TARGET ID: Niklas Posse SUBJECT: RE: Classifieds ORIGIN: Heisenberg Research Station, Koeln ATTACHMENTS: None.
"Hi, Nick." The faint glow of the screen silhouetted the same two-credit café, same pitted plastic cutlery and patterned polymer floor. Nightfall on Heisenberg, and the station’s internal lights had faded to dull glow; simulating the night-day cycle of a world no human being had seen outside of history vids in more than eight hundred years. The phrase ‘old habits’ seemed completely inadequate to describe that sort of determination, but it was the best Sparks’ sleep-addled brain could throw up. Her own sleep cycle had been drifting steadily out of sync with the station’s, mornings slowly drifting into evenings, until she’d given up on keeping track altogether. Who cared if she got up at six in the evening? It wasn’t like she had anywhere else to be. Sparks swallowed a mouthful of something that looked like coffee and tasted like biohazard-grade waste and glanced back at the camera.
"Thanks for the offer. I’m honestly surprised at how much attention this little ad got." Sparks spared a look behind her. Except for a bored-looking drone and a pair of waste-disposal techs poking at what could have been sandwiches, if you closed your eyes and didn’t chew too thoroughly, the café was empty. That was good. An empty café meant fewer potential eavesdroppers. Or someone else is clearing the field. She shook the idea free. Stars, when did she get so twitchy?
"Farther afield sounds good, actually. I’ve been here for long enough already. Too much longer and I might start to put down roots." Sparks smiled, but she said it as though she were a doctor identifying a tumour. Mhm, it’s in deep, but if we operate now, we might just save her… "Er, that said… Like I said, I’ve had a few more offers then I really expected. I was thinking one, maybe. If I was lucky. Some old lady who needed a corridor swept out in zero-G for a buck-fifty an hour-type work. So to have had a number of people come back offering postings on fully operational starships…
I’m a little surprised, I guess, is what I’m getting at." She raised her arms in a helpless shrug, bones made thin by years in low gravity. "And as much as I wish I could accept all the offers, yours included, I can’t split myself in that many directions. One’s just about all I can manage these days.
So, sorry Nick, but I have to politely decline. At least on a full-time basis. It’s nothing against you."At least, nothing against you personally. The man was a Rheinlander. Sparks had had enough of Rheinlanders and their Fatherland to last her a lifetime. No, signing on with one was too much risk for too little reward. "Depending on how things work out, I might still have time for a bit of freelance repair work here and there. You know, if you’ve got an odd job here or there that doesn’t need me to stick around. Drop me a line. You’ve got my comm codes."
She raised a hand to her forehead in mock salute. "Good luck out there, skipper."
Message Ends.
"This is really sort of a personal project of mine."
- James Arland, on single-handedly engaging an enemy regiment.
