Challenge #02051-E227: Death Trade
Kill it! Kill it with lethal amounts of Sodium Chloride! -- @internutter
The enormous bipedal chordate flinched under the -pardon the pun- assault. Cried out. And yet, it was still standing after five rounds rapid. Then the assembled Cryptels watched in stunned amazement as the Deathworlder actually licked the powder from its skin.
"Mmmm..." It bared its enormous teeth. "YesthisisexactlywhatIneed."
It actually craved the death mineral. T'lu didn't know what to do. Ze clenched backwards out of instinct as this giant went through its possessions. Laying them out away from the aura of salt that surrounded it.
"Sir," trilled Junior K'leth. "I think... it might want to trade?"
Indeed, the creature they had just tried to kill was gesturing at the offerings and then to their ammunition packs. Their hide had to be much thicker than a Cryptel's. And it seemed... so dry. How could anything survive without a constant source of moisture?
This creature was using some machine to suck up the powdered death mineral from every surface, including its own. It had a barking call as it did so, but it made no further hostile move. It even made certain that there was no salt on its own offerings. Pushing them a little towards the stunned Cryptel crew and then jumping backwards on those long, impossible limbs. It pointed towards the container of sucked-up minerals and attempted to indicate that it wanted more.
Slowly. Cautiously, T'lu extruded hir limbs and scanned the offerings. Dried balls of a capsaicin-containing organic pod. noble metals with high conductivity. A toy containing gears and a spring. A sealed vial of silicon that, if turned, could measure a small space of time. A ball of string. A reel of waterproof fabric backed by a powerful adhesive...
Through a combination of mime and broken GalStand Simple, they managed to communicate a trade. Twenty reels of this Ductape for twenty cartridges of death mineral.
It was the start of a wonderful trade agreement.
The Human Spacers had been extracting salt from their own waste fluids for too long, but they could easily fabricate Ductape. The Cryptel Sovereignty needed a salt-proof armour that could also preserve their fluids, and had long ago turned a waste product of an industrial process into a weapon of mass destruction.
Only the Humans found it amusing when they discovered their disparate names for that first trade. Salt for Tape versus Bullets for Armour.
[Image (c) Can Stock Photo / jirkaejc]
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Send me a prompt [31 remaining prompts!]
That first line got me XD
What are the Cryptels, slugs/snail types?
In my head, they're slugs. But there's a kind of slug that's almost a snail, but not quite? I stole the latin for them and used it for the critter name.