Among Stars

One of Those, Please

After wandering some fifteen minutes around the place, she almost walked into a stand with a shady-looking guy. He had blue skin, tiny antlers on his head, four eyes and four legs. He was wearing a 1920-era Earth trench coat, which didn't fit him at all. His stand was filled with expensive looking equipment with all the greatest logos with an only a fraction of the price the larger shops. All in all, he looked slimier than a wet snail. Naina glanced at him and squinted.

"Can I offer you a great deal on some of the galaxy's best items, miss?" He asked. Naina turned to leave, but then her lips turned upwards and sprouted a smile that was probably slimier than the man himself.

"Yeah, actually, do you have M-Tech Energy Converters at hand? I need two of the model MEC14-5563, positive polarization.", she said. The man looked at her and blinked with all but one of his eyes.

"What? You will? Uhm, of course you would! I have the best merchandise on this whole port!", he said and turned his attention to the tablet in his hands. "Let me check my inventory, and... Yes, yes, I do have. But only one and it's not of the newest stock. I will have to apologize, but—"

"That will do nicely," Naina said. "It being older stock is not that big of a surprise, given they stopped production of the blasted things a decade ago. Wait, no, two decades now. Eh. Dang time."

The man hesitated a little, then turned around and went through his inventory and picked up a small brown box that had no branding on it. Naina picked it up and turned it around in her hands. She opened the box and pulled out the small black box with the M-Tech logo on the side and fifty-two small holes for the connectors. It looked suspiciously like the real thing, and not a fake she expected. She squinted her eyes at the guy.

"How much will this cost, sir?" She asked.

The man looked apologetic, which made Naina re-evaluate her first impression of him. Either he was a really good swindler; a really, really bad one; or actually the real deal. Naina shook her head slightly and dismissed the last thought. Finding a two-decade old M-Tech converter so surprisingly easy, just like it fell into her lap, seemed too suspicious.

"It's old stock, but it's still unused and factory new, so the price will reflect that, even if it is old." He said and added, "I'll have to ask you for 1,200 for it."

Naina furrowed her brow. 1,200 for an old - if unused - converter was steep, but not ridiculously so. Not swindler-deep, and certainly not worth it for them that sold one thing and scrapped the rest and ran with the money. He'd live a month in a spaceport like that if he was frugal with that money, but it wouldn't make him rich. Doubt crept into her mind and she turned the device around in her hands again. She popped the casing open easily and peered at the insides. The man gasped, but didn't do anything, as Naina put it back together in one swift movement and put it back into the brown box.

"Don't worry, I didn't break it. They're supposed to open for cleaning. I'll have to ask you though, why that price? In a space port like this with such a rare item, you could've asked five times that price and someone would have bought it."

"It's not worth that much. I get my profits for that price and it's enough for me.", the man said. "This is more of a hobby for me. I don't do this for a living," he added.

Naina raised an eyebrow at him. He closed his eyes and shook his head, as to say that's a topic he wouldn't be getting into. Naina shrugged again. She turned around to leave, but for some reason she turned around at the last moment and looked at the guy again. He was not looking at her, but rather down on his merchandise, and there was a sad, deflated smile on his face. Naina closed her eyes, sighed and turned back toward him. She cursed her inability to leave things alone that were none of her business.

"Sir..." she said and took a step toward the stand. "Can I help you with anything? You don't know how much I needed this thing and for this price... Do you require anything I could help you with?" She said.

"Well.. You do have a ship..." He said. Naina leaned on the stand and tilted her head slightly, as if to ask for more details. The man sighed. His customer service smile dropped off and his face twisted into an expression of worry. "Do you know about the Sunstar Installation?" He asked.

"Sunstar..." Naina said and scratched the tips of her ear. Then a sudden spark of information lit inside her head. "Oh!" she exclaimed. "You mean the experimental platform that they made in deep space a few years ago?""That exactly," he said and stood up. Naina hadn't realized that he had been sitting this whole time. He was positively towering over the short elf. Naina was used to being shorter than the average human, but this man just seemed like a giant beside the tiny elf. He started walking and waved Naina to follow him. Without saying anything, he walked to the side of the great hall and leaned on one of the absolutely massive windows that lined the walls. Naina followed him closely.