DT 2022: Venezian Irk Pub

A short story connecting Vilmos-G069 by to my own work with his permission. And a spiritual sequel to DT 2020: Other Homeworld Theory.
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Venezia set itself up on somewhat tenuous crossroads between civilizations and rebel spirits. The planet rested at the beginning of the Via Casilina interstellar trade corridor and opened out into the far frontier and soon after, the alien spaces of the former Covenant. Earthlings had little power here and rebel sentiments peaked in few other places to compare than Venezia. Yet despite all that, the UN Space Command kept sending their operatives into the rebel stronghold while the local weapon cooperatives sold to the human military without second thought.
The currency of Venezia was money, but the culture of exchange was too. Loyalty was an afterthought. Anarchism was chaotic but when you stopped trying to understand the “whys,” everything became easier to predict.
And for Naval Intelligence, not having to ask why made everything easier. Their Spartan supersoldiers were welcome to wander the farmlands and streets without concern if they carried the biggest guns. The colony then became a sort of right of passage. A warning, “it doesn’t get any easier than this.”
Vilmos-G069 took the declaration to heart.
He did have one question though. Why did the Navy bring him in unforgiving winter?
Power armor with their advanced homeostasis systems made cold a trivial affair but as a younger Spartan-III from Gamma Company, he was still small enough to blend into regular human crowds. A something his commanding officer suggested getting more exposure time to. So more than a few times during this so-called “extended ground leave” Vilmos packed a day bag in his sparse sleeping quarters on the secret ONI spaceport and trekked out into the knee-high snowfall.
He turned over the hydrogen-ICE engine of his Spade truck, and pulled out passed the automated gate. Despite the cabin heater and his own superhuman augmentations, Vilmos felt his teeth chatter and skin vibrate as he rubbed his hands together for warmth. Such days were a remembered tradition, a lonely two-hour drive into New Tyne. Enemy territory.
And yet, enemy territory didn’t draw a single gun on him as he drove among towers of a colonial corporate utopia and grizzled average people going about their everyday lives. Everyone was too cold to consider anything adventurous in these times. More than a half millennia after leaving the Earth behind, humans still follow common logic. Don’t be bold in winter. Stay home, stay warm.
Vilmos wasn’t insane, rather that he made the most of this strange, slow adventure. He had orders to explore and expose himself to a strange culture. But this was probably his first time given free reign other than just to pick his victims in a target-rich combat environment. In fact, it was the first time anyone asked him not to pull a trigger.
What was a Spartan if not a solder or trigger? Generous alone time to himself meant such questions spun through his mind without interruption, and without end. It didn’t surprise him anymore. He grew accustom to being alone with his own thoughts and not just in off-time between missions. There was still so much to think about, but he could allow himself a chance to slow down and for just a little bit – pretend he wasn’t a Spartan.
He was Vilmos. No last name. Just another haggard individual with a mysterious past, passing by in daylight and night. Maybe Vilmos was from Venezia, maybe he wasn’t. He could also go by another name if he so felt like it. He could go anywhere on the planet and learn anything he chose.
The universe was Vilmos’s oyster. A feeling described and repeated by other Spartans he met on deployments far from the center of human space. “You’ve become a stranger in a strange land.”
This morning’s target of interest was a dive bar called the Irk Pub. After trying a dozen other drinking places in New Tyne, he found himself asking if there was a quieter, less rowdy place to drink away his “sorrows.” Every drinking champ in those bars told him “Irk Pub,” especially after he drank everyone of them under the table without breaking a sweat or turning even a dash of red. The bested champs were always happy to tell once they were lucid enough to give directions – maybe from lingering alcohol, or wounded pride.
Vilmos traveled four blocks before coming to the tight neighborhood of ageless permacrete buildings where a tattered wooden sign announced the Irk Pub. It looked like the bar was set up in a building that was once a townhouse as the neighbors seem a mix of rundown garage shops and residences.
He left his truck in a sidecar lot and walked up to the pub’s front steps noting a reasonable number of visitors from the foot traffic pockmarked in the disturbed snow. Vilmos clasped at the frozen door handle and pushed it in, letting himself in but bringing along the chills into a somewhat toasty interior.
Someone shouted from the other end of the bar, “Close that door! You’ll let the heat out.”
Vilmos quickly sealed the door behind him, making sure there was no gap in the frame. Turning back to the Irk Pub, the grumpy man who warned him had already turned back to a lone scotch without another glance. Small gatherings of people whispered among themselves in corner booths and more than a few others hovered near the bar surrounding a very alien and leathery-snouted Kig-Yar bartender whose head quills appeared standing up in agitation.
Maybe for some war veterans or Spartans, the sight of an alien, much less one serving human beverages might have set them off. Not for Vilmos. A part of him did react, a slight pause in his step but he covered it up well, striding confidently into a bar chair and pulling out a menu from behind the counter.
His eyes traced the two-page pamphlet for rather common and boring named beverages scrawled out by a doctor-like hand in English. Vilmos cared little for the drinks as anything with a particular percentage of alcohol all started to taste the same, and with none of the known human side effects to his system. There was little sport or spectacle in what was an ageless human pastime. Unfortunately, that was an unmentioned consequence when he signed away his life to become a Spartan. Not that six-year-old Vilmos understood the concept of consequences. He just wanted to be a cool space warrior.
But that was the past, Vilmos did become a cool space warrior. There were consequences of course. The present was now and he was well over and past any regrets from becoming a Spartan.
Unfortunately, before he could request a UNSC Wreckage Vodka, Vilmos twitched at a flare up on the other end of the bar. The nearby dinosaurian bartender practically leaped back, squawking in distress as the small crowd watched in awe as the flame died down transforming an exotic dish into another exotic dish.
The plate to Vilmos hazy recollection was an edible plastic ball on a frictionless stand colored blue-and-green like a planet. One of the bar floaters set the ball ablaze with a sparker causing it to ignite and reveal a purple ball beneath. The scorched bioplastic floated to the bottom of the plate, burnt into forgotten ash.
The jubilant distracter explained to his audience with hands reaching for the ceiling, “Earth burns away! Revealing, our real paradise: Paradiso!”
Vilmos scratched his temple as he quirked his lips in mild annoyance. The Kig-Yar made a hissing noise as it collected itself, rubbing out its disheveled “Don’t Shoot the Cook” apron. Feeling a slight sympathy for the alien, Vilmos nodded for the bartender’s attention but the alien beat him before words could leave his lips.
“You want a free meal? Get this imp out of my establishment. He’s turning my establishment into a circus.”
“I thought Irk Pub was a place for everyone?” Vilmos inquired based on the description he was given by his defeated acquaintances.
“It is until you spend four hours espousing silly nonsense. He thinks your homeworld is Glyke even though you humans blew up Glyke in 2552. Apparently, Earth isn’t your own homeworld. Sounds dumb to me.”
“What makes him think Glyke is the human homeworld?”
“It was purple apparently, I don’t know. I didn’t ask. He just keeps claiming delusions. Your human lot are very strange.”
Vilmos smiled in slight humor. “I think on that we can agree.”
“So, what do you say, free meal in exchange to getting rid of that one?”
Vilmos glanced back at the walking public disturber and shrugged. “Sure. Why not? I’m going to need an open tab for fruity alcohol drinks though.”
“You can include it on the free tab if it gets him out of here.”
“Done,” Vilmos grinned and stepped free from his eat. “Hey mister! What’s this about not liking Earth? You got me curious.”
The small crowd seem to bristle at the Spartan’s words but the speaker quickly raised calming hands, cooling his entourage. He cleared his group and approached Vilmos. “It is not that I dislike Earth. I dislike Earther lies. It is not the human cradle, merely a well-crafted myth.”
Vilmos quirked his lips in slight humor and even greater curiosity. “My name is Vilmos. How about you tell me about this myth over a couple drinks.”
“Why not join my class, I’m giving a lecture right now?”
“The Jackal bartender here is mildly annoyed by your remarks. I think you’re too loud.”
“Oh?” The disturber questioned in mild surprise, he glanced to the bartender. “My apologies, dear bird. You should’ve said so.”
The Kig-Yar’s head quills shivered once more in a pattern Vilmos recognized as a gesture accompanying the start of combat. Time for damage control. The Spartan grabbed the disturber by the shoulder and waved off the bartender. “Now, now. Here. We’ll take a booth and be quiet. Can you open a tab and bring us a couple drinks, Server-chan?”
The bartender shot Vilmos a pointed look with dilated pupils but nodded and grabbed a few mix cups and what looked to be bottles of very pure moonshine. This would be over quickly.
“And you sir, I gave my name. What is yours?”
The disturber warmly patted Vilmos on the shoulder as the Spartan let him go. “You got a firm arm there, Mr. Vilmos. I am Professor Manchester, Doctorate in Early Interstellar Colonialism. I am something of an expert in my field.”
“Do tell, Doctor,” Vilmos continued, dragging the alleged professor into an open booth and away from his very grumpy entourage.
“Well, the thing is that Earth has been trying to keep rebels down for centuries. Now, if Earth was the true homeworld, why would rebels fight against their claim?”
Vilmos shrugged but gave a well-polished answer, after all, war was his field of expertise. “Taxation policy. Quality of life standards. Cultural decoupling. Security policies maintained by the CMA and UNSC.”
The doctor nodded, “All good answers. But the Covenant then show up in 2525. The Earthers spend the entire war pretending we’re winning despite losing half of human space to the Arbiter’s fleets. Seems odd, would you agree?”
“Sure, but that could be the luck of the draw. First contact was inevitable in hindsight.”
“Indeed, but known Covenant space is remarkably close to colonized human space in astronomical terms. Considering the Fermi Paradox and five hundred years between its inception and now, that is a remarkably short time in universal time. Too short for human interstellar industrialization, compared to our combined 150,000 years of supposed human history.”
“Then what is your theory?”
“The human homeworld is inside Covenant space. They were our ancient enemy that chased us from paradise to Earth. Our falling from grace, many centuries ago.”
Vilmos nodded along, but in his head, he was laughing. Under the table he scratched his knee and considered whether to pinch himself to make sure he wasn’t in a dream. He faced some absurd things in his several years of military service but this man easily topped it. His morning just became very interesting.
The bartender came and left in a hurry with their fruity moonshine, not that this Professor Manchester realized it. Vilmos took a big gulp and smiled at his new drinking companion. Manchester made to do a similar motion and almost gagged on his drink by the sheer alcoholic content. Somehow, the professor managed to swallow it down but was already beginning to turn red.
“Tell me more Professor, you have me intrigued.” Vilmos encouraged with a grin.
Manchester blinked slowly and took a long sharp breath to get control of his body and senses. “R-right, of course. They attacked the Outer Colonies first because of proximity, it was the most logical trail to follow…”
Vilmos didn’t have to wait very long before the nutty professor succumbed to alcohol poisoning and had to be whisked away by his crowd who were shooting him suspicious stink eyes. To confuse them even more, he brashly announced to them as they dragged their leader away, “I hope he’s alright. I’ll finish his drink for him in the meantime.”
The Spartan proceeded to down the entire bottle of moonshine. Unfortunately, like all humans, he wasn’t completely invincible. Even if he couldn’t get drunk, he could still stink of it from his sweat and it still encouraged his need to use the toilet but that wasn’t important. He got his free meal and earned the awe and respect of another bar because of the seemingly never-drunk stranger. Another bar conquered. Maybe that would be Vilmos’s new mission, defeat every bar in New Tyne.
In the process of his curious investigation, however, Vilmos also learned a few things. He put this new knowledge to the test for Commander Markko Kallas, Boogeyman, when he got back from town stinking of several lifetimes’ worth of alcohol.
How Earth was not the human homeworld. A purple planet somewhere in Covenant space was the ancient human homeworld. The Insurrectionists have an underlying genetic trigger to rebel against tyranny and liars. He even added a little cake demonstration for the scar-faced ONI officer and set it ablaze to reveal Paradiso. All in good fun.
Kallas had to soon step out to make a call to some Codename: UTOPIAN about a new run-in with Target: USEFUL IDIOT. Vilmos went off to bed that night with a grin on his face and a high despite unable to get drunk. Tomorrow: maybe another random bar to conquer.
Category:Short stories
Category:The Weekly