The diner in the sky

Outside the rolling black clouds release an unending shower of cold, ever-winter rain, but inside the diner it’s always warm and dry. Floating between the city's chrome-black skyscrapers, you can just about make out the human (and non-human) crowds below as they hurry through the rain.

There’s all sorts to see while sitting in one of the booths. Space racers, with their sleek, neon ships parked outside, thick with the smell of burnt oxygen, stop by between circuits, never around for too long before moving onto the next arena. 

Augments, with mechanical fingers holding cups of steaming coffee, taking a break from the dirty looks of the population below. There's no discrimination allowed in the diner, no one cares who you are, or what you were. And anyway, the last patron to cause a fuss over their fellow clientele was given a quick, one way stop to the city streets below, courtesy of the diners very own chef, barrister and owner.

In the twenty years since the diners doors first opened, stories have varied as to his past. Some say he was an off-world pirate. Hijacking interstellar freighters and selling off their cargo to one of the multiple galactic crime rings, before a job gone wrong forced some quick, identity altering surgery and the need to lie low for a century or two.

Others are sure that he was an ex military man. Apparently he had been on the front-lines of the siege of Titan. Throughout the whole of the Delta quadrant there are statues bearing his likeness, commemorating the 15 fleets liberation of the galaxy from world-eating Synth-core armies.

Whatever the truth is, his days are now spent roasting exotic coffee beans, frying giant Oviraptor eggs, and at the end of each night-cycle, cleaning out the booths of the diner in the sky.