Claire sat quietly for a while, staring dumbly forward. The sheer amount of space she could see in front of her was incredible. A wing of fighters flew past, completely and utterly dwarfed by the behemoth she was currently sitting in the command chair of. "Well..." she began, sweeping her gaze across the panorama, "If nothing else, it must give you a feeling of superiority." she smiled at James, to show she was just teasing. "Though, it must be mighty boring to fly!" she said, getting up and walking over to the helm. On the X11, the smallest movement on the control stick sent it flying off in a direction. In this, however, she imagined you could pull it directly to one side, and still have to wait a minute or two for it to do a full turn. "Is it fun to have your own minions?" she said with a sly grin, walking back over to James. "You always did like to be in control of whatever situation we might have been in!" She stood in front of him, eyebrow cocked and arms crossed, trying to get a reaction.
It was something Claire had always done during highschool. Never one to show his emotions, at least around her, she enjoyed teasing him to see what he would do.
She would have gone further, but it was their first meeting in years, and he was in front of his men. The last thing she needed was his suboordinates taking after her and giving him trouble.
She grinned and changed the subject. "So, does she have an observation deck?"
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Haddock just gave her a smile as he picked up on her teasing. He secretly enjoyed it as he did many years ago.
"Superiority?" he answered, "in many cases yes but there are other ships of this size out there with much more hostile intent than we have. Being set up as a hospital, we are largely left alone by just about everyone so yes, it can be boring."
He showed the helm controls and explained the function of each, "in open space, it's an easy ship to fly. Bring it through asteroids, it's a nightmare. It gets very bumpy. To help, we'll shoot up some rocks on the way even if it only helps minimally."
Having gone through the whole bridge, he began taking her to the observation deck as she asked. On the way, they past a very large lounge.
"When one is off duty or just wants some quiet time, this is the place to be," he explained, "we have a couple of these lounges with plenty of window seating to boot."
It was mostly medical crews that were there at the time with a few ship's personnel. At the bar in the lounge, serving food and drink, was a young girl probably not more than 19 or 20. Her long red hair went down her back and she wore the look of much worry. Smoke rose from an ashtray in the corner of the bar where she had just taken a drag. Haddock, knowing her story, continued his way to the observation deck at Claire's request. He gave a brief run down on her story as they walked.
"She was rescued by us," he explained, "left for dead in an escape pod in Omega 41 and very pregnant. She has a healthy baby boy now but has nowhere to go so, we gave her some work. It's not much but it's something," he explained.
They boarded an elevator and went to the observation deck. It was a large, circular room that sat high above the rest of the ship. It also overlooked Freeport 9 which sat right next to it. James stood back, just letting her take it all in, a smile on his face as she stood watching and pointing, the excitement of a little girl overtaking her.