Before the top of the fifth hour and fourth hit of that damn fine Kalisti Gold, Che received a comm on his neural net.
When he saw who it was from, his eyes went wide with surprise, then softened into a look of relief before narrowing into a glare of anger.
"What is it?" Nivek asked in a choked voice from across the table, as he lifted his head away from the bong, doing his best to hold in the smoke.
"Uh, Nothing. Work." Che replied through gritted teeth. "Please excuse me for a few moments, Mi Amigo, I have to take this."
Che stood and motioned to the waitress to refill their beers, and then stormed off to the back of the bar.
He body chequed the restroom door and knelt down to make sure there were no feet in the stalls before locking himself in.
He stood at the sink in front of the mirror and plugged in. His reflection disappeared and turned to static as the network connection was being made, and took a calming breath before answering the call.
Quote: Identification:The Banger Grim
"Joaquin my Lad, it's good to see you!"
"Where.The.F***.Have you been, old man!?" Che replied.
"That's a fair question," Matthew said, "and I promise to give you an answer, but I need you to pull that angry wood goblin out of your jacksie first."
Che said nothing. he just stood there and crossed his arms, waiting.
"Close enough."said Matt, realizing that's as good as he's going to get. "I owe you an apology, and I promise to give it along with an explanation for disappearing on you, but not here, and not now."
"What I need you to do," he continued, "is to bring yourself and Mr. Erieth here to Shasta
Station. I've bungled a number of things with the pair of you, and I'd rather talk in person, face to face."
"I'd rather you come here and save us the trip" Che said defiantly, "and how did you know I made contact with Erieth tonight?"
Matthew just raised an eyebrow and chuckled in response to knowing, but explained, "It's no longer safe for me to enter house space these days, so I simply can't make the trip to Cambridge...Will you please bring yourselves to Baffin?"
Che stood silent for a long, drawn-out moment glaring at the mirror-screen, until finally throwing his hands up in the air. "Alright. Fine."
"Thank you." Banger said with a relived smile. "See you when you arrive."
He cut the feed and Che was left looking again at his own reflection.
Nivek Erieth has lightened up quite a bit in the last handful of hours. Mostly because he's very drunk & very high, but also because he finally had a chance to blow off some built up steam.
I don't know about you, but if I went through half of the things he has since getting out of prison, I'd probably be an insufferable, moody, little angstclot too.
"Hey!Don't be an a**hole!" Nivek slured to the disembodied voice, and defiantly shot his middle finger up into the air.
Rude, but I guess he showed us, huh?
It wasn't until he saw Che return to the table, cash out the kalisti in the bong & pay the tab that Nivek realized he's seeing all of this as if he were on the outside looking in; that his internal monologue was a mixture of second & third person narration and that he's perfectly cool with it.
Che looked at Nivek & asked, "Would you like to take a field trip to Baffin?"
"Why?"
The more sober of the two took the padd out of his pocket and let Nivek watch the recording of his earlier comm with Banger.
"It's only about eight hours away from here, and I'm going. It's entirely up to you, but I think you should come with me."
Erieth watched the recording a second time before he agreed, and fifteen minutes later, they exited the Cambridge system in Che's freighter, "GreenthInc." speeding towards the Poole system.
About five hours later, after making a quick drop off of some supplies at the Glendale Armory in the boondocks of Edinburgh, Che sets course for Planet Gaia instead of heading straight to the Tau 31 jump hole.
Erieth has been passed out in one of the guest cabins since Dublin and won't be aware of the detour. It's unfortunate in a way, because as far as Mr. Araya is concerned, Gaia is the beating heart in the absolute center of the Living Universe.
After parking the ship in a geosynchronous orbit above the planet, he enters the observation cabin, sits on the floor inches away from the window, and begins his quiet meditation ritual to recharge and realign his chakras beside the wellspring of unfathomable energy.
Matthew Grim props his feet up on a small portable table and leans back in his folding chair, balancing it on its back legs as he takes a sip of coffee, waiting for his guests to arrive.
The Shasta Dockmaster informed him that the GreenthInc. has already been locked down; its crew processed and they should be entering the receiving area at any moment.
He hates to admit it, and probably won't, but he's nervous and has no idea how he'll be greeted by his godsons.
That's not entirely true...Jaoquin he can handle. Matt knows how he thinks, but Nivek? Nivek he's never actually met before and is an unknown variable.
The most logical course of action is to hope for the best and expect the worst.
It's only fair to utilize another time-jump, because the meeting between Erieth, Araya & Grim was predictably a bit awkward, but ultimately, not really interesting enough to go into great detail about.
Che expressed abandonment issues, Nivek ranted about wanting to know what the hell was going on, & Banger offered alot of apologies to them both while simultaneously trying to come off like he knew what he was doing all along.
It took some effort, but eventually, Matt talked the other two into joining him on a trade run on the LochNet to Freeport 11 with the promise that all will be explained.
Standing underneath the Zoner ZBT 1002 Deep Space Transport was a little intimidating to Nivek. He's seen pictures of them before, but he's never seen one in person. It's much bigger than he imagined.
Beside him & Che, Matthew tilted his head upward and shouted at the Whale: "Oi, Shamus! Let us in!"
(For a split second, Shamus considered responding with *Not by the hair of my chinny chin-chin* but thought the better of it since he doesn't have a chin or remembers what it felt like back when he did have a chin.)
The lift carried the trio up towards the hatchway, and as it opened, the pressurized air blew down on them and carried an odor that Nivek couldn't quite place, but it reminded him of his childhood.
"What is that smell?" he asked as they continued to rise into the ship.
Banger gave him a side glance with a wry smile. "That, my Lad, is the smell of fresh air."
As the lift came to a stop and the hatch closed under them, Nivek went from intimidated to awed by what he saw.
It's hard to describe exactly what he saw. He was surrounded by plant life of all types.
Plant life of all types literally everywhere.
It covered the walls, overgrew onto and obscured the consoles, and just about occupied every nook and cranny in sight.
And the interior lighting: It was yellowish-orange, like sunlight...and the sounds! Nivek had it on the tip of his tongue: Is he hearing...what's the word?...crickets?
As the word crossed his mind, a small lizard crossed his path in a blur and jumped into a bush in the corner, and the chirping stopped.
Yep. Crickets.
"Shamus, get us underway, please Sir." Banger said as he walked past the dumbstruck Erieth.
*You got it Boss* came the reply over the speakers.
The old man stopped and turned. "I'm sorry Mr. Erieth, allow me to introduce you to Shamus. Shamus, this is Nivek Erieth. Nivek, this is Shamus."
*Shamus O'Shaunessy at yer service. Well, more specifically, Shamus 2.0'Shaunessy at yer Service.*
"Nice to meet you Shamus. Are you the pilot?"
*Uhhh. Yes and no. I do pilot the ship but I'm not the pilot*
"Ok. Engineer maybe?" Nivek asked.
*Uhhhhh. Yes and no...look, it's kind of a long story my lad, but for the foreseeable time being, I'm the ship, so you may consider me your humble host, you little parasite.*
"Ship? Excuse me?"
*I'm sorry, that was rude of me. Consider me your humble host, you little parasite, Sir.*
Che busted out in a prolonged fit of laughter that made his eyes water and his stomach sore.
He's very impressed at the progress Shamus has made in the year since he was last aboard the LochNet.
Che had never met O'Shaunessy back when he was alive, nor when his consciousness was transferred after his death by some sort of TAZ hocus-pocus into something Matt once explained as a floating titanium sphere called a F.N.O.R.D. All he knows is that somehow, Matt has taken a massive amount of acquired broken source code and has been repairing it ever since.
As Che was catching his breath, he received a comm on his neural-net.
It made his day.
"Matthew? I have some good news."
Banger was foraging for berries on a nearby bush by one of the windows, poked his head up and said with a curious tone, "Alright. Out with it, then."
"I was just contacted by a Warden Hitcher of the Gaian Guard. I'm in."
"That's outstanding news my lad!" Matt replied, genuinely happy.
"I'm to meet my contact at Skye Base. If you can drop me off at Freeport 6, I can catch a ride back to Baffin for my ship."
"Nonsense! I won't have it!" Banger said. "We'll turn around and get you back to Shasta ourselves."
He was about to speak on how good of an opportunity it would be for their business Co-op, when he received a comm on his neural-net.
Looking at the name of the sender and the very high level of encryption, Matt's mood went from light, to deadly serious.
"Well, speak of the devil...it's Warden Sherman Hitcher."
Banger locked himself off in another room and took the call.