Gone.

[Byron]

Ten o'clock. The short flight to Glendalough Orbital had been a rather uneventful one, something Elena happened to be overly thankful for. She still had this weird feeling in her guts from the encounter with the man in the park, and she wouldn't have liked to talk with people right now either. In fact, she got a little surprised by how extraordinarily grumpy she was feeling, but she ascribed it to the pending pile of paperwork that already awaited her at her workplace. Sometimes she believed the bureaucracy had really taken hold of her, sometimes she wished the old times back when she had just been a simple freelancer, living from hand to mouth, and sometimes did she wonder whether the path she had followed would prove to be the right one in the end. But every time those thoughts would anchor themselves in her mind, she was resourceful enough to know how to distract herself. In this specific case, she switched on the radio during the flight, letting others take care of the talking process. In the past, she would have chosen the loudest music she could find, but as of late, she caught herself listening to the news more and more often. Clearly could she remember that she had once hated newscasts absolute guts, and when she was honest to herself that was still the case, yet everytime she switched them on some hope of a possibly interesting coverage would resonate. Not exactly to her surprise, the newscaster didn't have much to say, one assault here, a nature disaster there, the usual daily fusses that would be mentioned, and soon the radio switched over to broadcasting music again. Following the premise "old, but gold", an almost eerily accurate tune would start playing and accompany her during the rest of her flight. It wouldn't exactly help to raise her mood, either, though.

Finally reaching Glendalough, Elena would maneuver her craft onto one of the free landing pads, just as she used to it on an everyday basis. The hangar was already full of other ships, some of which she recognized whom they belonged to, and mechanics and Service Droids were bustling about all over the place, in some ways similar to an ant colony, lugging spare parts round. As every day, Elena hopped out of the cockpit, climbed down the ladder and instructed the next available mechanic to leave her Sabre alone. Even though she had been rendered unable to work on it on her own lately due to her health state, what she would have wanted the least was others to meddle with her ship, no matter how adept they might were. The local mechanics already knew about her special wishes, but didn't say much to it. When their boss told them something, they would have to follow it. Nay-sayers would get disliked very fast in this branche, everybody knew that.

Heading straight to her office, she met a few acquaintances on her way through the hallways, exchanged a few pleasantries and Good Mornings, mainly formalities, nothing actually serious. On other days would she might have gotten into longer conversations with a few of the others, but today she felt like getting to work rather sooner than later. Besides the fact that standing felt exhausting to her currently, she felt weak in some weird way. The possibility that she might was becoming ill seemed more and more realistic, a possibility that already now began annoying her. Nobody liked being ill, and especially not she, feeling bereft of her get-up-and-go. And that's exactly how she felt today, her incentive was still lost in some random cloaca and she couldn't find it. Entering her office, sighing at the papers already lying all across her desk, she would jam herself behind the latter, boot up the PC and get to it. Ever since the inter-structural changes for the Forlorn Hope had been decided upon, Elena was kept being busy with organizing duties. Leading an own division was a hard job, she had been wary of that, but how could she have imagined it would be that hard to change a pre-established system? Databases would have to be updated, others to be created first, listing everything she had to do would result in a sheer monologue.

The sound of a keyboard being typed with would suffuse her room for a few hours up until midday, that's when she decided to take a break and visit the local cantina for a rudimentary lunch. It wasn't exactly because of her having a ravenous appetite, quite the opposite, she weirdly had none at all, yet she felt how her body could use some nutrients after several hours of brain working. After having knocked together a meal, she would sit down at a table where a few other people were already residing, joining into the conversation with ease. If one thing was her strength, it was certainly talking. However today, she wasn't working towards being the center of attention at the table as she was usually keen on. Her body kept her busy as she more and more felt slight stomach aches, responsible for her lack of appetite. Some gastro-intestinal disease was her first thought, and it didn't amuse her. She still had stuff to deal with, which made her rather unwilling to allow herself getting ill right now.

Thus, after bidding goodbye to the others, she quickly made her way back to the office, going on with the business that she had to do willy-nilly. But these aches kept being there. In an act of immersing herself into the various matters she had to deal with, she tried to pretermit the aches that were slowly crawling through her stomach. The ignoring method of hers only worked well up to a certain degree, up until the ache transformed into a twinge of pain which made her completely unable to concentrate. With a deep, annoyed sigh she striked on the keyboard disgruntedly. It was at this point when she decided it wouldn't make any sense continuing with her work. Even though she hated leaving without having finished her daily set task, the problems with her stomach didn't seem to go away easily. Thus, believing a longer session of lie-down would help, she left her office aiming for the hangars again to fly back to her boyfriends' apartment, looking forward to the cozy couch and a hot cup of tea that would hopefully be able to settle her stomach.