Banner of the Stars, Volume 1 by Hiroyuki Morioka

Author:Hiroyuki Morioka [MORIOKA, HIROYUKI]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: J-Novel Club
Published: 2019-12-17T00:00:00+00:00

Alone in the Basrogrh’s Starpilot Mess Hall, Samson was nursing a distilled liquor made from corn. He was all for that rustic flavor.

One of the mess hall’s walls was showing video of the outside. Countless ships on a starry backdrop. Actually, there was no way to tell whether or not a handful of those “stars” were actually faraway ships themselves. It was a magnificent vista, but he was already tired of it.

“Drinking, I see,” he heard Sobash say.

“Hello there, Senior Starpilot,” he replied, raising his head and his cup. “Doesn’t look like I’ll be getting another chance for a while, so here I am, knocking one back while I can.”

“It’s a bad habit,” said Sobash, who took a seat facing him. “Can I have some?”

“You just said it’s a bad habit...” said Samson, surprised.

“Yes, what of it?” he replied with a puzzled air. “I’m fond of bad habits.”

“Oh, I like you,” Samson laughed throatily, pouring the Senior Starpilot a cup.

“Thanks.” Sobash had himself a sip.

“Is it true that Abhs-by-birth don’t get drunk?”

“We can get tipsy,” said Sobash. “But no drunken stupors, no. It’s in our genes. Though if someone were to inject alcohol directly into one’s veins, that would be a different story... Come to think of it, they might die of acute toxicosis before they experienced drunkenness. In any case, we can’t get ‘blackout-drunk’ imbibing orally.”

“To genetic engineering!” Samson raised his cup once again. “But if you ask me, that’s a curse more than anything else. There must be times when you want to forget it all.”

“During times like that, we ought only to take sleeping pills and doze.”

“How health-conscious.”

“We Abhs are a race hale of mind and body.”

“Though it seems like half of humanity doesn’t really agree with you there.”

“We can’t be meeting everyone’s highest expectations all the time.”

“Abhs caring what others expect of them? This is the first I’m hearing of this.”

“Yes. In truth, I haven’t heard of such a thing, either,” Sobash admitted. “But I can’t declare that it’s never happened. Never mind that; you’re oddly argumentative today.”

“You haven’t seen me drunk before, Senior Starpilot.”

“Even though I have a feeling this is not a rare state for you?”

“Usually I’m just drinking. I’m not drunk.”

“I see,” said Sobash, in all seriousness. “So at the moment, you are drunk.”

“I’m up to my second bottle,” said Samson, picking up the bottle with a third of its contents remaining for Sobash to see.

“Do you always drink that much?”

“No, I treat myself like this once a year. Usually I stop at the ‘tipsy’ mark.”

“Is today a special day for you?”

“Soon we’ll have to deal with enemy ships in ten times our numbers. I think it’ll be a once-in-a-lifetime experience.”

“That is true,” Sobash concurred. “If it weren’t so rare, that lifetime wouldn’t be terribly long.”

“You’ve got that right.”

Sobash polished off his cup in next to no time, and he pushed it forward for a refill without a hint of reservation. Samson poured him another glass, parting with the booze with some regret.

“When

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