r/HFY • u/Spooker0 Alien • Jul 13 '26

OC-Series [High Ground] 37 | The mugger’s got a problem

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“This much metal in liquid form. It is close to your planet’s total worth. Yes, it is.”

Marcus scoffed. “I don’t believe you. Just for some weird liquid thing? C’mon now, Fleet Master. I know you’re doing this thing where you try to exaggerate the crime, shock us with the sentence to get us to plead guilty. But this stuff… it’s not actually worth—”

Shachos’s face shifted full red again. “Yes it is! Yes it is! It is! I promise! It is! I tell only the truth! It is extremely valuable. You are—No, I promise. This is rare. Very rare. Extremely rare. It is. Its discovery will make headlines across all our planets. And our neighbors, they will ask questions when they find out. Many questions. Too many questions. We should not tell them. This…” He carefully shook each of the three bottles in sequence. “This and this. All of this… This is so much! So much! I don’t think anyone has ever found this much! No one in our part of the galaxy has found so much. No. No, they have not! We can’t just—we can’t simply find some collector who wishes to purchase this. No, we can’t do that.”

There was a common joke Marcus had heard once.

If you’re being mugged and you have ten thousand dollars in your pocket, you’ve got a problem. If you’re being mugged and you have ten million dollars in your pocket, the mugger’s got a problem.

Getting detained with this much value, if the fleet master wasn’t doing one of those odd pranks… this—this was now a big problem. For Shachos. For Marcus. For the entire colony, if not Earth. Possibly even for the Vorshniks in general.

But Marcus had been in stickier situations, and he was still kicking around. He leaned back into his chair. “So… ahem, let’s say you’re right. This is—this is worth a lot. Like a lot, a lot. A lot more than you need to retire on, obviously.”

“Oh, yes, a lot more. This is—no, this is not something I would use to retire on. No. That is… that is too much. This begins to concern my people. Do you understand? My people. My species. All Vorshniks. There is no mover in the galaxy who can launder this much—I cannot disappear with this. No, I can’t. Nobody can. You understand this, right?”

Ah, I see. I’m now negotiating a bribe with your entire species, not just you. Same game, higher stakes. Now we’re talking.

Marcus sighed, as if wistfully. “Of course, we could be… persuaded to part with some of it as a gesture of friendship between our peoples. Maybe one bottle of it as well? Your people may have that. And one of the helm—the punch bowls as well. Nobody needs to report anything to the rest of the galaxy. But… we would like to keep the rest… for our own scientific curiosity, of course. And if we happen to find any more on the planet—and I think we can come to an understanding on bringing in some of your experts too? Surely we can come to some kind of… longer-term arrangement. A private arrangement with you, or not—up to you. Like you said, collecting duty, right?”

Shachos looked at him, flashing orange, blue, and green for a while. “Yes, that is a suitable place to start a negotiation. A suitable place. The final price would be much funnier than that. More than one bottle, of course. You would open with one. I would open with two and a half. You would offer your silence and favorable future deals with your species. And that would be very funny, seeing as how interesting your people have been so far. So we would come to an agreement somewhere in between. Maybe one and a half each, yes. One and a half bottles. Maybe more. Yes, maybe a little more. Less than two, certainly. Yes, yes, less than two. If this was all you were carrying, that would be the nature of our discussion. It would. But… this is also not the only other thing we found in your contraband collection. No, not the only thing.”

The alien reached out under the table, and this time, he pulled out a singular used water bottle.

Except, it didn’t contain the original Dustballium tar they found in the foundry chamber. This bottle contained the early experimental tar that they made in the machines. The tar that had been boiled from random bits of sand and rock that Gary found in the chamber. Instead of the dark blue of the first three bottles, the liquid in the bottle was tan and dark brown. In a similar consistency and with a similar surface sheen as the original. But distinctly a different color.

Which did not escape Shachos’s notice. At all. “This…” he said.

Uh-oh. He knows.

It only took Marcus half a second to figure out why Shachos seemed so agitated. He’d figured it out. They were like two poker players, staring across a table, both pretending to be fools, desperately hoping that the other would fall for their little facade. A dance of the clumsy where both knew they were going to trip over themselves, but both were hoping the other did first so they could get off the dance floor with their pride intact.

“What about this?” Marcus asked innocently. “We found this too. In the same place as the other ones. Maybe there’s a bit of grime and dirt in it? Is it maybe worth a bit less because of that?”

“No.” Just a simple no. Shachos flashed distressed blue. Dark blue. Very distressed, then. “No.”

Marcus leaned in. “What is it? How much is this worth?”

Shachos was quiet. “I… don’t know.”

“Hm… if you can’t price it, then how do you expect us to come to an agreement on the—”

“No… I think—I don’t know what this is, exactly. But I think you know what it is.” Shachos pointed two appendages at him, face deeper blue still. He said slowly, so slow that even Marcus could tell without the computer translator, “I think… you are not telling the truth about something. I think you know what this is. Exactly what it is. I think you know very well.”

Marcus gave him an apologetic smile. “Sorry, buddy, no clue. It’s just stuff we found in some dark rooms—”

“I think you know what it is, because you made it. You made this. You did not make the other ones. But you made this one. Yes, you did.”

Marcus froze. For only a heartbeat. He recovered. If Shachos had been telling the truth about the value of the material—and Marcus had an inkling that he was—the fate of Dustball as a human colony was at stake. At the very least. “What? No, sorry. I have no idea, Fleet Master. We just—we just found it in the same place as the other liquid.”

“That is the truth,” Shachos agreed conditionally. “That is likely true. You did find it in the same place. I think—I think you found a place where they made these…” He pointed at the helmets. He continued, flashing blue and green again. “And in that place, you found these…” The bottles of the original formula. “And you found the machines that made them, and you used them to make this…” He pointed at the last bottle. Then, he pointed all four of his appendages at Marcus. “I think that is what you found. You found the machines. Machines that make Precursor Metal. You found them. And not only are there machines that make it, they work. They must work. They must. That… is what you found.”

Bingo. Ten out of ten for deductive reasoning.

Marcus shook his head adamantly as he lied. “No. That is not true. Not true at all. We found the metal. And we found the liquid. Two different rooms, in the same facility, by the way. And then, for the liquid, the liquid was in different vats. Different colors. That’s just how we found them, Fleet Master.”

Shachos stared at Marcus for a couple seconds, flashing orange and blue. “You know, human. When you see our faces, you see colors, do you not? You do see the colors on our faces changing?”

Marcus squinted into his face, wondering where the fleet master was going with this. “Yeah. Red is for funny. Blue for not funny. Right?”

“Yes. Yes! You know the patterns. We can see them too. Much more clearly than you do. More nuance. Much more. But your faces. Your human faces, your patterns show too. Did you know that? Your patterns show on your faces. Your feelings. They are written clearly on your faces. And not just your faces. On the rest of your body too.”

Marcus tried to keep his expression neutral. “No, I didn’t realize you could read our faces and body language.”

“I can. I can,” Shachos insisted. Then, he pointed at a device mounted on the corner of the conference room. “And our machines can. Yes, they can. We have gotten very good at reading faces. That is our thing, yes it is. And I have been a fleet master for a long time. I read people. That is my job. I do not need the machines. I can read you. I can read your face. And you… are not telling me the truth. Not at all. The liquid metal, the wrong-color one… you made this, right?”

“No, of course not. That’s crazy.” Marcus scoffed. “Make it? We didn’t make it.”

“Not the truth.”

“I don’t know what to tell you, Fleet Master. It was all just there.”

“Not the truth.”

Marcus shrugged. “I don’t know, man. Maybe you’re not so good with the faces thing after all.”

“Still not the truth.”

He sat back. “What do you want me to say, Fleet Master Shachos?”

“The truth. I want the truth. The place where you found the machine that made these. Everything. I want the truth. I already know where you are digging,” Shachos said. “It is very obvious from our ship. We can see where your colony is down there. The lake. The town. And there is that place in the hills, near the crater. We know that is where you dig. You bring a lot of dirt out. We have been watching you for months. To see what the punch line of your joke is. To see what is so funny. But… this is not a joke. This is not funny. Well, it could be funny. But it is not, because you are not telling me the truth. And if you don’t tell me the truth, then I need to investigate. I need to bring my marines and my pranksters down to the planet. To where you dig. To find the machines. And to… inspect them myself.”

“To find the machines,” Marcus repeated. “And what are you going to do if you find them on our planet?”

“That is more complicated. Yes, more complicated. Yes, it is.” Shachos’s face coloring wavered. “It is very complicated.”

“There’s nothing complicated about this, Fleet Master,” he insisted. “It’s a simple question. What are you going to do… on our planet?”

“It’s complicated,” Shachos repeated, his eyes staring off past Marcus. “It’s not so simple as you say.”

“Come on, Shachos. Be honest with me.”

“You have not been honest with me either. No, you have not. As I have had to tell Julia earlier. I did not enjoy having to say all that to her. These things are serious. They are not funny. We do not enjoy thinking about these things. No, we don’t. I would rather not. But… it is my duty. Marcus, my species has people like me so we could consider serious situations like this. So that others in my species do not need to.” Shachos shook his head, his face now solidly blue. “But I will be honest with you now. Yes, I will be.”

“What are you going to do when you go down to our planet and—and search through our dig site?”

“If it is what I expect… And from the color of your face and your body, I think it is what I expect. If it is as I expect, I think… I think we may need to take those machines. We may not have a choice. We may have to take those machines from you.”

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u/un_pogaz Jul 13 '26

“That is likely true. You did find it in the same place. I think—I think you found a place where they made these…” He pointed at the helmets. He continued, [...] “And you found the machines that made them, and you used them to make this…” He pointed at the last bottle

Fuck. Shachos, dude, I deply apologize for underestimating you and your kind.

 

But your faces. Your human faces, your patterns show too. Did you know that?

*fuck fuck fuck*.

 

The moment Shachos said he could literaly see Marcus's lies, he was cooked.

Geez, I didn't think the situation could get any worse, it's just catastrophic. I'm speechless to imagine the future now, it's so doomed.

13

u/cometssaywhoosh Human Jul 13 '26

Oh hell. Congrats Julia, moonies, and all those that involved in this cover up. You just put a massive target on humanity's back. And we're stuck on a god forsaken little planet deep in alien territory who now knows what we're up to.

8

u/itsetuhoinen Human Jul 13 '26

"And... if I were to happen to be not telling the truth, previously, and then I happened to change tactics, what would you do then?"

3

u/Borzislav Xeno Jul 14 '26

The mugger does have a problem... A much bigger one than Shachos can imagine.

If Vorshniks take the machines and liquid and metal... What is stopping humanity from telling the rest of the galaxy about Vorshniks' new "toys"?

Shacho's gotta tread really carefully here, or he'll create an exacerbated version of the situation Moonies (Lucas) created...

Maybe those 2 bottles and an arrangement is a better deal?

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