Evangeline ushers the man out of her ship, watching over him as he returns to his own craft and takes flight without hesitation.
Come on Misaka you can't tell me you don't want to abuse him not even a little bit? He's such a sweetheart no warm-blooded woman could resist. And he's always so cute when he's upset.
Playing the part of the wife to the man with wandering eyes to a "T", the caramel-haired Kusarian tweaks her partners' ear in light-hearted displeasure.
No, Eva. It's just you with that mean streak of yours.
Aww.
He's one of the more useful people I've got under my wings, that's for sure. Having a battleship standing guard over this place can only be a good thing, after all. I just wish he'd ask for payment of some kind. I don't really like having him do all this work for me without giving him anything...
I think he's happy that someone like you shows him affection. It seems to me that he hasn't had many friends in his life. It's sad that it's been that way, but, looking at him just now, he's a million times better than when we first ran into him.
The two leaders observe the gunship taking leave of the moon's mediocre gravity well and disappear into the vast nothingness of space. Evangeline retakes her position upon the masochistically rigid captain's chair at the center of the ship's bridge and reboots the laptop she'd left on the console.
The infant cupped in her left arm wakes up and after a brief bout of muffled, desperate cries, finds her mothers' nipple and quickly begins feeding whilst her parent clumsily peruses the computer with her one free arm.
Rachel was on the Spyglass in her quarters preparing to take her ship out for a spin, though suddenly realized that the battleship itself had landed on what seemed to be a white planet or moon. She looked out her quarter window and saw Eva's ships parked about in random order, then noticed Xii move toward the ship, and enter the Pirate Transport. Obviously Eva had called him to talk to him about things. Rachel shrugged and finished dressing herself properly to fly.
Not but a couple days ago, Eva had procured an Eagle, and Rachel was itching to try it out and see how it did compared to the crap she was flying before. As she finished dressing, she typed into the computer that she would be leaving the ship, and flying around for a while, to inform the on-board computer and Xii if he needed to know.
She walked down the illuminated hall toward the hanger, where her brand new Eagle was parked. She walked up to it, and examined it's bulk, and compared it to the Startracker parked in the back on the hanger. She wasn't sure what Eva wanted to do with that, but Rachel didn't care.
Happy with the way the ship looked, Rachel boarded the Eagle, and slowly launched from the Battleship. For a few seconds she hovered over the ground. She familiarized herself with a few more controls, then decided she was ready to try it out.
She took off quickly, throwing the thruster into maximum, taking off for the skies above them, leaving the battleship in a cloud of dust. She felt like she was doing pretty good, turning, strafing and attempting to be agile in her new ship. Figuring out what it could do better then the other ships she'd flown. After 10 or so minutes of flying about, she suddenly saw the Spyglass pass by her in high speeds. It scared her to suddenly see the battleship take off passed her. She shook it off and kept going with the Eagle practice.
Another 10 minutes later, she felt she was comfortable with the controls in taking off, and flying, now to try her first landing in the Eagle. She flew in not far from where all of Eva's ships where parked, and dropped the landing gear. She was slowly setting the ship down, when she suddenly pulled the throttle back to far and fast, suddenly sending her in a forward dive 10ft above the surface. She didn't know what to do and tried to pull the nose of the Eagle back up, but instead she plowed the nose of it into the sand.
The sand had stopped her ship for her, and the Eagle was stuck in it, several feet deep in the sand. Rachel sighed, and swore under her breath, then looked back out the window, and saw half her cockpit stuck in the sand, and the other half looking at the Pirate Transport. No doubt she knew Eva was watching.
Billy Woke up with a grunt, and hit his head against the bulkhead
urg... I swear i need a damned alarm clock.
Quickly getting up and getting in a blue jumpsuit, he walked to the small
landing ramp for the alsatia, wheeling his heavily customized bike into
the airlock.
This Thing better work.
After donning the helmet, he pops the airlock and drives out onto the moons
cratered surface, and begins to drive around at a ever increasing speed.
After a little bit of warm up driving, Billy taps the control panel on the bike and
opens a channel to Eva's New Toy, Her BWT.
Eva, next time nobody wakes me up im going to blow something up.
Power does not corrupt. Fear corrupts... perhaps the fear of a loss of power.
The crew of the McDowell Company dip their faces into the palms of their hands in almost perfect unison at the sight of an Eagle fighter ditching into a sand dune on the perimeter of the base. The leader sighs heavily knowing full well the likely cost to repair the vessel which had been bought only days before.
She raised the microphone arm of her headset and dialled in Rachel's receiver channel. She moved her hands close to the microphone and clapped sarcastically - the other girls within earshot did the same, creating an audience to celebrate the young blonde pilots' efforts.
Smashing landing love. Top of the line!
Evangeline is cut off by an intruding signal from another of her connections, this one being Billy on his cyberpunk themed imitation motorcycle rover.
Listen. Billy.
Evangeline pauses for a moment as she observes the two-wheeled rover making a Murphy's Law-powered bee-line for the ditched Eagle, which from Billy's perspective was hidden behind the sand dune.
Climbing the hill, Billy heard eva say "dont" over the radio, and not knowing
that he was headed straight for a grounded eagle, Billy set up for a jump that
if not executed properly would land him right into the eagle. As he came over the hill,
he saw the eagle.
OH CRAP!
Billy, in a lapse of judgment, gunned the throttle and accelerated over the
jump, careening over the eagle. after not calculating his jump, he flew into a
dune himself, nearly completly covering himself and his bike.
Who parked that eagle there?
Getting up, Billy pulls his now caked bike out and pops a kickstand, then
walks over to the eagle and peers into the cockpit window.
Power does not corrupt. Fear corrupts... perhaps the fear of a loss of power.
Frustrated that she had crash landed her ship in the dumb sand, unbuckled herself and stood then kicked the seat.
Stupid ship! She yelled at it, she then had to climb her way out of the cockpit into the cargo bay. She then proceeded to the open the cargo bay door, as it was the only way out. She pressed the button, and the bottom doors started to open. She sighed again and jumped out, then stepped away several feet to look at what mess she got herself into.
Stupid ship... she said again to herself, disappointed with what happened.
Evangeline stood in combined bewilderment and bemusement at the scene that had unfolded before her.
Those two are the only people that could ever happen to. And they're the only two it ever will happen to.
A heavy sigh escapes the woman's lips as she shakes her head in disappointment for a moment before issuing an order over the radio.
Someone get down there and get that ship out of the sand. Oh and make sure they're both alive, too.
One of the small fleet of robotic vehicles suspends its' current duties and moves over to the "crash" site under control of a man riding atop it in a space suit.
After traversing the combination of smoothed-out landing pad, mounds of discarded rocks and slag and slipping over the spongy sand dunes, it eventually crawls over to the stranded ship. The tractors' driver hops off and unenthusiastically, yet professionally, slaps a towing chain to the Eagle's rear end. Evangeline watches over the entire procedure from the comfort of the border world transports' luxurious command room.
The tractor is put into reverse and pulls at best speed backwards. The chain is pulled taught and heaves heavily on the embedded vessel. Although it is moved a significant amount, it is not freed on the first attempt. A second subsequent tug is made, this time the ship is successfully evicted of its sandy residence. It clumsily falls to the ground after floating for a short distance in the meagre gravity well the moon offered.
The young, male driver of the wheeled vehicle removes the chain, his gaze crossing Rachel's with clear malcontent, shaking his head as he angrily returns to his post on the tractor and returns to his original duties. He briefly speaks over the radio.
They seem alive enough to me. I'm going back to work.
Evangeline observes the two standing figures of Billy and Rachel seemingly engaged in a lovers' spat in the dust cloud beside the rescued, yet still dead, Eagle.
The warning klaxons blared piercingly amid the dull roar of poorly muffled engines. Red warning lights strobed like miniature pulsars, flooding the otherwise dark cabin in intermittent crimson.
"Nuts. What's it this time?"
Kai groaned as he sat up in his recliner, groping about the myriad of consoles that lay sprawled around him. In the darkness, the lights from the buttons of his various consoles gleamed like a sea of stars, punctuated by the blinding flashes of the red alert strobes. Thoroughly dazed, blinded, and deafened, Kai reached down below his arm rest and fished around for his trusty crowbar. Eyes locked shut, he blindly pummeled everything within his arms reach, finally stopping as the klaxons ceased, the warning lights died, and the cabin was enveloped in total darkness and silence, interrupted only by the occasional sound and light of sparks, and the slight smell of smoke from a broken console.
Enjoying a moment of blissful calmness, Kai lay back into his recliner and relaxed only to be drowned in the retardant foam of the fire suppression system.
"Oi, wake up you lazy bastard," said something in Kai's voice,
"I've rigged the recliner pressure sensors with the snooze. If you don't get up off the chair in five seconds, I'm going to start singing."
Kai bolted from his seat and clumsily stood up.
"And God said let there be light," said the voice.
A door slid open, flooding the cabin with the bright light from the hallway.
"Good. Now that you're up, do you remember where you are and what you're here for?"
Kai shook his head.
"Of course you don't. You've been in a chemically induced hibernation for the better part of three weeks."
The voice continued.
"You're on call from Miss Eva. She wanted mining machines for that project of hers in whatsisface Kansas."
Kai squinted at the bright light flooding in from the hallway.
"Screw it, I'll explain later. Bathroom is the first door on your left, and there's pancakes in the fridge in the room to the right. The third door is to the cockpit, go there after you're done to hear the rest of what you've got to say to yourself."
* * *
Properly dressed, fed, and cleaned, Kai walked into the cockpit of the ship. Through the viewport, a pale white sphere glowed as it appeared to slowly grow ever larger. In front was a pilot chair with a postit note reading "push me" taped to a button on the armrest. Kai sat down and pressed the button.
"Good, you should be near Colby now. Just park in geosynchronous orbit, and Miss Eva should take the load. After that, clean up the cabin, sit in the recliner, and the pills I put into the pancakes should put you out again for the trip back."
Kai coughed loudly.
"It's not like I like doing this every single time, but we're too broke for a cryo chamber and we're too cheap for an AI."
Taking the controls in his hands, Kai nudged his ship into orbit around Colby and waited.
Evangeline peered over the extensive radar and navigational system that Admiral Hale had gifted her, noticing a new appearance in high orbit over the installation.
The advanced scanner system returned results which explicitly revealed the vessel as belonging to one of the more molestable members of the McDowell Company - Kai Siegfried. Evangeline grabs the radio headset and swings the microphone arm in front of her lips.
Another all too familiar voice boomed from the intercoms.
"Kai! Get your butt down here!"
Kai sighed and punched in the coordinates of what seemed to be an outpost of some sort, next to a lazily floating spyglass. Kai heard his own voice once more.
"I'm guessing she wants you to touch down?"
Kai nodded, forgetting that the voice was his own, recorded long ago in planning for a great many possible events.
"You may not remember this, but you busted the landing gear while you were borrowing the cargo Miss Eva wanted."
Kai reached under his chair and pulled out an oxygen tank. He fastened the breather to his face and reached into his pocket and pulled out a cigarette.
"We're never going to get our deposit back, are we?"
Kai shook his head at the voice and lit up. Fire retardant foam began to fill the cockpit as Kai set an impact course on to whatever spot looked softest.