Branches Book

BRANCHES

the trail of whichever unlucky person had stumbled upon the money and felt like they won the interplanetary lottery. Kluub set his black briefcase down on a nearby rock. He pressed his thumb into the fingerprint scanner and popped open his case. In it he carried an assortment of torture devices, communication relays, and other necessities of his trade. Out of it, however, Kluub pulled a small shot glass. He had already sniffed out that there were three different people’s bloods in the still growing pool, and as there were two bodies, he knew a third person must have been at the scene. He walked to the puddle, squatted, and dipped the glass into the blood. He then stood up, leaned his head back, and knocked back the sanguine shot. Kluub pulled in a deep breath and his pupils filled his eyes. The blood rushed through his mouth and nose, the scent rushing to his head. He knew where to go. His hunt had begun. Part 3: The oasis of light rising out of the darkening horizon of the desert served as Kurt’s beacon as he raced towards the outpost. The outpost in sector QR- 44 served a function similar to most of the outposts on Keptar-5 that find themselves in desert sectors. It was a trade hub for the surrounding farmers, a transportation depot, the only place in the sector that you might find interplanetary goods, and the only place in the sector you could buy a drink. It was also usually the seediest and most crime ridden place in the sector, drawing in the local vagrants and criminals that had nothing to do in the surrounding farmland. Kurt’s hovercycle sputtered to a stop as he parked his hovercycle in the alley next to the Kwikbena Cantina. The light up plasma sign was blinking, causing the name of Kurt’s favorite outpost tavern to read: K ik ena Can na. Kurt approached the bouncer, QiiMok. QiiMok was a Thelopian from the Trimbell system. Thelopian’s were a strong but mostly dumb species. They walked up right, but on four legs, much like a centaur. They sported human like faces until where their noses would be, where instead long elephant like trunks flopped down towards their stomachs. Their skin was the texture of a rhino, but the color of a human’s. They weren’t all fat, but QiiMok was. However, he still enjoyed the immense strength natural to his species. There weren’t many Thelopians spread across the galaxy, however they did spread, and they spread very far. You often might not find more than 2 or 3 Thelopians on any given planet, but you were also very likely to find those 2 or 3 on said planet. Kurt stopped to exchange greetings with QiiMok. “QiiMok! Been a while.” is the rough translation of the sentence Kurt blurted out in broken Thelopian, a language that was hard to speak without the elongated nasal passages natural to the species.

91