Ripples of iridescent light flickered across the hull of the Anubis, which was currently stationed within Puerto Rico. An invisible bubble clung to the ship molding its self to its contours. The reactor was being fully utilized to provide a continuous stream of energy to the cloaking system as well as the Jump drive. The Anubis contained a more powerful energy core in due to that all of the crew was android and most of the crew’s quarters re-purposed into storage facilities and served as the cargo hold for the ship while the Cargo hold itself had been extended onto the Core room of the ship. Unlike the more modern Osiris the Anubis still utilized the old cloaking design of the Osiris, however it was not as effective and only had a finite life and the device was not as well maintained as it should be, being the old Osiris had been wreaked and the cloaking device had been one of the projects on the ship. It was because of this origin that that it lacked the requirement of fuel. However what did chew through fuel was the Jump drive that was charging. Light suffocated the ship as the drive came to its crescendo, the effect dissipated on the ships successful jumping. In the surrounding area there was a subtle increase in radiation which would soon die out as well as the excess of energy dispersed. The exit point was within the Westerwald field which helped to hide the entry of the ship. With no contacts within the visual conformation of the ship, the Osiris would uncloak and instead divert the energy to maintaining its stealth equipment which prevented ships from noticing it on the scanners leaving with but one option to find it which was to visually search for it within the dense particle cloud. The location was picked out by the Eye of Horus a Reshepeh reconnaissance cruiser, it used its scrying ability to ensure that the location was outside of the nomad mind field in that system as well as away from the trolls which the information had been gathered from his last visit there just a few days ago. The AI united responsible for outbound related activities actively scanned for any hint of detection, working its way into the nearby lane communication network. The Internal based AI focused on the diagnostics and calibration of the ships systems.

Vaelin looked out over the tactical table which displayed a holographic image of the Anubis within the field on a three dimensional display, the scanners as well as the information from the Reshepeh streamed constantly to the map and it was in this that it was also tracking the other ships within the vicinity of the Anubis, ones that were hostile were shown with a red outline while others with white and green depending on their affiliation, seeming content with this he rose from his seat. He mounted his trench coat which carried coolant tech as he did have a small biological problem of being prone to overheating, something that remained a mystery to even him. He moved out and down the hall way before coming to the elevator that would take him to the ‘safe haven’ wing of the ship which had been prepared for those that were granted access to the ship, it was through this route that he would get into the lower hangers where his Nephthys sat although this was not to be his stallion that he rode in on. His hand traced over the hull of the ship in contemplation. He was wearing a Zoner pilots uniform which he had retained as one of his disguises. Vaelins long hair and beard was gone in exchange for closely cropped hair and being clean shaven. Vaelin entered the bay of the freighter that he had brought from Freeport 9 discreetly as well as the Zoner Identification card. He passed the F.O.W and ship repair supplies which were already squealed for being dropped off in a few minutes time, as Vaelin made the necessary system checks the Anubis would shift its internal bay about placing the freighter at the docking bay doors. The ships engines hummed to life and the transponder of the ship reading as Zoner Frighter X-349 as it was registered, its IFF reading as Zoner. The bay doors would open and the Krestal would make its way out of the ship and realigned its vector to line up with Bruchsal although going for a slingshot vector around planet Holstein.

It was a mercurially short trip to the base and as he approached he had a patrol meet him which also acted as an escort, when he finally reached within range of the hunk of rock he requested docking clearance in advance to prevent having to wait for so long in the queue. When he moored on the station he was met by two of the stations guards who inspected his ship and merchandise while he went to check in with the commodity foreman. He was provided with paper work to fill out while they ran his Id, the gist of it being the relinquishment of his cargo for credits. While the men were unloading the cargo Vaelin gave a pat the foreman’s shoulder announcing that he would be going to the bar for a drink. When he arrived in the bar he made the usual retinue, he scanned the face of all the patrons finding that he recognized none and he saw none of them as particularly inviting. He pitched his body in the direction of the counter and made his way over having a brief conversation with the bartender as he was served a drink. Vaelin sat down at the table with the cold glass of vodka in hand which he had bartered for, He reached to the collar of his shirt where he pulled out two ear plug headphones, which started to blear out music at an almost deafening volume. He spied at his Vodka thumb started tapping on the table to the beat and after a few moments everyone was quite intent on ignoring the man despite the dull ambient music that his device excreted: although this was all a disguise as his left eye held a optical interface lenses and the tapping of his finger were micro commands in relation to Morse code and his thumb contained a very thin and transparent pressure plate which relayed the commands. These commands were received by his PDA device that was molded to his forearm which was now remotely accessing the database of what this ship would hold nothing substantial but what he was looking for was something rather specific.

He spent close to an hour in the bar as he had finished his drink and got into yet another conversation with the designated bartender at that time only talking of rather bland things; sometime during that conversation he had obtained some temporary accommodation on the station. He had deliberately picked the time to arrive in the middle of peoples shifts which there would be less people milling about the station either they’d be getting rest or doing their jobs, at least that’s how it as in theory. He had a few more glasses of Vodka before he left for the accommodation section of the station and more promptly the crew’s quarters. He had disregarded the idea as trying to pass off as one of their pilots as it was a small group and he couldn’t rely that everyone wasn’t known to everyone else here: He would simply have to be cautious about running into other people. The PDA still doing its work with the visual devices having made a loop so that when he passed by he was completely concealed. He moved a hand down to check the PDA’s screen on the matching door number and when it was confirmed he would slide the counterfeit key-card from his PDA’s drive and then insert it into the rooms door controls, when they opened he moved inside and his eyes started to scan over the room. He moved towards the bed and laid down as his eyes traced over the room for whatever novelties or personal touches it might hold but now all that was left to do was wait. - Like a normal person.... Kinda, he was left wondering what her reaction might be and if he should set something up to scare her. delicious mischievous thoughts started to fabricate within his mind.

Sarah’s room was bare - unfinished plasterboard hung from the walls in rough sheets. Panel seams clustered around welds, cracks branching out along the wall like the forks of some great plaster river. Some long-departed activist had made a half-hearted effort at covering the plain steel floor. Scuffed and dusty coils of linoleum still lurked in the corners, each a little monument to procrastination. A half-made bunk bed squatted against the far wall like a cornered animal, discarded clothes scattered about its base like wayward young.

Balanced at the centre of the upper bunk, a datapad charger rested alongside a fist-sized sphere of rock. Veins ran through the stone, colours shifting and bending in the light; but the glassy surface was smooth, throwing up twisted reflections. Maintenance binders sat in a loose stack against the base of the bed in mute defiance of the electronic age. Faded registry numbers and dates stamped across yellowing covers that must have been old when Sirius was young. One had slid off the top and slumped between the rest of the pile and the floor like a homeless man seeking shelter from the storm. A wardrobe that must once have been green but had now faded to an uncertain iron-grey completed the room’s meagre fittings.

Sarah was nowhere in view. Outside, footsteps reverberated against the narrow halls of the station like caged thunder.

*

“Oxygen’s showing 80%. You still alive out there?” Cameron’s voice cut into her helmet, as clear as if he had been standing behind her. Really, physically, breathing down her neck, instead of just metaphorically.

“Yeah, still alive last time I checked.” Sparks released the transmit button on her suit, extended a gloved hand to steady herself against the rocky bulk of Bruchsal base. Bruchsal was a dwarf by station standards. Less than a speck held against the real giants like Montezuma, or the nameless Blood Dragon base she and Erich had once run supplies to. Yet; the asteroid installation was still large enough to make her feel like an ant crawling up a battlement. A twist of her hand, and a circuit board came away from the sensor beneath her fingers. She fished around and replaced it with a passably new one from her bandolier. "Alright. Number three should be good. How many of these things do we have left?"

"Looks okay on my end. Another four sunward, and one over on the dark side." Cameron, again, his voice carried to her via the long cable snaking from the back of her suit to the relay. A dozen such relays bulged from the asteroid, no more than another crater rim to most who cared to look. Anywhere else in the sector wouldn't have bothered hard-wiring a personal communicator. Out here, with a military bunker-buster only ever one incautious burst away, security and reliability won out over convenience.

"Dark side. Very spooky." She patted down the bandolier, the motion muted through the suit. "How many boards does Rutgen have to go?"

"This isn't a competition, Sparks." But the hint of trepidation in his voice said that he knew it was - and that he didn't approve. But this was Cameron. The man was so risk adverse he'd call up three traffic reports and a soil test before crossing the street. He'd come to Rheinland to write a commerce thesis for Cambridge. How he'd ended up a systems tech for the Widerstand instead was something she'd never got around to asking. On the upside, he hadn't asked about Sparks' past either, which suited her just fine.

"I know. Just wondering. Healthy concern." Ficker had banned races among his repair crews, of course. Jumping around the surface of a rock where escape velocity meant a gentle sneeze was far from safe at the best of times. Which was exactly why races were so popular. They raced for credits, they raced for prestige, but mostly they raced to relieve the dull, mind-numbing boredom of station life. Sparks was the station favourite. She had her own betting pool going.

"For the sake of healthy concern then, Rutgen's got four replacements to go."

"Only? Wasn't he on six a minute ago?" Sparks swore under her breath, and resisted the urge to punch the surface of the asteroid. Four. Her hard-won lead kicked down to less than nothing.

"We had a transport come in five minutes back. The docking bay sensor has been scrubbed until the bay is clear."

"What? Why didn't you say something?" Damn it. Damn it. Damn-

"I didn't think it worth worrying you. Look, you know Rutgen is hardly in the pool anyway. Besides, we've-"

"But I am!" And that was what mattered, wasn't it? Not the money - though the money did have a certain, mercantile, appeal - but the competition. Holding back, letting Rutgen win just because a transport happened to arrive was somehow worse than losing in the first place. Treasonous, that's what it was. A betrayal of the effort she'd put in - and the money, of course. There was always that. Sparks grinned, pushed away from the asteroid, and the universe spun into view above her.

Cameron's voice was in her ear, steady and measured, marking the next sensor to replace. Sparks barely heard him. Above her, there was nothing but the black sky. Asteroids of the Westerwald drifted across her vision, as slow and stately as ballroom dancers. Eternity swam below her feet, lit by the steady glow of a hundred distant stars, as she floated from the cratered surface of Bruchsal. For a moment, she felt an insane urge to push on, to spin away into the void and just keep flying.

She twisted, and the galaxy spun beneath her, the rattle of her regulator the only sound. The phrase free as a bird came to mind; but what poor earthbound bird had ever experienced freedom like this? Gravity was a prison, the atmosphere a cage, and she had slipped the bonds of both those ancient tormentors. Her heart drummed in her chest, and, for a stolen moment, she shared a smile with the stars.

Then, the competition was on again. Sparks thumbed the controls and her pack purred to life with a hum that raced up the back of her skull like the hunting cry of a living thing. She jetted retrograde, addressed the ascent before it could tug the comms cable from its housing. From here, she could see other crews, jumping about Bruchsal's surface like worker bees in a hive. Long comms cables trailed behind them like tails, clouds of compressed gas puffing from their packs like the last gasps of a giant.

Somewhere below her, Rutgen was widening his lead. Sparks' called the pack to life, and the sensation of weightlessness left her. She puffed back toward the station, starlight fading in the glow of Bruchsal's docking lights. To her left, she caught a flash of movement as another worker leapt skyward, faded green suit a dark silhouette in the vacuum. Sparks didn't bother waving. Beautiful as the view was, few people wanted to spend longer in a vac-suit than was necessary.

"Cameron?"

"Oh, are you talking to me again now? I've been trying to get that next sensor on your HUD for three minutes." The voice on the other end of the line was more exasperated then annoyed. Sparks tended to have that effect - the annoyed ones didn't stick around. She could almost hear the disapproving shake of Cameron's head as the tech continued. "It'd be a lot easier if you gave me access, you know."

"Sorry." Sparks tapped her wrist terminal, accepted the data transfer. A moment later, a yellow diamond flashed into being on her visor, cupping another sensor on the asteroid's surface. A steady stream of numbers informed her of the sensor's distance and heading. They also alerted her, more often than she felt was strictly necessary, that it was not operational. She couldn't see it, of course, but she didn't need to. That was what Cameron was for. Besides, if her suit couldn't pick up almost standing on the surface, it was a fair bet the station would give the Rheinlander's planetside arrays trouble too. She nudged her suit's trajectory up a few degrees, towards the crippled sensor, felt the gentle stretch of acceleration tugging at her toes. "Got it now. Did I just sail past Rutgen?"

"Hang on." A moment's pause. Sparks could hear the insect like hum of machinery on the other end of the line. "Yes, that was him. Just finished up his number three. Why, did he wave?"

"Nope. Just an inkling." Waving would been unprofessional. Rutgen tended to save his gloating for after his victory. At least he had, last time Sparks had been slow enough to hand him her money. Three months ago, and the experience had cost her what would have been a week's pay on Manhattan. Out here it was closer to a month's wages. Then again, she had learned to expect that. Her pay packet had seen a swift decline alongside her employer's chances to manipulate her father through her. That was just dandy with Sparks. It meant they were forgetting who she'd been. They had known, she was certain of that much. You didn't shake hands with the Order unless you had a formidable intelligence network of your own at your back. With more than a century eking out an existence in the gutters and dusty university backrooms, the Widerstand's network of informers was about all the fractured revolutionary band still had going for it. "Alright, I'm heading down."

"I know. I'm in your head, remember?" Cameron dumped just enough faux-mysticism into the phrase to tug a laugh from Sparks.

"Uh-huh. Let's not make a habit of it." Sparks slid her suit to a halt next to the ailing sensor with a gentle sequence of puffs that hugged the straps to her shoulders. As a child, she had been to the snow, but always artificial environments. She imagined that the pressure of the suit on her shoulders was something like falling snow would have felt like. "What's up with this one again?"

"Camera still works okay. The image is a little scrappy, but that's alright. A micrometeorite strike took out the servos back before the... incident at Zwickau."

"One day we really, really, need to have a talk about your use of the work 'incident.' But, yeah, busted servo, on it." Sparks tugged a small electric drill from her belt and slid the magnetic clamps on her boots on, felt them bite onto the metal plate hidden beneath the dirt of the asteroid. Quickly, deliberately, she set to work unfastening the lead-lined plate shielding the camera's internals. Not that it had been shielding much of anything lately. A neat round hole drilled its way through the small assembly of electric motors responsible for manoeuvring the camera, and punched straight out the other side. Under the camera, a matching scratch gouged its way across the rock. "Huh. When did meteorites start using AP rounds?"

"Probably some nutcase shooting into the field. You know this place, happens every other Thursday, right?" There was a trace of doubt in the system tech's voice.

"Yeah, probably." And if not, she had better places and times to worry about it than here and now. Sparks secured the new servo in place and patched the hole. Then she disabled the locks on her boots, and kicked off the station and into deep black nothing. "Where's our next-"

Another yellow waypoint flashed onto her visor. A moment later, a green circle joined it. The circle darted across her HUD before resolving into an arrow pointing off to her left. RUTGEN was stencilled alongside it, next to a heading and distance. "Hey, thanks."

"You're welcome. I thought you may wish to know." Cameron said. Rutgen was stationary, relative to the rock - presumably working on his repairs. A chance to catch up.

Sparks pushed the suit hard. Let the cloud of compressed nitrogen swat her forward like a giant's hand. Not too fast. Beyond a certain speed, the defensive guns made no distinction between a space suit and a hypervelocity round. Rationally, she knew that there wasn't enough fuel in her suit to get her anywhere near the velocity that would prompt the guns to dust her. Nonetheless, she kept a light finger on the throttle as she skated past the gun.

Two more sensors; a radiation-saturated infrared camera and one of the station's few LADAR arrays - passed in a steady blur of motion. Damaged parts slowly replaced their functional counterparts hanging off her suit. None of the parts she was using were new, exactly, and some of them had passed through enough hands to make a Junker blush but, they all had one redeeming feature. By and large, they worked. Perhaps not for long, and perhaps not as well as they might have, but they worked. When you lived at the bottom of the local food chain, you had to be content with that.

Zwickau had meant something different to everyone who saw it. To the Rheinland Military, the attack on the station had been a resounding victory. The destruction of a Widerstand fighter wing and the extensive damage to the station had revived the military campaign against the revolutionaries. The chance give the upstart Natio Octavium a bloody nose had been a pleasant bonus. To the die-hards in the Widerstand, it had been irrevocable proof of the regime’s brutality. Renewed justification that any force the Widerstand could bring against them, no matter how cruel, was ultimately right. To the universe at large, it hadn't been much more than another skirmish in a guerrilla campaign that had dragged on over century. Another scattering of dead starships in a sector already polluted with wrecked hulls. To Sparks, it had meant more work.

The Widerstand wasn't so wealthy that it could write off a station, and Zwickau had been the closest thing the movement had to a research base. Ficker's crew, Sparks included, had spent most of the past few months hanging off Zwickau aboard inflatable habitation blisters. Raided from ships bound for the Augsburg relief effort, the blisters had provided rough housing while the engineers raced to save the station. They'd managed to pull Zwickau back together. Looking back, she still wasn't quite sure how. The race to bring the station's ECM back online and hide it from sensors before the Rheinlanders sent something heavier than a cruiser group had taken its toll.

The rest of the Bundschuh's bases had languished for lack of maintenance. It was like trying to dam a river with putty. Every time you turned away, there was another hole. If you left it, the problem worsened until your dam was nothing but flotsam on the water. A space station was the ultimate violation of nature. Life where, by rights, there should have been nothing but hard vacuum and solar wind. Sometimes it didn't feel as much like maintenance as it did a marathon. Hold back the cascade, or the station dies. It was like living your life dangling off a cliff.

She loved every moment of it.

Sparks velcroed a torque wrench back onto her suit, and braced her legs to push off again. Then, without a flicker, the waypoints vanished from her HUD. Rutgen's marker disappeared a moment late. A red and white EMERGENCY banner had usurped it, stamped across the top of her visor. She chinned the comms switch in her suit. "Cameron, I've just lost markers here. What's going on?"

"We just got pinged." Cameron's voice was low and urgent. Sparks felt her heart drop and settle somewhere in her toes. She froze, braced herself against the station's surface like a barnacle clinging to a wharf. As though the stillness would hide her from electronic eyes. "Don't move, we're tracing it now."

Sparks didn't. Her suit seemed far colder than it had been a few minutes ago. The stars that had promised freedom, she now found herself searching. She raked her eyes across the suns, waiting for the distinctive silhouette of a warship. They've found us. God, they've finally found us. It would be Zwickau all over again, and this time she didn't have a ship to carry her clear of the devastation. Sparks rolled her hands into fists to stop them shaking, switched her suit camera to watch for the distinctive glimmer of a targeting laser dancing across Bruchsal's surface. A plasma cannon could punch through the armoured hull of a fighter like so much damp paper. She tried not to think about what a hit would do to her.

After what felt like hours, Cameron's voice cut across her comm.

"Head for the airlock, Ficker's calling everyone back in. We're powering down the active sensors."

Gas poured from her pack as Sparks jetted off the surface. She didn't need to be told twice. "Is it the military?"

"Could be. Whoever they are, they're not actively targeting us. We picked the signal up on one of the ventral sensors though, so it's probably on the wrong heading for a military ship."

"Well. That's nice." Sparks released a breath that was more tension than air. "Any luck on that location?"

"Beyond that the ventrals picked it up first? No. I could give you a location if the outriggers were up and running, but..." But with only one sensor pointed in the right direction, the signal could have come from anywhere above the station. Sparks nodded, realised that Cameron couldn't see her face and hit the comms instead.

"No idea. I get it." It probably wasn't the military, though. They could have come in from above, but why bother? A dreadnought could shrug off anything the Widerstand could throw at it without bothering with subterfuge. All it would need to do was come in on an orbit counter wise to Bruchsal's and drop a few kinetic rounds, let the cruel laws of Newton guide them to the station. It wouldn't take more than the press of a button, and all they'd need to do would be to wait for the boom. But it probably wasn't them. Probably.

"I can't see anything on the passives, so, yes, unless Jana decides to start shooting off LADAR, we're essentially blind." Cameron paused. "On the upside, they haven't hit us again."

"You think it was random?" Sparks settled to a halt next to the airlock, locked her boots to the surface with a clang that reverberated up her legs. A familiar green-suited figure was already in the lock. Rutgen signed a spacers 'okay?' with one hand. She returned it and he returned his attentions to his own comms line.

"It would hardly be the first time a free trader decided to check the lay of the land for himself." Cameron's tone carried the faint uncertainty of a man trying to convince himself.

"Yeah. That's probably it." Never mind that a merchant would show up on the passives. Sparks nodded, began to nurse her own suspicions. "Just unplugging comms. I'll see you when I get in."

"I shouldn't bother if I were you." Cameron jumped in. "Ficker’s got that tone again. I suspect I'll be here late."

"All right. See you whenever, then." Sparks tugged the cable free of her suit, and the world went quiet, save for the rhythmic click of her regulator. Save for a few, critical life-signs, the information on her HUD faded with the noise. Without the station's computers lending her processing power, the suit had its hands full running her own trajectory calculations without keeping track of everyone else’s.

She locked her cable into the clamps just outside the airlock door, alongside Rutgen's. There were still three empty clamps, but that wasn't unusual. Other repair crews tended to run at a pace that was closer to sedate, or sane, depending on who you were asking. As she watched, another mechanic barrelled toward the airlock. As one, she and Rutgen reached out gloved hands to steady him before he careened into the interior door, magnetic boots tugging at her knees. The mechanic gave a wave that managed to look flustered, even with his visor down, and stowed his cable alongside theirs.

Rutgen gave his 'Okay?' sign again and, when the shaky mechanic returned it, cycled the airlock. Sparks fidgeted with her gloves as the light above the door slowly cycled from red, to yellow, to green. Sound returned in a trickle as the atmosphere filtered in. Gravity returned next, the generator buried under the airlock floor coughing its way up to the 0.3G of the rest of the station. After nearly ten years in space, even that felt almost heavy to her now. She hadn't kept up with the fitness regime meant to keep her in-shape for one G, but who did? If I ever want to go back dirtside, I'm going to regret that. She wasn't concerned. A future in which she went back down a gravity well seemed as fantastical as a future in which she grew wings.

"Do you need help?" Rutgen and the other mechanic - a broad-shouldered man, with the scraggly beginnings of a beard clawing their way out of his chin - had their suits off, down to the creased bodysuits underneath, and were watching her, still fully suited. Sparks had the distinct impression that it wasn't the first time he'd asked. Rutgen's sirian was the slow, hesitant drawl of a student speaker. Still better than when they'd first met. Before she'd learned more than a few words of the bastardised union of modern german and a dozen, older, languages that spoken in Rheinland. She still wasn't sure if she hadn't preferred him before they started talking. She hit the speaker on the suit.

"I'm fine. Sorry. Just thinking." She waved them away. "I'll catch up later."

Rutgen nodded his assent and vanished down the corridor with the mechanic, swaying like sailors too long at sea. Sparks undid the clasps on her helmet, took a long breath of the recycled air, tainted with the small of heated plastic, and set to work undoing the rest of the suit. Unpeeling would have been more accurate. The temperature control unit on her suit was just one more thing on her ever-expanding list of things to fix and, right now, it was falling well below a shower. She stowed the suit in an airlock locker, and began the long walk to the other side of the station, and her bunk.

*

Someone was in her room.

Sparks had seen movement, a flash of black against the grey station walls as she rounded the corner. That, and she'd caught the hiss of the sealing door as she rounded the corner. She'd pressed herself back around the bend as rapidly as surprise had allowed. No-one outside of the station administration should have had access to her quarters. Right now, that meant Erich, Freya, and a middle-aged fire warden whose name she should have known but never remembered. She worked through the list, mentally checking off names. Erich was still missing, and Freya had considered her beneath notice since she'd turned down her offer to run station engineering. As far as she could see, nothing was on fire, and the wall terminals reported the station's life support was functioning, if not perfectly, than well enough that there was no immediate emergency. So it wasn't the fire warden.

She revised her assessment. Someone unauthorised was in her room. She'd locked it on the way out, she was certain. She pulled up another mental list; what sort of person had a reason to want in to her room? More importantly, who had the means to override station security? Sparks pointedly ignored the whisper at the back of her skull, the whisper that had nestled there since Cameron called her in, suggesting she knew exactly that sort of person.

Sparks retreated down the passageway until she found a wall terminal. The red and white warning banner at the top was a perfect copy of the one on her suit HUD, albeit this one warned against unshielded communications. She paused, considered calling up the internal cameras before she remembered that she had quietly removed them from their mountings the day she moved in, and swore under her breath instead. Instead, she unhooked the terminal from the wall and navigated through until she hit a screen titled SECURITY. The station branch was already on screen. All she had to do was hit the pulsing SEND REPORT, and Freya's soldiers would march right in. Then all that was left was to do was to explain herself to Freya.

Again.

On second thought, perhaps the intruder wasn't so bad.

She slid the terminal into her hand, thumb hovering over the button, and slipped into her room.

The back of a black trench coat greeted her. The coat was a strange affection. Except for the real backwaters, the primitive worlds that had withered and not-quite-died when the jump network sprung into existence, mankind hadn't dug trenches in a millennium. Sparks held a deep-seated belief that the coats should have died out with them. There was only one person she knew backward enough to wear one. Only one person that broke into her rooms, as reliable and inevitable as winter. Only one person with the means and reason to ping Bruchsal and avoid the retaliatory probes. She let her thumb drop away from terminal.

"One of these days, Vaelin, I'm going to have to teach you to knock." Sparks pushed past him, all elbows and knees, auburn hair a fuzzy halo in the low gravity. "It’s been at least a month. I'd started to think you might've learned manners or something stupid like that while you were away.

“It’s good to see you again.” She laid a hand on his chest, shepherded him back towards the door. "Now, get out. I need to change into something that doesn't smell like a donation bin, please and thank you. We can talk after."

His mind had gone over a few scenarios in his head, ones where he might scare her or other ridiculous things, mostly ridiculous things. It was a half-hearted attempt to occupy his mind. His plan had worked at least mostly and his attention span for waiting when there wasn’t a completely iron-willed reason behind the visit quickly diminished a hairs breathe after his mind was done reciting over the various outcomes within his head, he decided to be less dramatic for once. It was in this moment that he got up from the bed, (mostly on compulsion) and he gathered a more detailed look over what looked to him as a derelict room.

His first attention turned to the unfinished plasterboards as well as the run down state of what was intact, it was a rather underwhelming sigh and a slight twitch over took his hand, which was stilled by the clench of his hand. Clean, put things in order, make things better. a small but very insistent voice nagged at the back of his mind which was more like a nagging back seat passenger asking if they were there yet despite having not even started the journey yet.

His hand traced over the fork of the great plaster river which was now dubbed Plasterion River in honor of the metaphor used to describe it. It was when he finished running a finger along one of the crevasse that his attention turned to the half-hearted attempt to make the floor into something a little more appealing, which might have worked if not for the person’s lack of conviction in the completion of the simple task. Once again the nagging voice came through though this drowned out and replaced the previous voice Complete the task. a small clench of his jaw was able to quall this voice into a laxer state of unbearable compulsion and unthankfully his mind turned to the other features of the room which only added to the irking of the current situation. He opened his mouth to mutter about the state of the bed when his attention came to the cloths sprawled out through the place which only added to the discarded judgment of the room.

This insistence in cleanliness wasn’t simply just from the fabrication of being a neat freak, on the contrary he was quite messy himself, but this had spawned more to the reason that he had little else to do, he was not in the mood for music which by inheritance left him with little else to do then wait in boredom. It was in this boredom that he was looking for things to do, despite it not being his room and how he started was in the folding of the cloths that had been discarded about the place like a farmer sprinkling out seeds over dirt.

They were placed on the half of the section of the bed that was made which he also rectified into a state of being fully made, which he also straightened out which the small voice gave him some relief in its level of insistence although that lasted only a moment before his eyes turned down to the maintenance binders, something he was unfamiliar with and he sought to scoop up the one misplaced file, he opened it sprawling it in his left hand like some great magical tome his hand flicking through the paces as if looking for instructions on how to conjure up a spell, though it was more closer him trying to conjure up something of familiarity which might lead to him comprehending what the files actually were about specifically.

This lasted all of two seconds as he placed the book back on top of the pile as it was intended to be stacked, his attention having been captured by the sphere, watching the twisted reflections thrown off by the object with some interest pitching his stature slight to accommodate his curiosity and amusement. It was in this moment when he heard steps settle close to the door. He turned and progressed towards the door, he refrained from moving a hand to the gun holsters on his thighs and instead smoothed his hands on the outside of such objects on the outside of the coat.

“One would think you are stupid to think I would learn the definition of manners let alone understanding and putting such etiquettes into use – which speaking on the subject of cloths that smell like a donation bin, I wouldn’t exactly suggest looking for such a condition of clothing in a place that looks inheriantly worse than a donation bin.” With his ejection from the room like a piece of garbage he would simply just move to the adjacent wall and leaned on it expecting sparks to come through and at least be polite enough to tell him when she’s done changing, for the moment however his mood towards music improved and the Improvements to her room slipped from his mind and instead the sound waves from the headphones assaulted his eardrums at a deafening volume.

"Thanks. Missed you too." The door hissed shut between them. Vaelin's here. The thought sent a shiver from the base of her spine to her skull. How long had it been since they last spoke aboard a station? Buffalo, ten years ago, fifteen? She had still been a child, patching up raiders to convince Dervin she was more valuable with them than on a slave ship to Malta.

Surely it hadn't been that long. Vaelin was a good friend. But he never bought good news. The man drew disaster like a candle drew moths. Any similarities in outcome were something she pushed from her mind. If something wasn't going wrong around him all it meant was that something was about to.

Sparks collapsed on the bed and tugged off her sweat-lined bodysuit. Insulated boots came away from her feet with a dull pop, like a starfish leaving a rock. She tossed them at the end of the bed to air. The bodysuit followed a moment later.

She peeled a panel from the wall, exposed the room's shower. The word shower applied to the Widerstand only in the most fundamental sense. No free flowing water, just a collection of damp sponges and towels. Sparks pulled a sponge from the wall and wiped the day's grime away, each touch of water bringing her a little closer to human. Her hair looked as though a small animal had taken up residence in it, but that was nothing new. Life in low-G killed hairstyles only slightly slower than it killed skipping routines.

Something about the room was different. Off, like a ripple in a still mountain pool. It looked the same on the surface, but beneath...

Oh no.

"Vaelin!" Sparks stared at the empty space at the foot of her bed in silent horror. "No, don't come in! What have you done with my clothes?"

A heartbeat.

"No, wait. It's okay. Situation's under control. You can stop worrying now." Her clothes sat at the foot of her bed, folded and stacked like a store display. Sometimes, it was easy to forget Vaelin's military past. This was not one of those times. Hospital corners protruded from the corners of her bed, top sheet folded neatly back. It would have been crisp, if not for the Sparks-shaped dent where she'd sat on it.

She'd never seen fabric look smug before.

Sparks tugged on her least-stained trousers and a green and grey T-shirt marking her as a station mechanic. Every member of the Widerstand wore similar clothing. The fist of the Widerstand sat emblazoned on her shoulder like the flag of an old-earth nation. With any luck, it would be enough to keep security from getting trigger happy around Vaelin. It would be the first thing that did, but you had to keep hoping. Magnetic boots, peeled away from her suit, and her arm terminal, fished from beneath her mattress, completed the outfit.

Sparks paused, hand held before the door control. There was one more thing to do. Slowly and deliberately, she walked back to the bed and pulled the sheet back. Her folded clothes drifted to the floor like snowflakes in the low gravity. They settled in a heap on the steel with a whispered thud.

"Much better." A coyote's grin flashed across her face, fierce and fast. The door slid shut behind her.

Chris - Vaelin, she corrected - reclined against the wall opposite her. Headphones wrapped around his skull like some invasive sea creature, head bobbing in time with the music. She could hear it from across the hall, sharp beats and pounding melodies. If steel and gunpowder had a soundtrack, than that was it. Alone there, against the wall, he looked like someone else. Not so different from Rutgen, when she first arrived. A shy teenager lurking at the outskirts of his first concert. Only the glint of metal on his hip and something harder still in his eyes spoiled the illusion.

"Hey." Sparks jerked her head down the corridor, waited for him to remove the headphones.

"Up for a walk? You're not meant to be down here, you know." She added conversationally. "Widerstand only on the crew decks. The public area's upstairs, near the docking bay." Where the gravity doesn't cut out every eight hours. I really need to do something about that.

A few paces down the hall Sparks paused to replace the wall terminal in its mounting. The red and white EMERGENCY banner hung over the screen like a shroud.
"I'm guessing that was you that pinged us, right?" Because if it was, I really shouldn't have lead you back here. And if it wasn’t- Sparks forcibly derailed that train of thought. She adjusted a wire at the base of the terminal. A beep from the machine confirmed the connection.

Freya's going to kill me.

His lips curved into a smile at her retort as he was ushered out the door which hissed in what he supposed in dissatisfaction that likely echoed Sarah approval of his genuine assessment. While she spent time on reflecting on the past and the inevitable chaos that was likely to ensue, Vaelin spent his time going over the songs on his PDA. It took a while of listening to a multitude of songs for only about three seconds each before he decided on one that seemed to fit his mood, he also put it on a loop, a mannerism of his was to play a song until its death. He went over the data that had accumulated on his PDA from the recent pinging of his vessel and only frowned as the information seemed to be on a broader spectrum then what he had originally sent. Opps. He had forgotten about the simple fact that a ping kept on going until it rebounded off something, he sighed softly and merely shook his head. It was in this moment that she had called out to him but on that note he was also listening to music that was drowning everything else at the moment so her voice alarm fell on deaf ears.

When the doors of her room came up he couldn’t help but taken in her own alterations to the room which only landed Sarah a narrowed eyed expression in a way of rebuke, although several words came to mind about his wasted effort he would keep his lips shut and a spark of mischievousness glinted in his eyes. He’d get her back later, he thought condemningly. He unplugged his head phones although that would not stop the blaring of music that radiated from them which played quite audible, it was frankly a miracle he wasn’t deaf – yet. He merely nodded in her offer of a walk and he would follow along moving a hand to the PDA on his forearm at least dulling the sound somewhat as to not serve as a beacon to those that were about. “I am quite aware of where I am meant to be and where I am not meant to be, that’s kinda the reason why I was in Your room, in relative peace might I add before you went and threw me out like some rag.” There was a mock tone of hurt in his voice as the tone died off.

Vaelin’s eyes rolled over to the terminal that displayed the notification of an emergency and he watched as Sparks would look to readjust a intricate part of it apparently, he took the time to at least maul over her question, though more in truth he was thinking of what to say which was probably a conformation within itself. “No… of course not.” His tone of voice dipping at the end would only add to the verdict of guilty. “In truth I was pinging for the positions of what was in the system of where the Anubis jumped into – I forgot the simple fact that a ping doesn’t stop in the allocated radius and instead extends far from set parameters, sorry about that.” This time his tone was genuine rather than condescending. At Vaelin’s chest she might notice a small change in his attire which was a necklace that had a wolf head at the top and coming out of the bottom was the fang of a wolf’s tooth.


Vaelin would take a data stick out of his PDA and then he would offer it toward her. “Which reminds me, in the terms of unexpected gifts!” His tone of voice just suggested that he had been reminded of something and the chosen words were ones that helped fill her in of this enlightenment. The device held the information of a ship, but not any ship – a ship that probably was more suited to the roll she had here rather than the one she would have on the Anubis. A repair ship. From the specs it was one that was freshly ordered, Debilitator turrets in honor of her mostly harmless nature, it also sported standard armor plating, the reputation seemed fairly neutral with everyone, considering who was giving it to her, it was a wonder on how he actually got such a standing (Hacking). The vessel callsign being: McFarlen’s.Pride. This had been achieved due to the fact that he had observed a kid give another kid a truck load of candy announcing Merry Christmas, although that’s something Sarah would not find out nor would she ever know the reaction of the child who should have been asking what Christmas was instead, given that he was the adult. “Merry Chrismiss.” Close enough - and probably close enough to the date as well, only off by a few days.

He had bought her a ship. Sparks stopped mid-stride, avoided tripping over a rough join in the floor, steadied herself and stared at the readouts. A physical, honest-to-God Fairdale-class auxiliary. Not quite a mobile shipyard, but close enough that anything less than a cruiser wouldn't notice the difference.

Sparks stared at the terminal, open-mouthed. The ship was ex-corporate, if she was any judge, but it could have belonged to anyone. Knowing Vaelin, it probably still did. Someone who likely wanted it back. As soon as possible, with the thieves spaced and the blood sponged out of the carpet, if you please. The theft itself didn't bother her. She'd done it herself. Often enough from people at least as violent as the corporations, and with fewer legal scruples. She couldn't deny the little thrill that came with taking something that wasn't yours. Besides, she was already a registered terrorist. Starship theft was small-time next to that.

It was just a surprise to see Vaelin doing it. He stole Anubis. She reminded herself. She knew that, but she was having trouble reconciling Vaelin the Fugitive with Vaelin the Thief. She filed it away for later and turned her attention back to the ship.

Fairdales crowded Manhattan skies like wasps, maintaining the sea of infrastructure that kept the planet connected to the world above it. They were the roadies and back-room janitors of the space industry, invisible workers that kept a dodgy thruster from kicking a station out of orbit and in to atmosphere. Given time, the nanorobots aboard a single Fairdale could drag a cruiser back to something resembling functionality from near-atomisation. They could scavenge the remnants of antimatter bombardment. A Fairdale at Zwickau would have saved lives. They were incredibly versatile ships, utility limited only by the crews willing to sign up for the inglorious duty of babysitting installations.

To part with one as a gift was incomprehensible.

Sparks twisted her arm terminal, changed the light. Closed the window and opened it again, to be sure. The readouts held their ground. She tried again, blinked a few times for good measure. The image refused to vanish, to drift back to the usual list of broken sensors and wounded ships. Vaelin's ship was real. As real as lines on a screen could be, at any rate. It wasn't that Fairdales were particularly rare. You didn't stop building something that worked. What they were was expensive, complicated, and distinctive.

The distinctive concerned her.

"Wow, thanks Chris." Surprise dragged her back to a familiar name. "I, wow."

For the first time in minutes, she pulled her eyes away from the terminal and looked at him. Vaelin stood, watching her like a puppy waiting for a treat. His expression was so sincere, so comically out of place that before she knew it she was laughing; doubling over, the sound tearing from her in great gasps. By the time it left her, the expression had vanished.

"You stole this, didn't you." It wasn't a question. Sparks sounded more amused than accusing. "Christopher Dangen, notorious outlaw and galactic criminal, ex-phantom and top-secret-spy, wanted on more charges than Liberty has laws..." She paused for effect, a ringmaster in her circus. "Christopher Dangen, with enough identities to start his own colony. Christopher Dangen stole me a repair ship. For Christmas!"

Another fit of laughter threatened to break through. Sparks let it come, revelling in the incredulity of the situation. He'd even named it after her! She would have to change it, of course. Flying around with her name stamped on the hull was as good as painting 'shoot me' on her forehead and walking through New Berlin customs. But it was a nice thought.

"Thank you, Vaelin. Really. I, er, I didn't get you anything. I didn't really know you were coming." She waved at the bare steel corridor. "We've been struggling to keep things together since Zwickau, and this'll help get us back on our feet that bit quicker. The repair crews really took a hit when the station did. There were a lot of technical people on board - engineers, scientists, a few political refugees that still wanted to fight. I don't know, with gear like this on our side again, maybe we can do something about it. Maybe stop it from happening again. I mean, we’ll have to be careful with how we stage the flight windows. Something that big’s going to show up planetside sensors, not much I can do about that." She shrugged. "We’ll figure it out. If we're lucky, and Freya wants to keep paying me after this, that is."

The Widerstand already had two Fairdale's, courtesy of the Liberty Navy. Sparks trusted no-one, and trusted the Navy less, so she had given the ships a wide berth. They had found use in the hands of less careful pilots to supplement repair crews, but there was always more work than there were ships. Everything helped.

Sparks spared a glance at her terminal, EMERGENCY banner still slung across the top like Christmas bunting. Her good mood sunk to somewhere in the area of her toes.

"We really should let someone know that was you, before they start sending out fighters." Or figure out I'm involved. Sparks tapped her terminal, slid the ship data into a pocket. "Since I'd prefer to not have to explain to the flight deck why half their wing got slagged trying to intercept Anubis, that heads-up's really going to have to come from you. Before someone decides to start sending out squadrons, if you don't mind."

Her fingers continued their dance across the terminal.

He could only contain a smile watching her reaction, seeing her stop and stare at the screen and in contrast to her disbelief he would move a hand out to ruffle her hair, though it was unlikely he was messing it up anymore than it already was providing it was Sarah, with her doubling over laughter, he lofted a brow in surprise and that would also drown out his previous open expression.

“I’ll actually have you know that with some ships, I actually don’t look to have them stolen, just claimed by alias’, I had these serviced recently due to me keeping a small number of these ships for work on the Anubis when I didn’t have a station to dock at with the capability of servicing a battleship - so I had the foresight to requisition a few of these vessels along with a surplus to spread these out, I contracted these out to people that would lease them for station repairs then retract them when they were needed for my person use before being put back out to lease - This is rather new so it’s not been flown by anyone but me and currently holds just near Freeport two in Bering - sorry to burst your bubble about my thief rate status.”

His brows furrowed in a deeper contemplation as she spoke of the last section and more meaty response of her words talking about the attack and the troubles she had been having which something had slipped his mind being it was one of his ships there were modifications on the ships itself which were mostly technologically based.

“Oh right, about the sensor thing, it does have masking tech as I didn’t really want the vessels to be tracked or picked up by scanners when moving out to repair the Anubis, so it has a few systems to prevent it being picked up with anything conventional - though eyesight is a something you’ll still have to work with but at least a still bit more manageable, I just hope that your friends don’t decide to try rip the tech out and use it in something else, being it is your gift - as for giving me something, you know me. More one to give then receive, your gift is your reaction.”

He did contain the insistent urge to ruffle her hair once again but so far retained is composure and instead shifted his hands into his pockets to further still that temptation. With the last part of her side of the conversation out he would only usher a sigh, the oversight with the ping was bad enough but he was confident that the Anubis would be beyond finding

“Well being that its well enough hidden, I doubt they would get slugged being that the ship it’s self is for stealth operations, kind of the reason why I chose to hide it in a cloud as its rather thick, besides I would be more worried about the Rheinlanders trying to find it due to the research station within the nomad mine field within that nebula.”

He was hesitant to announce his ships presence to anyone but seeing as it was Sparks asking this of him he gave it more consideration than he normally would for others and gave a nod. Agreeing, reluctant to do so but all the same, his fingers blurred across the screen of his own wrist mounted PDA typing up a message on which he would show Sarah

To: Fraya

“I apologize for the scare with the ping, it was not my intention to throw your operations into disarray, merely I was trying to find out the position of the Rheinland military units and patrols after jumping in to the system being the exact location of such a jump is not easy to divine. Once again I apologize for the scare but there is no threat to your base at least from the one who pinged the source. Hope I have not caused to much chaos.”

“oh and I am on the station with Sarah.”

~ Vaelin “Darlight” -

He would hit the send button and looked up at the Emergency banner curiously seeing if it might disappear sometime soon but he got bored of watching it and looked back to Sarah and ruffled her hair instinctively, once again. A coy smile on his face for a moment before it lessened to a more neutral based feature. “So I take it that your boss is going to come here with a very, very unhappy attitude?”

Sparks' expression was inscrutable. The thought of Vaelin not stealing the ship seemed stranger than the notion of him as a thief. He was already so far beyond the laws of the colonies that starship theft was to his record what a raindrop was to a thunderstorm. Doing something so normal as buying a ship, even via an alias, seemed, well, dull.

Where he got the cash was anyone's guess. Being an interstellar fugitive didn’t come with a great pay packet, last she’d checked. It didn’t help that the benefits usually came in the form of a plasma bolt. The greatest quantity of cash associated with the man was probably the bounty on his head. So the cash, at least, was likely stolen. Which meant she was still right, after a fashion. Her lips curled into a knowing grin equal parts acceptance and wry cynicism.

"Less unhappy than 'ready to rip my lungs out through my throat.' But, yeah, you've got the general gist of it." Sparks shrugged, nonchalant. "It'll be okay."

It wouldn't be the first time Sparks had earned Freya's ire. It was also not likely to be the last. Between drone ships, radiation burns and snubbing her offer of promotion, Sparks figured that she was close to scoring a free drink on that particular loyalty card. The Vorsitzende was not a woman known for her motherly demeanour.

"We'd be better off going to her, really. I don't want to have to explain why you're here, in the crew quarters, on top of everything else." She stepped back, dropped her voice an octave in a passable impression of Vaelin.

"Oh, yes. I'm sorry, I hit your specially-concealed station with ranging equipment from my personal battleship. This was before I climbed aboard under a false identity - you did use a false ID, right? Oh, and once I'd finished with that I figured I'd hack the internal security and let myself into the crew quarters. Just for good measure. Yes, terribly sorry. Hope it didn't cause you any distress."

Sparks raised an eyebrow, let the accent drop.

"It's not really the sort of message you send via text. I mean, unless you're aiming to get us shot." Than again, this was Vaelin. Getting shot at was always an option. The Widerstand was tolerant, as far as violent revolutionaries went, but there were still limits. Pointing a battleship at Bruchsal, even inadvertently, was probably edging dangerously close to them.

Sparks jerked her head towards Vaelin's terminal, attempted to shake her hair back into place. "You spelt 'Freya' wrong, by the way. It's e-y-a."

It didn't matter in the long run, but every second she dragged the conversation out was another second she dodged Freya's company. It couldn't last. Even Sparks couldn't run forever. She tapped send on her terminal, sent the meeting request spiralling through the station's network to Freya's desk.

"Alright." She exhaled, tasting the filter-stale air. "Time to go pay the piper."

*