Milk Run: The Streets

Posted on 22 Jan 2022 @ 6:06pm by Commander Calliope Zahn & Commander Bruce Kensforth

Mission: M2 - Sanctuary
Location: Kalara City
Timeline: MD 11 1050HRS
1561 words - 3.1 OF Standard Post Measure

The sun was as harsh as ever, even if the RSA was successfully filtering the most damaging radiation. Calliope unfolded a pair of dark sunglasses and let her eyes adjust to the harsh afternoon light and shadows through the tone of the lenses. Mentally she was working out which street they had emerged from the landing zone on and how that would spill out into the market lane. Mostly she wanted to avoid the central fair with all it’s potential to draw attention. She paced herself along a parallel lane, the market square’s activity only discernible through the alleyways between some of the buildings that didn’t happen to abut one another. And “parallel’ was more of a general direction claim than a geometrical term that could be applied to the pathway. The street had to accommodate the ancient structures that had long ago been established, their footings set in stone before anyone had even considered city planning much of a necessity. The layout was more organic than anything, as if the mudded walls had cropped up wherever one had planted an adobe brick like some kind of seed. Calliope did her best to track along in the direction she needed to go. Occasionally a turn petered out into a dead end or a fence to someone’s garden, forcing her to backtrack in the maze to ascertain a better, if more indirect, route.

As she navigated, she couldn’t help but absorb the details of Kalaran life- their washing on the lines between the buildings, chalk drawn hopscotch games along the cobbles, stacks of broken crates beside back gates, and stray dogs chasing past.

She smiled. “I always wanted a dog as a kid. I even walked all the neighbors’ dogs, but I couldn’t have my own. Now my mom has three.”

“I had one as a kid, Franky. He was an Australian Shepherd. Used to strap him into my Dad’s Waco UBF-2 rebuild. Used to scare the hell out of our neighbors. Me in the rear cockpit, Franky in the front, doing barrel rolls over the countryside,” he smirked back to her. “Ever see a dog fly?”

"Can't say as I have." Calliope was sure antican pilots didn't count. Outwardly, she kept positive and relaxed, while her inner antenna was on the lookout for anyone to avoid offending with their presence. Children at play kicking some uneven looking ball between one another blocked the path ahead and Calliope tried to time her walk between the passing of the ball.

The ball shot straight towards them. Bruce knew better than to think that it’d do anything less than knock Calliope over, but regardless he was a playful soul. He stepped forward and caught the ball on the top of his foot so it went up in the air, bounced it up off his knee and then off his chest before kicking it out towards the kids before it hit the ground like a football pro. The kids cheered his dexterity and as they walked on, passed it again so he could do something similar, only from behind this time.

Laughing, he continued on with Calliope. “Maybe E-ro wasn’t so crazy to want kids,” he mused as much to her as to himself.

She looked back over her shoulder, grinning and enjoying the kids’ infectious joy. They didn't seem bothered by offworlders. "E-ro?"

“Right, sorry. Elise Rochambeau. She was… well,” he shrugged. “She wanted kids. I didn’t. So you know, things didn’t work out.”

He hadn’t thought about that in a while, at least not the reasons why things had ended. He thought about Elise on the regular; so many little things in his life were a product of their time together. She’d broken his bad habits, helped him see the good he could do. That he wasn’t just a product of cruel circumstances. But he generally thought about their good times. He did his best not to dwell on the reasons why they weren’t still together. That only made him sad and threatened to send him down the path she’d found him on all those years ago.

“Sorry.” Calliope sensed the shadow of something melancholy dampen Bruce’s spirits. For a moment it made her reflect again on the situation she had at hand. She knew she needed to broach the question of kids with Lance before the next round of treatments and she also knew those kinds of decisions could drive a wedge in the strongest of couples. She and Lance weren’t on the stablest ground as it was. “Hey,” she smirked and looked aside to Bruce. “If it makes you feel any better, I’ve been married almost fifteen years and we still kick that conversation can down the road. At least you both knew what you wanted.”

“Ah, you give me more credit than I deserve on that one. She knew what she wanted. I was just along for the ride. Until I wasn’t,” he smirked.

After a while, the streets became little more than narrow passages between buildings, with no thoroughfare. The crowded buildings had unkempt facades, none of them recently white washed or refinished like the ports-side of Kalara. Even though the daylight was strong, the buildings were crowding out much of Loki’s rays. It was actually pleasantly cooling, although the built up gutter grime countered the comfort with fermented malodor. Knowing if she started to give in to it, she wasn’t going to have any control, Calliope covered her face with her head-scarf and tried not to gag.

“I think we’re close,” she managed to say while holding her nose.

“I thought Targ’s only lived on Kronos…” Bruce complained, “But they’ve sure mastered the smell of a dead one,” he added, all but pinching his nose to stop the smell from creeping in. “This bar better be good.”

Calliope came to another fork and thought back to the map she’d seen. With some careful attention to her footing, she took a narrow set of stone cut stairs, the steps worn into depressions from foot traffic. It led into what must have once been the atrium of a long decrepit palace, now partitioned into many other homes and places of business. Local Kalarans were going about the atrium-turned-square with hand carts and pack creatures. Unlike the Market or the Port landing, or the ag projects, or the city center, there were no other off-worlders to be seen, and no pretenses of any cultures besides their own. A woman cast a pail of murky water out of a fourth story window and the rivulets ran into the gutter.

Someone barked something the commbadge translator couldn’t handle— as was often the case with native curses— which made Calliope’s head snap left as a Chuchaki, one of the local hairy oxen creatures, snorted hot air in her face, forcing her to step aside and make way for it. The rider spat off the side of the Chuchaki, but, luckily for Calliope, the beast happened to be swaying in the opposite direction and the spittle happened to land shy.

“Hey, good afternoon to you too,” she said with an understated wave at his back.

“Guess you’ve identified the smell,” Bruce added, glaring at the rider as he went past.

Moving towards the open center of the dusty square, Calliope scanned around, trying to identify the place she’d been told about. There were no signs as such, besides Kalaran symbols carved into the crumbling mud of the facades. She took out her tricorder and had them translated visually. A baker, a rug shop, a leather worker, an attorney, a cobbler, a wheelwright with a pile of iron rings stacked outside the door…

She considered. Wheelwrights often also banded barrels. Which would be convenient for a distillery, which would probably have an alehouse nearby.

Electing to try one of the once-princely archways beside the wheelwright, Calliope crossed the square, careful to avoid Chuchaki patties along the way. The broad alleyway was wide enough for a cart and it curved elegantly back, reflecting the history of some ancient and stately past. As she had expected, there were barrels lining either side.

They came to a terminus in the passage which opened into a circle of decrepit tile worked walls, several stories high. The patterns that remained hinted at what was once skilled mason work generations long since past. Inset in the tiled walls were cracked stonework reliefs. Giant stone pots stood hollow where pruned trees should probably have been. Calliope had the sense that this may have once been an entrance to a palace shrine or something of similar importance. A series of pillars sheared off at their bases suggested a footprint of a grand portico.

Now it was only shaded by the remnants of a tattered Chuchaki hair canopy which let in filtered light, dabbling over three knobby elbowed, long gray-bearded men sitting around some demarcated board they were tossing tokens over at a makeshift crate-turned-table. They tracked the two strangers with distrust. One licked his crooked teeth before taking up his bottle to whet his throat.

Calliope tied her handkerchief back over her head and straightened her shoulders. “This must be the place…”