Heads. Tails. Tails. The coin flipped in the air, thudding into the back of Spark's hand with the dull slap of metal on flesh. She cupped it in her palm, flipped it over, shrugged. Another tail, a stylised eagle staring back at her from beneath the embossed cross of Rheinland. Perhaps it meant something, that many eagles in a row – but Sarah had never been one to accept the word of a coin. The universe was more than weird enough without her adding to it, thank you very much. She turned the coin over in her hands, watching the dull light of the Embassy's lamps glinting from its polished surface. Strange, to think that people had once used them as currency. It seemed so heavy, so clunky, for what it was. Why bother?
Sparks shrugged again, rolled the coin between her fingers, metal rising and falling between her knuckles like a dolphin darting and leaping between waves. No-one used them to pay for anything any more, of course. Never stopped the Federals from minting commemorative coins though. Some famous Rheinlander or another stared out at her from the other side of the coin, immortalised in steel, an improbably chiselled jaw hanging over a large, columned building that she had no doubt she, as a faithful and loyal citizen of the Republic was meant to recognise, but she was drawing nothing but blanks.
She flipped the coin again, barely paid attention to the embossed eagle that stared, face-up from the table, thoughts on her drones. Despite her best efforts, a coin was a poor distraction. Sparks palmed the coin and glanced around the bar a second time, taking in the carefully polished tables, the gleaming glasses hanging above the bar, the haphazard metal patch where she had toyed with the station's wiring, wide-framed image of a pair of smiling revolutionaries not quite succeeding in covering the bump of the plate and, among all that, a hint of a familiar face.
"Axel!" Sparks was up and moving even as the former cadet turned back for the door, her head spinning as the blood dropped into her feet. She hadn't spoken to him in what felt like years, but here was someone she'd met. Someone she knew. More importantly, someone who could distract her from the probe's ominous silence."Axel, hey."
"This is really sort of a personal project of mine."
- James Arland, on single-handedly engaging an enemy regiment.
