11-21-2021, 11:24 PM
A vortex of blue and purple, black rocks in a cloud of dark soupy mush, I felt myself out there, in that cloud. Head spinning with the vortex of sensations. “We want you to sing”, the colors tell me, it’s like a musical choir, dozens of voices, all hitting me at the same time. I couldn’t breathe, but I wasn’t suffocating. All of the sudden, a single voice came through “Find it”. I woke up, almost screaming, my arm in pain, Am I having a heart attack? I thought, holding onto the arm. How could I’ve forgotten? “F*ck me” and reached to grab the bottle of pills on the nightstand, downing a couple I lay back on the bed to stop my head spinning. I could still feel the colors when I closed my eyes. It wasn't helping that the pills made me dizzy, but I need them. I remember the accident. We were dead in space, far from any jumphole, six warforms, one of those big f*ckers had hunted us from Dublin. I was assisting an engineer in fixing a relay that was about to blow, we had seconds, but, alas, It blew, killing the engineer “F*ck, what was her name?”, and ripped open my arm. Permanent nerve damage, I’d live with this pain for the rest of my life.
After a couple of minutes I felt the spinning calming down, as I got up and went to my dresser, I still couldn’t get the image of that cloud out of my mind. “Clothes”. And got dressed. I pressed the comm button on my jacket “Joanne? How's the reactor holding up?” I asked why pulling on my shoes “Good morning sleepyhead, it’s all good, everything is in the green. I am damn surprised this piece of junk is still working”, Joanne is one of the agents from the old days, now a civilian. “Well, we retrofitted and remade over half the systems after all. I’ll be down there in a couple of minutes” and from Joanne you heard some banging and something that sparked loudly “F*ck… All good here Victor, hehe.. See you in a bit”.
As I walked down the hallways leading down to engineering I felt a sting of pain in my head, no, my mind. For the last few months I’ve been having these dreams, they keep coming back, even after a week lacking them, at first, they were just dreams. But now? I don’t know.. I’ve had plenty of contact with the.. Others.. Who knows what’s going on, but somehow I needed to find out if anything of this shit had meaning. As I walked down the stairs to engineering the sound of classic rock music came over me in waves, Joanne was a sucker for the older rock albums and she kept playing that wherever she was working. I guess that’s her one flaw, cause I can’t stand that god awful noise for more than a couple of minutes. “Turn that down will you?!” I walked up to her and slapped the back of her head, she reacted with trained reflexes by spinning around, her hand stopping a couple of centimeters from my throat, she grinned at me in victory, mine were too slow to block it. “Fine fine” she said and turned down the music. “What are you doing?” I asked with a quirked eyebrow and as I looked past her at the console she was working on, that now showered the floor with sparks. “Uuhm.. Fixing.. This.. Console?” she looked very guilty, “Riiiight.. Well, ok, what were today's plan then?” and I looked around the main engineering area. “The plasma flow valves need to be corrected and I have a half dozen relays to replace. But, after that, it is decently possible we’ll be able to fly”, she smiled widely. “That’s great, I had Book get those turrets online, which should be done by the end of the day. It seems, we are but days away from being able to launch” I said with a nod and a grin, I looked down to my belt where my favorite mug was hanging “Coffee..” I groaned and yawned. “Go get coffee, I’ll be busy down here for some time. Tell Book to make sure to attach the right cables this time. We don’t want to blow out the relays on first and second decks like the last test we had” I nodded in agreement, offered a half arsed salute and went back to the stairs and headed to the mess hall.
As I was drinking my coffee and looking out through the window showing nothing but black, my mind wandered and as I sat there, I saw that there were small sharp rocks floating in space, then the black turned into a dark blue and there were these streaks of light in between the clouds of blue. I closed my eyes and shook my head, I can’t tell the others of this.. They’ll think I am being affected by ‘them’ or something worse, infected. Ever since I heard that Kepler was affected by a dark matter storm I knew we needed to be there to investigate. I knew it had something to do with my dreams and supposed visions, but why did I have them? I don’t know. And that scares me even more than the dreams themselves. I remember the first time I saw one of them, their colors mesmerized me, even intrigued me, then, they started shooting. I was in a bastet, I thought I was fast, but they just ran circles around me. The first shot I fired, ever, after joining The Order was at one of them. I was supposed to be on a training mission, but that mission turned into a battle of life and death. Several minutes in I had lost shields and my team leader had a burning engine, that’s when I heard a soft whisper, I can’t remember what it said, but it made me angry and I turned the fight around, a lucky mine hit and me being in the perfect line to open fire at the warform turned into a kill, my first one. I was applauded for a first successful kill and positive performance.
I snapped back to reality and opened my eyes, darkness awaited me from the window and I let out a sigh of relief. I picked myself up and ventured out of the mess hall and upstairs to the bridge. We had spent hundreds of millions, retrofitting this old Bustard Class Carrier to carry proper research departments, along with high tech arrays of sensors. The crew were chosen carefully, over several months, hand picked experts and veteran scientists. As I told them, we were going to research and investigate strange phenomena around Sirius and we were going to go where we had to to find answers to a lot of questions. Sure, the Order does the same thing, to an extent, but, if we go as independent we can travel more freely. Kusari and Bretonia needed licenses for a Bustard to be able to travel in their space, while Liberty allowed the massive carrier to travel there. Reinland, well, I haven’t found a way to properly get access to their space yet. But, there are ways around them, just a shame we can’t explore their space as well, you never know what may come up there. As I came onto the bridge, coffee in hand, Jurgen stood by the main console, tapping away. “How is nav going? Any progress on the nav map we bought?”, Jurgen didn’t turn around as he said “It’s functional, we have, thanks to that data, charts for most of known space. Including most of the Omicrons. Jump holes included.” I nodded and checked the output display, a sharp pain in my arm made me groan and Jurgen looked at me and then the arm, he up-nodded at me with a questioning look, “It’s fine, just.. Hurts” I frowned a little, but Jurgen just nodded and pointed at the map “As long as we get the licenses to travel, we can be in Kepler in a day or so, if Joanne fixes engineering today” I nodded and exhaled before sipping my coffee “She’ll get it done, she is in ‘hard rock’ mode, ain't nothing stopping her now” I chuckled and smiled at Jurgen, he smiled back and nodded “Good.. How’s Book doing with weapons?”, I shrugged and sighed “They’re being installed as we speak. Some cruiser turrets, along with two battleship ones, enough to deal with basic warforms if we come across them”, I wanted more battleship class turrets installed, but the power drain would’ve been too much for our reactor. We’ll just have to do with some basic lighter turrets, then again, the only thing we want to be able to defend from is them, and as long as we keep ourselves ready, we should be able to fight them off. Jurgen tapped on the console, bringing up the Kepler system. There was no update to the map since the dark matter storm, so we saw it as it was before the situation. “We only have information of the situation from second hand accounts, hopefully we’ll be able to gather data there in a day or so” he said with a frown. “Yeah, I don’t like going in blind, but, if we don’t, we may miss our chance to explore the area and do research on the phenomena.. And these ‘other things’ that reports tell exist in the cloud”. I tapped the map twice and closed it “We’ll get there in time, we have to” I mumbled, mostly to myself. Jurgen looked at me with a sceptical look, but decided not to make a thing out of it. After a few minutes of me just standing there, looking as Jurgen continued to program the navigations console. Eventually I went to the captain's seat and sat down, checking some information on the armchair console, drinking my coffee and wasting some time, before I had to go speak to Book about weapons. As I sat down, I felt the weight of my situation fall onto me like a load of bricks, what was I doing? Was I dragging out my former team into a dangerous situation, on board a civilian carrier? Just to satisfy my own curiosity? No, I brought them out, because they were the best of the best and we all shared a special bond and a shared interest in investigating the phenomena that seems to appear around Sirius. And an interest in them, we used to hunt them when we saw them, but this time around we may be able to learn more about them. There have even been rumors that some of them were.. ‘Friendly’, or at least wouldn’t shoot first. It’s been ten years since we were with The Order, nine years ago we decided to.. Wait, why did we stop? My head started to hurt and I squeezed the mug of coffee, almost so it broke. Yeah, we had been investigating them, showing up in Bretonia. But, we all felt that we needed to stop. “Urrgh..” the pain continued. What was I doing? Oh yes, Book, weapons. I stood up and waved at Jurgen, he responded with a nod. As I was walking along the hallways I saw plenty of crewmen, people Janice had hired, these were a wide mix of people, from different areas of Sirius, even a couple of people from Gallia that wanted a new life. Janice, our primary researcher, had a wide array of expertises, from genetics to astrophysics and for a woman in her sixties, she was quite lovely. We’ve had.. Encounters, ever since leaving the Order. But never anything serious, I think neither of us wanted that, but some nights I wondered.
As I approached tactical I saw a group of armed people, mercenaries, that Book hired to operate tactical systems. At first I was opposed to having armed people on board our ship, but he was adamant, we knew the dangers of space and we needed to be ready for anything. Inside the area named ‘Tactical’, I saw several engineers, all in the process of attaching cables and activating power relays along the walls. In the middle of it all I saw the large man called Book. He was pulling large cables from a nearby console to attach to a socket on the wall. I offered a lazy salute as I approached him, he instead offered a grin and a thumbs up, before he showed the cable into the socket. He wiped some sweat off his brow and stood up “It’s goin’ well here cap’, we just installed six turrets and the two primary ones shoul’ be installed by the evenin’. Shields are functionin’ and we have crew for all systems. We’re good to go” he offered another thumbs up. I looked around and nodded, also offering a smile “That’s excellent, ‘Book’, I was worried tactical would be the last to be finished. How will the core handle the stress of all these turrets?” Book chuckled a little “It’ll be fine cap’, the core can handle the stress with not too much issue, I estimat’ we can hold continued fire for thirty seconds, give or take five. Good enough for defense against those blue bastards”. I nodded and offered back a thumbs up “That sounds good, it sure ain’t the Equilibrium, but it’s good enough” and as I checked a console I saw that most of the systems were indeed installed and ready. “I’ll head to science and chat with Janice about her systems, good luckBook and offered a lazy salute at the bulky man, he offered one in return and I walked out and down the stairs to the middle decks. They had retrofitted the Bustard for use in dangerous areas, even bought heavy armor plating for the hull, added cruiser shielding that also covered radiation from killing the crew. It was a well put together ship, not like an Osiris, not even close to those majestic creations, but.. For this purpose, it will do great. There was some discussion about outfitting it with a jumpdrive and a cloak, both of which I think would be great to have, we don’t have the contacts to install them as of yet. After a couple of years of working for Interspace we’ve managed to make a fortune, enough to cover the cost of the ship and the crew’s salaries for a couple of years, we still had a surplus to install docking bays and other advanced technologies. It was just a matter of finding the right dealer, someone who doesn’t ask too many questions, then it was the issue of most houses having cloaking and jumpdrive tech as ‘red’ technologies. And since we mostly will be investigating things in House space, we need to be as legal as possible. I'd hate for us to be stopped and fined for operating in house space. The headache returned with a vengeance, not even the pills helped with it. But I endured and ventured down into the science department, it was weird we called it science, we had a medical area as well, but.. I guess that’s a science too. Janice was fierce in her conviction that we needed a well equipped medical unit on board, she knew she would need those experts as well if her research would lead somewhere. As I entered the sealed doors to the science department, I felt the sudden change in climate, it was cooler with extremely clean surfaces and I was forced to wear gloves as I walked in. I kept my coffee however, I refused to give up my cherished ambrosia.
There were a few people walking the hallways in between departments, some wearing light green to symbolise medical and some in light blue to represent science. I found my way to the administrators office, where I found the lovely Janice, I couldn’t help but smile as I knocked on the doorway before entering, she had her focus on the screen on the desk, as she looked up at me, she herself smiled in return “Victor” and stood up, for a moment I wanted to walk in and hug her, but, not the time. “Janice, how are things in Science? Everything ready?”, I took a step in and walked up to the desk. “Mhm, it’s as ready as it can be. We just got our database installed this morning, every department has its members and we are well supplied for different situations.” she smiled and walked around the desk, she went up to me and without me having a chance to react, she embraced me. I froze for a second, then turned to embrace her as well. We stood there for what seemed like minutes, but it was probably just a couple of seconds. As we returned to normal, we had an awkward moment of silence before I spoke “Uh, good, then we are mostly set, just engineering and tactical left I think. But both Book and Joanne assured me they’d be done today”. Janice smiled and nodded and straightened out her jacket, before walking back to sit down, she turned the screen at me “See here? We got most of the database we kept from the Equilibrium, even if The Order would want us dead if they knew we kept them. But they’ll be essential to our work. Ok, so here, we have the civilian database, it contains most basic information we can get access to, this however” and tapped a section of the menu “Is the secret data, it’s secure behind several layers of protection. And it’s designed to self-delete if anyone accesses it from anywhere save this console.” I nodded and listened and said “So, do we have backups for that database?” she nodded “Yes, it’s in a secure location, don’t worry, it won’t just disappear”. I chuckled and nodded “Right, well.. Great. I can’t wait to get out there.” Janice smiled at me “Oh, have you sent messages to the Governments regarding licenses for the use of our ship in their space yet?” she quirked an eyebrow at me, I sighed and slapped my forehead, only increasing the pain “F*ck, I knew there was something I needed to do. Right, I am off to my quarters, going to send those transmissions today, hopefully they’ll respond for tomorrow's journey” she chuckled and took my hand and gently squeezes it, then stared for a moment “Headache?”, I looked surprised at her “How did you know?” she smiled and reached for a drawer, pulling out a small bottle, giving me three pills “Take those, it should be better in a couple of minutes”, I smiled and with no hesitation took the pills “Thank you, Janice. You are the best” I smiled. She smiled back and nodded “Yes, that I am” and winked at me. I left with a wave and headed up to my quarters, ”F*ck, how could I forget? Don’t worry, it was a busy day yesterday”, I told myself. The headache dissipated as I walked up to my quarters. I spent an hour there, sending a message to Bretonia authorities to get a license for the ship to pass through them. Kusari wanted a hefty 120 million sc for the license, I whistled low, checked our accounts and waited to send a message to them. Knowing that the government's administration will take a while, I decided to lay down in bed again, closing my eyes. I saw only black, I exhaled and was for the moment content there were no interruptions.
After a couple of minutes I felt the spinning calming down, as I got up and went to my dresser, I still couldn’t get the image of that cloud out of my mind. “Clothes”. And got dressed. I pressed the comm button on my jacket “Joanne? How's the reactor holding up?” I asked why pulling on my shoes “Good morning sleepyhead, it’s all good, everything is in the green. I am damn surprised this piece of junk is still working”, Joanne is one of the agents from the old days, now a civilian. “Well, we retrofitted and remade over half the systems after all. I’ll be down there in a couple of minutes” and from Joanne you heard some banging and something that sparked loudly “F*ck… All good here Victor, hehe.. See you in a bit”.
As I walked down the hallways leading down to engineering I felt a sting of pain in my head, no, my mind. For the last few months I’ve been having these dreams, they keep coming back, even after a week lacking them, at first, they were just dreams. But now? I don’t know.. I’ve had plenty of contact with the.. Others.. Who knows what’s going on, but somehow I needed to find out if anything of this shit had meaning. As I walked down the stairs to engineering the sound of classic rock music came over me in waves, Joanne was a sucker for the older rock albums and she kept playing that wherever she was working. I guess that’s her one flaw, cause I can’t stand that god awful noise for more than a couple of minutes. “Turn that down will you?!” I walked up to her and slapped the back of her head, she reacted with trained reflexes by spinning around, her hand stopping a couple of centimeters from my throat, she grinned at me in victory, mine were too slow to block it. “Fine fine” she said and turned down the music. “What are you doing?” I asked with a quirked eyebrow and as I looked past her at the console she was working on, that now showered the floor with sparks. “Uuhm.. Fixing.. This.. Console?” she looked very guilty, “Riiiight.. Well, ok, what were today's plan then?” and I looked around the main engineering area. “The plasma flow valves need to be corrected and I have a half dozen relays to replace. But, after that, it is decently possible we’ll be able to fly”, she smiled widely. “That’s great, I had Book get those turrets online, which should be done by the end of the day. It seems, we are but days away from being able to launch” I said with a nod and a grin, I looked down to my belt where my favorite mug was hanging “Coffee..” I groaned and yawned. “Go get coffee, I’ll be busy down here for some time. Tell Book to make sure to attach the right cables this time. We don’t want to blow out the relays on first and second decks like the last test we had” I nodded in agreement, offered a half arsed salute and went back to the stairs and headed to the mess hall.
As I was drinking my coffee and looking out through the window showing nothing but black, my mind wandered and as I sat there, I saw that there were small sharp rocks floating in space, then the black turned into a dark blue and there were these streaks of light in between the clouds of blue. I closed my eyes and shook my head, I can’t tell the others of this.. They’ll think I am being affected by ‘them’ or something worse, infected. Ever since I heard that Kepler was affected by a dark matter storm I knew we needed to be there to investigate. I knew it had something to do with my dreams and supposed visions, but why did I have them? I don’t know. And that scares me even more than the dreams themselves. I remember the first time I saw one of them, their colors mesmerized me, even intrigued me, then, they started shooting. I was in a bastet, I thought I was fast, but they just ran circles around me. The first shot I fired, ever, after joining The Order was at one of them. I was supposed to be on a training mission, but that mission turned into a battle of life and death. Several minutes in I had lost shields and my team leader had a burning engine, that’s when I heard a soft whisper, I can’t remember what it said, but it made me angry and I turned the fight around, a lucky mine hit and me being in the perfect line to open fire at the warform turned into a kill, my first one. I was applauded for a first successful kill and positive performance.
I snapped back to reality and opened my eyes, darkness awaited me from the window and I let out a sigh of relief. I picked myself up and ventured out of the mess hall and upstairs to the bridge. We had spent hundreds of millions, retrofitting this old Bustard Class Carrier to carry proper research departments, along with high tech arrays of sensors. The crew were chosen carefully, over several months, hand picked experts and veteran scientists. As I told them, we were going to research and investigate strange phenomena around Sirius and we were going to go where we had to to find answers to a lot of questions. Sure, the Order does the same thing, to an extent, but, if we go as independent we can travel more freely. Kusari and Bretonia needed licenses for a Bustard to be able to travel in their space, while Liberty allowed the massive carrier to travel there. Reinland, well, I haven’t found a way to properly get access to their space yet. But, there are ways around them, just a shame we can’t explore their space as well, you never know what may come up there. As I came onto the bridge, coffee in hand, Jurgen stood by the main console, tapping away. “How is nav going? Any progress on the nav map we bought?”, Jurgen didn’t turn around as he said “It’s functional, we have, thanks to that data, charts for most of known space. Including most of the Omicrons. Jump holes included.” I nodded and checked the output display, a sharp pain in my arm made me groan and Jurgen looked at me and then the arm, he up-nodded at me with a questioning look, “It’s fine, just.. Hurts” I frowned a little, but Jurgen just nodded and pointed at the map “As long as we get the licenses to travel, we can be in Kepler in a day or so, if Joanne fixes engineering today” I nodded and exhaled before sipping my coffee “She’ll get it done, she is in ‘hard rock’ mode, ain't nothing stopping her now” I chuckled and smiled at Jurgen, he smiled back and nodded “Good.. How’s Book doing with weapons?”, I shrugged and sighed “They’re being installed as we speak. Some cruiser turrets, along with two battleship ones, enough to deal with basic warforms if we come across them”, I wanted more battleship class turrets installed, but the power drain would’ve been too much for our reactor. We’ll just have to do with some basic lighter turrets, then again, the only thing we want to be able to defend from is them, and as long as we keep ourselves ready, we should be able to fight them off. Jurgen tapped on the console, bringing up the Kepler system. There was no update to the map since the dark matter storm, so we saw it as it was before the situation. “We only have information of the situation from second hand accounts, hopefully we’ll be able to gather data there in a day or so” he said with a frown. “Yeah, I don’t like going in blind, but, if we don’t, we may miss our chance to explore the area and do research on the phenomena.. And these ‘other things’ that reports tell exist in the cloud”. I tapped the map twice and closed it “We’ll get there in time, we have to” I mumbled, mostly to myself. Jurgen looked at me with a sceptical look, but decided not to make a thing out of it. After a few minutes of me just standing there, looking as Jurgen continued to program the navigations console. Eventually I went to the captain's seat and sat down, checking some information on the armchair console, drinking my coffee and wasting some time, before I had to go speak to Book about weapons. As I sat down, I felt the weight of my situation fall onto me like a load of bricks, what was I doing? Was I dragging out my former team into a dangerous situation, on board a civilian carrier? Just to satisfy my own curiosity? No, I brought them out, because they were the best of the best and we all shared a special bond and a shared interest in investigating the phenomena that seems to appear around Sirius. And an interest in them, we used to hunt them when we saw them, but this time around we may be able to learn more about them. There have even been rumors that some of them were.. ‘Friendly’, or at least wouldn’t shoot first. It’s been ten years since we were with The Order, nine years ago we decided to.. Wait, why did we stop? My head started to hurt and I squeezed the mug of coffee, almost so it broke. Yeah, we had been investigating them, showing up in Bretonia. But, we all felt that we needed to stop. “Urrgh..” the pain continued. What was I doing? Oh yes, Book, weapons. I stood up and waved at Jurgen, he responded with a nod. As I was walking along the hallways I saw plenty of crewmen, people Janice had hired, these were a wide mix of people, from different areas of Sirius, even a couple of people from Gallia that wanted a new life. Janice, our primary researcher, had a wide array of expertises, from genetics to astrophysics and for a woman in her sixties, she was quite lovely. We’ve had.. Encounters, ever since leaving the Order. But never anything serious, I think neither of us wanted that, but some nights I wondered.
As I approached tactical I saw a group of armed people, mercenaries, that Book hired to operate tactical systems. At first I was opposed to having armed people on board our ship, but he was adamant, we knew the dangers of space and we needed to be ready for anything. Inside the area named ‘Tactical’, I saw several engineers, all in the process of attaching cables and activating power relays along the walls. In the middle of it all I saw the large man called Book. He was pulling large cables from a nearby console to attach to a socket on the wall. I offered a lazy salute as I approached him, he instead offered a grin and a thumbs up, before he showed the cable into the socket. He wiped some sweat off his brow and stood up “It’s goin’ well here cap’, we just installed six turrets and the two primary ones shoul’ be installed by the evenin’. Shields are functionin’ and we have crew for all systems. We’re good to go” he offered another thumbs up. I looked around and nodded, also offering a smile “That’s excellent, ‘Book’, I was worried tactical would be the last to be finished. How will the core handle the stress of all these turrets?” Book chuckled a little “It’ll be fine cap’, the core can handle the stress with not too much issue, I estimat’ we can hold continued fire for thirty seconds, give or take five. Good enough for defense against those blue bastards”. I nodded and offered back a thumbs up “That sounds good, it sure ain’t the Equilibrium, but it’s good enough” and as I checked a console I saw that most of the systems were indeed installed and ready. “I’ll head to science and chat with Janice about her systems, good luckBook and offered a lazy salute at the bulky man, he offered one in return and I walked out and down the stairs to the middle decks. They had retrofitted the Bustard for use in dangerous areas, even bought heavy armor plating for the hull, added cruiser shielding that also covered radiation from killing the crew. It was a well put together ship, not like an Osiris, not even close to those majestic creations, but.. For this purpose, it will do great. There was some discussion about outfitting it with a jumpdrive and a cloak, both of which I think would be great to have, we don’t have the contacts to install them as of yet. After a couple of years of working for Interspace we’ve managed to make a fortune, enough to cover the cost of the ship and the crew’s salaries for a couple of years, we still had a surplus to install docking bays and other advanced technologies. It was just a matter of finding the right dealer, someone who doesn’t ask too many questions, then it was the issue of most houses having cloaking and jumpdrive tech as ‘red’ technologies. And since we mostly will be investigating things in House space, we need to be as legal as possible. I'd hate for us to be stopped and fined for operating in house space. The headache returned with a vengeance, not even the pills helped with it. But I endured and ventured down into the science department, it was weird we called it science, we had a medical area as well, but.. I guess that’s a science too. Janice was fierce in her conviction that we needed a well equipped medical unit on board, she knew she would need those experts as well if her research would lead somewhere. As I entered the sealed doors to the science department, I felt the sudden change in climate, it was cooler with extremely clean surfaces and I was forced to wear gloves as I walked in. I kept my coffee however, I refused to give up my cherished ambrosia.
There were a few people walking the hallways in between departments, some wearing light green to symbolise medical and some in light blue to represent science. I found my way to the administrators office, where I found the lovely Janice, I couldn’t help but smile as I knocked on the doorway before entering, she had her focus on the screen on the desk, as she looked up at me, she herself smiled in return “Victor” and stood up, for a moment I wanted to walk in and hug her, but, not the time. “Janice, how are things in Science? Everything ready?”, I took a step in and walked up to the desk. “Mhm, it’s as ready as it can be. We just got our database installed this morning, every department has its members and we are well supplied for different situations.” she smiled and walked around the desk, she went up to me and without me having a chance to react, she embraced me. I froze for a second, then turned to embrace her as well. We stood there for what seemed like minutes, but it was probably just a couple of seconds. As we returned to normal, we had an awkward moment of silence before I spoke “Uh, good, then we are mostly set, just engineering and tactical left I think. But both Book and Joanne assured me they’d be done today”. Janice smiled and nodded and straightened out her jacket, before walking back to sit down, she turned the screen at me “See here? We got most of the database we kept from the Equilibrium, even if The Order would want us dead if they knew we kept them. But they’ll be essential to our work. Ok, so here, we have the civilian database, it contains most basic information we can get access to, this however” and tapped a section of the menu “Is the secret data, it’s secure behind several layers of protection. And it’s designed to self-delete if anyone accesses it from anywhere save this console.” I nodded and listened and said “So, do we have backups for that database?” she nodded “Yes, it’s in a secure location, don’t worry, it won’t just disappear”. I chuckled and nodded “Right, well.. Great. I can’t wait to get out there.” Janice smiled at me “Oh, have you sent messages to the Governments regarding licenses for the use of our ship in their space yet?” she quirked an eyebrow at me, I sighed and slapped my forehead, only increasing the pain “F*ck, I knew there was something I needed to do. Right, I am off to my quarters, going to send those transmissions today, hopefully they’ll respond for tomorrow's journey” she chuckled and took my hand and gently squeezes it, then stared for a moment “Headache?”, I looked surprised at her “How did you know?” she smiled and reached for a drawer, pulling out a small bottle, giving me three pills “Take those, it should be better in a couple of minutes”, I smiled and with no hesitation took the pills “Thank you, Janice. You are the best” I smiled. She smiled back and nodded “Yes, that I am” and winked at me. I left with a wave and headed up to my quarters, ”F*ck, how could I forget? Don’t worry, it was a busy day yesterday”, I told myself. The headache dissipated as I walked up to my quarters. I spent an hour there, sending a message to Bretonia authorities to get a license for the ship to pass through them. Kusari wanted a hefty 120 million sc for the license, I whistled low, checked our accounts and waited to send a message to them. Knowing that the government's administration will take a while, I decided to lay down in bed again, closing my eyes. I saw only black, I exhaled and was for the moment content there were no interruptions.