Sarah tilted her head to one side, brain trying to sort some sense from the nonsense her ears were reporting. What sort of person offered you a job and finished it with 'I'm trusting you too much. Don't screw up.'? More importantly, who was she to offer? Sarah's earlier plan to head for the door trundled back to the front of her mind with all the grace of a siege engine. It didn't help that eagle-woman looked like she was trying to decide between snapping something's neck and crawling into a ball. Talking to her gave Sarah a far greater understanding of the mental processes of a deer on a highway then she'd ever endeavored to have. In retrospect, perhaps this hadn't been the best choice of time for the projector. She powered it down with a twitch of a finger.
"Thanks." She made no move to touch the datapad. "But I'm really not sure this is the best time. I mean, I've only been here a couple of weeks."And I've got no idea who you are. Or how to talk to half the people on this station. She tugged the chair back, sweeping to her feet. "Besides, I don't want to be head of anything. Give me a ship to fix and I'll fix it, sure, no problem. But you'll need to find someone else to run your station. I can't just jump in and start telling people what to do." The rest of the sentence didn't need to be said. She said it anyway, common sense screaming it's condemnation all the way. "And I'm not sure you should be, either. Not when you're... Like you are. Sorry." She slid her own datapad under her arm, stooping to collect the toolbox from the floor, doing her best to ignore the visual daggers she was sure were burying themselves in her back. "I should really go and get the rest of the projectors installed. Nice meeting you, Michael. And you too...Er... Anyway. Nice." She scurried from the bar with all the dignity she could muster, sweeping back into the hallway with a flurry of too-quiet footfalls before vanishing from view.
"This is really sort of a personal project of mine."
- James Arland, on single-handedly engaging an enemy regiment.
Michael opened his mouth like he wanted to say something as Sarah was leaving but decided against it considering quite the impact her last sentence had had on the conversation. "Not when you're like you are" What was she thinking to talk like this to the Kommandant. Michael blamed it on not knowing her way around the base yet but was worried for the effect it might have had on the obviously distraught Kommandant.
Kommandant? Are you alright? I am sure she didn't mean it. She just doesn't know who you are yet. This is only your first encounter. Michael was trying to calm Freya down before anything major would happen. In her labile state anything could happen next, he really didn't know how she would react. Still amazed that he was even having this conversation with her, as he thought she was gone forever still about an hour ago, he also started slowly realising the state she was in. If only he knew how she felt
Freya wanted to shout and curse at Sarah. Yet, she couldn't. Michael, knowing Freya's temper, quickly tried to calm her down, but that was not neccessary as Freya silently watched as Sarah left. She whispered:
"I... I don't know, Michael..."
Then suddenly she raised her voice.
"What the hell is wrong with me? Why can't I just keep it together? Verdammt noch mal! I'm weak and incompetent! Look at me shaking and stammering like an idiot."
She felt both sad and angry at the same time. She seemed to be dissapointed... by herself.
He was surprised by her sudden outbreak but at the same time welcomed her fierce tone in her voice. It reminded him of the old times.
Kommandant! Nobody thinks you are an idiot. I don't really know what happened, but you just came back into active servicec. People will be forgiving. You see, you don't always have to impress people. Great leaders also have their tough moments, you should worry less. We all respect you. Michael wasn't sure if he had found the right words. He didn't even know if he reacted remotely correct to the situation. Freya seemed to be at her end, time seemed to have changed things a lot. But he was confident they would find a way to catch up on lost time. He just first needed to figure out what was going on in her head right now.
"I used to lead the party with support of the vast majority of its members. I was the face of this movement and I was its fist. Now, the new members don't even know who I am, they maybe think I am some crazy witch. The old ones who do know me see it. They see that I've become weak and they ignore me, bypass me. They figure I can no longer be relied on.
And they are right aren't they? My usefulness has passed. I'm now neither fist nor face. At best I'm now a friendly-looking mask the Widerstand can wear when talking with the Coalition."
A red-haired woman stamped through the prestigiously battered door to the Embassy - taking careful care to duck her head and wipe her feet on the way in which, if she was honest, kind-of ruined the effect of stamping in the first place, but you took what you got as far as fiercely defensive monkeys were concerned - and eyed the lights, the screens, the projectors, as though they'd each personally insulted her grandmother. They hadn't, of course. That would have been crazy, and whatever else Sparks was, whatever kept breaking her probes, she remained stalwartly convinced that she was not insane.
Though if she was, she had to admit that she was in the right place for it. Struggling against the might of the Federal Republic was a task best suited to the slightly unhinged, after all. She didn't belong to that special breed of crazy that actually flew against them, though. She had once, but as it turned out an opposition to killing things made you rather useless as a resistance fighter. Perhaps she was just maladjusted. Sparks hadn't minded. Conflict broke ships as well as people and though she couldn't offer the injured much more than a kind word, there was never any shortage of birds that needed patching up. Everyone heard the cries of injured people, but there were so few that heard the groan of agony in a ruptured fuel line or the discounted rumble of a misaligned cooling unit.
Sparks heard them though. Heard the screams of the metal and the muffled weeping of a ship's electrics, the faint, gentle crack of a uncalibrated weapon like the click of a broken jaw, a hull breach like a sucking chest wound, bleeding atmo instead of blood. No, the ships spoke to Sparks and, occasionally, she even answered them. Not when anyone was watching, of course. That would have been crazy.
They spoke, and she answered. Or at least, they had until yesterday morning. Three probes, small simple constructs - not much more than some hi-tech cameras and low-tech thrusters (old hall effect models, ancient enough that they may as well have been fitted to a rowboat by sirian standards) - had simply vanished from her readouts, gone completely dark without so much as a flicker of warning. If they'd been detected and attacked - unlikely, considering that they ran without live systems, save the cameras - she would have expected something on the readings. A few reports of system damage, the scream of fluttering thrusters, a few last-ditch pictures, some hint that her steel and carbon children were dying. But there had been nothing.
And that silence, more than anything, terrified her.
Sparks wrung her hands, eyes raking over the, admittedly empty, bar; looking for someone, anyone, to talk to. Something to take her mind off the eerie silence of the machines, if just for a while. God, she needed a familiar face. She crossed her fingers and looked again, hoping to find one.
"This is really sort of a personal project of mine."
- James Arland, on single-handedly engaging an enemy regiment.
Axel took interest in the bar. It was a social hub of chats, drinks and cheers. Everything Axel didn't particularly like.
Despite this, he took a chance and entered the bar, being sure to display polite etiquette and manners. Respect above all else, as he remembered.
Scanning the bar, he found not a soul, contrary to the popular belief he had concluded to in his head. Even though the Sparks was set up in the middle of the bar, Axel decided that he'd rather take his chances with the Armoury than her.
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.
As Axel turned around with Sparks yelling at the same time in the background he failed to notice the person close behind him. The two clumsily bumped into each other as the person had expected Axel to continue to walk into the bar rather than turn around at the entrance.
"Woah!" Freya quickly took a step backwards, surprised and feeling uncomfortable as someone just bumped into her chest. "Look out where you're going, Dummkopf!" The scene must be quite amusing to the observing Sparks and if she was looking for someone or something familiar then in addition to Axel she now also had the typical Bruchsal ambient sound of a yelling Freya to add to it.
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It had been a little while since Alex had entered the bar, and for a good reason too. "'Tag Oberst" this and salutes and whatnot, far too formal for his tastes. He had been content with sitting on top of his Phantom drinking Rheinbier, but he felt that he might as well enter even with his new credentials.
Alex however, decided that it may not have been the best idea when he could here the infamous Witch of Frankfurt yelling at Axel. He had met her before and wasn't at all enthralled with the idea of interacting with her again. He spotted "Sparks" and strode towards the table where she was sitting.
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