Thinly sliced nondescript vat meat sandwiched between artisanal bread. The thing sat across from him did not like his odour – it kept wrinkling its nose. He was not sure why it had sat down opposite him, because it hadn’t said anything.
He offered it a piece of sandwich and it slapped the plate out of his hand. Some kind of polysyllabic language gurgled in its mouth, but it was the silent stare that was communicating more eloquently.
He had thought that calling a planet Turd was a very sick joke, and that it was partly down to the fact no one could speak the language, and there were mountains of guano in huge abstract arrangements around the place. It was a shithole though. Turd was at the arse end of a spiral arm galaxy, and was supposedly not good for your health. No one stayed there long.
The creature tapped the table, gestured at his mouth, gestured at the sandwich. When Teller put the sandwich on the table though, the creature lunged for him instead. Apparently his odour was not a problem – it had, instead, got the creature feeling hungry, and given its social rank it felt he should comply with the request to lay down his life to fill an empty belly.
This was explained to him by the person sat beside the bar who he had made a deal with earlier in the week to sell some of the mineral deposits to that he had been collecting. Thank god the message was not intercepted – the fact that this thing had no translator suggested Luddite tendencies.
Bar fights were common around here, and the owners, in order to cut the conflicts short, had decided to weaponise the crockery. Thankfully Teller had a hack code, which he activated now. He used the ten second delay to rapidly grab his unfinished sandwich, and was glad of the splash-guard force-field as he chowed down, and the creatures brain matter splattered against the wall of energy.