Upon the planet Slunkna in the Verkal System was the city of Alk-Verdsaberg, notable due to its large population of robots, androids, and other artificial lifeforms, and also because in the city’s spaceport was docked a ship named the Revnik. Most knew this because the inhabitants of the Revnik had made themselves well-known to be there. Between the drinking competition with a crime lord and the following shootout with the local law enforcement, most Alk-Vergsabergians knew the bastards by how they looked.
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The oddly bedecked Salksi and his scrapheap with a cannon were especially detested by one bot in particular, Andrexsy Malkow, founder, owner, and barkeep of The Asimov. Andrexsy’s hatred of these bumbling vagabonds was completely justified given they had entered his establishment, started a drinking competition with notorious crime lord Kalzam Rech, resulting in a raid by local law enforcement in which one of them shot dictionary-sized holes through the aforementioned officers and his walls, and also the local public road trolly, and also the walls of the houses across the street, before leaving without paying their tab or offering to pay for damages.
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Down the slightly less road trolly inhabited streets of Alk-Vergsaberg ambled our protagonists, Xerxes and ADAD, armed with what they usually were while looking for work and being avoided by locals and tracked by every government-funded security camera controlled by local law enforcement. “What was the name of that place we were going to again?” Xerxes asked, ignoring the eyes staring at him from the nearby alleyway. “The Asimov,” ADAD responded. “Wait, why are we going back there?” Xerxes Socratic-Methoded. “Work,” ADAD responded, with their usual lack of noticing alleyway-based stares.
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Sitting in a damp, musty alleyway in Alk-Vergsaberg, outside of the notice or care of our protagonists, was an Irkalki crime lord, the Irkalki being a species of bipedal pig-things with skin thick enough to not be pierced by most small-arms fire, this specific Irkalki crime lord was unusually skinny for his species, and most other species, as he willingly starved himself for reasons unknown to the reader due to the writer’s lack of want to write a reason. The name of that Irkalki is Kalzam Rech, and he was currently too preoccupied with staring antagonistically at some rattler (slur for members of the Salksi species) to notice his brother, Groft Rech, the local butcher, exiting his shop into the alleyway.
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“Hey Kal,” Groft called out, invoking a surprised scream and gunshot from his twig-like brother, the bullet was stopped easily by Groft’s dense flesh, “SHIT DAMN!” Kalzam replied. “Rude…” Groft says, “…also you shouldn’t talk like that.” Kalzam, visibly annoyed, berates “Don’t sneak up on me like that you pudgy fuck!” “Momma said..” Groft attempts to speak, “Momma’s dead and in hell, you lousy bitch!” Kalzam interrupts, “You should go back in your pussy-ass little shop and join her!” Groft walks back up the alleyway to the door to his butcher's shop “Find a new place to sleep besides my attic!” he yells down the alley at Kalzam. Kalzam sprits up the alley at him “Wait, you can’t do this to your own brother! You can’t just leave me on the street! What would Momma think?” “She’d wish I'd left you in that burning drug lab,” Groth responds before entering his shop and closing the door behind him.
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Xerxes and ADAD enter The Asimov. Dunkalk, the disembodied robot head sitting on the mantle over the fireplace, yells “An, those fucking space hobos are back!” Andrexsy Malkow, owner of The Asimov, was already aware of the returning space hobos as he was boarding the holes in the wall next to the door with plywood. Andrexsy, a 5’6”-ish professionally built domestic-grade general-purpose robot, with a wheel instead of legs, wearing the most stereotypical butler uniform he could find, put his hammer back on a nearby table before confronting the genderless snake-thing that owed him money, “Well, look what the cat dragged in, some drunkard and his pet pile-a-garbage.” “I’m not-” Xerxes started, “I’m not his damned pet,” ADAD interrupted. “And I’m not a drunkard” Xerxes added, “I only got drunk for the money.” “Yeah, well you owe me 450 credits, so I hope you got that damn money,” Andrexsy started again, “… and that's not even for damages that’s just-” “I’ll get your money, once I find some work,” Xerxes interrupted to make Andrexsy shut the fuck up, it was ineffective. “Then find some, you-” Andrexsy interrupted himself this time, “Y’know what, no, come here, I've got something you incompetent fucks can’t screw up.” Andrexsy wheeled himself back behind the bar before looking through a cabinet labeled ‘shit to make other idiots do.’
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Kalzam Rech, now homeless, perambulated down the streets of Alk-Verdsaberg in his usual pathetic-excuse-for-a-crime-lord fashion. He had nothing but his gun, the ash-stained red paletot he always wore, his blood-stained sleeveless undershirt, the jeans he stole from a tourist, and the thing he was most prideful for, the bronze medallion that denoted his membership in the Earthen Brotherhood, the xenophobic, fascist religious order/government body that inhabited the Sol System and, with the exception of Kalzam, consisted entirely of humans. The medallion itself was styled as a military award, traditionally pinned to the wearer's outermost coat just below the right shoulder, with the design of a bald eagle, an animal that was driven extinct long before Earth became uninhabitable, holding a thermonuclear bomb in its talons. The main belief of the Earthen Brotherhood was death to all non-humans and also the Irish, who had left Earth in a large dome-thing containing their entire island shortly after reunifying, which is why Kalzam’s membership in the group was befuddling at best and often laughably stupid.
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Andrexy pulled a stereotypical sci-fi ass hologram tablet thing out of the S.T.M.O.I.D. cabinet and handed it to the desperate-for-attention pile of reptile that was doing a weird little dance thing in his establishment. “Here, in some middle of fuck-ass town in the desert somebody’s looking for a couple of hired guns to shoot some Earthen troops with.” Xerxes took the tablet doohickey and looked over the official details, Ivan Meclasov, known revolutionary and habitual smoker, was looking for mercenaries to help him assault a secret Earthen research base thing outside of Carcilal, a small township in the middle of the Don’t-fucking-live-here Desert, reachable from Alk-Verdsaberg only by a sandskipper convoy from Vlenko Station, at a rate of at least 1,000 credits per merc along with the additional prize of whatever they steal form the base and its inhabitants.
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Xerxes accepted the job and promptly fucked off to Vlenko Station.
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