Gloom had settled over her the morning before they discovered there had been a bounty put upon their heads.
Her haid didn't quite settle the way it used to now it had grown longer (how long had it been since they'd left Moya?) and no amount of hair product would ever put it right, so after the hundreth time staring at her unkempt self in the mirror she attacked it with her hands and left it messy with a mischievous smile aimed at her reflection.
"See anything you like?" a voice came from behind her and Chiana's eyes turned from her reflection in the glass cabinet and saw the sycophantic salesman peek underneath her messy hairdo.
Chiana had wanted to ask a question, but the moment she saw him she'd opted out.
"I'm just browsing." she said, but he was barely listening. Rygel was unloading stories upon the man and kept him occupied and distracted from keeping an eye on his shop. The thought of taking a peek in the till crossed her mind.
Gar'Shaam's repair shop was laden with guns and rusted parts displayed in a single aisle going from the front to the back, where a large metal door separated the shadowy shop from the workplace.
Dust twirled visibly within the orange sunbeam that cut through the shop with its blinding rays. Chiana admired the dust for it seemed to dance, but when her eye followed the sunbeam it blinded her and she had to turn away and let her eyes recover.
"Do you have it, or not?" she asked and her question cut right through Rygel's bantering small talk.
She felt as if she was rocking back and forth between uneasy breaths, dragging her feet through the dusty shop as a tingle spread up her spine.
Their eyes lingered on her and she didn't like it. The silence meant expectation. "What?" she said cross.
Rygel asked Gar'Shaam to be excused for a moment as he took Chiana aside. He hissed through his teeth at her, knowing that Gar'Shaam would hear anything more than a whisper.
"What the frell do you think you're doing?"
Chiana was getting tired of watching Rygel sweet talk the sweet talker. They were supposed to have been in the air arns ago.
She was bored, basically, although she wouldn't admit it. She was tired of dwindling, tired of stalling and preparing. She was ready to take the plunge right now, not tomorrow, not the day after that.
Tomorrow she wouldn't feel this rush. She'd lose the feeling and lose her brother forever.
She'd dreamt of him that night. Through blackened and charred rock she'd chased the elusive white blur she remembered seeing in the holovid message, although he didn't look anything different from the day he left her to roam the galaxy on her own.
He smiled at her as if it was a game and beckoned her from the distance. She heard him even though there was no sound. "Come on!"
But this wasn't a game for her. She stumbled and cried out, but she couldn't find him. His voice had echoed through her mind and when she awoke she felt like punching the walls, punching herself for making her feel like this.
Every moment they waited felt like a moment lost. Nebari space was right around the corner, at least in her mind. She felt trapped, sinking further down with every passing second, until eventually the quicksand would swallow her whole and then she would truly be alone.
"You'd agreed to let me handle this!" Rygel snapped at her through clenched jaws and Chiana refused the Hynerian's touch.
When she avoided his hovering throne sled she bumped backwards into one of Gar'Shaam's products.
"Careful!" the shop owner spoke and he rushed to check whether the product had been damaged. Rygel quickly closed his mouth and mind.
Chiana turned to see the rusty device she had run into. It had felt as if an arm had been poking her in the back.
"What is it?" she asked curious and the greymaned salesman put on his magnifying glasses.
"Are you interested?" Gar'Shaam asked, but Rygel quickly intervened in his new sale.
Chiana peeked around the shop owner and saw a large rusty buste of a Sebacean man with powered down robotic arms attached atop a small tracked vehicle. The features on its fake face were non-present. No eyes or mouth, nor colour, yet still Chiana felt strangely drawn to it.
"Chiana..." Rygel warned stiffly.
Gar'Shaam noticed Chiana's curiosity and he could not resist attempting a new sale.
"How old are you, love?" he asked and again his beady eyes, now magnified through the lenses of his glasses to appear ten times larger, peeked through the mess of her hair.
Shyly she gazed straight back at him in protest, before resuming to examine the rusty machine.
"Old enough." Chiana said and she couldn't help herself but let slip a mischievous smile after she said it. "Does it matter?"
Uneasy, she peeked around her in an instinctive paranoid reflex and she slapped away Rygel's pokes.
"With this machine? Oh, yes. It's an Octaris scout droid refitted as a pleasure machine. Would you like to try it out?"
Suddenly the sound of a rattling chain came from the other end of the warehouse and approached them at a mechanically precise speed. With it came the clumsy remains of the humanoid once known as the best mechanic in the universe.
"Get off, Sebassas!" Gar'Shaam yelled at the disembodied head in a jar that was staring at them with black and largely dead eyes from the ceiling. "Go away!"
The bloated head was barely floating anymore in the acids that kept it fresh and was lying on its side with its cheek against the glass. Chiana would've sworn she caught it blinking.
The shop owner drove it away, beating at the mechanical arm that was attached to the bottom of the travelling jar, until it scurried off across the metal rail into the direction it came from.
"I apologize..." Gar'Shaam said, gasping for breath and wiping the sweat off his brow.
Chiana somehow still heard the weirded out voices of Crichton and D'Argo, her former travelling companions, in her head, even though she had left Moya. In situations like this she missed their childish wonder and freaky responses.
She wished she had one right now.
"Can we just skip this nonsense?" Rygel intervened with a jerk of his throne sled, implementing a new business strategy. "We're not buying the sex doll. I thought you were a business man!"
"I am!" Gar'Shaam objected.
Chiana couldn't see why business and sex should be separated. Everyone needs their guilty pleasure...
"You also said you were a professional!" Rygel keenly added and he squinted his eyes.
"I am!" Gar'shaam replied offended and he started squinting back.
It was the way they bantered on this backwater planet.
"Ha!" Rygel finally said when Gar'Shaam blinked and lost the contest. It was the glasses that made him lose, but Rygel, knowingly, would not let go of his advantage.
"Listen!" Gar'Shaam said. "You won't find a more professional mechanic anywhere in Querasha! It's me and my services you want, and I'm the best there is!"
Rygel smirked as he took Gar'Shaam aside to comfort the doubts he had just instilled within him.
"Then by all means, let's proceed with our initial arrangement, shall we?" the Hynerian spoke. "I will settle the price for one engine upgrade for our Pod and one starmap for...let's say, at least 15,000 cubits."
"15,000? The starmap alone costs that much!" Gar'Shaam said, rejecting his offer and their voices grew softer as they walked away to a more secluded corner of the warehouse, while Chiana remained by the register unsure what to do next.
Then with a tongue against the roof of her mouth she jumped over the counter. Who was she not to take advantage of an ideal opportunity such as this? When was the last time she'd robbed a shop like this, anyway?
Rygel would've objected. She knew her thievery would jeopardize the business arrangement with the shop owner, not to mention draw too much unwanted attention their way.
They needed the engine upgrade more than they needed this pocket money, but Chiana was sick and tired of following the rules. Rygel's rules.
"Frell him."
With a smile and a cleverly concealed hairpin she unlocked the register and smelled the cubits inside.
The pleasure droid watched her without eyes.
In the market square her pockets jingled with cubits. A succesful getaway in glorious yellow starlight shot a final surge of adrenaline and delight through her veins, but her uneasiness did not fade.
The silver-eyed nomads who endured the dust ignored her as they would stray cattle.
Queresha's masked quartermaster was supervising the offloading of imported goods and provisions at the far end of the dock. The newly arrived shipments blocked Chiana's view of the Transport Pod they arrived in and it disoriented her for a moment.
After a sudden jolt of panic she quickly remembered she wasn't lost. There is no way back, only forward.
She'd been to places like this before, seen countless space ports and more bars than her Nebari brain allowed her to store as memories. After so many worlds the experiences have turned blurry. A fun kind of blurry, but blurry nonetheless.
The rush dulled the pain. It always did. The jingling cubits in her pockets now only felt heavy.
She didn't have the patience to wait for Rygel. Passing wheelcarts kicked up the dust and under its cover Chiana scurried and fled back to the Pod, evading the corners of the quartermaster's eyes.
As she ran through the dust she could've sworn she heard accusations of theft yelled from street to street, but maybe that was just her imagination.
She climbed up the steep ladder, crawled through the hatch and upon entering the Pod she heard a beeping noise coming from the communications console.
With a flick of her wrist she activated the voice message that had been left for them. It was the harbourmaster.
"Vessel 1373, I hereby inform you that..."
Chiana wasn't listening. She ended the message mid-sentence and removed it it from the log without hearing the full message.
Tired, she sank down to her knees and let herself fall on her back, even though it hurt. She gazed up at the ceiling of the Transport Pod and focused on her own breathing.
The hustle and bustle of the busy starport outside had been reduced to a whisper inside the craft.
Being alone didn't feel like it did before. In some ways it was better, in others worse.
At the whim of gravity, the cubits started flowing from her pockets and she imagined to be swimming in cubits, even though it was barely a large amount.
"Pocket money." Rygel called it when he returned.
After an arn of business negotiations he'd caught her touching herself in the Pod and she smiled at him from her position. Rygel barely looked, treating it as a minor nuisance.
She zipped up and skipped towards the hovering toad eager to know more. She'd already heard the mechanics tinker with the Pod's outsides. She assumed them to be upgrading the engines now.
"Look what I got." she said and she threw a handful of cubits into the air which showered down on the Hynerian's brow.
"Up to your old tricks, I see?" Rygel commented, but Chiana was unaffected by his sardonic tone. "Yet while you were robbing tills for pocket money I managed to cut the price for our required repairs in half!"
"Good for you." Chiana said.
"Yes," Rygel spoke. "You may consider that my final parting gift to you..."
"What?"
"I'm leaving. I've procured myself a nice little ship for myself from Gar'Shaam down by the border of Queresha. He's arranged for me to be smuggled back into Hynerian space by freighter. Bishaan will regret the day I reclaim my place as Dominar!"
It sounded too good to be true, but Chiana just couldn't seem to get herself to criticize her friend's wishful thinking.
Huh. She called him a 'friend'.
"So that's it?" Chiana asked.
"That's it, or did you want more?" Rygel said.
The fallen cubits all felt so silly now, so out of place. She wanted to laugh, but the moment wouldn't let her. She was about to lose another friend.
She fought back the tears, intent on hiding them, for Rygel did not deserve them.
"What about me?" she asked and her voice cracked.
"Reluctant shipmate, valued travelling companion...Chiana." he spoke and for a moment Chiana thought he was going to get mushy on her.
"You'll be fine." Rygel spoke. "That's what we are you and me. Survivors."
It sounded easier than it really was.
"And thieves." Chiana added with a smile.
"Yes..." Rygel smirked. "That too."
When Rygel zoomed away on his hovering chair Chiana honestly thought that that would be the last she would ever see of Dominar Rygel the Sixteenth of Hyneria.
Uploading the starmap he had given her into the navigational computer she set out on a vector toward Nebari space and after checking all the Pod's systems and new capabilities, and after being granted clearance by the harbourmaster and traffic control, she punched in hetch 9 and lived as if there was no tomorrow, just like Neri taught her.
But she would never find him.