James Arland's private snubcraft decelerated to a comfortable drift as it emerged from the Manchester-New London jump gate. The ship was a Raven's Talon, a starkly utilitarian vessel, but one with good performance characteristics for being private sector. Absently tapping a few keys to lock into the nearest trade lane, James looked out into the void. A little blue-gray ball in the distance - Planet New London. A few clusters of blinking lights moving off somewhere to his starboard side, a trader and its escorts. The bulk of a Crecy-class destroyer loomed within figurative spitting distance, an attending flight of Templars lurking in its wake.
James smiled. He could all too easily imagine the scowl on the Captain's face as the Crecy scanned him, James' meagre cargo manifest describing a slightly disconcerting if not strictly illegal combination of small arms, munitions, and alcohol. He wasn't entirely sure why he kept those aboard anymore, his mercenary days were long past. Maybe it was because it'd be too much trouble to keep them around in his fleet lodgings. Maybe he just liked having both guns and alcohol within easy reach. Maybe that was a terrible idea.
Ultimately, it wasn't terribly important, to which the destroyer seemed to agree. It turned away to scrutinize some hapless civvie, probably with the Captain rolling his or her eyes. As the trade lane propelled James' ship further into the system, James voiced a request to JADE - an AI without which he would have been dead many times over.
"JADE, mind pinging the Adventure Galley? It shouldn't be too far out now."
"Very well. Stand by," she advised. While he waited for JADE's query to propagate, James leaned back in his seat, thought of home. Strange really. From here, everything seemed so... normal. Like the situation wasn't desperate after all, that the front line wasn't just a simple measly jump one system over. At least they'd chalked up some wins recently, with recent operations being overall successful. Part of him had itched to participate, but his squadron had been kept in reserve - and with the last couple months spent in training and reorganization for that other thing, he doubted he'd been allowed to go anyway.
JADE's voice broke him out of his thoughts. "I have detected the Adventure Galley," she said. "The ship computer sent a standard greeting packet - it also appears we've been added to their tracking service whitelist. Following was detailed location information. The ship is in high orbit over Planet Cambridge. I've taken the liberty to plot a course."
"Well, let's not waste time sitting here, then. Take us there."
One system jump later and a bit of time spent twiddling thumbs in a trade lane, James had a clean visual on the Serenity-class vessel. Slightly beat up, James noticed. Not combat damage - simply wear and tear after a long time spent travelling in space. He issued a standard docking protocol request, didn't bother to open a voice link. It'd just be awkward to sit out in space and talk before docking. The yellow PENDING... marker for the request quickly became a green ACCEPTED message, and JADE handled the rest of the steering to line up the ships' docking tubes.
James wriggled out of his seat, crept back into the dimly lit, cramped little cargo hold. Besides the guns and the alcohol, the place also contained basic engine access for emergency repairs, as well as a single airlock for boarding other ships that didn't have fully pressurized cargo bays. There wasn't enough space for him to even stand up straight in there.
Funny thing about space travel, really. If you had either claustrophobia or agoraphobia, you were kind of screwed either way.
He grabbed a small duffelbag. It contained a paperback copy of a book, one "Stars Unending" which Leslie had requested he bring along, as well as a bottle of pretty good scotch that she hadn't, but James decided a small present was only appropriate for a social call anyway. And hey, if that one ran out, it was not as though there wasn't more where that came from.
He ducked into the docking tube. The tube on this bird was roomier than the one on his old Eagle, but only by a hair.
He emerged blinking into the Galley, somewhat unsure of what to expect.
Something was up. Sarah ‘Sparks’ McFarlen, freshly-appointed engineer of the Adventure Galley, wasn’t quite sure exactly what it was, but she had an inkling. An inkling that had rapidly grown from suspicion to outright fear when she felt a gentle tremor run through the engine room, setting her drifting slowly towards the serenity’s silent reactor. Sarah wrapped her hands around a handrail and pulled herself to the engineering terminal, tools hovering in the air where she left them, hair floating in an unruly mop. She tapped the terminal, coaxing the machine back to life, and stifled a cry as she read it. “Oh no. No.”
There was another ship alongside the Galley.
Sarah cycled through the transport’s meagre alarms and defences like her life depended on it. Maybe it did. Nothing tripped, nothing triggered. The Galley’s electronic eyes all reported life as normal. Life as normal, save the silhouette of a fighter, all straight lines and protrusions that she knew were weapons, waiting outside like a faerie of legend, just looking for an invitation…
Piracy once had been rare in Bretonia, but the nation had been at war for years now. Military patrols had steadily been called away to the front, and the police couldn’t hope to fill all the gaps and handle the growing civil disorder on planets close to the front. Sarah felt her heart hammering in her chest, found her hand closing around a fire extinguisher and tugging it away from the wall, cursing under her breath at the noise it made. But the Adventure Galley was in high-orbit over a major world. Running up against a planetary defense grid was insane. Surely no pirate would be that bold. That was plain suicidal.
Unless you got in to the systems… Sarah raked her eyes over the terminal again. None of the ship’s security warnings were active. Oh god. Sarah curled her knees to her chest and pushed off the wall, grabbed a railing with one hand, fire extinguisher hanging in the other, and swung herself toward the cargo bay like the BDM themselves were on her heels. She shouted as she shot through the ship, fear twanging in her voice like a violin pulled too tight. “Leslie!”
As she shot into the cargo bay the light above the airlock flickered to red. Cycling. Nononono.
“Leslie! We’ve got boarders!” Her legs cried out as she braced herself against a cargo pallet and shoved off it, lunged for the airlock control panel fixed next to the door. Green. The inner airlock door slid open with a hiss. Inside, a heavily-muscled man blinked out at the Galley’s cargo hold, hair cropped military short, shoulders back. All Sarah’s senses - those that weren’t busy flinging her hand toward the control panel - screamed government spook like klaxons.
“Hello?” He began. The spook got about as far as ‘Hel-’ before Sarah’s hand clamped down on the airlock control and the inner door slammed shut, four inches of steel, insulation, and wiring sliding between them with all the finality of a tombstone. Sarah knew it was a lie. The door was rated to withstand environmental conditions, not deliberate assault. It was thirty seconds reprieve, at best, against someone who knew what they were doing.
“There’s someone in the airlock!” Sarah called again, hand hovering over the ‘cycle’ command that would vent the airlock’s atmosphere to space. Or, at least, vent it into whatever the Galley was connected to. “I don’t know what you’re doing up there, but this’d be a really good time to get us the hell out of here!”
Within moments, Leslie arrived, floating as quickly as was sane in low-gravity. She looked at Sarah in confusion. “What the hell’s going on?” She said, hair floating about her head.
“Someone’s alongside! I was in the engine room, and I felt something docking with us and there was nothing on the security display and-” Sarah was babbling. She knew it and, at that moment, it was right at the bottom of the list of things she cared about. “And I came out here and shut the airlock and there’s someone right there.”
Sarah jerked the nozzle of the extinguisher towards the airlock door. Only a last-second grab at the railing prevented her from jetting off when her finger curled too tight around the trigger. “And we’ve got about twenty seconds now before they start coming through.”
Leslie held a hand up, although Sparks’ nervousness had gotten to her as well. “Just stay at the door and brain anyone who comes through, I’ll look into the ship access records...it should have at least a mention of whoever’s outside,” She said, already looking at her datapad.
“We really need to get going. Like, thirty seconds ago.” Sarah’s eyes slid from the Galley’s captain to the door and back again, fists white around the extinguisher. “He’s a spook! He’ll be inside by the time you finish-”
She trailed off. Leslie already had her head down, datapad up. Sarah grimaced and tightened her grip on the extinguisher a little further, eyes searching the airlock for the blue-white glow of a cutting torch she was sure was coming.
“Why the hell would a spook invade my shi-” Leslie trailed off as records flashed on her datapad, and after a moment of silence...burst out laughing, pressing a palm to her forehead. “Ah….crap. I’m so sorry, Sarah.”
Sarah’s eyes slid up. Hair frazzled, extinguisher clutched in one hand, heart racing like a sprinter. Green eyes narrowed a fraction at Leslie’s tone. “This better be an ‘I’m so sorry I’ll never get a chance to give you that big bonus because we’re about to be boarded and you were right’ sort-of sorry.”
Leslie laughed harder, nearly doubling up and spinning in low-gravity with the force of her mirth. It took a few moments for her to calm down, and she wiped a tear from her eye. “I forgot to tell you, I invited a friend and that’s him.” She shrugged sheepishly. “I’m so used to flying alone that informing you completely slipped my mind.”
“You-.” Sarah actually spluttered. If they’d been down a gravity well, she would’ve dropped the extinguisher on her foot. “You invited him?”
Leslie nodded. “He’s an officer in the Liberty Navy. James Arland. We’ve worked together before.”
“So, you’re telling me that I just shut a military officer in our airlock?” Sarah groaned, raised a hand to her forehead. “Crap. Is it too late to go back to the engine room? Forever?”
Leslie shook her head. “Nope, he’s going to arrest you and do unspeakable things.” She gestured at the airlock. “You should probably get that before he actually tries breaking through.”
“Oh, just unspeakable things?” An eyebrow crept up. “I guess that’s okay, then.”
Sarah paused, wiped the sweat out of her eyes, and fought to return her breathing to something approximating normal. Then she slapped a hand down on the terminal and the light above the airlock flickered to green. As James floated in, Leslie waved at him cheerily.
“Hey there, James,” She said, smiling. “Sorry about the strange reception, there was a bit of confusion and my Engineer’s pretty paranoid.” She turned in Sarah’s direction, raising an eyebrow to say introduce yourself.
Sarah raised a hand from the extinguisher and gave a hesitant wave. The man did look like a spook, but now that Leslie mentioned it, she could see the navy in him as well. Jawline like that, he wouldn’t have looked out of place on a Manhattan billboard, advertising the latest blockbuster. Abruptly, Sarah realised she was gawking and let her gaze slip to the floor instead.
“Hi. Sorry about locking you in the airlock I, er, I don’t normally greet people like that.” She extended a hand. “I’m Sarah.”
Leslie started laughing again. “If I’d been a moment late, she would’ve brained you with that extinguisher.”
“Only because you didn’t listen when I said to go.” Sarah shot back.
Leslie raised a hand. “Peace, my Guardian. Mistakes happen.” She nodded at Arland. “Let’s go to the Mess and get a bit more comfortable.”
“Works for me. Don’t know about you, but I think I just burnt off two breakfasts.” Sarah shrugged, sealed the airlock behind Arland and, after a moment, lead the way down the serenity’s corridor.
"This is really sort of a personal project of mine."
- James Arland, on single-handedly engaging an enemy regiment.
James was confused, not to mention miffed, to find an airlock slammed shut in his face when he was actually not trying to kill everyone on board. He spent a few moments considering what went wrong here while watching the woman - Leslie's new engineer? - panic through the little viewport inlaid in the door. She was babbling pretty intensely, enough to almost struggle to stay upright in the zero-gravity. James would have found it comical if it wasn't for the fact that she was so obviously terrified. He'd seen that look before in different situations, and he hadn't found it funny then, either.
Dammit, he really needed to learn to knock. Perhaps opening a voice link before boarding wouldn't have been such a stupid idea after all.
His heart sank a little once Leslie showed up, looking just as worried - apparently instructing the engineer to grab the fire extinguisher. His eyes widened a bit at that. As hard as it'd be for her to swing it without spinning out of control with a tall, narrow frame like that, were they genuinely going to try to kill him before he'd even gotten past "hello"? Maybe he should try to crack the airlock before they decided to try and space him. Nah, bad idea. Then he'd just give them even more reason to try murder by decompression.
He breathed a sigh of relief once he saw Leslie palm her face and break down laughing. Not moments after the airlock door finally cycled open, and James gently floated inside, duffelbag merrily flapping behind him.
“Hey there, James,” Leslie said. “Sorry about the strange reception, there was a bit of confusion and my Engineer’s pretty paranoid.”
James shrugged a little awkwardly, but was smiling all the same. "Hey, well, I can't say I blame her. I didn't exactly have my presence announced by herald, my bad."
“Hi. Sorry about locking you in the airlock I, er, I don’t normally greet people like that.” The engineer extended a hand. “I’m Sarah.”
James shook the proffered hand, firm, but not crushing. First impressions, now, James. Be nice. He also looked her up and down, at a glance. Tall woman, as previously noted. Slender. Attractive, too. Interesting choice of work, considering. Engineering, at least the hands-on kind you saw on board starships, was dangerous, messy, claustrophobic and often thankless - not to mention unglamorous. Perhaps that was just him applying a stereotype, he dismissed it as such and spared it little further thought.
"James Arland. Pleasure to meet you, initial confusion notwithstanding." There was a bit of laughter in his voice.
Leslie laughed again as well. “If I’d been a moment late, she would’ve brained you with that extinguisher.”
Tried to, at least. But he knew better than saying it out loud.
“Only because you didn’t listen when I said to go.” Sarah shot back.
Leslie raised a hand. “Peace, my Guardian. Mistakes happen.” She nodded at Arland. “Let’s go to the Mess and get a bit more comfortable.”
"Sounds good to me. Oh, and I brought you these." He unslung the bag from his shoulder, sent it floating towards Leslie. "Sorry it's not government secrets, Alice DeFrance's knickers, or anything spectacular like that. I hope you'll enjoy it all the same."
As they floated through the access corridor towards the mess, James took note of the ship's decor. It seemed mildly haphazard, but it was nonetheless a valiant attempt to spite the drab, corporate-starch utilitarian dullness that often defined commercial freighters. A lone paperback copy of Dune seemed to have lodged itself in a corner.
When they floated into the mess, James turned toward Leslie. "You've really made a home of this ship, haven't you? Did I spy a painting a little way down the hall there?"
“I’m kind of disappointed it’s not the knickers actually. Since she’s a princess, those would’ve paid this ship’s expenses for a month, at least,” Leslie said with some amusement.
She strapped herself into a chair in the mess, rifling through Arland’s bag like a cat looking for her prize. Bringing it out, she turned the paperback in her hands. “Oh, how I’ve been looking for you” She said, grinning and putting it back in the bag. After a moment, she spotted something else entirely and brought out a bottle.
“I don’t remember asking for this, James,” She said, eyebrow raised. She brought out the bottle for closer inspection, pressing it down on the mess table. “We’ll have to talk about this,” She said, trying to be stern but failing miserably.
“Glad you noticed though. A bare ship looks so dead, I had to do something to put life in it.” She grinned.
“The painting wasn’t my idea, actually. It just….appeared after our little operation with the Exiles. I suspect that’s Zenith’s way of thanking me. Put an angry bear on my ship.”
Across the mess, mid-way through a cupboard, Sarah’s eyebrows shot up. “I meant to ask you about about that. Figured you just had a bear thing.”
A moment later the engineer drifted into a seat, distributing a handful of ration bars and sealed containers holding something that, if you closed your eyes and didn’t breathe too hard, could have passed for food. She shrugged, tugged the straps over her shoulders, and tried not to read the warnings on the back. “It’s not exactly the Cornwall, but it’s edible. Apparently. Enjoy!” She said it like she was at an execution, nodded towards Leslie. “You might’ve guessed, but the skipper hasn’t exactly been a fountain of information on you. Where do you two know each other from?”
Leslie cocked her head at Sarah and threw the paperback copy of Stars Unending at her. “Take a look at that first, I think you’ll like it as well.”
“Wow, is that actual, physical, paper?” Sarah swiped the book out of the air before it drifted towards a vent. She snorted around a ration bar, a laugh that turned into a cough. “No wonder you’re not making money, hauling all that extra mass around. I didn’t think they made those any more.”
Leslie gave a long-suffering expression. “Look at what I have to deal with, James. Plebeians don’t understand the worth of a good paperback. What has happened to the world?”
“Digital age. Sorry you missed it, skipper.” Sarah waved her ever-present datapad, grinning like the cheshire cat. “What wonders I've got to show you. For a start, we’ve got these neat things called computers now. They can do mathematics and everything.”
Leslie shook her head. “Plebeian.”
“Someone’s got to be practical.” Sarah flipped the book over in her hand anyway, raked her eyes over the blurb. The daring adventures of Captain Vanita Ferguson and her intrepid crew would have to wait for another day. “I’m amazed they're still exporting these things. Different strokes and all, but…”
She shrugged. The idea of choosing to store information like that, vulnerable to rot and damp and plain old age just seemed counter-intuitive. Besides, papercuts hurt.
Leslie looked at Sarah coyly, remembering something. “You pretend to be above such things, but I did see you flipping through Forbidden Fruit earlier.”
Sarah coughed, eyes darting across the table for support. She found none.
“Hey, you left it lying in the engine room. Fusion reactors and paper don’t really get on. I was just looking after it for you.” It was a blatant lie, and Sarah felt the colour rushing to her face. “Er. So, how did you two meet again?”Smooth, Sarah.
Leslie shook her head in amusement, and waved the bottle in her hands about. “That’s two issues we have to settle then. What to do with this, and how the good officer and I met.”
“I might have a suggestion.” Sarah’s lips curled into a grin.
Leslie glanced at Sarah, then at James. “Field both those questions, James.I imagine you’ll do a better recounting of that story than I will.”
"This is really sort of a personal project of mine."
- James Arland, on single-handedly engaging an enemy regiment.
James strapped himself into his seat and began munching on his ration bar while his hosts bickered about the pros and cons of paperback books on a spaceship. He'd eaten all sorts of long shelf-life rations, bad or otherwise, and thought himself something of a connoisseur at this point. This one in particular tasted a little bit like normal food, except cursed to turn into some unidentifiable, horribly dry powder in your mouth first.
"Hey, this ration's not half-bad, Sarah. It only tastes like arse for the first bite or so, then it kind of grows on you. Stockholm syndrome as a foodstuff, I like it. Tentative six out of ten."
He took another bite for the road, then started his recounting.
"Anyway, how I met Leslie, eh? That was, what, a couple months or so back when I was still doing mercenary work. How I ended up doing that for a living is a different story, I can get to that later if you'd like - but for now, suffice to say I was roaming about with a mutual friend of ours, one Lisa Jaeger. We happened to be looking for work together, as our skillsets complement each other neatly. So we end up out in the Taus, and approached the Exiles. Along with them, we encountered the Adventure Galley out in space. Lisa introduced us, the Exiles' intel organization offered us work, and in general we all hit it off, and all was fine and dandy, drinks were had, books were discussed. Now, you see among these Exiles was one of their top officials, one Admiral Sakuma."
James grins.
"This is where it gets interesting. Turns out Admiral Sakuma went and got herself captured by the damn Gauls out in their fringe space. Leslie, Lisa and I help out with that - Lisa and I first gathered some intel on the prison facility she was being kept in, then we essentially pulled a fast one along with Zenith, falsifying a bunch of papers, a few database entries - and tricked the Gauls into delivering a high-ranking prisoner that they had no idea who was back into freedom in guise of a routine transfer further into Gaul space."
An odd expression came over James' face, stuck somewhere between pride and disappointment.
"I'm still pretty amazed at how easy it was to just walk in there, flash some credentials and walk out, Sakuma in tow. Not that the groundwork itself was easy, but still."
He leaned back into his seat.
"So, that's how we met. Went from drunkenly ranting about books to rescuing an Admiral from the vile clutches of the Gaul menace in no time flat."
He gestured at the book he brought. "By the way, I'm not about to suggest either of you start reading that right away. I'm sure Leslie already knows quite a bit about the series, so if nothing else, I can take the time to occasionally shout spoilers while chasing down floating orbs of scotch with a bendy straw."
Sarah paused, ration forgotten halfway to her mouth as James spoke. Gallia was, by popular reckoning, the most powerful nation in Sirius. Their frequent attacks on the descendants of the first four sleeper ships, leaving broken ships and bodies in their wake, and driving Bretonia from one of their oldest and most valuable worlds, had only served to reinforce the fear that any sane person felt at the mention of the King’s Navy. James spoke as though they were an inconvenience, something to be struggled against rather than simply run from, something that could be fought.
It was the sort of idiot defiance that got people killed. The sort of defiance that most people wouldn’t dream of, much less voice. Despite herself, Sarah found herself thinking of Klugmann, the grizzled revolutionary leader always pressing for the one last push, one more fight, one more day of struggle. It wasn’t that different, as far as impossible wars went. James had just chosen the big leagues.
Sarah glanced across the table, from the clean-shaven navy man to the lanky free captain, a new respect settling in her gut. Survival alone was impressive enough in the face of the Royal Navy. To actually fight it and come out the other side victorious was almost impossible. Sarah turned to Leslie for confirmation; tried, and failed, to keep the awe from her voice. “You really did that? Actually fought the Gallics? The pair of you?”
Leslie grinned sheepishly, embarrassed.
“Murdering is his job, I was just helping a friend…” She said quietly. “Nobody did any fighting, really. You may look for trouble under every rock, James, but I’m just glad everything worked out.”
“Worked out?” Sarah remembered the ration in her hand and lowered it to the table, where it hovered contentedly half an inch from the surface. She raised a finger and flicked the corner, setting it revolving like a top. “It sounds like you did a bit better then worked out. Christ, Leslie, a full stars-and-all Admiral. I didn’t realise I was signing on with commandos when I sent that message out. I would’ve packed lighter.”
“Going Commando has a different meaning here…” Leslie quipped, shaking her head in embarrassment, a light flush lighting her cheeks. “It was a massive gamble, but it paid off. Thankfully the Exiles were an afterthought to the Gallic Navy, so they didn’t really know they had an Admiral there. And since they thought she’s just another pilot, security measures would be lax enough that we could sneak a little bit of subterfuge in.”
Leslie grinned. “That woman is now in charge of the entire Exile Navy. That’s a powerful woman who owes us big-time, Sarah.”
“Owes you two, more like. I still can’t believe you got away with that. The Royal Navy’s not exactly known for dropping the ball. I can’t imagine how much of a nightmare getting that information in the first place must have been.” Sarah shot a grin across the table, offered the copy of Stars Unending back to Leslie. “Gee. Want to sign my book?”
Leslie shook her head.
“I just made a few calls, James and Zenith were the real heroes.” She felt, and looked uncomfortable at all the sudden admiration being bestowed on her. She’d helped Sakuma because she was a friend, and it was still a decision she considered to be against her nature. In normal circumstances, she would not risk everything for nothing. She grabbed the paperback and made it disappear under her jacket.
“I worked on an exploration ship, once.” Sarah smiled. The Soliloquy hadn’t been an easy life, but it had been an honest one. “And there I was thinking that was a high point. You two are another league altogether. You’ll have to introduce me to Lisa and this Admiral of yours sometime, if you’re not too busy engaging in more thrilling heroics.”
Leslie shook her head firmly.
“No more heroics if I can help it, but I’ll certainly arrange a meeting if we’re in the region. You’ll like Sakuma, she’s got the naval bluster and rigidity upfront, but she’s quite sweet, actually,” Leslie smiled fondly at many memories of embarrassing the prim and proper Admiral with something inappropriate.
“I didn’t think the Emperor was big on women in his forces.” Sarah raised an eyebrow, cocked her head to one side. The overall impression was nothing so much as a surprised pigeon. “Desperate times for the old man, I guess. I can’t say I’d want to be in his shoes. Er, toga. Whatever. Caught between the Gauls, Bretonians, and the new republic back home. Call me a pessimist, but I’m not really seeing a clean way out of it for him.”
Leslie cocked her head to the side, considering it for a moment before waving dismissively. “I don’t know enough to comment on anyone’s chances there, but they do have backing of some sort. Exiles have been giving me good business, and you don’t talk about if your client can survive the coming year,” She fixed Sarah with a hard stare, the implication was clear.
Sarah raised a hand in a placating gesture.
“Easy. Don’t worry about me, I’ll smile and wave for Bowex in a couple of days. Oh! Almost forgot. That recruiter came back to us, they’ve organised a red-eye transfer for us to Canary Wharf tomorrow evening, so you might want to load up the coffee machine.” She turned back towards James, hating to cut the spook- officer, she corrected - out of the conversation. “Bowex sent me a message a couple of days after I signed on with Leslie. I mean, I’m not exactly interested in tossing this away and pulling on a corporate uniform and slasher smile just yet, but we figured it couldn’t hurt to badger them for work. They agreed to meet up in New London orbit in a couple of days time. Work’s work.”
Her gaze slid across to the Galley’s captain. “If Leslie’s interested in it, that is. Running technicians back and forth might be a little dull after saving the resistance.”
Sarah grinned, trying to coax a smile from Leslie.
Leslie did smile, returning somewhat to her normal self. “It’ll be interesting to see what Bowex has to offer. I’m always interested in more work, as long as it’s something we can accomplish. Which hopefully means no more showdowns.”
She glanced at James, thinking. “Think your overlords will have any work for me, James? You know my conditions. I need to secure a few contracts so I can begin building some capital and invest in things.”
“And pay your gorgeous engineer.” Sarah coughed.
“Who only has one set of clothing...” Leslie muttered.
"This is really sort of a personal project of mine."
- James Arland, on single-handedly engaging an enemy regiment.
James smirked. "Only one set of clothing? Begs the question of what you do when it's in for laundry."
"Now," James began. "To be honest, working for my employers right now would probably be the precise sort of thing you'd hate. Unless you're willing to work for one of the many cut-throat corporations in Liberty, the only thing left is the Logistics branch of the Navy - and that means making dangerous runs for a relatively meagre wage. You'd probably either be sent to help out the supply operation going on in Rheinland, what with the Bundschuh out there and us having come to an arrangement. Or, it's resupply duty on the Bretonian front, and that's still a goddamn mess. Gaul units make probing attacks into adjacent systems from Leeds all the time, logistics ships are greatly endangered whenever one of them slips through the perimeter."
James sighs, and for just a tiny moment, something unnerving and blank crosses his expression. A tiny glimpse of the other James Arland, shining through, the one that didn't make social calls.
He caught himself before he launched into an explanation of what was really happening on Leeds, described the burning urban nightmare in a way the BBC reporters couldn't. Of what he'd done on Gaia in hopes of drawing at least a tiny bit of pressure away from that. Of how frustrating it is to fight a force that is seemingly limitless in both ambition and resources.
Just as quickly as it had been there, it disappeared - and James was his usual self again.
"But, you mentioned Bowex, yes? They're not so bad. A bit eccentric, maybe - I suspect they may be some kind of badger-worshipping cult, but they make honest deals - and they still make a lot of relatively easy runs, especially to Rheinland. The Omegas may be plagued by Corsairs and the like, but at least there's been reasonably successful attempts to suppress their activity there lately."
His expression shifted to somewhere between mocking and thoughtful.
"No matter what you do, though, it may be wise to invest in some additional security implements if you're serious about trading. Though I harbour no doubts as to Sarah's awe-inspiring might with a fire-extinguisher, I'm not sure even a moderately determined asthmatic with brittle bone disease would actually be deterred, should they get through the airlock door. That's where I'd begin, upgrade your airlock security - then following on that, I'd either get some okay-ish security mechs, some entry-level handguns, or at the very least some stun guns. It won't stop a special forces team or a particularly numerous attacker, but... with two people on board, there's only so much you can do to defend yourselves."
Something slipped in Jame’s expression. Sarah didn’t know how to describe it any better than that. One moment he was smiling along, gently brushing them away from naval work, and then something in his attitude shifted, rolled and settled, like a magician pulling a tablecloth out from under a dinner setting. Nothing had changed in the spook’s posture, but Sarah suddenly found herself wondering if maybe she shouldn’t have opened the airlock after all. Then, so quickly she doubted she’d seen anything at all, it was James Arland sitting across from her once again.
“Works for me.” Sarah nodded along as James spoke. She would quite happily have signed on with any of the Big Three, borderline slave-labor and all, before she considered crawling back to the Widerstand with Freya and Jana at the helm. Being a wage slave wasn’t exactly liberating, but at least when you retired it was to an apartment instead of a prison cell. “I mean, corporate work’s not exactly going to be horizon-broadening, personality-defining adventure, but it beats hauling straight back to Rheinland under a naval ensign. You’ve got to be a little damaged to keep throwing yourself into warzones.”
Like she was an expert on avoiding dangerous behaviour. Sarah grinned and glanced across the table, from the naval officer to the Gaul-opposing freelancer. “Er. Present company excluded.”
Leslie was startled out of her reverie, she had been deep in thought, considering what Arland had said. “I’ll definitely look into it once the bottom line is secure, James.” She smirked suddenly, an errant thought shaping itself in her mind. “Or you could just ditch the Navy and hop on with us.”
“I don’t know.” Sarah frowned, dubious. “I mean, you never know when we might need those five bedrooms. I’d hate to have to kick someone out.”
“Yeah, she has a lot of lovers,” Leslie said in response. “But it might do you good, signing on for something sane for a change. I could probably invite Lisa as well, and it’d be a crew I can definitely work with,” She said, looking at Arland again.
“It would be good to have a third hand to take shifts on the bridge.” Sarah rolled her eyes and jerked her head towards Leslie. “I keep finding this one collapsed at the pilot’s station in the mornings. I swear, she needs more energy in caffeine to keep moving than the ship does.”
Leslie merely shrugged in response, looking deeply unapologetic. “Pass me the bulbs, Sarah. We might as well get started on this.” She tapped the bottle with a finger, where it was floating, neglected so far. “And see if you can find a bendy straw. I haven’t seen a special agent chase drops of scotch with a straw before, but we could make it a first.”
“See what she makes me do?” Sarah grinned, scooped the bottle from where it hung above the table, and jetted across to the cupboards. Slowly, careful not to spray the scotch across the room, she began splitting the liquor into three sealed bulbs. “We’re running a little low on mixers, sorry. So it’s looking like soda or bust. Unless, y’know, you’re just planning to drink it out of the bottle. Not here to judge.”
She rummaged in a drawer and sent a bright green spiral straw drifting across the room towards James, shortly followed by the much-reduced scotch bottle. “I knew we kept that around for a reason.”
Leslie grabbed her bulb, turning it around gently in her hand. “Where’s Lisa anyways, James?” She asked. “I haven’t seen her since the Exiles happened.” Saying that, she took a brief swig. “If she’s available, I’d like to talk to her.”
Sarah swung over and around a chair and settled in to listen. Wordlessly, she flicked the second bulb to James.
"This is really sort of a personal project of mine."
- James Arland, on single-handedly engaging an enemy regiment.
James caught the bendy straw between two fingers, brought his bulb of the amber, strong-smelling liquid to a careful near-halt in front of him. He hesitated when Leslie brought up that she'd welcome him as crew.
"I appreciate the offer, I really do." He smiled, a little crookedly. A small sense of resignation. "But believe it or not - I do like my job. Doesn't mean I like all of it. At times I hate it. But I'm a military creature through and through, and I don't think there's much out there that'll change that. Besides, even if I did want to jump ship at this point, I'm under contract, and, uh, I'm not feeling up to deserting another military in my lifetime."
He poked a tiny little hole in the orb of scotch - drops of the liquid languidly separated from the bulb at a trickle pace. "I'll take it bare, thank you. No going back now. Behold, the precision of my craft!" He joked as he put the bendy straw in his mouth and started chasing down the floating droplets. He spoke around sips, looking more than a little silly. "You can probably- probably reach Lisa right now if you tried to comm her. She's been doing contractor stuff for the ESRD, recently. Cy- whoa - cybersecurity stuff, either cracking a system or ensuring a system won't be cracked, that sort of thing, intel shark extraordinaire as she is. Here, I'll do it for us, even."
He paused the scotch hunt long enough to connect a handheld comm unit wirelessly linked to his ship systems up to a screen in the mess, then hit the frequently used contact for Lisa.
When he turned back to the scotch, a significant glob of it had accumulated from the trickle. "Oh, damn, I'll be paying for this later. Here goes," he said, and went back to drinking as the comm was trying to open a video connection.
During a past recon mission that she and James had done, she’d quietly copied over a large Gallic military database from one of their stops. The data would be woefully out of date by now, but cracking through such things took time. She’d made several attempts at breaking through the heavy encryption that was applied to every military database with even remotely sensitive data, but for some reason the Gallic variant was proving exceptionally difficult.
Part of the problem was that the decryption keys used by the Gallic systems were clearly very long and frequently shuffled and randomized by their systems. This led to longer loading times for them, but it made things hellaciously difficult for Lisa and JADE, her AI and assistant for this task.
The AI was attempting another series of logical progressions, bombarding the system with a variety of educated “guesses” at the security key based on a path Lisa had laid out. The AI could work very quickly at this sort of thing – testing, determining success or failure, then loading the next key and testing again within nanoseconds.
The long and short of it was that, despite literally millions of attempts, nothing seemed to be working, and the database remained hopelessly scrambled. Lisa turned away from her monitor, glancing instead at one set into the wall of her Camara freighter. It showed a view of the ship’s exterior, the icy solitude of a distant corner of the Magellan system. She had a rotation of quiet little spots that she liked to park the ship in while she was doing this kind of work, but today it just made her feel a bit lonely.
A soft chirping suddenly emanated from her console. Someone was attempting to comm her.
Her head snapped back around, eagerly looking for who was calling. A small window had appeared on her screen, indicating an incoming call.
------------------------------------------------ Incoming Comm Request from
Lisa accepted the call with a small grin. A fullscreen video screen immediately appeared over the top of JADE’s ongoing work. A small camera embedded in Lisa’s screen captured her image in reply, meaning James would be able to see her as well.
Immediately Lisa noticed that James wasn’t alone - causing her cheeks to heat slightly as she realized that she was dressed very casually and hadn’t even considered doing her hair or makeup yet today.
She quickly took in the scene – three people seated around a table aboard what was obviously a ship. James was there, closest to the screen, and Lisa recognized Leslie Durant, another familiar face. The third person – a woman – she didn’t know. All three of them held bulbs of a dark liquid and seemed to be in the midst of drinking it in the zero-gee environment.
A party? She wondered. She’d seen James quite a bit recently, but those had been solely for work reasons. At first glance, this seemed more informal, despite Leslie’s inclusion.
“Uh… hi everyone,” Lisa began – feeling more than a little awkward at not knowing the context of the call. “What’s going on?”
