Nerotai

The new morning routine, sixty-four days after Lea te Suldan. Sixty-four days into an isolated Therevatti. Wake up, check the feeds. See the news scroll on the buffer, the name “Le Stroud” across the headlines. Gradually losing its place to other stories, other colonies. Noonsun. Arai. Tangodan. Conflict across the stars.

Confirm buffer connection is intact, the tiara of satellites falling ever onward, rotating round Therevatti, keeping us connected. Letting our voices be heard on the buffer. Letting my podcast reach all of you. Letting everyone hear Therevatti slowly come into focus. It’s triumph, its anger, its future conflicts, slowly coming into focus.

Get out of bed, nearly topple over sheets kicked clear by soaked, humid sleep. Could always roll to the other side, where it’s cooler, but I never seem to, even in dreams. Force of habit I think.

Shower. Put the stink, and the sweat, and the anxiety down the drain. Fight dark thoughts.

“You’re never going to see Sacramento again.”

“You’re never going to hug your father again.”

“You’re never going to see a forest again.”

“You’re never going to… see…”

Cut the water. Towel off. Breakfast is a cold protein shake that tastes a lot like blueberries and a little like pork, made exclusively in a blender. Vrrrr. Open the Twinnon Peregrine, check my messages for any sign of them. There isn’t anything, so I scan the spreadsheet of restaurants, temporary haunts, any place we crashed, any place we stayed together for more than a day. Map out the ones I haven’t already visited. I pat the stack of posters, which is too thin, and curse. On the fridge, a magnet has slipped. Under the fridge, probably, is a note that says “get more computer paper for the printer” in black ink. Below that, in red ink, is something unkind and vulgar--which I won’t repeat.

Get dressed, get the posters back in their carrying case. The familiar weight of the satchel strap digs into my shoulder. The familiar sensation of rain sweeps past my jacket’s hood. Season of fog’s come early this year--wonderful.

Back into the mud, alone. Back to searching, alone. Back to hanging posters, so maybe I won’t be alone.

It has been two months since Lea te Suldan Station was destroyed. It has been two months since I climbed out of the escape pod. Two months of searching.

Polity is everywhere… in my thoughts. At their pillow, in the packets of planetangs I’m saving for them, in their toothbrush at the bathroom vanity.

But for two months, Polity is nowhere near me.

I’m Oscar Yasui, formerly a professional food critic, and currently an independent food journalist--and exile. And you’re listening to Gastronaut.

I was worried that Lea te Suldan’s escape pods might touch down in one of Therevatti’s banded seas. Leaving the occupants bobbing, living off of sundried algae and fuschia scaled seabirds. Another possibility was a saner, preprogrammed route to what the pod might consider a safe location. And since the pod came from Lea te Suldan, and Lea te Suldan was owned by Brightsail… Yeah. You can imagine how that would have ended.

But no, we arrived, rattled and nauseous, feeling the trip in every bone of our bodies, battling vines just outside the Pacheco City Blue Zone. Maybe that was always the intended destination. Maybe Polity selected it, reprogrammed the pod navigation and directed us there. We didn’t see any other pods nearby, though the displays showed a few landing within a mile or so. Was it all random chance? (laughs) To be frank, I find that possibility scarier than the ocean or Brightsail, so I’m just going to let that train of thought gently derail, alright?

Brightsail probably checked where we landed, but we never saw them up close, just occasional glimpses of distant patrols vectoring towards us. The guerillas Polity had sent to me were invaluable in gathering and directing everyone away from the city, but also away from the deeper jungle where we might uh… disappear. Eventually, the tattooed guerrilla pulled aside a cascade of vines, dotted with pink flowers no larger than the point of a pen, and we were standing outside that ruined shed by the skirts. The exact one Polity and I squatted at after they were shot.

I caught Bradely staring up at the sky, with an expression of wonder and horror. The clouds were out, as they always were, so you couldn’t see the falsestar of Lea te Suldan without special equipment. He took a deep shuddering pull of air, more a series of gasps. His knees almost gave out, and I had to support him. Somewhere above us, the ruins of his livelihood floated.

“That’s that, then,” Bradley said. He gave me a single nod, but when I moved to join him he simply turned up his collar against the rain and walked out into the city, followed by his employees.

Two months ago. That had been two months ago. The epinephrine, the cortisol, those awful fluids, they had all dried up. What was left was… nothing? No. That’s reductive. What was left was me.

Back then my days were spent almost exclusively knocking on doors and hanging posters of Polity’s face. And in doing so, I saw a Therevatti I did not entirely recognize.

Dain once told me… well, not me, he’d never tell me this, but he once told Polity that the worst fate a revolutionary could have wasn’t dying to a bullet. It wasn’t being shipped by Railship to some deadworld blacksite, it wasn’t eating the same meal in a cave, learning all the ways you could hate a bowl of stew, missing all the things you never knew you’d miss about living above ground as a citizen.

No. He said:

“The worst way all this ends is one day I wake up from all the hiding and the planning, all the nightmares and the killing, and I haven’t moved. I’m living in an indifferent world. The same color drywall, the same Brightsail propaganda. Nothing’s changed except how many bodies I’ve sent to the crematorium. That’s what hell is, Polity. All of this, and nothing mattered.”

I know you can’t hear this, Dain, because you thought my work was terrible and… because you’re not with us anymore. But we didn’t land in the same Therevatti we left. I hope you know that, somehow.

Because the streets I walked to hang my posters were no longer dotted with triads of Brightsail mercenaries, or marred with vehicle treads or the columned imprint of power armored boots. A man made star had vanished from Therevatti’s night sky, and even during the day I could see nearby rooftops dotted with tripods and infrared ping-scatter telescopes. Rain shimmered down the front of billboards painted with graffiti of sinking boats, bullet marked sails, anchors overgrown with native vines. Cafe-goers spoke in hushed whispers over hot cups of instant coffee. Fear and excitement ran through the streets. If there’s anything I’ve illustrated in this second season of Gastronaut, it’s that extrasolar life has never been boring. But even then, these were interesting times.

I stapled posters to stores, stopped to chat as best I could in my broken Thetti to passerbys. A thirty something, might be in a gray sweatshirt and black synthetic pants. Might have a round messenger bag with little stars on it. Nobody knew anything. I got shrugs, scowls, sad shakes of the head. A gaggle of tough looking youth cocked their heads at me, some glowering ferociously. Someone called out “Muidatte.” I ignored the word, but they persisted.

“Muidatte, you look familiar, hatietti. Scar, yah? Are you Scar?”

I told them I didn’t know a “Scar” but my name was Oscar Yasui. The youths lifted their eyebrows to each other, but relaxed.

“Close enough. No word in the jungle about Politi. Nothing.” He rapped his knuckles against the trash bin he was sitting on, spit to the side. He reached a hand out, and I pressed a poster against his callused palm.

“We’ll keep our eyes open. Not enough made it out of that mess. Always happy to pull a Saint up out of the Rail.”

“Thank you,” I said.

“And you,” he said, “for helping our upstairs tenants redecorate.” The young man grinned, and I noticed the scabby scratch on his chin for the first time.

“Are you with Grac au Mao?” I asked. A few of the kids grimaced at that. One of them straightened like she might leap to her feet. The older boy I was speaking with shook his head, no longer smiling.

“Glory Ten,” said another. My turn to straighten. Hardliner types. I was lucky to be considered a friend.

“Wonderful meeting you,” I said, keeping my voice neat and level. “Have a good day, and stay dry.”

“Therevatti for the D*****,” another kid cheered out. I got out of there quick; I never could predict what Glory Ten’s people would do next.

I said my goodbyes and departed. I walked a few blocks and sat for a drink from my canteen, staring from beneath an awning the color of Polity’s jackets, out at the lights of Pacheco City spilling over the towering walls of the Blue Zone.

I knew of no negotiations with Brightsail’s board, or with the mercenaries that now found themselves stranded on Therevatti’s surface. From where I stood, I could see how the security forces had entrenched. The walls were reinforced with new plate, the gate sealed at all hours. It was ringed in a stretch of land that extended out across beaten mud, to abandoned buildings pockmarked by the sabots of unseen snipers. The graffiti was beginning to weather in the rain. The foundation stones curled and coiled with new ivy.Three months ago, a mercenary would hurl spewgas canisters and baton blows at anybody who approached the gate. That special brand of mercy was gone. Nobody went near the walls now.

Was that where Polity was? Right back to the place I had first met them, locked in some automated cell being fed drugged food by an interior intelligence? This was one of those barbed fears, the kind that puts its hooks into your soft places so thoroughly, no amount of logic can lever it out. Nobody had reported a pod dropping down in one of the city’s green spaces. Wasn’t like it was something an entire township could miss, streaking down from the sky, still steaming from the touch of an atmosphere under pressure.

I pulled out my Twinnon Peregrine. Some of its new screen cracks were healing, but slower than I remembered. The crystal was aging. This trip aged everyone, I guess. I tabbed over to my email.

A lagged message, drawn out and reassembled by the time-ignorant hands of the buffer. I felt the rain more clearly all of a sudden. The message had reached me despite Brightsail’s network blackout. If anyone could pull that off… this was it.

But… wait. It was a blocked category, brought to my attention due to certain marker tags. Ah. Not Polity. The Duke.

I poised my finger over the message for a moment. I hadn’t expected to hear from him again so soon. The Rail Network had been partitioned in preparation of Sol’s expedition to Therevatti. No more passenger or commercial traffic, which meant that the Duke was stopped during his flight on the Singular Devotion. I thought he’d be moping for at least six months.

I could feel Polity beside me. Hand on my shoulder. Don’t open the message. Don’t do it.

I put finger to screen. The heading expanded.

“To my Sommelier,

I hope you’ve enjoyed this little reprieve the military cordon must have offered you. Certainly you are, shall we say, informed enough to have heard that the Singular Devotion was waylaid.” Yeah, Duke. I watch the news.

“Well, this little foible is nothing to a man of my means. Because for the sake of finding satisfaction against the substantial crimes you have wrought, first and foremost…”

I let my eyes skim a little here, spot editing my way through a few paragraphs of concentrated grievance. I picked up after the word “melliferous” hit the page with the force of a jackhammer.

“Yes, you heard that right. I’m willing to sacrifice any comfort to find you. My new ship, the Pathway to August may lack in decorum, but it is a vessel of hard, committed men. If I must send away every security officer and personal assistant and chef and maid to meet the muster to bring you to justice… then so be it. I need only myself, and the very best of my mercenary companions to track one braggart ragposter.”

The rain felt a bit chill. The Pathway to August was a military ship. The Duke had found a bunk aboard a marine vanguard vessel. Which meant he had skipped the cordon. Which meant-

I let the pad go slack in my hands. Looked up at the sky. Clouds woven with airborne kelp. Forests on the wind. Somewhere above all that was the obliterated remains of Lea te Suldan Station. Of the only Railgate in the system. The only exit from Railspace in this branch of the colonies.

In a stupor, I resumed reading.

“I’ve done the calculations with the help of a particularly ungentlemanly navigator, the kind of ilk your flight has forced me to converse with. If his approximations are correct, then by the time you read this message, I will have arrived on Le Stroud. With fortune, perhaps I am behind you this very instant. You may begin running, if any part of your being still believes you have a chance.”

The wind kicked up. Setting awnings to bounce, making passerby pull in their coats against newly motivated rain. It lifted my coat and lifted the skin of my neck into prickles of goosebumps.

And the wind didn’t stop there. Nothing could stop the wind. It soared past me, winding and howling. A thing of immaterial force. Of influence without substance, and on and on.

Maybe that was the Pathway to August. Maybe that’s too woo-woo for the buffer. Maybe I’ll delete this later. What was certain fact, however, was that the Duke wasn’t arriving on Therevatti. Wasn’t arriving anywhere. My shoulders shuddered at the thought. The consequences of the raid. Hundreds of newly minted Saints on the Rail, trapped forever in the not-nothing beyond our own something. Trapped until… whatever happens to all the Saints that have been trapped on the Rail. Nobody ever knew where they went. Only that they would never stop going.

“See you soon, Oscar,” the message ended.

“Goodbye, Duke of New Caledonia,” I said, and deleted the message.

My route took me hanging posters at every major gathering point of the skirts, so I got a great view of street life. It spread out in all directions, responding to the events in orbit. I saw flags with “Mai Lis Ais” emblazoned on them, “Tomorrow, Liberty!” sewed on banners, on stickers. Oh, the stickers. Lah-tahp, listeners. The word gleamed in holohues from windows and walls, stuck to public phones and utility boxes. A gaggle of teenage girls whispered it at a street corner. Two drunken women just last night howled it from the roof of my apartment. You could hear it from the tangle, you could see it graffitied in great five meter letters on the Blue Zone’s walls. Those letters stood unfinished--the artist had been shot halfway through. Topsy turvey. All things change. Lah-tahp. No longer just a hidden slogan, or a beloved brand of alcohol.

But I did not see those logos on the building I approached that morning. Certainly, there was grip tape residue where someone had ripped the stickers free, leaving blotchy silver streaks. At the Pacheco Bicycle Repair Shop, where Grac au Mao once sourced their weapons, the language of the revolution was not welcome. The neon sign outside lay unlit, as it had for a week. A closed sign was posted on the door. On a nearby wall, Polity’s face stuck their tongue out at me from one of my posters. I smoothed a corner down, let the gecko tape regain its grip so it wouldn’t flap as much in the breeze.

I raised my hand to knock on the door. I never knew if I was welcome. But in the old watchtower above the garage floor, Polity and I had sheltered for a few days. Splashback flecked my cheeks when my knuckles connected.

Shah’s father answered, his beard grown out a half inch, his eyes reflecting the fatigue he must have felt in his bones. A few months and he already seemed much older. I knew why.

“Oscar,” he said, after looking me up and down. “We have not seen Polity.”

“Okay,” I said, then switched over to Thetti. “Could I come in and sit with you for a while? Talk?”

“No Oscar, I do not feel like drinking,” he said as I produced a sloshing thermos from my raincoat, “I am beginning to realize that it does nothing for the melancholy.”

“I bring tea,” I managed. Understanding was easier than speaking, so far. “It is good tea,” I finished.

He regarded the thermos without joy, but waved me in. I passed boxes of family possessions, saw tables and chairs stacked. A house arranged for travel, rather than a life. Memories and keepsakes as freight. Pictures stacked in rows against the walls, and someone, maybe one of Shah’s younger brothers, had gone to the trouble of scrubbing the floors.

“You’re doing better with Thetti, Oscar,” Shah’s father called out from the kitchen, his voice rising as he returned a stacked chair to the dining room table. “But if it’s more comfortable for you, we can speak in Standard. I’m ah… I don’t know how common it’s going to be now that we’re disconnected.”

“No please Standard,” I said, shuffling my words like a song playlist. “I am to be enjoying this.”

Shah’s father, or Lifo as I had come to know him, sighed, “have it your way, I just want you to know it isn’t an obligation.”

I sat down, and Lifo struggled with the thermos cap, wrinkling his crooked nose at the effort. He waved me away when I reached to help, murmuring something in Thetti that I didn’t catch. The cap came free, and he poured us a few drinks.

“I’m not used to…” he began, his voice thickening. “Usually when I had a stubborn lid or screw I’d just wiggle it in Shah’s direction and be done with it.” He laughed, only once. “I suppose I’ve had to learn to be more independent lately.”

“I see you have begun to be moving?” I said, broadly gesturing at the house’s disarray. Lifo looked around as if he had just noticed the mess.

“That, of course. No, we don’t believe that there’s much of a future for us here in the Outskirts,” he said. “We’ll build a life somewhere else. Become a coat patcher or bike fixer on Therevatti and you’ll always have food on the table. Maybe we’ll ehm,” He paused to take a sip of the tea, before smacking his lips and giving a nod to his cup. “Kira and I’d like to find a property where we can fill the doorways with new memories.”

“And you are taking the children with,” I said. A shadow crossed Lifo’s features.

“I think only Misha could be called a child now. We’ll be taking those that still value the wisdom of their parents.”

I realized there was a hoarseness in his voice. His gaze flicked behind me, and I turned to look. There was a dent, two centimeters deep, a few meters up the wall. Shards of clear plastic was neatly piled near a broom. They reflected the light of ceiling fixtures. When I returned my attention to Lifo, I saw that his eyes were unfocused, replaying a memory.

“What happened?” I asked.

“I had a disagreement with one of my sons,” Lifo answered. He took another gulp of tea, let it settle against his vocal chords before he swallowed. “I think we both took a different lesson from Shah’s funeral ceremony.”

It tasted of sweet leaves with a synthetic honey burn. I hadn’t attended Shah’s funeral. I had spent most of the week preparing for the Lea te Suldan attack. The funeral was over just the day before we packed into the shuttle to leave.

“He joined Mao?” I asked.

“Yes,” Lifo answered, “or one of the dozen or so groups haunting our world’s jungles and alleyways--he hasn’t kept in touch with us.”

“I understand,” I said, noticing the stacks of boxed possessions a second time. So… that was it then.

“Have you…” he started, but appeared to dislike the vulnerability in his voice. When he began again, it had been replaced with a note of authoritative disinterest. “Have you seen him around the cavern base? If you run into him, will you tell him that…” he stopped again, seeing my look of pain.

“Lifo,” I said, “I do not see Grac au Mao anymore, I do not go to that place. I only meet a man to talk about Polity. Things are changed with me and they, never were we close.” I willed Lifo to understand that I couldn’t return. “I am… sorry-friend.”

“Yes,” he said, crushing the lids of his eyes together. “That makes a great deal of sense. Never mind then.”

We ran out of tea shortly afterwards, Lifo asked if I wanted to stay for lunch, for a delicious sounding meal of fried local scallops, swimming in sauce. Tender and spicy, a meal we had eaten together when I had stayed last, when I was at Polity’s side. My stomach rumbled at the thought. But I had more locations to visit. I told him that if he ran into Polity, that he should call me as soon as possible.

“Oscar,” Lifo said, as I was capping my thermos, rising to stand. From my new perspective, I could see how much gray had tangled through the wave of his black hair.

“You will find them. I do not know if Polity has survived worse, but I do know that they need very little to succeed. I think that they enjoy challenging expectations.” Here, he gestured at the adjoining garage, where he had triaged the two of us after our encounter with Ungerson.

“You will see them again,” Lifo said, the warmth in his voice surging up and over the smokey tendrils of bitterness. “When you do, give them a hug for me, and tell them… how about you tell them that they’ve grown up well.”

I hovered in the threshold of the kitchen, one foot towards the door, one towards the table where he sat. I wanted to apologize to Lifo, for Shah. I wanted to apologize for what happened to her every time I came here. I wanted to tell him anything I could to give the man some extra insight into the life his daughter had with Grac au Mao. With Polity and I. But I had already done all of that before. And an apology becomes a crueler thing every time you repeat it.

Instead, I said something in Thetti that I had been practicing for nearly a week. Struggling to get the vowels tones just right. “Thank you, Lifo,” I said in Thetti, “for all the hospitality you’ve shown us.”

“Goodbye, Oscar,” Lifo said.

“Goodbye,” I said.

I left shortly afterwards, back to hanging posters and speaking to old friends. Under a gray sky, where birds with emerald feathers danced with the rain. I remember exactly what I felt, watching them yaw and dive and tuck their wings in for rolls, chasing translucent bodied insects. My thought was…

“Saints my knees hurt.”

I checked the guardhouse where I got Polity sandwiches while they were recovering, chatted with the incredibly friendly couple that lived there. They were holding on, even if their home was quite close to the no man’s land outside Pacheco’s walls. Brave twenty somethings. Cunning, too. While the man distracted me, his wife managed to slip an entire spokeshroom and onion melt into my pocket. They wouldn’t take no for an answer and, well, they still made great sandwiches. It was a travel sized meal. My stomach was complaining from marching all over the skirts, so I had a bite.

I only managed two before I heard the pops. High and loud, in three group clusters, with whizzing retorts. I dove to the muddy ground, feeling corrugated siding grate against my scalp as I landed. I had aimed for an alleyway, hoping that the walls would offer me some cover from the shots.

A figure darkened the entrance. I wiped mud from my eyes.

A child. Looking confused and startled. A grape cluster of little cheap powercells, each the size of a pea, all daisy chained on a connection cable. Local firecrackers. Easier to rig up in the rain than a gunpowder charge, only as expensive as a few hours sorting through city trash.

He pointed at me and laughed. Said something in Thetti, “muddy” I think. Then he dashed off down the street, towards more rippling pops.

Just--Just a kid. Just a muddy faced kid in torn shorts. Mismatched orange and pink flip flops.

Not Green Eyes. Not today, at least.

My knee had completely obliterated my gifted melt, flattened it, spraying the contents out either side,the whole affair had been soaked in sodden soil. My stomach growled again.

Forget this. It was time for lunch.

Location number seven. Tato’s emerged from the fog like a steel crab, squat and plated. A restaurant built out of the husk of an abandoned heavy forestry machine. Legs with burned out servos and welded joints rose like cathedral spires. Its innards had been stripped out, broken down, sold. Patrons sat where the engine block once rumbled and groaned. A pair of cooks worked the grill where once a series of grinders mulched local vegetation. Above the entrance hung a single detached metallic claw, its grasp slack and pouring water. It looked like some fishing trophy. Well, the fishing trophy of a particularly brave angler, I guess.

You’d think the manager would call the place “Steel Crab” or something with a bit more punch. The joke here, listeners, is that it wasn’t even called Tato’s. That’s a service I’m doing for all of you. “Tato” was the owner’s name. The sign above the claw, flickering light refracted by the liquid crystal of the fog, just read Nerotai. That’s… that’s just Therevattin for food. Years ago, I wouldn’t set foot in a place called food.

Maybe that’s why, despite having some of the best battered fish I’d ever had on either side of a Railgate, Tato’s never had more than five customers inside at a time. Marketing, listeners, is not a skill we are born with, although Tato is a wonderful hostess, manager, cook, and obviously has a flair for unconventional applications of real estate. Still…food.

I came to Tato’s more for their fish than to search. My posters stood strong in the rain outside, given a healthy margin of space by the other missing persons reports that were becoming all too common since the revolution had heated up. I’d hit Tato’s for a meal, then head back out onto the street. Just a quick bite--two strips of white fish fry, seasoned with the ground hulls of a new Therevatti spice. It tasted like sweet pepper with a mild acidic pucker to it. There was a side basket of root vegetables, not potatoes, but something dark brown with a rich, starchy, caramel. It was fried in oilgrass squeezings and perfectly salted. Its lower profile flavors complemented the sweet and salty taste of the fish’s flesh perfectly. There was a side sauce, translucent gold with bright red flecks. It was… buttery, with bursts of savory sweetness. The red flecks perhaps? A local chopped fruit?

Seasonings and ingredients I had never heard of, listeners, even in all my time here. I’m talking about this because Therevatti hadn’t even begun to come into its own in the world of cuisine. Places like Tato’s illustrate that new recipes and new elements are being revealed every year. What a time for a food critic to be stranded, right? But searching for Polity left little time for food writing.

I was just wrapping up my meal when I saw the door open, saw a stooped figure enter. Yellow rain-jacket clinging to their body, fog billowing behind them. They had a harried confidence to them, a swagger I found familiar, even if I couldn’t see their face behind the mouth of their hood.

I was already wiping the grease from my fingers, rising to my feet. Polity had found my posters. They’d shadowed my route.

I only managed a few steps when the figure dropped their hood. I froze at the sight of their face. Pale and angled, but still managing a carnivorous grin. Hair blonde but not a dyed yellow. A ghostly blonde.

Not Polity. Ungerson.

He was gaunter, more hunched. He was alone, with no replacement for Ogata in sight, and that seemed to put Ungerson in a more feral light. He would often shift how he stood to keep doorways and news screens in view, scanning his surroundings even as he leaned on furniture and waved his opposite hand extravagantly. His clothes were dull on his shoulders. Their color and weave didn’t scream for the attention of passerby, and they hung untailored on his frame. As he spoke to Tato at the front counter, his left eye caught the overhead lighting just right, and I saw a thin applique of false flesh ringing the socket. There, bruising crept around the adhesive, and the white of his globe was just a bit redder.

And yet, it was still Ungerson. It was him in his grin, in his posture, in the short, darting motions of his hands. In his appraising looks to the food of other patrons, to their clothing, his veiled calculations of venue value and popularity. Assessing bank accounts, lifestyles, media platforms. A beating hadn’t changed the man.

I knew why Ungerson was here. Tato’s marketing was abysmal, but her restaurant's eponymous food was excellent, service was quick, and few locations are hosted in hollowed out industrial equipment. Nerotai was a first draft, but with refinement, it could become something really special. The issue was that Ungerson had the same thought. I kept him in view as he picked out a booth, settled in, feet up on the table, only removing them with a sheepish chuckle when Tato whistled at him, snapping her fingers at his muddy boots. She didn’t see the eyeroll after the apology. Didn’t hear him mutter under his breath.

But I did.

While he was picking out his order, I went to join him. I took a seat at his booth, saw him slow his drumming on the tabletop. Saw the flash of recognition in his eyes. His mouth twisted, his fingers curled slightly, spiders that didn’t know if they should die.

All of that preamble took maybe a second. The space of an eyeblink. Ungerson smiled like a fox might have, had you found him rambling with the chickens. But his spine was unusually tense.

“Hey, Oscar,” he said. I could hear the loathing beneath his voice. Could hear him wrestling against it. “How’re things?” He rolled a kink out of his right shoulder, limbering up.

“I know why you’re here,” I said.

“You know,” Ungerson continued, plowing ahead. “You just keep finding ways to surprise me. I really thought you’d have skipped town after the stunt you pulled.” The corners of his mouth twitched. “Just seemed like something a smart guy might do.”

“I skipped your part of town,” I said, “But since you brought it up… is Pacheco still your part of town, Ungerson? Is that why you’re out beyond the defense grid? Beyond the walls? Getting your shoes dirty?”

Ungerson spread his hands, “I’m an experienced contractor. Just because my network shrunk a bit when the station went kablooey doesn’t change the fact that my skills are in demand.”

The seat beside him sat empty. Devoid of Ogata’s massive frame. The loss made Ungerson seem smaller. Highlighted some of his manic energy. Was he always a little haggard?

The shudder of his eyes. The slight wobble in his limbs. I found myself craning to look at the subtle seam lines of his cranial augment.

“Ungerson,” I began, “where are you getting your sleep treatments now?”

He laughed, a bit too loud for comfort, then sucked air through his teeth. His face resolved into a smile as tight as a tourniquet.

“Nice, very nice, Oscar, but you can save the bullshit for someone it’ll work on.” He dragged a free hand across his chin before he spoke, “I’ve got a connect or two in pocket. Again--and really listen this time, alright? My skills are plenty in demand. Even on this mushroom studded turd of a world.”

Away from our table, a customer chatted with the waiter. The cooks in the kitchen were singing a duet, a brassy anthem. My Thetti was good enough to pick out a few words now, and besides, this one was a favorite of Shah’s. “The coil binds my wounds, the rain washes clean. Fight, fight, fight, another day to fight…”

Ungerson heard it too. Grimaced at the sound--or maybe at the lyrics.

“Out out out, you can die among the stars…”

“Doesn’t matter either way,” he said, nearly talking over me. He rapped the table, “I’m a free agent, freer these days then I’ve ever been, got the locals to thank for that… so much for winter holiday,” he grumbled.

Silence between us. For a moment, Ungerson leaned away, wobbled the salt shaker back and forth. I kept my eyes fixed on him.

“Have you eaten here already?” Ungerson asked, in the awkward pause.

“Yeah, I have,” I answered.

“Oh, good, that’s good… what did you have?”

“The Shred and Fish,” I said.

“Shred and Fish! Kind of like Fish and chips, right?, see, that’s exactly what I was going to have, it just looked so good. It is good, right?”

“Yeah.”

“Yeah, great,” Ungerson said. “Course it’s fucking good, that’s why I chose it,” Ungerson brought up his menu like a privacy screen, making a show out of selecting a drink.

“Lah-tahp’s a gimmick, right?” he said after some time.

“I don’t think so,” I said.

“You know I still have my gun,” Ungerson replied peeking over the top of his menu like a cat looking into a fishbowl, as if it was a very normal thing to say.

“I had guessed,” I said, meeting his eyes. Ungerson dropped the menu.

“Oh shit, y’know, Oscar, baby, that actually reminds me of something. Your fuckbuddy or whatever, Polity, I totally ran into them, craziest thing.”

It took every ounce of my self control not to react. I desperately willed my nostrils not to flare. My pupils not to dilate. My heart not to beat. I couldn’t give Ungerson the satisfaction.

“See, I remember their face from the time they assaulted me with a--a pipe. When they bashed my arm in and I… exercised my right to self defense,” he shook his head as if he was discussing a weekend rock climbing with his old college friends.

“Yeah I thought I got ‘em pretty good but imagine my surprise when I saw ‘em in the Blue Zone.”

A chill up my back. My lips parted ever so slightly. Ungerson saw, lifted an upturned palm into a shrug. To everyone else, we were old co-workers sharing a coffee.

“Right? I thought you’d want to hear about this, seeing as the two of you were um, pretty close, yeah? Well, I’m over in operations, big building in the finance district, great view, two minute walk to a… kinda touristy eatery, when I see some of Brightsail’s military subcontractors wheeling a stretcher past.”

My face had locked, but in my head it was nothing but white noise. No. No, no, no.

“So me and the muscle, we’re not really simpatico, so I didn’t get all the gory details… and let me tell you, whoo, improper atmospheric reentry can just fuck a face to pieces, right? But I knew that jacket, and y’know, they were already a criminal before so we had their DNA on record.”

He leaned in, with mock sad eyes.

“I’m sorry Oscar, I don’t think they made it out.”

Another pause between us. In the kitchen, I saw Ungerson’s order being assembled, prepped for transport out to our table. I took a deep breath before I spoke, hardened my face, reorganized my thoughts.

“Ungerson,” I said, “enough. Save your energy for the walk home.”

He scoffed, rolled his eyes. “Hey, I’m just trying to-” I didn’t let him finish.

“You’re just trying to hurt people, Ungerson. Because hurting people’s all you ever do, and you’re singling me out because,” I pulled my hand through my hair, “I don’t know, because you lost your job? Because someone kicked your pride? Polity’s not dead. Or at least you don’t know if they are. If someone like you learned they died, they wouldn’t make up some story about it. No. You’d let me lose sleep and obsess and get old looking under every rock for a person I care about. That’s who you are, Ungerson. That’s what you bring to everyone around you.

Ungerson rolled his eyes, letting out this… suppressed laughter. But it was an act. I could feel the malice radiating off of him.

“You’ve got nothing,” I said. “You’ve got no bodyguard, you’ve got no job, you’re grasping for straws, and you’re falling back on the only thing you know how to do. I know because after we first met, that’s where I was. Trying to reinvent myself, and yet still following old patterns. I don’t envy you for that.”

Ungerson’s grip was on my shoulder before my brain processed what was happening. The geniality? It was all gone. I once described Ungerson as a snakeskin boot with an attitude problem. But in that moment, as he hauled me halfway across the table, he was naked in his rage.

“You don’t envy me?” He said, voice a whisper. “(laughs) Buddy, you might want to start. I’m going to come out of this shitshow smelling like a rose. And you? Unless I undergo a stunning emotional metamorphosis in the next few seconds, you are going to die in some no-name shithole during a tragic septuple homicide.” His opposite arm remained below the table, at his hip. I could see his muscles fighting against themselves. To draw or not to draw.

I lifted my chin, clenched my jaw--anything to stop my rising sense of fear. My urge to raise my hands and blubber, terrified of Ungerson’s rage. But I thought of Rufus and Cali. Of Shah. Of Polity.

“You’re out of cards, Ungerson,” I said, “you hurt people in boardrooms and alleys, and even then you never do it alone.”

“Maybe today’s the day I reinvent myself,” Ungerson mused, flashing hot ivory. “Besides, being a tourist is all about moving on, isn’t it?”

“Can’t speak to that,” I said, twisting my neck in his grip, “but being a tourist has disadvantages too, like being totally oblivious to how well armed the local populace might be.”

Ungerson narrowed his eyes, glanced to the other patrons. At the bar sat two broad men. One with an ear that had been burned clean off, the other with a tattoo of a Baiheytu barely concealed under a high collar. They were watching us both in grim silence. Watching Ungerson’s grip, waiting for what he was going to do next.

I smiled now, or more accurately, I showed my teeth. “The problem with trailblazing is that there’s a certain level of risk involved.”

Ungerson had gone cold, now. His body was coiling with energy, but outwardly he was still. I swear I could hear him stripping the enamel from his own teeth. But his opposite hand, the one that wasn’t clutching me, hadn’t moved an inch from his belt.

“How does this end, huh?” I jabbed. “How does this all end, Ungerson?”

Across the room, Ungerson’s order was ready to go, but it wasn’t moving. It sat, steaming deliciously on the counter. I could see the salt resting on the shredded roots, the perfect sheen of oil on the fish’s breading. Tato had looked up from where she stood at the bar. She was chopping local fruit for garnishes, but she had swapped her paring knife for a square bodied cleaver. It boomed against the plastic cutting board in the sudden silence of the room. She kept a level gaze on Ungerson, and her expression was frigid death.

I kept my smile plastered on my stupid face. And my face was stupid, listeners. If I had underestimated the extent of Ungerson’s pettiness, this could have ended in a hail of gunfire.

Ungerson let go of my shirt. His expression snapped back to its usual charm. He called out, “Hey! Can I get a little service here? I’m dying of hunger, waiter!”

Tato murmured something in Thetti. Roughly translated, it meant “then find a ditch to die in.” Nobody moved. Ungerson’s meal remained far out of reach.

He sighed, gave a little chuckle before rising to his feet. He made a show of adjusting his cufflinks.

“Well! I guess this hole’s not the hidden gem I thought it was,” he said, under his breath. He turned to me.

“Oscar, you want to know how all this ends?” Ungerson asked.

“Word of wisdom, I’d recommending moving your cardboard box deeper into the tangle.” He gestured through what was once a display panel, now a window. “This kind of marginal mudtown shithole? This is all gonna dry up and blow away when the real fighting starts. Even if I don’t burn it down, the staff are going to kill it just by running when the bombs drop.” He spread his hands. “Or maybe they’ll die, I don’t fucking know, it’s above board, baby, nothing you need to freak out about.”

“You should leave,” I said. Ungerson scoffed.

“Okay, so first, hilarious that you think you can give me orders, very cute. And second, did you hear me? This place, what’s it called, “Food?” just the word “food?” (pfft) it’s dead and buried.”

“Maybe,” I replied, “but whatever happens, you’re never eating a meal here. You’re not getting that satisfaction.” Ungerson jabbed a finger at my chest, letting it hang between us.

“Then it’s their loss. If I was some dirteater, I’d be jumping at any scrap of nu thrown my way. This town is gone, you little shit. The war’s gonna boil over until Therevatti’s a pressure cooker. Until it shatters into a bunch of raindrop warlords. And those bros are gonna bulldoze you all into the exact same mass grave.”

“Then I guess we’ll both have a front row seat,” I replied. “No Railships at the station these days.”

“Yeah,” Ungerson said. “Be seeing you, Oscar.”

I didn’t reply, and Ungerson left Tato’s. I watched his back as he stalked his way out into the street, occasionally lifting his expensive shoes to shake mud from their soles. I raised the beer he had ordered, and toasted his shrinking silhouette.

And then I slumped forward, head atop my crossed wrists, my entire face squeezed into a mass of wrinkles. Farewell, bravado! What was I thinking? Did I need more hateful shadows in my life? More reasons to jump at sharp noises, to jog past every alley? I had saved Tato’s from Ungerson, but was that worth a new bullseye on my back?

A hand touched my shoulder, I jerked up immediately.

“Polity?” I said.

Tato stood above me, her face grim. Her hands were still sticky with fruit juice, and she was getting it all over my jacket. I didn’t mind.

“Hey, you alright?”

“Yes,” I managed, in Thetti, “Just tired. That was… unhappy.”

“I bet,” Tato said. “He seemed like a real piece of work.” She eyed his meal, clicked her tongue. “You want to take his spread to go? His treat.”

“Yeah,” I said. Didn’t even have to think about it. If I learned anything on Therevatti, it’s that you don’t turn down free food. “Thanks you,” I said. Tato snorted.

“ ‘Thanks’ you too. Maybe be more careful in the future though. Skinny guy like you should avoid pissing people off.”

“I avoid!” I said, “I try.”

“Good. You keep that booth as long as you want. Sleep in it if you gotta. Thanks for coming to Nerotai.” Tato bent one knee and flashed a peace sign in a little pop flourish. Though her body language was that of a bufferstar, her face did not change throughout the entire process. I fought back a laugh, and she cracked a little grin.

I opened up my Twinnon Peregrine. No time for rest, unfortunately. I had to review Nerotai and send it out to as many followers as I could manage, to block any further machinations on Ungerson’s part. Palladium couldn’t kill this article.

Two hours and seven hundred and forty eight words later, I was fast asleep, drooling on the booth table. I wasn’t supposed to stay, I had more locations to visit, but my eyes… I just couldn’t keep them open. That fish was so good. Sleep med good. No order without a medical prescription good.

When I woke up, I had earned a new crick in my neck, and my fingertip found that the word “Peregrine” had become embossed into my forehead. Sunset dappled through the window onto the table. I had blown my entire evening period.

“Saints be lost,” I grunted, kneading my knuckles against my smarting spine.

“Good evening to you too,” said Polity, sitting across from me.

My head snapped up. I had heard their voice many times these last two months, but never so clearly. Across the table, Polity was dressed in an olive drab rain jacket, heavy pneumatic hood folded down their back. They were beaming.

“Sorry I didn’t bring you a travel gift---maybe some Nostalgia Air?” they joked, “But really, you seemed tired and I’ve waited this long, so, seemed fair to let you rest for a-”

“Polity,” I breathed. “Polity you’re here.”

Tears welled up in their eyes, “Yeah, yeah I’m here! I made it back. I saw all the… the posters and I spoke with Shah’s dad, and the garrison couple, and just… all I did was follow the posters.”

“And now,” I said.

“Now I’m back,” Polity said, spreading their arms wide. They looked around Tato’s, at its ceiling, ribbed and reinforced, a restaurant in the ribs of some huge animal.

“Great name, right? Nerotai. Food. Very avant-garde.” Polity was cracking up, but they seemed to genuinely love it. "Of course you'd find a place like this. You’ve got a serious nose for awesome places."

I bent over the table and threw my arms around them. The table edge jammed into my midsection, but if it hurt, I was numb to it. I buried my head against the inside of their neck. They smelled like rainwater and treated plastic. Polity startled, even reflexively pulled back in my grip, before returning my embrace with crushing force. Seriously, they had never given me a hug like this, holy shit. “Wow,” I wheezed, “you’ve gotten kind of built, Polity,” they let out a little chuckle and eased up.

“Yeah, ship life does wonders for your arms.”

“You were in orbit?” I asked, pulling away to see their face. They held out a hand and cupped my cheek.

“Oscar, I was on a boat. I was on the ocean, with waves and everything.”

“Saints,” I said, quietly.

“And sea monsters are real, Oscar, and they’re so, so big,” Polity was beaming.

“You overcame your fear…” I said, incredulously. Polity had chosen this moment to take a gulp of water. Their cheeks bulged with the effort of keeping it from spraying across the room.

“Baby, no,” they said, having averted their water crises, “No, I’m twice as scared of the sea now, there are such awful things in the sea, it’s so bad!”

“Holy shit,” I said. “I love you.”

“I love you too,” Polity said, and leaned across the table. Fingertips on my cheek, my hand in their hair. Our noses touching, then the first tingle of our lips on one another.

And we kissed. Gently, beautifully, and for a long while.

Polity hadn’t landed anywhere close to where I did. The station was crumpling around them as they ran, and all the safe routes had been claimed by Brightsail personnel escaping. By the time they got their chance, the pod they reached was in a state. Flyable, but fucked.

“So it took me to a separate continent,” Polity said, “not a continent, like, an archipelago I guess. And the retrorockets didn’t fire quite right when we landed, so…” Polity pulled up their sleeve to reveal a winding synthflesh bandage that ran up their bicep, bordered by angry red tissue, where live bone had met rain. It was still healing, even now--the injury must have been terrible.

“So I had to recover from that,” Polity laughed, “but I worked something out. Traded salvage rights on my pod to a little farming town, I think they’re using it for housing now, good for them. Oscar, I wanted so badly to call but…”

“It’s okay,” I said. “Not many messages could slip the blackout. All I’ve been getting is the odd bit of old mail. And you--you survived all of that, and you’re back,” I said dreamily.

“Yeah… yeah.”

Polity warmed with a blush, traced their fingers up their injury, resting it protectively at it’s apex.

“A little thing like my arm exploding wouldn’t stop me from seeing you again. I’m back, Oscar.”

“What was it like?” I asked. My fatigue had disappeared, as if I hadn’t been walking the outskirts for two months. I felt so light.

“Oh, it was like something out of a fantasy movie,” Polity said, “and I mean the good kinds, with just the best special effects. You know what the clouds look like at sunset over the sea? It’s like a world of fire and mirrors! Creatures the size of islands made of five legged crabs the size of either of us. Massive soaring mantas that fly on organic rocket jets and shit sparkles. Deep, dark things that I only saw as… hoo,” Polity slowed down, held a hand to their chest, fought a rising panic attack.

“Okay, enough about that one.”

“You alright?” I said, reaching a hand out. They took it as they continued, twining their fingers with mine.

“Dude, I’m great! Look at how jacked I am! Rigging and stevedore shit, moving crates in every direction! I’m a cool nerd now, like, even cooler! Check this shit out!” Polity flexed their arm, and a bulge like a buried grapefruit sprang to life at their bicep. “Two months, four bottles of painkillers, a diet exclusively of protein rations, and a whole lot of heavy lifting! I’m never going back from this!” They crowed.

“Anyway,” they were a bit breathless now, and slumped in place, eager for a break. “What have you been doing?”

“All I did was look for you,” I said, and filled them in on what they had missed.

Polity sat back after that. We both considered the local situation.

“So it’s going to get worse,” Polity said.

“Before it gets better, yeah,” I coughed. “Brightsail is licking their wounds, but they have nowhere to run.”

“Think we’ll all get lucky?” Polity shrugged, unsure how to find a positive spin on a global conflict. “Armistice, reconciliation councils, war crime trials? Mass disarmament? Maybe free Opera Cakes for everybody? The two of us could go into baking.”

“That would be wonderful,” I said. Both of us were quiet for a while. Brightsail had nowhere to run, but they also had the heaviest guns on planet--equipment that everyone feared, but more than that, the kind of thing that could help one rebel group win over its rivals.

“Interim governments are popping up all over the planet,” Polity said, “not sure what we’re looking at for stability, but… with Brightsail on the run, a lot of them are tracing their lineages back to the original colony pods, kind of banding together in that shared history. I wonder…” they let their words trail off. I took their hand.

“Polity, it’s a start. We’ll go there, get away from all of this. Find a path forward together.”

“Together,” they said. “Yeah, that’ll work.”

“Hey!” called out Tato, her voice ringing with mock irritation. “If you two are going to hang around, why don’t you order something? I have a stock of pop dumplings that I can’t move since…” she blew her bangs up with a puff of air, the frustration suddenly real, “my connections have fallen through on that front thanks to the whole gate thing.”

“Pop Dumplings?” Polity asked. They seemed uncertain, but turned to me. “Hey, this is what you’ve been looking for, right? For Gastronaut?”

“Oh,” I said, “that’s right,”

“Let me get them heated up for you,” Tato said, turning.

Polity smiled, but when they saw my expression, their face fell. They rested a hand on my shoulder, leaning in. All this time I’d been looking for this. But what were Fairy Wraps and Pop Dumplings? What were they outside conflict and starvation? What were they to me--a foreigner stranded on alien shores?

When I searched my heart, I didn’t get an answer.

“Wait!” I called out,” and Tato stopped.

“What?” she asked, foot tapping.

“Could we have… something else? Maybe…” I looked to the menu, scrolling my finger down the words.

“Mumasta,” I said, pronouncing the word as carefully as I could.

“Oh. Huh.” Tato said, nodding. “Two orders of mumasta then, coming right at you.”

Polity quirked an eyebrow at me as I sat back, nodding to myself.

“Do you even know what mumasta is?” They asked.

“No,” I said, then leaned forward. “Would you mind telling me?”

“Well,” Polity slapped their hands on the table, “what you just ordered is a classic, it’s a patty of reconstituted tadpole spawn.”

“Really?” I asked. “Wait, does it also go by the name crenuey?” I couldn’t believe it. I had seen this in one of the old Therevattin cookbooks. Another starvation food.

“Yup!” Polity said craning their head for the kitchen. “Bog cakes. Oscar, it’s like your favorite thing in the world is famine food. Only this is an old school panscrape dish, it’s more like a kind of badge of honor than a real meal, like uh, lutefisk might be on Earth. The ‘lil wigglers produce a bittering agent to discourage predators, so they’re pretty nasty even after you salt and age them,” Polity and I watched Tato cleaning a glass, watched her check for onlookers before spitting against a stubborn stain. Polity continued, “I bet she keeps this on the menu out of sheer stubbornness, because it’s not really a fashionable dish.”

My stomach sank. Nothing like knowing your meal was locally acknowledged as terrible to get you excited. But as I remembered the taste of my fish fry, as Polity kept kicking at me with their feet, constantly reminding me what I ordered, I had a thought:

“Hey, Lah-taph is a flavor inverter, right?” I asked.

“Yeah,” Polity said. Then their eyes widened in realization. “Ohhh, that’s a neat idea! When mumasta was created, Lah-taph wasn’t even a thing back then. But still, the patty has like, these sweet pockets, so you’d be trading one bad flavor for another once the inversion happens.”

“What if you used a marinade?” I asked, “or a beer batter, but with Lah-taph instead of a lager,” I didn’t care about the meal anymore, and neither did Polity. We both scrambled for our devices, I opened a notepad, Polity drew diagrams on a sketch display. I noticed their kit was simpler now. They must have lost their hacking rig.

“Okay,” Polity said, turning the screen to face me, “I searched it, and it seems that Lah-taph’s inversion compounds break up at higher temperatures.”

“Right,” I said, “so batter is out, but if you slow cooked it at a moderate temperature you could preserve the compounds and…” Polity jumped in.

“Actually make something kind of juicy and light, holy shit! That first bite might be a little gnarly, but if you kept at it the whole thing would come into its own,” They leaned over and gently punched my shoulder.

“You just have to find the right mix of sides, right kind of bread, look at us, making culinary history.”

“You’d call it…” I paused, struggled with Thetti. Polity coaxed me through my attempts with their hands.

“Mumitiu!” I said. Polity burst out laughing, high and musical, before they descended into snorts.

“What?” I asked, as they clutched their sides.

“Oscar, that means frog shit,” they said, and I joined them in their laughter.

“That literally translates to ‘frog shit,’” they patted my shoulder. “First draft. It’s going to be a sandwich made with the drink of the revolution, it’ll kill. Workshop it--you’ll get there.”

Harsh on the first bite, but improving in real time, growing on the palate. Therevatti had gone through decades of starvation, and it wasn’t going to get easier in the coming years, but the planet hadn’t even begun to come into its own. If Pop Dumplings and Fairy Wraps were the foods of hardship, what would the foods of tomorrow, of peace and prosperity look like? I’m not sure. Even as I edit this episode, the whole world struggles, at times violently, to find its identity in independence. But there’s still a community. And there’s still Polity and me.

It wasn’t the last time we ate in the Pacheco Outskirts, before we left for another continent, but it’s the evening I think I’ll remember most clearly. Polity explaining the dish, happy and animated. Me taking notes, drinking in all their little movements, stunned at how easy it was to have them back.

“Yeah,” I said when they finished. “I think that’ll be just perfect.”

For Gastronaut, I’m Oscar Yasui, signing off. Thanks for listening to…whatever all this has become. A travel blog? A war correspondence? A chronicle of meals, some delicious, some horrible, some that really don’t count as food. Definitely something that could be used against me in a court of law. Whatever Gastronaut is, I don’t think you’ll see me around anytime soon but… you might hear me on the buffer. Sometime, someplace. Until then--enjoy yourself out there. And when you’re feeling adventurous, try something new.