “I’m up 269 Krohn in the coliseum. Happy I did better than yesterday.”

Felothi beamed at his accomplishment, but his wife was less than thrilled. The disappointment oozed through every word she said in response.

“Only two-hundred-ish?” she scoffed. “You used to bring in ten times that! What in heavens is happening with you?”

“That’s not my fault, alright?!” he said. “There’s a gods-damned ape that’s been messing with the odds. ”

“Messing with the odds? What? Is the human cheating or hacking or something?”

“No, no, nothing like that! It just... keeps winning matches stacked against it! I keep losing the surest bets! I sunk a thousand into a Reborn, and the ape took it to town! Just like that!”

His wife audibly groaned out of frustration and shook her head solemnly.

“So you made bets against a duelist that kept winning?” she said, “Were you expecting something different the next time or something? Look, just go back to your old strategy, and ignore the human. If you do that, things will be... better.”

“I am using my old strategy!” he exclaimed. “I’m going for the small, sure bets and growing it over time. But the gods-damned city’s gone upside-down! Those extra-sure bets get upturned by that ape!”

Felothi’ wife spun around yet again, the anger deep in her eyes. She couldn’t believe how foolish her own partner had been. It was insanity to her that he kept betting against something that clearly kept winning.

“Stop betting against the human, you idiot!” she yelled. “Better yet, quit betting the moment any human shows up on the arena floors. Put the coin away! Ignore the human!”

“How can I?” he yelled back. “That ape keeps mocking us, telling us we’re weak, laughing at our strength! Then it pounds our best duelists into the dirt! You can’t ignore that!”

“And you’re just gonna keep throwing our coin away?! Because you’re angry? Because you can’t ignore being provoked so easily?”

“But-”

He began to respond, but she cut him off before he could even begin.

“But, but, but,” she said. “It’s all ‘but’ with you. When are you actually going to take responsibility, huh? It’s not the human’s fault you’re broke. It’s not the lack of work, or skill, or whatever. You’re the real problem!”

She stood up from her seat in a flash, anger having filled every corner of her body. She balled her fists tightly as her arms shook from the adrenaline. Felothi’s hijinks had long bothered her, and she had enough of it. It all built up inside her, until she couldn’t help but let it burst from within.

“How about you grow a backbone,” she continued, “and do something with your life instead of playing around with those red-robed goons all the gods-damned time? How about you let go of this obsession with ‘apes’ and concentrate on your own gods-damned clan? Or, how about you quit plugging yourself up with your tail and bring home some gods-damned coin for once?!”

He slunk further and further into himself as she unloaded all of her frustrations onto him. Her tirade also wore her out somewhat, and she ended up huffing and puffing, completely out of breath.

.....

“When we joined clans,” she continued, “you promised me prosperity. We were supposed to become the richest in our district, the happiest among our peers. How about you live up to that instead?”