"Allright, it's settled then." Ronnie nodded and stood up. "The guest quarter is just around the corner. When you walk out the bar, turn right and then the first turn right again. Second door on the left. You can code the lock with your fingerprint"
He finished his coffee. "Or maybe you want me to escort you?"
Sonya was nodding towards the new face in her usual way to greet someone.
"So finally I meet someone from the legendary Benitez family," she replied. "I'd loved this encounter way earlier in my life, you'd been one hell of a promotion for me," she joked before her head turned back to Ronnie.
"Well, complains are to be directed to the doctors. They liked me that much in sickbay I nearly had to fight my way outta there. But well, I won't hold you guys up, I'll stay behind and enjoy my freedom apart from all this medical gizmos and gadgets."
Sonya grabbed a chair from a close table and sat down, not as fast as usual. Something - it seemed - caused her a great deal of pain.
"De nada, senorita." She inclined her head respectfully to responded to the xeno woman. "You are not holding us up at all, but si, I should best get some rest before the muchos long dangerous journey back home." As she turned to leave for the guest quarters, she noted the woman's pain in her movements. "Rest well senorita and I hope you recover el pronto. I look forward to meeting you and the other xeno pilotos when I visit next."
"Oh well, have I been polite again?" Sonya smiled towards Valeria. "It's an old habit from my life before I met those two here," she said while pointing towards John and Ronnie. "Working with those stubborn fools really teaches you to use elbows and knees instead of your brain," she finished laughing.
It might have not been the best way to introduce herself to the guest but after her days in the sickbay and a lot of chatter she didn't understood she needed a talk as usual badly.
"Thanks, I'd offered myself as an escort through Liberty but the medics won't let me fly anytime soon. So yeah, I'll try to get back in space as soon as possible. Have a good one while you're still at Ouray and don't get bitten by the bugs... and I'm not even kidding."
"Knees and elbows, you say? Stubborn, you say?" Ronnie asked and started laughing. "Would you imagine that these are exactly the words one of your doctors used to describe you in his report?"
He grabbed his things from the table and stepped towards the exit. "You have a good night, people. I still need to do some paperwork before hitting the sack. I will see you in the morning, Miss Benitez."
Suddenly, he stopped for a moment and turned back to Sonya. "Oh, and you know, Rink... as you can't fly now, I'll share some of the paperwork with you. We wouldn't want you to stay in the bar too much, would we?"
He grined and walked out of the bar.
* * *
When he finally made it to his quarter, Lancehead enabled his desktop terminal to do his typical daily paperwork. He was surprised to find that the latest message is from Death Adder, sent only a few minutes ago. Ronnie opened the message and grined. "I knew I can count on you, old buddy" he thought.
He spent half an hour sending comms with orders for other xenos. It was important to start all the preparations as soon as possible. Browsing through recent reports took him another thirty minutes but he was just too tired to focus on what he read. He copied the reports to his personal terminal and turned the workstation off.
Even though he was very tired, Ronnie couldn't sleep. While still in his bed, he enabled the small device and searched the Ouray database. It took him quite a while before he found what he was looking for. He downloaded the files and some additional software, installed and launched it. The screen filled up with text and a clean female voice was heard.
Quote:Había una vez una niña muy bonita. Su madre le había hecho una capa roja y la muchachita la llevaba tan a menudo que todo el mundo la llamaba Caperucita Roja.
Un día, su madre le pidió que llevase unos pasteles a su abuela que vivía al otro lado del bosque, recomendándole que no se entretuviese por el camino, pues cruzar el bosque era muy peligroso, ya que siempre andaba acechando por allí el lobo.
"Habla oona ves neena mooy bonita. Sou madre le habla... hec-... h-esho..."
He fell asleep listening to The Red Riding Hood in this weird and exotic but interesting language.
Once in the guest quarters, Valeria looked around and once again saw how barely the Xenos were hanging to their lives here, fighting with tooth and nail to not go under. The room was lit dimly but sufficing and when she scanned the bed, she realized that the xeno pilota wasn't kidding about the bugs.
"It seems I will sleep in the shower..." Valeria mumbled.
Finding her way to the bathroom, she saw some breached pipelines, some of them repaired with duct tape. She entered the shower and simply leaned against the wall after shutting the door tight.
"I wonder what will come of all this..." She mused while she was beginning to feel the soft pull of falling asleep. She made sure the shower was turned off and secure and then thought about how random, but yet awesome everything had turned out. A lot of things could have gone wrong, they could have simply shot her when they found her but they didn't. Things just .. turned out right for once. And with the comfort of that thought, she exhaled and closed her eyes.
A dim spark of light appeared in the corner, right next to the bar, near the table where Lancehead used to drink when he was still around. The little dot started grownig, became brighter for a while just to dissapear in a single flash. Few moments later, the dot appeared again, but this time it started to grow steadily and took shape of a man sitting at the table. After few more seconds the shape became more solid and much, much less shiny.
The figure started mumbling. "Oh, man... what a bloody hangover... Fell asleep in the bar, didn't you, old bastard?"
He reached for a bottle of Mother's Finest standing on the table. His hand got through the bottle like it was only a holo projection. With angry look on his face, he stood up while yelling: "Which one of you poor excuses for a xeno is playing around with a holo again?!?"
Then he noticed that when standing up, his palm got through the table. He tried it again and once more his hand got through just like there was no table at all. "I'll be darned" he mumbled. "Bloody zoners..."
He tried to grab the bottle few more times with same results. "Oh, boy, it's not good... not good at all... I'll have to see Death Adder about it"
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