Stepping once again into the Embassy after receiving word from his contacts in the Bureau, Gauss fetched himself a pint from the bar and sat down, awaiting a meeting with his contacts 'out of the Bureau'.
There was some discussion to be had about the work of Unit 62.
Sarah McFarlen thumped into the Embassy hauling a battered green toolbox trailing a length of wire. The bar was surprisingly quiet for an evening, but it wasn't altogether unwelcome. She gave a nod the brute of an ape lounging behind the bar, a courtesy that she'd been quick to learn after her first visit to the Widerstand's favourite watering hole some weeks ago, before dragging a table to the wall and climbing atop it.
"Sorry Dutch!" She said, busying herself unscrewing a wall panel near the roof. "New toys wait for no-one. I'll clean up once I'm done, promise."
The bar light's flickered as she thumbed a switch, hauling a rough handful of wires from behind the hull plating, fingers scratching the steel shielding the bare rock beneath. It was easy to forget just how close they were to vacuum here, she thought, wiping the dust on her trousers. Less than an inch of steel sealed them off from hard nothing in places, and it was her job to keep it that way. Beautiful as space was, she had only the faintest desire to see it without an intervening window.
The projector was barely a handspan long, though fitting it in meant drilling a similarly sized hole in the intervening panel. Sarah smiled as she worked, singing an old Rogue ballad under her breath, oblivious to Dutch’s confounded stare.
" The Warlord's tastes were simple, but his methods were complex.
We found him with five partners, each of a different world and sex.
The LPI were on the way - we had no second chance.
We picked him up in the nick of time - in the remnants of his pants.
And we’re banned from Erie, everyon-"
The bar’s lights sizzled out with a fatalistic thump. Sarah’s faintly bewildered voice floated across the sudden darkness. "Oh. Drat." Somewhere, she was certain she heard a hoot of simian laughter.
"This is really sort of a personal project of mine."
- James Arland, on single-handedly engaging an enemy regiment.
Huh? So you must be the infamous 'Sparks', looks like the light might need some of those. The Voice finds it hard to supress the laughter in his voice, as finally something takes his mind of the stress and worries of the past weeks. Having enjoyed watching Sarah's sing-song as she was working away, he finally managed to forget some of the harsher times of the weeks past and the memories of his rather dark mission.
So mainly because I know who you are, and because right now I am just a creepy voice in the darkness to you, I better introduce myself. Michael Hermann, at your service , Michael said lighting up a torch he pulled from under the inside pocket of his jacket and lighting his own face while pulling a devilish grin. It was quite the image he produced with the slight shine of Holstein in the background and his lit up face in the darkness while the only sound was the scrambling noises of the ape being slightly disturbed by the sudden darkness around him.
Sarah prodded at the wall with gloved fingertips, searching the faint indentations for a loose wire. The chuckle from that drifted from the darkness like a wolfhound's growl sent the lanky engineer leaping backwards in surprise, tumbling from the table in a cascade of limbs and faded red tablecloth. She rubbed her elbows, trying to drive the bruises from her arms. And the worst part was that it hadn't even been a good pun.
White light flashed a circle on the Embassy's carefully-maintained ceiling, and she traced the beam back to a grinning face. After a quick pat of the ground around her confirmed that she did not, in fact, have anything to throw at it, she contented herself with moving the toolbox from where it was digging into her spine and sat up, blue eyes blinking in the darkness.
"Michael." The name sounded familiar. It was a moment before she made the connection. "Wallgau, right? Ex-military boat, with the hardwired targeting systems. It's a nice bird. I saw it down on bay four." She added hastily, fishing around in the box for her own light. "Yeah, I'm Sparks. Or Sarah, if you prefer. I didn't know I had a reputation already. Guess that's something to be proud of. What're you doing here? I mean, besides trying to break my spine." The torch flashed on in her hand, illuminating an upturned table and a liberal sprinkling of circuit breakers on the wall, two of which were pulsing an angry red.
"This is really sort of a personal project of mine."
- James Arland, on single-handedly engaging an enemy regiment.
OH dear. Are you alright? Now what had he done? Always trying to make some sort of impression but his awkwardness catching up with him once again. Let's hope she won't be too annoyed about that one, Michael said to himself. Actually using his torch for the ground now he shone it to the area around Sarah quite impressed by the mess he had triggered. He started moving towards her slowly through the darkness lifting up the table and moving it out of his way as he made his way through the rubble to reach the sitting Sarah
Oh yes, the Wallgau. She is my everything, never had a more beatiful ship than that., Michael said after a slightly worrying look at the red glooming circuit breakers.And me. I was just standing in my spot pondering life, the universe and everything. It's been a stressy time recently
Michael had finally made his way to Sarah and was looking down at her. As he chuckled at the fact that he had approached on the red tablecloth as if it was a red carpet he extended his arm to Sarah to give her a lift back up on her feet.Well sorry about that. My fault coming out of the darkness like that. Should we get to fixing this mess then? he offered with a friendly nod towards her and then the wall.
Sarah took the proffered hand, slowly unfolding to her near-six foot height. "Thanks." Deprived of his flashlight, what she could see of the man was significantly less imposing. Back on Buffalo staring out the window contemplating life was usually something you only got to do once in life, and it was usually immediately followed by a trip out said window without the benefit of a space suit. And here he was, apologising. She couldn't help but grin at the absurdity of the situation.
"Don't worry about it. It wouldn't be the first time someone knocked me off a chair." She retrieved a conical length of metal from the bag, an opaque lens protruding from the wider end, pushing it into the Rheinlander's hands. "You can make it up to me by holding this for a second. I've already got the wall open now, we may as well patch it in while it's open. Kinda what I was coming in today to do anyway."
She hauled herself atop the table, kicking the last of the tablecloth from the bench-top and uttering a quiet prayer of thanks that Dutch couldn't see the damage she was doing to his table setting. " 's a pre'jector." She said around the torch clenched between her teeth. " I hadgh some lef'-" The torch dropped to her hand as she fished a length of wire from the panel. "I managed to get some off when Contents went up earlier. I was planning to set up a briefing room, but they're pretty neat for entertainment too. Spa and Cruise was trying to use them to set up theatres before those holo-tainment bands showed up, so I managed to get them pretty cheap." She extended a hand. "Projector, please."
"This is really sort of a personal project of mine."
- James Arland, on single-handedly engaging an enemy regiment.
A sudden sound echos through the place, startling the two, though Sarah more so than Michael. To Michael the surprise is that he hears it again after such a long time, not the sound itself. The sound of heavy boots hitting the Embassy's floor., her heavy boots.
"What the hell is going on her?! You two! Aktivisten, are you the ones fooling around here?"
The loud thundering voice almost triggers a fight or flight instinct. The voice can only come from one member of the Bundschuh, but everyone thought she was still in the medbay after her Eagle was obliterated and her escape pod getting damaged almost a year ago. Then again, it was perhaps foolish to assume she'd sit out her recovery as the doctors advised her too.
The uniformed blue haired woman steps in the direction of Sarah and Michael. From behind the bar Dutch would smile. This was going to be interesting.
Sarah winced, covering her ears almost on instinct, cold metal of the projector pressing against her face. For the briefest of moments, she was back on Buffalo, being hauled from beneath a Hyena feet-first by the latest gang of drunken thugs to explain a broken fuel line. The memory was so strong she could almost smell the alcohol-flecked spittle that had smeared her jacket. Then it faded, and she left standing atop a table staring at a woman who looked as though she was trying to eviscerate Sarah by sheer force of will. Sarah took a pace to the left, simultaneously descending from the table and extraditing herself from that raptor-like glare. She briefly considered propping another table against the wall to prevent the woman's gaze from cutting into the underlying rock before concluding that would likely only result in more glares and, overall, more structural damage then it would prevent. Despite the situation, Sarah found a moment to shoot Michael a glance that was equal parts accusation and plea for help. He probably wouldn't see it in the gloom, but it made her feel a little better.
"Er."What was that, Sarah? Come on, a coherent sentence would be nice."Michael was just helping me fix the wiring in here. There's a new projector going in, and the old Type 7's couldn't really handle the draw, but I thought we had 9's in here and..." She trailed off as the woman's expression determinedly failed to improve beyond 'thundercloud'. Time for a different approach. Sarah extended a dust-coated hand. "I'm Sarah. Nice to meet you?"
"This is really sort of a personal project of mine."
- James Arland, on single-handedly engaging an enemy regiment.
An angry expression would remain on the face of the woman. Yet when Sarah extends her hand, she hesitates. Then slowly she moves her own hand for a firm handshake. Her face briefly shows a bit of friendliness but then quickly turns back to anger when she retracts her hand.
"So, 'Sarah', huh? You don't sound like you're from around here and you act like some damned Junker. Walking around messing with the electricity without a single thought. We are a resistance movement, Aktivist, we are fighting an uphill battle and have been doing so for decades. If we had people just walking around messing about all the time we would've been crushed a century ago."
She sighs and relaxes her stance a bit and her face changes from pure fury to more annoyed with still a hint of anger in her eyes.
"So now tell me again what you're doing here. In simple understandable terms. And tell me why you just decided to walk in and do it without asking, without even notifying someone."
There it was. A flickering uncertainty in the woman's eyes, the quiet rumbling of a mask slipping. She was human, after all, not some pet sociopath the Bundschuh kept around to scare new pilots and foreigners. Sarah felt some of her earlier fear drain away, joining a shattered glass on the Embassy's floor. She tugged a pair of chairs from a nearby table, leaving one for the walking eagle, and settling herself on the second. "Sorry, if I stay standing here, I just know I'll fall right over again. Never did get on well with centrifugal gravity in the dark.
I was trying to hook up a projector in here. I mean, there's a bit more to it then that, but that's pretty much the general gist of things. There was an old theater down on New London that went under a while back while I was passing though and we managed to pick some of them up pretty cheap. I meant to use them to set up a proper scanner UI on Contents, but-" She gave a shrug, a touch of melancholy flashing across her face. Contents May Differ had been a good ship. The liner had deserved a better end then the one Sarah had given her, sending the big vessel spiraling into nuclear fire at the heart of Bremen's sun to buy her time to escape a military patrol. "But that didn't exactly work out like I'd planned it. Put them in the pods to keep the hallways clear and ended up taking a hundred and two of the things with me when Contents hit vacuum.
Anyway, I figured that they'd at least be useful here for displaying system charts or something. They're not meant to be that difficult to install, I mean, just like changing a flurostick really. Didn't see much point in bothering someone for a five minute job. Besides, if I went around asking permission for half the things that get done here they'd still be a leak in bay twelve." She shrugged again. "And I was on this end of the station, so I thought I'd just patch them in while I was here. Didn't...Er... Didn't really think that the adapters here wouldn't be set up for them. It's just a few boards. Give me fifteen minutes or so to get them fixed, and I'll show you what they can do."
"This is really sort of a personal project of mine."
- James Arland, on single-handedly engaging an enemy regiment.
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