Floodwaters
Inactive Member
Evening - Same day the Veil arrived on Dawn Station
Concordia Veil - Cabin 3
The small wagon was carefully pushed under the bunk, devoid of its previous cargo. Once it was out of sight, Amelia quickly flopped on her back against the lower bunk, covering her eyes with her forearm as she tried to catch a brief moment of respite in the dim light of the cabin, letting out a sigh as she started to feel her limbs getting heavier.
As Amelia started to feel herself drifting off, a quiet tone beeped at slow, persistent intervals from her Datajockey, making the astrogator rise from her rest, just as she was starting to kick her boots off. With a newfound alertness, she approached the upright electronic, placed on top of the cabin's table and inserted on its charger, and removied it, toggling the screen on and checking the alert.
On the display, a tiny icon of an envelope pulsed, indicating a new message waiting to be read. Upon opening it, the text appeared on the screen:
The astrogator took some time before she answered the message, looking around the cabin briefly.
As soon as the message was sent, Amelia retrieved her Datajockey, noticing how it had barely charged at all, and commenced to grab the rest of the belongings she would be needing. In a few moments, the cabin's door slid closed and the only sign that she had been back at the ship was the way of how her bunk bedding was unkept in yet another different way.
Dawn Station - Sector Nine City, Downtown - Silver Tap Restaurant & Tavern
The Silver Tap was a smallish establishment on the ground floor of one of the many dizzyingly tall buildings and arcologies sprawling across the central hub of the Origin station, located right at the corner of an intersection jam-packed with vehicle and foot traffic. Compared to the insomniac, overwhelming cacaphony of people zipping this way and that along the street and in the skies above, the restaurant itself was by contrast very quaint and relaxed, shrouded in the dim lighting and rich impressions of virtual candlelight and imitation mahogany and cherry wood. Immediately upon walking through the entrance, Amelia felt as if she went deaf for a few seconds as the noise from the outside was suddenly dulled to a murmur, almost as if the old-world stylings and relaxed atmosphere held the insanity of the outside world away from its walls. To her right, several oversized wingback chairs were arranged around what appeared to be a hearth, and although she could tell that the flames within were only simulated, the flickering light and warmth that they cast were almost real enough to deceive her. Directly ahead of her was the bar, set against the back wall, with another row of seating along a second bar that stretched perpendicular to the various taps and liquor bottles arranged against a mirrored shelf with quaint incandescent backlighting, and the dining room sprawled off towards the right. Lush red faux-leather booths set inside of wooden alcoves lay in neat grids on the lowered dining floor, each of them lit by a miniature shaded lamp set to one side that flickered like a candle.
A petite, pretty Geshrin girl with long, flowing black hair adorned with a silver brooch and dressed in a snug-fitting, short black dress approached her, smiling warmly. "Good evening, ma'am," she said in a sweet, singsong voice, although she eyed the utilitarian clothing Amelia wore with cleverly concealed disdain. "Is it just you, or are you meeting someone?"
It took a few moments for the astrogator to answer the query, still staring at the intricate decoration of the establishment with interest as she was. "Meeting someone," she said, turning her gaze towards the Geshrin, her eyes shooting between her and the other seats in the place, scanning for Oreza. Before the hostess could reply, Amelia spotted a massive paw waving in the air at the end of a barrel-like arm, at a two-seater booth just on the other side of the hearth. It took her a second to recognize him at first, since he was dressed much less like a spacefarer, and more like a less-affluent version of many of the other patrons. His greatcoat was gone, as was his fisherman's cap, and a dark green Nepleslian military-issue sweater was stretched across his massive shoulders. The gray-spackled black hair atop his head was brushed to one side neatly, even.
Without a word, the astrogator moved away from the hostess, clutching at one of the straps of her backpack as she moved towards the Veil's first mate. It was only then that she noticed how everyone inside the place was dressed in a much different attire than herself. Even the Geshrin hostess could be considered an anathema to her usual utilitarian clothing, which was somewhat unsettling even for someone who didn't pay much mind to that like herself. "Hey," Amelia said to the bearlike Nepleslian once she approached the table, sliping the backpack off her shoulders and sliding it under the table. Compared to him, she was dressed like a hobo.
Oreza's cane appeared from beneath the table, and he stood up as Amelia approached, a friendly smile on his bearded face as he leaned on his walking aid. He still wore the brace on the outside of his dark pants, but other than that, most everything about his appearance was crisp and clean. "I'm glad you could make it, Amelia," he said in his deep, resonant bass. He waited until she had situated herself before he returned to his own seat, wobbling a little on his knee, and clasped his hands in front of him. "Everything all right on the ship?"
"Thanks," the astrogator replied, scratching her head and making her hair messier as she looked at the Veil's first mate with a somewhat concerned expression when she saw him hobbling because of the injured knee. "I guess, the captain wasn't there when I came back later," she continued, intertwining her gloved fingers together as she talked.
The big man nodded with a quiet sigh. "I see," he intoned.
A well-groomed and black-uniformed waiter appeared at their tableside, offering each of them a menu and a smile. "Happy to see you arrive, madam," the twenty-something Geshrin male greeted Amelia. "May I bring you anything from the bar?"
"Just a, uh," Amelia started to say, failing to hide the disconcertment from her voice at being called ma'am. She thought that the term was usually for middle-aged women. She briefly looked over at Oreza, and then at her menu, looking over at what the bar offered.
"A brandy for me," Oreza spoke up when Amelia hesitated, then turned his eyes back across the table. "Please, anything you wish. It's on me."
"I'll take the same," the astrogator quickly said, setting the menu down on the table and briefly looking at the waiter.
The waiter nodded politely, and turned away to retreive their drinks. Oreza's face focused again on Amelia, his smile fading just a touch. "Have you had some time to relax, cool off a bit?" he asked her. "There is a lot to see around here, it seems."
"Yeah," Amelia agreed, more automatically rather than consciously as she recalled her outburst and subsequent interaction with Crash on the park. As much as she liked working on starships, getting out of them when it was docked in a station was a welcome change when the alternative would be to just get crazy inside of it by dealing with the same people over and over again.
"I think it will do everyone some good to spend some time away from one another, honestly," the big man stated, leaning back into his seat and resting his open hands on the table. A dry smirk appeared on his face for a moment as he continued. "Even I'm not accustomed to such a small ship."
"What kind of ships did you used to work on?" she asked with genuine curiosity. The change of subject was a welcome reprieve.
"Military vessels, mostly," Oreza replied, lightly drumming his thick fingers on the tabletop. "Anything from frigates to cruisers. I held command of one for a time, in fact." His eyes drifted, unfocused as he said that, and for the first time Amelia caught the normally always-in-control Oreza looking what appeared to be a little lost.
"I see," the astrogator said, noticing the change in the other Nepleslian's demeanor. She should have stopped pushing the matter, but her curiosity was simply too much. "What happened then, if you don't mind me asking?" she asked after a while.
Oreza looked back at Amelia with a mildly dismissive smile and a shake of his head, but the haunted look in his eyes remained. "The Hyperion," he told her in a far-off voice, before he cleared his throat and continued more resolutely. "It was a powerplant meltdown. No one's fault in many ways, just one of those freak accidents that nobody saw coming." He sighed. "The ship was lost, more than six hundred men and women perished. I myself was injured in the rescue efforts, and sent back to Nepleslia to recover for several weeks. They touted me as a hero when I recovered, said I saved the lives of thousands," he continued, waving his hand in the air and looked around, as if he wasn't impressed with his own words, "but I would gladly trade the medals to get those soldiers back."
The astrogator remained in contemplative silence as she watched and heard the Nepleslian talk, trying to picture he event of a powerplant meltdown in her head, and even on the most tame scenarios that wasn't pretty. She tried to think of something to say to him, but couldn't find any sort of consolation for that; she hadn't gone through the same thing and didn't know how that would feel had it happened to her. Deciding it was probably for the best, Amelia kept staring at Oreza.
After a moment, Oreza looked back across at her as the drinks arrived. He nodded his thanks to the waiter, who, upon seeing that neither of them had touched their menus, elected to leave them to their discussion for the moment. The big man's mouth turned upwards in a small smile, and he shook his head. "It's in the past," he said, lifting his snifter an inch or two off of the table, gently swirling its contents. "And a part of the responsibility of command. Decisions have to be made, and many times you are not afforded the luxury of thinking it over." Lifting the glass to his nose, he breathed in the aroma, and took a contemplative sip, but never took his gaze from her. "Sometimes people are upset by the choices you make. Other times, people die," he continued, lightly smacking his lips as he savored the liquor. "You make the best decision you know how to, and live with the consequences of them every day." By this point, it was starting to become unclear whether Oreza was still talking about himself. "Everything else is pointless self-torture."
Amelia continued to listen to the old Nepleslian, taking a small sip of her drink right after he did so. She had to do some extra effort to avoid grimmacing as soon as she felt the strong tang of the alcohol, despite the taste of it itself not being too unpleasant.
A grin played across Oreza's face when he saw Amelia's reaction to the brandy. "If you don't like that, you don't have to drink it," he told her. "I'd be happy to get you something else."
"Oh no, I'm alright," she answered, decided to drink it more out of stubborness than anything. That concern for her made her feel like she was being treated like a child.
"All right," Oreza replied, still smiling slightly, and took another sip of his drink as he panned his eyes around the ambient, dim lighting and soft murmurs of the other patrons. "You haven't eaten yet, I hope," he said after a pause. "I'm told that this place serves phenomenal tenderloins."
"No I haven't," Amelia admitted again. That was true, at least, if the few sweets that she had didn't count as an actual meal. "Anything sounds good for me about now," Amelia replied to the Nepleslian, smiling faintly. She wasn't lying, her mouth watered and her stomach rumbled at the thought of food, specially the good and fancy kind. Not that the food served aboard the Veil was bad in any accounts, far from it, the ship's cook was as good as it got with what she had available, but it didn't compare to the pictures shown in the restaurant's menu.
Oreza smiled broadly. "That makes it easier, then," he commented, and flagged down the waiter. Within seconds of waving his hand, the server was at their tableside, and with a polite bow was off to get the cooks started on their meal, taking their menus with him. With a satisfied look, he settled back into the booth and took another drink of his brandy, dabbing away a stray drop that stowed away on his moustache.
"So," he said, changing the subject slightly. "How have you spent your day on Dawn Station thus far?"
"Oh, you know," Amelia started to say, almost blurting out a 'I've spent some time hanging out with Crash.' The astrogator looking at the Nepleslian's direction, although her gaze was centered on something behind him and over his shoulder. "Just spent some time on a park looking around," she commented.
The big man turned slightly in his seat, grimacing for a brief instant as he adjusted to make his braced knee more comfortably. Giving her a somewhat sideways look, he raised an eyebrow. "That's all?" he asked. "Just looking around a park the whole day?"
The astrogator shrugged. "How is the knee?" She asked, looking for a change of subject. She didn't like to keep lying, even it was by omission.
Oreza's brow settled downwards slightly, a bit caught off guard by her sudden change of subject. "It's doing fine, all things considered," he replied, though his tone of voice betrayed his mild confusion. "I'm considering going to a clinic sometime in the morning to see about some kind of reconstructive surgery to speed up the healing process." His eyes remained intently fixed on the young woman, clearly wondering what she wasn't telling him, but he didn't overtly pry.
"Well, let me know if you need help with anything," Amelia said, removing the gloves from her hands. She hadn't realized that they were still on, seeing as she wore them all the time too. The astrogator stuffed the gloves on one of the bulging leg pockets of her pant, intertwining her fingers on the table again once she finished doing so.
Idly watching Amelia remove her gloves, Oreza's head didn't move very much, nor did his expression change. He sat there quietly with a patient air about him, saying nothing, and lifted the brandy snifter just above the surface of the table, holding it there for a moment as he looked at her.
"What?" Amelia asked, looking back at Oreza, not being able to stand the first mate's gaze anymore and clearly showing the way she felt uncomfortable about it.
Oreza just smiled slightly, shaking his head. "You have a knack for evading questions," he observed. Amelia didn't reply, but a somewhat guilty smile crept up on her face. She tried to stiffle it, biting on her lower lip and looking down at her own glass, which save for the first sip was mostly left untouched. A quiet chuckle rumbled in Oreza's chest. "If you don't wish to discuss it, I won't press," he continued. "But I think a friendly ear may do you some good, Amelia, especially given what you've endured so far on the Veil."
"To be honest, I don't even know where to begin," she said, slumping her shoulders with a sigh. The astrogator raised her gaze to look back at the ship's first mate.
"That's simple," he replied, still smiling quietly at her. "From the beginning."
"What do you mean the beginning?" The astrogator asked incredulously.
Oreza shrugged slightly, swirling his brandy. "From wherever you feel is relevant to what you want to get off of your chest," he said disarmingly, his posture relaxed and doing his best not to make Amelia any more uncomfortable than she clearly already was. "What have you actually been up to today?"
"I just told you," she said, evading the first mate's look once again and chewing on her lower lip.
After a brief pause, Oreza gave her a resigned nod and smile. "As you wish," he said whimsically, and took another small sip of his drink, looking away. "Any plans for the next few days?" he continued, sweeping the room with his eyes once more. "Looking for other work, or just idling for a while?"
"No, not really, just waiting some time," the astrogator admitted as she looked back at the first mate. She eyed him for a couple more moments in silence, weighing in the risks of telling him about what had really happened or not. The urge that she had to simply talk to someone about it turned out to be too much, and she eventually made her mind. "Can I trust you?" Amelia asked after a while.
Oreza's eyes whipped back to fixate on Amelia with a slightly taken aback look. For half a second, it appeared that the big Nepleslian was unsure of exactly how to respond. "Well, I would think I have given you no reason not to since we met," he commented, and while his voice sounded just a touch bothered by her implication, the jovial, paternal glow about his face and in his eyes softened it significantly.
"Well, I just don't know. So far every job I've tried to take part of has ended badly, and working on the Veil has been the first one that actually lasted more than a day," Amelia said, crossing her arms in front of her chest, each hand grabbing for the opposite arm as she did so. "It's pretty scary," she added.
"Fortune is a fickle mistress," Oreza agreed with an understanding nod, idly swirling his brandy.
"I guess," the astrogator said, althought it was clear that she didn't agree with that. She wasn't a firm believer of something like fate, and fortune was right after that in such a list. "First, there's this job on Nepleslia Prime, which ended badly," she added.
"What job was that?" the first mate asked.
"Just some woman who wanted to go digging around somewhere in the planet," she started to say, remembering that particular day. "And just as we start to leave the shuttle we had we get attacked by pirates, out of all things. But that wasn't the end of it, we managed to hide under some tunnels there, and we sort of got buried in a room for a while," she continued in a more serious tone. "And then, the marines dug us out of there after a while. It turned out that there also had been one of the cats there who was hunting down the pirates, but it got captured by the marines," she concluded.
"That... sounds like a mess," Oreza observed with raised eyebrows. "Did you find what you were looking for, at least?"
"No, not really," Amelia admitted. She didn't particularly care much about what was, if anything, buried under that place, only that the pay had been good and she had taken it. The astrogator idly looked to the side, observing the other patrons of the restaurant for a while as she digested those moments again.
"Pity," Oreza said. "You mentioned others. Were there other jobs that ended as badly?"
"Yeah, there was another one, before I joined the Veil," the astrogator said. At first glance, that job seemed like a very bad idea, but she had been dangerously low on money by the time, and would take any opportunity that presented itself. "It was on Kennewes," she added, as if it was all Oreza needed to know.
The mention of Kennewes seemed to provoke a reaction from Oreza, but he quickly suppressed it with practiced swiftness. Even if Amelia missed the haunted look that flashed across his face, there was no missing the dead silence between them that lingered for several seconds before Oreza cleared his throat quietly and continued. "What happened then?" he asked, and Amelia told him.
Oreza's plate was empty by this point, and he was on his third brandy as he listened to Amelia conclude her tale, intrigued. He paused a few moments as he let what she told him sink in, pensively holding the snifter at his nose. Eventually, his head slowly began to shake. "I have to admit, Amelia," he said with newfound repsect in his voice, "I had no idea your life had been so... colorful thus far."
"Colourful is one way to put it," the astrogator admitted, idly using the end of her silverware to scratch the porcelain of her empty plate. Her head felt light and she was a little tipsy from the single glass that she had, but, most importantly of all, was the fact that she felt like she had taken a huge weight off her shoulder by telling the Nepleslian that.
As Amelia ran her fork across the plate, it emitted a grating, high-pitched screech that only lasted an instant, but more than long enough to cause Oreza to wince slightly, and draw more than a few annoyed glares from the surrounding tables. Oreza lifted his palm just high enough off of the table to give Amelia a subtle "don't do that" gesture, coupled with a very slight shake of his head, but otherwise ignored the stares around them. "I could think of more 'colorful' ways to phrase it if you like," he joked, trying to lighten the mood.
"Right," she answered, setting for fork down. "Well, I ended up in Amatsu-Nova afterwards, and that's when I met you guys," she added, with some finality to her voice.
"And the rest is history," Oreza concluded, taking another drink and setting the snifter down. "Well, you have your health intact, and some spending money in your pocket now, at least, yes?"
"Yeah," she admitted, although she didn't have any idea of what to spend it now that she had it. Her eyes briefly flashed with some acknowledgement, at least she could spent it to get Crash something after the freespacer had gotten her several not-so-cheap 'gifts' when they last spoke. "What are you spending yours in?" she asked.
"A fair portion of it may very well go to getting my leg fixed," Oreza said with a shrug. "After that, I'm not sure."
The tone of his last comment didn't pass imperceptibly by her. "Why?" she asked.
He looked her way, slightly puzzled. "What do you mean?"
"Nothing. Nevermind," the astrogator said, dropping the matter. She leaned with her elbows on the table, hugging her arms once again she took a brief glance around the restaurant.
Oreza just watched her for a moment in silence, then smiled quietly again. "Did you enjoy your meal?" he asked.
"Yeah!" Amelia piped up, smiling faintly. "How can I repay you?" she added.
With a wave of his hand, Oreza shook his head and brushed the offer away. "I told you, it was my treat," he insisted. "I thought you could use the time away, if nothing else."
Her smile broadened at that. "I'm just not used to people buying me stuff all the time," she explained.
Oreza's eyebrow raised again, and a mischievous grin spread across his face. "All the time?" he pointedly asked. The astrogator opened her mouth to speak, but nothing came out, and her face started flushing at that as she cursed herself for letting that small detail slip up.
Amelia quickly looked away from the bearlike Nepleslian, trying to mask her distress.
"So," Oreza chuckled, settling back into his seat, patting around in his pockets looking for his pipe before he realized that smoking was more than likely prohibited in the city. He didn't look too terribly disappointed at the realization, though, as the amusement written all over his face at catching Amelia in whatever little game she was playing more than made up for it. "You were saying?" he chided.
The astrogator didn't reply at first, not wanting to reveal what she was actually talking about. "There's this person," she simply said, somewhat ashamed that she was still omitting some of the more important information from the ship's First Mate.
"Yes?" Oreza said, his smile broadening. "Go on."
"He buys me stuff all the time, and I feel like I don't derserve it, because I really didn't give him much- if anything, in return," she continued, briefly glancing at Oreza.
Oreza now looked thoroughly amused. "So you have a paramour you're keeping secret, eh?" he said jokingly. His comment only made her face flush further.
"It makes me feel like I'm using him," she said in a low tone, not admitting or denying his question.
The grin faded slightly as the big man's face turned gentler, setting aside the jokes for the time. "But you aren't, are you?" he asked.
"I'm not, but, it looks that way to me, and I don't want to deny them to offend him," she said, raising a hand to scratch her head.
"Have you asked him to do any of these things for you?" he asked, raising his snifter again. "Or suggested it in any way?"
"No."
Oreza shrugged. "Then it sounds to me as if he is doing it of his own free will," he replied, and took another sip of his brandy. The glass was nearing its end by this point. "Have you discussed it with him?"
"He just kinda waves it off," Amelia said, recalling that particular conversation with Crash.
"Then it seems to me that this man wants to impress you," he said conclusively, still holding the nearly empty glass. That comment made Amelia flush more, although she smiled at that. She never considered herself as someone who would receive that kind of attention. Oreza's grin returned, only this time it was warm and pleased, rather than merely amused. "And the way you're blushing makes be believe you are, and not just by the gifts he gives you," he said with a wink.
The astrogator still didn't add anything else to that, still too embarassed to form any sort of reply.
Oreza finished his glass and set it to the side, still smiling, and folded his thick hands on the table. "May I ask how long you've known him?" he asked.
Amelia paused, weighing in how she would come out with that information without sounding like she had been lying to everyone the whole time. "It's complicated," she said.
"It is?" the big man asked, sounding slightly confused. "How so?"
"Because he's part of the crew," she admitted, her eyes darting away from the large Nepleslian.
The puzzled frown deepened on Oreza's weathered and bearded face. "Part of the crew?" he repeated in quiet bewilderment, his eyes drifting a few degrees off of Amelia's face as he mentally went through the Veil's very short crew roster. Focusing back on Amelia with a bit more intent, obviously not reaching a satisfactory conclusion on his own, he wordlessly prodded her for an explanation.
And the astrogator told him, going over from the moment when she joined the ship, experiencing the ''computer glitches,'' to the moment where she actually found out about the spiderbot on Halna, and then until the present moment from when they arrived at Dawn, omitting the instances of when she and the freespacer went ashore on the Black Moon and the embarassing, very embarassing moment of when the captain walked in on them and mistook it for something else.
Oreza's face stayed mostly expressionless while Amelia finished the story, one of his hands curled up in a loose fist with his knuckles resting on the table. He didn't say anything for a moment while he took it in; somehow, he didn't seem as surprised to hear about the Freespacer's existence as Amelia might have expected, but this was clearly the first time he'd had it explained to him plainly.
After a moment's thought, he slid his jaw to one side, rubbing his beard. "Does Sienna know about him?" he asked.
"Yes," the astrogator admitted. "She found out during our salvage op," she added.
"Hmm," he mused, still rubbing his beard. "I wonder if that would account for her rather irritable behavior."
"I guess. They don't like each other much," Amelia also admitted. In a way, she had partially been dragged into that problem too.
"I feel somewhat sorry for this Freespacer then, too," Oreza half-joked, cracking a slight smile as he looked back at Amelia.
"He's had a hard time, so you know how I feel when he gives me all that stuff," she said, not noticing the half-joke form the first mate.
Oreza nodded. "I can understand that perspective," he replied. "But if it's what he wishes, perhaps you should allow it. It may be that, if he has indeed had as difficult a time as you say, the companionship is worth far more than any material thing he could ever give you." Another brandy had appeared where Oreza's empty glass was, and the waiter had done so apparently without being seen. Without taking his eyes away from the young woman for more than a second, he pulled the glass to him, bringing it to rest in his cupped hand on the table directly in front of him. "Much like this dinner has been worth more to me than the cost of the bill, as I hope it has been for you."
"I'm glad you enjoyed the company, I never thought I was much to talk, to be honest," the astrogator admitted, smiling faintly.
"I know," the first mate replied, nodding again. "But I'm happy you were comfortable enough to do so with me. It seems like you benefitted from it."
"It feels good telling it to other people, you know?" she admitted, but left it at that.
"It does," the big man agreed, musing over the rim of his glass as he took another small sip. "It does indeed."
Without anything else to add, Amelia simply shifted in her seat, idly looking around the bar.
After another period of silence amid the murmurs of the restaurant's patrons, Oreza broke it with a soft tap of his hand on the table's surface. "So," he began with a breath, smiling again. "I take it you will be staying with the Veil, in light of this new revelation?"
"I guess so, unless the captain doesn't want to keep me around after what happened," Amelia said, wincing slightly as she remembered the discussion with Sienna.
Oreza considered her words for a second, his jaw moving slightly up and down as if he was idly chewing some small, unseen morsel as he thought. "Difficult to say," he sighed, shaking his head in resignation. "I would think she is smart enough to know how much of an asset you are to her. But she can be... unpredictable, as you've witnessed yourself."
"Yeah, well, at least you'll be there to keep her in check," Amelia said, smilling at the first mate of the ship.
For the first time, Oreza didn't return her smile.
"What?" The astrogator asked, noticing the clear change in demeanor.
He hesitated again, as if unsure how to answer. He took a slow breath in and held it for a moment, his mouth slightly agape for a silent moment before he finally spoke. "No, I won't," he said finally, in a quiet voice.
"Why?" Amelia asked, concerned and hurt at the same time.
"It's... rather difficult to explain," Oreza said, regret and apology plastered all over him. "Aside from my knee, of course. I feel as though my path and Sienna's are simply not meant to overlap any longer than they already have."
"If you're not there to keep her in check you know she'll act crazy all over again, and won't stop," Amelia said, still with the same expression on her face.
Oreza sighed again, and looked into his brandy. "It isn't quite so simple," he said. "I think my presence there is not helping matters as much as you may think. Certainly, I can stop her from getting too far out of line in the moment, but in the long run I only compound the problem." He said nothing further, taking a much longer drink of his brandy than he had previously.
The astrogator noticed the change in demeanor, and leaned back against the chair. "It just told you the story of my life, you could at least tell me what's going on, because I don't buy it," she said, crossing her arms in front of her chest.
The big man turned his eyes without his head following to Amelia, and an eyebrow inched upwards. He couldn't help the little half-grin showing as he set his glass down, swallowing the drink. "I suppose you're right," he reluctantly agreed, then leaned back in his seat again, pondering exactly what to say. "Do you know how Sienna and I know one another?"
"No," the astrogator admitted, leaning closer to listen to that bit of story.
"Her father and I were close friends once upon a time," Oreza explained, reclining even further into the booth as he rested his extended arm on the surface of the table. "Very close, in fact, for years. Before Sienna and her brother were born." A wistful smile appeared on his face as he stared off into nothing.
"She has a brother?" Amelia asked, somewhat incredulously, before Oreza could continue.
He looked at her and nodded. "She does, though I don't think she's spoken to him in a long time, Neither have I, for that matter." He paused for a moment, collecting his thoughts. "Anyhow. Carson and I met when we were young boys. A right pair of troublemakers, we were," he went on, grinning in spite of himself. "Nepleslian men to the T. Never anything too outrageous, of course, but we managed to upset more than our fair share of our elders. I dare say the man was a bad influence on me," he added, chuckling. Then he tapped his fingertips on the table, as if forcing himself to get back on track, and peered across at Amelia, the faux-candlelight casting dancing shadows across his dark, bearded face. "Of course, eventually we came of age and our paths diverged. I went on to enlist in the navy, but Carson stayed in Los Apagos. He had some rather strong opinions about serving in the military, see. I always knew he was something of a firebrand, but I didn't realize the extent of his rather anarchic beliefs until much later."
He paused for a moment to take another swig of his brandy, while Amelia simply listened to him, resting her chin on her hands, and swallowed a hiccup, excusing himself quietly before he went on. "I returned home as often as I could to see my family and friends, of course. I made an effort to see Carson as time permitted, but when he married and had children, I made certain to see them as often as I could." The nostalgic smile returned. "I loved those kids like they were my own. They even called me 'uncle,' though I don't think they understood the literal meaning of the word. It just stuck, I suppose." He refocused again, looking squarely at Amelia. "In fact, I dare say they were the very reason I even attempted marriage the one time."
"Then what happened?" The astrogator asked, genuinely interested and leaning forward and closer to the first mate.
Catching himself getting off-track again, Oreza shook his head and lightly twiddled his fingers. "Remember the Hyperion?" he asked. "The cruiser I told you about whose reactor melted down?"
"Yeah, I remember" Amelia admitted. It was still a pretty sad story that his life had turned for the worst so suddenly.
"Well, while I was on medical leave on Nepleslia, after that incident, that's when I learned where Carson's true loyalties lay all those years. He still considered me a friend, of course, and we spoke on many occasions when he'd visit my hospital room. He began to press me hard to drop out of the military, I suppose because he figured that my morale would be shattered to the point that I would actually consider it this time." He sighed again. "Carson's reactionary views had blossomed to the point that he had become not only a Reds sympathizer, but in active service to them.
"I was upset by the news, of course, and vehemently turned down his repeated insistence that I join his cause, but it only got worse from there. By the time I had made my recovery and was again placed in command of the destroyer Orion, things were said between us that could never be taken back." He paused to take another long drink, collecting himself. Although his face remained completely stoic, the regret in his eyes was unmistakable. "Decades of friendship destroyed in a matter of days, over a difference of opinion."
He cleared his throat and continued. "Carson decreed that I was never to see or speak to him again until I 'came to my senses,' and unfortunately that included his family. I didn't know the extent of the damage that doing so would cause back then; it wasn't until much later that I learned that he and his wife's service to the Reds left their children to their own devices for long periods of time. I have no idea what they were exposed to in my absence.
"I fought in the Kennewes Offensive in which the armed forces of the Reds were destroyed. Against my own countrymen." His eyes misted up for a brief instant. "And quite possibly against Carson himself. I will probably never know. Once the war was over, I tried to contact him. I never succeeded, and was only able to learn through a lengthy search that he and Midori were unaccounted for, and that Sienna and Jacob, according to the system, never existed."
A long, controlled breath whistled through Oreza's nose as he stared off into some distant plane that only he could see. "I abandoned Sienna and her brother, you see," he said quietly. "Left them in the hands of a madman. In a way, I feel responsible for making Sienna into what she is today." His eyes focused back onto Amelia, and she could plainly see the pain buried deep inside of them, laid out bare for her to see now. "And after the time I've spent on the Veil thus far, I've come to believe she's never forgiven me for it."
"And how do you know that if you're just gonna leave?" Amelia asked after a few moments of silence. She was still trying to digest the information that he had just told her, it somehow made her understand more why the captain was so insufferable most of the times, despite her frustrations.
Oreza shook his head slowly. "Because I can see it all over her face," he explained softly. "It was good to see her again after all these years, but the longer I stay, the more anger I can see welling up inside of her. It will only get worse the longer I'm around, and it won't be only me that suffers for it."
Amelia leaned back against the chair, crossing her arms in front of her chest. The indignation was plain on her face, but instead of pushing the matter on, she simply looked to the side. It seemed that the first mate had already made his mind, and she doubted she had any measure of persuasion to convince him otherwise. "So that means this is the last time I see you?" she asked.
A quiet, bittersweet smile appeared on his face again. "I certainly hope not," he replied. "It only means that I won't be serving on your ship any longer."
The astrogator continue to look at the first mate. How it seemed just so familiar that life would once again come and screw with her, taking the one crewmen that had a chance to stop the captain from becoming a total psycho. She wanted to say something, anything, but was simply at a loss of words on how to continue, so she kept quiet.
"I'm very, very sorry to do this to you, Amelia," Oreza said, his voice even more genuine than ever. "Please understand I didn't come to this decision lightly. I know that in leaving, there will be consequences. But they will be worse if I stay." He paused, waiting for her to say something, almost desperately hoping she would, even, by the look on his face.
"Hey, man, it's your life. If you want to do it it's your choice," Amelia said, trying to force the bitterness from her voice. She found, much to her surprise, that it was hard to hate him, even if doing so would just make it easier for her to deal with it. The astrogator tried to force a smile to give some weight to her argument, hoping that the first mate wouldn't notice it.
Oreza just stared at her for a moment, gauging the sincerity of her reply. He smiled a smile of his own, but it was a far cry from a happy, or even a satisfied one. But in lieu of trying to change her mind, he only nodded his understanding. "I know it is my choice," he said. "But one's life is not just their own. I've learned that over the years. The choices you make send ripples, and affect countless lives around you." His gaze became more intent as he paused to be sure he had her attention. "No person is an island, Amelia. We're all connected in one way or another, and we owe more allegiance than just to ourselves."
Again, Amelia didn't reply. The astrogator gripped her arms tighter as she stared at the ship's first mate. "Our captain would disagree with you," she commented briefly, not sure if she completely believed him either.
"Our captain--" Oreza began somewhat tersely, but then cut his own words off in mid-sentence, as if realizing he was about to speak too rashly. With a sigh, he closed his eyes and began again. "If you say you don't believe in gravity, does it make it any less real?" he said, somewhat whimsically.
"Gravity is a proven thing," Amelia replied, somewhat irritated.
"So is what I said," the big man replied quietly, "if in something of a--"
"Will you still be around by the time we leave port?" the astrogator suddenly asked, cutting him off.
Oreza's mouth hung open on his unfinished sentence for a second before he smiled again and closed it. "That depends on how long you stay here, doesn't it?" he commented. "But more than likely, yes. And you are more than welcome to contact me any time you need to talk." His smile warped slightly into a teasing grin. "Assuming this Crash can't help you, of course," he added, eliciting a laugh from the astrogator.
"Thanks," she said, brushing a strand of hair off her face. "It's nice to stay in touch with people," she added, and a her expression changed to something more pained.
He nodded his agreement, then looked at her in concern. "Is something the matter?" he asked.
"No, just, stay in touch alright?" Amelia said, in a way that sounded like she was almost pleading.
Oreza nodded with a gentle smile again. "You have my word," he told her. "On one condition."
The astrogator raised on eyebrow at that. "What?" she asked.
"Look after Sienna in my place."
Amelia let out a long sigh, scratching her head one again. She wanted to refuse that, she wanted to refuse it so much. "Alright," she said, looking at the ship's soon to be former first mate.
It was easy for Oreza to tell he was asking a steep price, but his smile broaded devilishly again. "I know," he said jokingly, "my friendship is expensive."
Amelia suppressed a chuckle at that.
Oreza's smile lingered for another moment, never looking away from Amelia as his expression softened again with an encouraging nod. "You'll be fine, I'm sure of it," he reassured her. "After everyone's had the chance to blow off some steam away from one another, I would wager that Sienna will be a bit more tolerable. And I would like to think she's learned a few things since we left Amatsu-Nova."
"Yeah. I hope so," the astrogator agreed, blowing off another strand of hair that had fallen in front of her face. "I honestly have no idea what to spend my pay on now that I have it," she added afterwards.
"Then save it," Oreza replied. "Hold onto it for something you really need later. Just because you have money doesn't mean you have to spend it." He shifted in his seat, idly tapping the base of his empty snifter, and he grinned a bit. "Of course, you could save most of it, and take a little to blow on something fun for yourself."
"Yeah, I know. I guess I'll do that," Amelia said, leaning back in her chair. She looked around the restaurant again, realizing that she couldn't think of anything to say, and leaving the conversation at an awkward silence once again.
Their server appeared at the table once more, smiling politely at the two as he took advantage of the lull in their conversation to check on them. "I hope you enjoyed your meal this evening," he said. "May I interest either of you in a dessert, or perhaps a hot drink?"
Oreza returned the polite smile to the young man and nodded approvingly. "It was excellent, thank you," he replied, then looked back across the table at Amelia, eyebrows raised in question, allowing her to answer the waiter's offer. The raven-haired nepleslian raised both hands with her palms upturned in a shrug. She felt like she couldn't eat anything else after the meal she just had.
"I think we're finished," Oreza said as he nodded to Amelia and looked back at the waiter. "Thank you very much."
"Very good, sir," the server replied with another rehearsed smile, and placed a brown leather half-folder on the table surface. "I can take care of this anytime you're ready."
The bearlike ex-soldier nodded again as the waiter vanished once more, and looked back across the table. "Thank you for joinng me tonight, Amelia," he said with clear sincerity. "I enjoyed the company immensely."
"Thanks for the invitation," she asnwered sincerely, eyeing the leather folder on the table. She felt uncomfortable in letting him pay for that by himself. "How much, uh, do you think this was?" She asked right after.
"No amount you need to concern yourself with," Oreza said with a sly wink, and Amelia slumped back in her seat with a sigh. The big man placed his paw on the folder and slid it across the table in front of him. "The company and discussion was payment enough," he continued reassuringly. "It was... cathartic to talk about some of these things for me, as I hope it was for you. And I pray it's shed some light on your captain's behavior as well."
"It did," Amelia admitted, watching the other Nepleslian take the bill. "But that doesn't mean that I agree with it," she added.
Oreza looked a little puzzled. "What is there to agree or disagree with?" he asked.
"That she can still act like that," the astrogator explained.
"Ah," the big man replied, rubbing his beard. "No, I'm not trying to say that the way she behaves is acceptable. It isn't. I'm only trying to help you understand why I believe she is that way."
Amelia nodded at that. "Okay, I'm just saying how I feel about it all, is what I meant," she explained.
"I understand," Oreza assured her. "And were I in your shoes, I would feel the same way, I'm sure." A melancholy smile crossed his face. "But now that you have a bit more insight, perhaps it will be a little easier to tolerate it, and you may have a better understanding of how to handle her."
"I guess," she conceded. Amelia realized more and more that it had only been by a stroke of luck, or something else, that Sienna had managed to become captain. Her lack of experience with that aspect showed.
"Anyway," he said with a conclusive wave of her hand. "Enough about Sienna, yes?" he asked with a smile.
"Yeah," Amelia agreed. That conversation had shed some insight on not only Sienna, but also on Crash. Her cheeks reddened a bit at that, and she hoped that her conversation partner would mistake it by the single glass of brandy that she had.
Oreza stiffened slightly, and he thumped his fist lightly against his chest, looking like he was either trying to suppress a hiccup or work out some heartburn, but he grinned at Amelia's blush nonetheless. "Now what?" he chided her.
"What?" Amelia asked.
He motioned towards her face with a wave of his hand, finally settling whatever was ailing him. "You're blushing again," he observed, still grinning.
"I do that when I drink," the astrogator said, which was still true.
"I see," Oreza said, though the grin on his face gave away the fact that he likely didn't believe that was entirely true. Regardless, he didn't press, but instead opened the bill, and after reading over it once, placed his credit chit inside and placed it on the edge of the table and folded his hands before him once more. "I think I've had enough for now as well," he added, holding another hiccup in check.
"Well, you certainly drank for the both of us," Amelia commented, smirking after she saw him attempt to conceal the hiccup.
Oreza laughed slightly. "I'm quite possibly twice your size," he commented. The waiter appeared from nowhere again, and carried the bill off.
"Possibly?" she asked.
"Definitely possibly," Oreza replied, chuckling again. Wiping the corner of his eye with his index finger, he sighed contentedly. "I would join you in gallavanting about the city tonight, but this old man needs a good night's sleep, I believe," he continued. "Then in the morning I'll be visiting some clinics. Is there anything I can do for you before then?"
"Not really, this has been more than enough," Amelia said. The faint smile appeared on her face again, she felt like resting more than she felt like looking around Dawn.
He nodded, smiling warmly. "You have my network address and commlink information," he told her. "If there is ever anything you need, no matter how trivial, I will be but a message away."
"Thanks, Oreza," she replied sincerely. Noticing that as a cue that the dinner had ended, Amelia slid her chair back, fishing her backpack from the floor and getting up. "I should probably go, then," she added, putting one arm through one of the backpack's straps.
"Anytime," the big man answered, producing his cane from beneath the table and rising shakily to his feet. "I do have one final request, if you'd humor me," he said as he leaned on the cane. With the paternal, inviting smile again, he extended his free arm in Amelia's direction. "Indulge an old man?"
The astrogator took the proferred arm, approaching the massive Nepleslian as she tried to hug him. Oreza's gigantic arm enveloped the small-framed Amelia firmly but without undue force, and Amelia almost disappeared, dwarfed by the massive older man, and the two shared a bittersweet embrace for a moment.
It took a few moments before she broke the hug. Not being someone used too much to that degree of physical contact, it still managed to be both awkward and welcoming at the same time. Expensive friendship indeed.
Oreza stepped back, leaving his bearlike hand on her shoulder for a brief moment as he looked her squarely in the eyes. "I mean it," he said with a serious expression. "Anything you need at all, I will be here."
"Thanks," Amelia replied, noticing how she couldn't hold the Nepleslian's gaze for very long at all. She took a step back from him, and was about to turn around to head out before something occurred to her. "Goodbye, Oreza," she said, waving one hand and stuffing the other one in her pocket.
"The best of luck to you, Amelia," he replied, still leaning on his cane aside the table as he watched her go. She had barely turned out of sight before the big man's face fell, and he lowered himself back down into the booth. Leaning the cane against the table's edge, he sigh a long, heavy sigh and rested his chin lightly on this thumb and forefinger, propped up on the table's surface, lost in thought as he waited for the bill to return.
Even when the waiter returned to thank him for his patronage, he was still wondering if he was making the right decision.
Concordia Veil - Cabin 3
The small wagon was carefully pushed under the bunk, devoid of its previous cargo. Once it was out of sight, Amelia quickly flopped on her back against the lower bunk, covering her eyes with her forearm as she tried to catch a brief moment of respite in the dim light of the cabin, letting out a sigh as she started to feel her limbs getting heavier.
As Amelia started to feel herself drifting off, a quiet tone beeped at slow, persistent intervals from her Datajockey, making the astrogator rise from her rest, just as she was starting to kick her boots off. With a newfound alertness, she approached the upright electronic, placed on top of the cabin's table and inserted on its charger, and removied it, toggling the screen on and checking the alert.
On the display, a tiny icon of an envelope pulsed, indicating a new message waiting to be read. Upon opening it, the text appeared on the screen:
Code:
To: Amelia Stroud
From: Oreza Dakkar
Re: Dinner Invitation
Amelia,
I'd like to honor my previous invitation and ask that you join me at the Silver Tap, located at 5th and G in Sector Nine. If for any reason you cannot or are unwilling to join me, I understand. Let me know so I can plan accordingly.
Your friend,
OrezaThe astrogator took some time before she answered the message, looking around the cabin briefly.
Code:
Thanks for the invitation, I'm on my way.
-AAs soon as the message was sent, Amelia retrieved her Datajockey, noticing how it had barely charged at all, and commenced to grab the rest of the belongings she would be needing. In a few moments, the cabin's door slid closed and the only sign that she had been back at the ship was the way of how her bunk bedding was unkept in yet another different way.
Dawn Station - Sector Nine City, Downtown - Silver Tap Restaurant & Tavern
The Silver Tap was a smallish establishment on the ground floor of one of the many dizzyingly tall buildings and arcologies sprawling across the central hub of the Origin station, located right at the corner of an intersection jam-packed with vehicle and foot traffic. Compared to the insomniac, overwhelming cacaphony of people zipping this way and that along the street and in the skies above, the restaurant itself was by contrast very quaint and relaxed, shrouded in the dim lighting and rich impressions of virtual candlelight and imitation mahogany and cherry wood. Immediately upon walking through the entrance, Amelia felt as if she went deaf for a few seconds as the noise from the outside was suddenly dulled to a murmur, almost as if the old-world stylings and relaxed atmosphere held the insanity of the outside world away from its walls. To her right, several oversized wingback chairs were arranged around what appeared to be a hearth, and although she could tell that the flames within were only simulated, the flickering light and warmth that they cast were almost real enough to deceive her. Directly ahead of her was the bar, set against the back wall, with another row of seating along a second bar that stretched perpendicular to the various taps and liquor bottles arranged against a mirrored shelf with quaint incandescent backlighting, and the dining room sprawled off towards the right. Lush red faux-leather booths set inside of wooden alcoves lay in neat grids on the lowered dining floor, each of them lit by a miniature shaded lamp set to one side that flickered like a candle.
A petite, pretty Geshrin girl with long, flowing black hair adorned with a silver brooch and dressed in a snug-fitting, short black dress approached her, smiling warmly. "Good evening, ma'am," she said in a sweet, singsong voice, although she eyed the utilitarian clothing Amelia wore with cleverly concealed disdain. "Is it just you, or are you meeting someone?"
It took a few moments for the astrogator to answer the query, still staring at the intricate decoration of the establishment with interest as she was. "Meeting someone," she said, turning her gaze towards the Geshrin, her eyes shooting between her and the other seats in the place, scanning for Oreza. Before the hostess could reply, Amelia spotted a massive paw waving in the air at the end of a barrel-like arm, at a two-seater booth just on the other side of the hearth. It took her a second to recognize him at first, since he was dressed much less like a spacefarer, and more like a less-affluent version of many of the other patrons. His greatcoat was gone, as was his fisherman's cap, and a dark green Nepleslian military-issue sweater was stretched across his massive shoulders. The gray-spackled black hair atop his head was brushed to one side neatly, even.
Without a word, the astrogator moved away from the hostess, clutching at one of the straps of her backpack as she moved towards the Veil's first mate. It was only then that she noticed how everyone inside the place was dressed in a much different attire than herself. Even the Geshrin hostess could be considered an anathema to her usual utilitarian clothing, which was somewhat unsettling even for someone who didn't pay much mind to that like herself. "Hey," Amelia said to the bearlike Nepleslian once she approached the table, sliping the backpack off her shoulders and sliding it under the table. Compared to him, she was dressed like a hobo.
Oreza's cane appeared from beneath the table, and he stood up as Amelia approached, a friendly smile on his bearded face as he leaned on his walking aid. He still wore the brace on the outside of his dark pants, but other than that, most everything about his appearance was crisp and clean. "I'm glad you could make it, Amelia," he said in his deep, resonant bass. He waited until she had situated herself before he returned to his own seat, wobbling a little on his knee, and clasped his hands in front of him. "Everything all right on the ship?"
"Thanks," the astrogator replied, scratching her head and making her hair messier as she looked at the Veil's first mate with a somewhat concerned expression when she saw him hobbling because of the injured knee. "I guess, the captain wasn't there when I came back later," she continued, intertwining her gloved fingers together as she talked.
The big man nodded with a quiet sigh. "I see," he intoned.
A well-groomed and black-uniformed waiter appeared at their tableside, offering each of them a menu and a smile. "Happy to see you arrive, madam," the twenty-something Geshrin male greeted Amelia. "May I bring you anything from the bar?"
"Just a, uh," Amelia started to say, failing to hide the disconcertment from her voice at being called ma'am. She thought that the term was usually for middle-aged women. She briefly looked over at Oreza, and then at her menu, looking over at what the bar offered.
"A brandy for me," Oreza spoke up when Amelia hesitated, then turned his eyes back across the table. "Please, anything you wish. It's on me."
"I'll take the same," the astrogator quickly said, setting the menu down on the table and briefly looking at the waiter.
The waiter nodded politely, and turned away to retreive their drinks. Oreza's face focused again on Amelia, his smile fading just a touch. "Have you had some time to relax, cool off a bit?" he asked her. "There is a lot to see around here, it seems."
"Yeah," Amelia agreed, more automatically rather than consciously as she recalled her outburst and subsequent interaction with Crash on the park. As much as she liked working on starships, getting out of them when it was docked in a station was a welcome change when the alternative would be to just get crazy inside of it by dealing with the same people over and over again.
"I think it will do everyone some good to spend some time away from one another, honestly," the big man stated, leaning back into his seat and resting his open hands on the table. A dry smirk appeared on his face for a moment as he continued. "Even I'm not accustomed to such a small ship."
"What kind of ships did you used to work on?" she asked with genuine curiosity. The change of subject was a welcome reprieve.
"Military vessels, mostly," Oreza replied, lightly drumming his thick fingers on the tabletop. "Anything from frigates to cruisers. I held command of one for a time, in fact." His eyes drifted, unfocused as he said that, and for the first time Amelia caught the normally always-in-control Oreza looking what appeared to be a little lost.
"I see," the astrogator said, noticing the change in the other Nepleslian's demeanor. She should have stopped pushing the matter, but her curiosity was simply too much. "What happened then, if you don't mind me asking?" she asked after a while.
Oreza looked back at Amelia with a mildly dismissive smile and a shake of his head, but the haunted look in his eyes remained. "The Hyperion," he told her in a far-off voice, before he cleared his throat and continued more resolutely. "It was a powerplant meltdown. No one's fault in many ways, just one of those freak accidents that nobody saw coming." He sighed. "The ship was lost, more than six hundred men and women perished. I myself was injured in the rescue efforts, and sent back to Nepleslia to recover for several weeks. They touted me as a hero when I recovered, said I saved the lives of thousands," he continued, waving his hand in the air and looked around, as if he wasn't impressed with his own words, "but I would gladly trade the medals to get those soldiers back."
The astrogator remained in contemplative silence as she watched and heard the Nepleslian talk, trying to picture he event of a powerplant meltdown in her head, and even on the most tame scenarios that wasn't pretty. She tried to think of something to say to him, but couldn't find any sort of consolation for that; she hadn't gone through the same thing and didn't know how that would feel had it happened to her. Deciding it was probably for the best, Amelia kept staring at Oreza.
After a moment, Oreza looked back across at her as the drinks arrived. He nodded his thanks to the waiter, who, upon seeing that neither of them had touched their menus, elected to leave them to their discussion for the moment. The big man's mouth turned upwards in a small smile, and he shook his head. "It's in the past," he said, lifting his snifter an inch or two off of the table, gently swirling its contents. "And a part of the responsibility of command. Decisions have to be made, and many times you are not afforded the luxury of thinking it over." Lifting the glass to his nose, he breathed in the aroma, and took a contemplative sip, but never took his gaze from her. "Sometimes people are upset by the choices you make. Other times, people die," he continued, lightly smacking his lips as he savored the liquor. "You make the best decision you know how to, and live with the consequences of them every day." By this point, it was starting to become unclear whether Oreza was still talking about himself. "Everything else is pointless self-torture."
Amelia continued to listen to the old Nepleslian, taking a small sip of her drink right after he did so. She had to do some extra effort to avoid grimmacing as soon as she felt the strong tang of the alcohol, despite the taste of it itself not being too unpleasant.
A grin played across Oreza's face when he saw Amelia's reaction to the brandy. "If you don't like that, you don't have to drink it," he told her. "I'd be happy to get you something else."
"Oh no, I'm alright," she answered, decided to drink it more out of stubborness than anything. That concern for her made her feel like she was being treated like a child.
"All right," Oreza replied, still smiling slightly, and took another sip of his drink as he panned his eyes around the ambient, dim lighting and soft murmurs of the other patrons. "You haven't eaten yet, I hope," he said after a pause. "I'm told that this place serves phenomenal tenderloins."
"No I haven't," Amelia admitted again. That was true, at least, if the few sweets that she had didn't count as an actual meal. "Anything sounds good for me about now," Amelia replied to the Nepleslian, smiling faintly. She wasn't lying, her mouth watered and her stomach rumbled at the thought of food, specially the good and fancy kind. Not that the food served aboard the Veil was bad in any accounts, far from it, the ship's cook was as good as it got with what she had available, but it didn't compare to the pictures shown in the restaurant's menu.
Oreza smiled broadly. "That makes it easier, then," he commented, and flagged down the waiter. Within seconds of waving his hand, the server was at their tableside, and with a polite bow was off to get the cooks started on their meal, taking their menus with him. With a satisfied look, he settled back into the booth and took another drink of his brandy, dabbing away a stray drop that stowed away on his moustache.
"So," he said, changing the subject slightly. "How have you spent your day on Dawn Station thus far?"
"Oh, you know," Amelia started to say, almost blurting out a 'I've spent some time hanging out with Crash.' The astrogator looking at the Nepleslian's direction, although her gaze was centered on something behind him and over his shoulder. "Just spent some time on a park looking around," she commented.
The big man turned slightly in his seat, grimacing for a brief instant as he adjusted to make his braced knee more comfortably. Giving her a somewhat sideways look, he raised an eyebrow. "That's all?" he asked. "Just looking around a park the whole day?"
The astrogator shrugged. "How is the knee?" She asked, looking for a change of subject. She didn't like to keep lying, even it was by omission.
Oreza's brow settled downwards slightly, a bit caught off guard by her sudden change of subject. "It's doing fine, all things considered," he replied, though his tone of voice betrayed his mild confusion. "I'm considering going to a clinic sometime in the morning to see about some kind of reconstructive surgery to speed up the healing process." His eyes remained intently fixed on the young woman, clearly wondering what she wasn't telling him, but he didn't overtly pry.
"Well, let me know if you need help with anything," Amelia said, removing the gloves from her hands. She hadn't realized that they were still on, seeing as she wore them all the time too. The astrogator stuffed the gloves on one of the bulging leg pockets of her pant, intertwining her fingers on the table again once she finished doing so.
Idly watching Amelia remove her gloves, Oreza's head didn't move very much, nor did his expression change. He sat there quietly with a patient air about him, saying nothing, and lifted the brandy snifter just above the surface of the table, holding it there for a moment as he looked at her.
"What?" Amelia asked, looking back at Oreza, not being able to stand the first mate's gaze anymore and clearly showing the way she felt uncomfortable about it.
Oreza just smiled slightly, shaking his head. "You have a knack for evading questions," he observed. Amelia didn't reply, but a somewhat guilty smile crept up on her face. She tried to stiffle it, biting on her lower lip and looking down at her own glass, which save for the first sip was mostly left untouched. A quiet chuckle rumbled in Oreza's chest. "If you don't wish to discuss it, I won't press," he continued. "But I think a friendly ear may do you some good, Amelia, especially given what you've endured so far on the Veil."
"To be honest, I don't even know where to begin," she said, slumping her shoulders with a sigh. The astrogator raised her gaze to look back at the ship's first mate.
"That's simple," he replied, still smiling quietly at her. "From the beginning."
"What do you mean the beginning?" The astrogator asked incredulously.
Oreza shrugged slightly, swirling his brandy. "From wherever you feel is relevant to what you want to get off of your chest," he said disarmingly, his posture relaxed and doing his best not to make Amelia any more uncomfortable than she clearly already was. "What have you actually been up to today?"
"I just told you," she said, evading the first mate's look once again and chewing on her lower lip.
After a brief pause, Oreza gave her a resigned nod and smile. "As you wish," he said whimsically, and took another small sip of his drink, looking away. "Any plans for the next few days?" he continued, sweeping the room with his eyes once more. "Looking for other work, or just idling for a while?"
"No, not really, just waiting some time," the astrogator admitted as she looked back at the first mate. She eyed him for a couple more moments in silence, weighing in the risks of telling him about what had really happened or not. The urge that she had to simply talk to someone about it turned out to be too much, and she eventually made her mind. "Can I trust you?" Amelia asked after a while.
Oreza's eyes whipped back to fixate on Amelia with a slightly taken aback look. For half a second, it appeared that the big Nepleslian was unsure of exactly how to respond. "Well, I would think I have given you no reason not to since we met," he commented, and while his voice sounded just a touch bothered by her implication, the jovial, paternal glow about his face and in his eyes softened it significantly.
"Well, I just don't know. So far every job I've tried to take part of has ended badly, and working on the Veil has been the first one that actually lasted more than a day," Amelia said, crossing her arms in front of her chest, each hand grabbing for the opposite arm as she did so. "It's pretty scary," she added.
"Fortune is a fickle mistress," Oreza agreed with an understanding nod, idly swirling his brandy.
"I guess," the astrogator said, althought it was clear that she didn't agree with that. She wasn't a firm believer of something like fate, and fortune was right after that in such a list. "First, there's this job on Nepleslia Prime, which ended badly," she added.
"What job was that?" the first mate asked.
"Just some woman who wanted to go digging around somewhere in the planet," she started to say, remembering that particular day. "And just as we start to leave the shuttle we had we get attacked by pirates, out of all things. But that wasn't the end of it, we managed to hide under some tunnels there, and we sort of got buried in a room for a while," she continued in a more serious tone. "And then, the marines dug us out of there after a while. It turned out that there also had been one of the cats there who was hunting down the pirates, but it got captured by the marines," she concluded.
"That... sounds like a mess," Oreza observed with raised eyebrows. "Did you find what you were looking for, at least?"
"No, not really," Amelia admitted. She didn't particularly care much about what was, if anything, buried under that place, only that the pay had been good and she had taken it. The astrogator idly looked to the side, observing the other patrons of the restaurant for a while as she digested those moments again.
"Pity," Oreza said. "You mentioned others. Were there other jobs that ended as badly?"
"Yeah, there was another one, before I joined the Veil," the astrogator said. At first glance, that job seemed like a very bad idea, but she had been dangerously low on money by the time, and would take any opportunity that presented itself. "It was on Kennewes," she added, as if it was all Oreza needed to know.
The mention of Kennewes seemed to provoke a reaction from Oreza, but he quickly suppressed it with practiced swiftness. Even if Amelia missed the haunted look that flashed across his face, there was no missing the dead silence between them that lingered for several seconds before Oreza cleared his throat quietly and continued. "What happened then?" he asked, and Amelia told him.
Kennewes Spaceport - Planet Kennewes, planetary capital.
It was easy to blend in with the crowd of the spaceport that went to and fro, bustling with activity as it was during noon, it showed that the destruction wrought from the war against the Reds had damaged Kennewes but not crippled it.
The evidence from the war had become more than a happening in history, but also been ingrained into the planetary culture; Selling souvenirs and tokens was a common thing everywhere on the planet. Such a practice was clear from the number of stands and shops that were selling such things right outside the Arrivals area of the spaceport.
Another obvious sign that it was also a Nepleslian planet was the increased security, both from the spaceport, with marines standing guard on strategic locations, and civilians, who it was safe to assume were all armed with anything short of an assault rifle. Although it wasn't Funky City, the planet could still be as much or more dangerous since many of the Reds who didn't go back to legal service after the war had instead went into a more illegal path.
Sitting on a bench under an archway at the spaceport's lobby, Amelia noticed all that, one arm resting against a large duffel bag and a backpack sitting at the woman's lap. She was wearing the familiar grey jacket, which was folded all the way to her elbows, and had ditched the black sweater from under it as soon as the hotter swamp climate had hit her. She also wore green, faded cargo pants that were tucked inside a pair of boots.
Pulling a Datajockey from her backpack, the raven-haired woman tapped the screen with a gloved hand and sent a message to the person that was waiting for her.
Pulling the electronic aside, she looked around, right hand hovering next to the weapon holster she had. Although she didn't expect anything happening inside the very secure spaceport, it didn't cost to be cautious. That, and she knew she could expect trouble in the planet.
He'd hit the surface two days ahead of his partner, scouting out the area to see if he could find any sort of leads on salvage. For the most part it had been two days just trying to rest up and still having to work out the kinks and pains from time spent in a hospital recovering. Other than that? To find the kinds of things that he and Amelia were going to be looking for, a man only had to stand in any pock-marked field he liked, and throw a rock. So he wasn't too worried about their finding something to get money off of.
Walking the streets, he was dressed close to how he had been before. His Fleet cap announcing him as a Marine veteran had been lost the day he took a missile like a champ and he hadn't bothered to replace it with another. Instead he wore a simple and unremarkable black baseball cap to cover his shaggy hair and to help keep whatever glaring sunlight out of his eyes that the wrap-around shades he wore wouldn't catch. He preferred sunglasses from his days in Crypto: it was harder for people to watch his eyes and they helped with a poker face. Not that he needed anything like that, he hoped. If everything went well it would just be he and Amelia scavenging old tech and weapons for money by themselves.
When the message light blinked on for his datajockey, he had been too busy watching the road to keep an eye on the surrounding traffic. He was a bike man, personally. They were smaller, easier to weave in and out of traffic, and were really just fun to ride. But the nature of the business had called for a truck. A big, unyieldy, steers-like-an-overladen-merchant ship, truck. It wasn't until he had pulled into the appropriate parking for Arrival Pickups that he'd finally been able to send the message.
Amelia was up and walking soon after reading the message, tucking the datajockey back into the backpack and then hefting the -manageably light- duffelbag. She slung the large piece of luggage over her shoulder and started walking, making her way through the groups of passers-bys in long strides.
The humid heat was the first noticeable thing she felt once she left the air-conditioned interiors of the spaceport, and as she made her way towards the parked vehicles she could already feel the sweat wicking through her clothes as the suffocating humidity prevented it from evaporating.
She eventually spotted the red truck sittling idle, and the all-too-familiar face on the driver's seat, and made her way there, looking around every once in a while. She tossed the duffel bag on the back of the truck before tapping on the window.
"Got room for one more?"
Giani had been able to see her as she came out the door. He had kept where he was and fished a cigarette out from a small silver case he kept tucked in the pocket of the white button-up shirt that he'd decided to wear. His thumb on the left hand had clicked open and he was busy getting a bright "cherry" burning when she'd finally thrown her duffel into the back of the truck. She'd find it wasn't alone, with his own duffel bag on the opposite side of the truck bed, and with what looked like several smaller crates of equipment of some kind, covered with a tarp, and lashed down to the truck bed by tie-downs.
He took off his shades and tossed them lazily onto the dash, rolling the window down with a press of the button on his door, "And where are you goin, stranger?" He asked with a smile.
"Oh, I don't know. I think I took the wrong spaceliner, they told me there would be this very nice car waiting for me." She said, jokingly, then added, "Think you could give me a ride?"
With a click, the door unlocked. Of course the truck rode high enough on heavy-duty tires that a short woman like her would probably get the best use of the running boards, which she did, putting one foot on the running board, then grabbing the door for support as she hefted herself up to the passenger's seat.
"How's life been treating you?" She asked once she was seated, door closed and window raised.
The air conditioner clicked on to blast them both with cold air. Frankly he'd been running it so much to fight the heat that he was surprised the fan hadn't died yet. As he backed out of the lot, he kept his eyes on his surroundings, with one hand on the wheel, and the other holding his cigarette as he drove.
"Just sore, kid." He chuckled, "Don't know if you remember, but I kinda got raped by a missile not too long ago." At a stop sign he flexed his cybernetic hand, the one gripping the wheel, "Doctor said he was half-tempted to put a jacket on my spine after everything that happened. Damn lucky I din' break my neck."
He still had a smile on his face while he said this. A man happy to be alive, while Amelia just had a faint smile on her face.
"How about you, kid? Din' have to beat off any cute boys with a stick while sittin' around waiting for me to come pick you up, did you?"
"No, I'm not the sort of person that has them come running." She said, scoffing at the remark as she looked out the window. "So, where and when do we start?" She added.
"Got word of some old Red craft crashed into a bog a few miles from the city. Only problem is, its not the sort of place that's real easy to reach by vehicle. How are you for hiking?"
"I'm good." Was all that she answered. The last time that she had went 'hiking' in the woods things had turned very sour, very quick and very violently. The event still lingered in her memory.
He left the spaceport and got over into the least busy lane he could find, heading north, while Amelia just stared out of the window, taking in as much of the planet as she could.
"Bribed the info from an old former pilot. Says his own plane crashed down somewhere in the bog when he had to bail. Only thing he really wanted from me was some DS and a promise that we'd try and 'be respectful' of any of the dead." Giani shrugged, "Easy enough."
"We're not gonna have any... Problems again, right?" She asked, not sure whether the event in Nepleslia Prime was as bad a memory for Giani as it was for her. For one thing, it had sure made her stronger, in a way.
Giani shook his head, "Nothing out there but nature as far as most of the rest of the world is concerned. Old man said he was one of the only people still alive who knew these things were out there. Bombs, ammo, old computer tech and commo that we can pull from the birds. Unless you believe in ghosts, we're gonna be fine. If not, then just don't touch the skel'tons too much."
The city was large but Giani had learned quickly over the last two days just how to get to the city limits as quickly as possible. As he drove and they moved further and further away from the spaceport, the buildings began to grow shorter. Their surroundings became less clean-looking, with graffiti sprayed across the walls of some buildings or the supports of overpasses. Traffic heading in their direction was beginning to die down. From between some buildings, the deep green of swamp-land and bogs in the distance, cut by the murky lines of rivers began to peak through.
"Man, would you look at that? Nature. Isn't something the normal city-types look at too often. I bet the pencil pushers in the business district'd piss themselves if they came out this close to the city limits."
"Yeah. Naaature." She said, mimicking Giani. She wasn't too concerned about it like she had last time, it was just a matter of going there, picking up what they could, and then getting the hell out. Touch and go. Or at least she told herself.
"Do you have a specific buyer for this kind of stuff?" She asked after a while, looking back at Giani and shifting on her seat once the marshes had became repetitive. She didn't doubt the value that some of the things could impose, and if push came to shove they could always sell it as scrap.
"Of course. The old man wants any unit patches, memrobilia, tags. That sort of thing. Plus if we don't like his prices there are always vendors who'll buy the stuff up in the Market. Any ammo can be sold to museums, and if I find any fuses that are still workable then we could probably sell those quick on the Market, too."
"Figures." Amelia replied. She woudn't be surprised if the whole planetary economy was based off selling souvenirs from the war. It was, for her, melancholic in its own way, a culture that tried to cling to the past while the rest of Nepleslia had simply moved on and faced other things like the squids.
Eventually he took an off-ramp and hit a road that was remarkably worse in quality. Only the truck's suspension and tires kept it from feeling like they were being bucked up into the roof of the truck with every pothole or dip in the "road" that they hit. Already they were drawing farther and farther from the city. Only the GPS display on the dashboard would let either know where they were exactly. Within a few feet, of course.
"Why? Nervous?"
"No, just... Wary. I heard this place can be more dangerous than your average planet." She answered; Being more dangerous than the average Nepleslian planet already spoke miles of the condition of Kennewes. She let go of that train of thought and held onto the grab-bar on the roof of the truck to stabilize herself as the vehicle gently rocked her frame around.
Giani chuckled, "Nothing is going to be out there but animals and some old skeletons to bother you. Plus maybe you'll get some mud in your boots."
"Yeah, I heard that one before." She retorted a bit dryly, not adding anything else.
The drive went slower than it had on the highway. Lacking the smooth finish of the previous roads, Giani tried to keep up a good speed without making the ride too uncomfortable for either of them, or risking heading off-road into deep water or the mud of bogs and swamps that could just about eat the truck alive and leave them stranded.
"Besides, why would pirates be interested in some old wrecks and corpses?" He shook his head, "This isn't anything like the magical freakin' super-mushrooms down in those old ruins. Honest pledge from a pilot who had his bird crash there."
"Yeah, sorry. Just being paranoid, I guess." She said. Maybe the last job had really made her pessimistic about any and everything. She still caught this change of attitude most of the times, and tried to stifle it, but that was not the case.
"I don't blame you, kid. Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean somebody isn't out to get you, sometimes." Giani shrugged, "A'sides, we've got guns with us, so we should be fine enough, I bet. A bird would have a hell time trying to peg us in this mess."
At an "intersection" almost unnoticable with how it was so overgrown and worn down by nature, he turned off the clearer path they'd been on, went forward just a bit further until the GPS display on the dash squawked at them, and finally came to a stop.
"So are you ready for a little explorin'?" He headed for the tailgate and waved for her to follow while he opened the tailgate and hopped up into the bed of the truck to start uncovering the crates in the back, "Brought some hand-held welding business, some 'splosives, some guns and ammo, and a sled for dragging back the heavier stuff we can't just stuff into our bags."
"Might as well get to it, then." Amelia said to herself as she jumped out of the truck, landing on the patched dirt beneath. She left her backpack inside, but grabbed a belt from inside of it that had a holstered pistol along with some pouches for extra magazines, then pushed the backpack on the truck's floor and closed the door.
She waked around the truck until she was besides Giani again. "Yeah, I'm ready to make some money." the woman replied, heavens knew she needed it.
It wasn't more than a half mile from the path, but the thick undergrowth, the darkness from the canopy overhead, and the deep and murky water with mud seemingly intent to suck away a man's boots made it a painful journey. It wasn't until the water levels began to drop and they were eventually on dry ground, Giani hacking his way at low-hanging foliage with one of the machetes he'd made sure to pack for the two of them, that they'd finally started walking on more solid and dry ground than before. The trees and hazy mist over the ground began to dissipate and before long they could see it.
Amelia was just behind him, having ditched the sweater and tied the sleeves around her waist under the belt that carried her gun and spare ammo, which revealed the white tank-top that she wore underneath that piece of attire. The woman pushed the sled, following the way that Giani cleared through the foliage.
A long rut dug into the ground, at least fifty feet long, slowly overgrown with time by nature again as grass and smaller plants took over, and at the end of it sat a Vampire. Split in half near the center, resting on either side of a crest of a hill that it had likely made on impact with the ground years ago. Giani whistled, sheathing the machete and motioning to Amelia.
"Take a look at that, kid. That's some serious business." He chuckled, throat raw, and needing to wipe sweat from his eyes as he did before hanging his sunglasses from a pocket of his shirt, "Shit looks ancient by the standards, you know?"
Amelia watched the wrecked spaceship, wiping the sweat from her brow and bracing her hands against her legs to catch her breath. The thing looked like it had been long claimed by nature, but she knew that military spaceships were built to be durable, so there was no doubt that they would find something salvageable in there, it also looked like they were the first to set eyes on it; The ship looked untouched.
"I wouldn't be surprised if we could activate some of the subsystems in it. Some of the ships from that war were built to outlive us." The woman said once she caught her breath, standing up erect and walking besides Giani. "We should check for the components first, if those are busted then we can just cut out parts of the hull for scrap metal." She said. ' That is, if that blowtorch has enough fuel.' She thought.
Giani began heading for the Vampire, walking to the outside of the dug out trench leading up to it. Even as they drew closer, battle damage showed through, in holes and large dents in the hull where the shields had failed to defend the ship and its crew from harm. All the while he listened to Amelia while also keeping an ear out to their surroundings. Listening to the sounds of animals further in the swampland, of the wind that carried through. As he drew closer still, coming to the rear of the shuttle, he reached out and ran two fingers across the sun-warmed steel hull.
Looking back at Amelia, the treasure hunter nodded towards the very section of craft he was touching, "Sounds like a good plan. The blowtorch ought to have plenty of fuel to get some decent scrap and we can always refill it and come back later if it runs out. So you up for pilfering around back here while I search up front?"
"Sure." She replied, letting go of the rope that she was using to push the sled, dusting her gloved hands against the faded green cargo pants that she wore. It was hard to discern at first, but as the woman approached the wrecked rear half of the spacecraft, she noticed that it was upside down, unlike the front half.
----- Downed craft - Rear end -----
Her booted feet touched something sturdy and firm, and she realized that it was a part of the rear hull that was the starboard side. Another thing that she noticed was that, unlike in the cheap sci-fi novels that she liked to read, that part of the ship wasn't neatly cleaved in half; The brute force of the impact along with the forced reentry had made it looked like some angry deity had grabbed the ship and torn it in half with its bare hands, leaving the sturdier metal struts jutting out from where the hull abruptly ceased to exist.
Crouching down near one such place, Amelia found her entrance to that section of the ship, grabbing a nearby root and giving it a tug, the woman turned around and eased herself down, dropping the last feet into the hard metal that was the ceiling of that compartment. She unclasped a small flashlight from her belt and turned it on, realizing that she was inside the patrol craft's cargo bay, if the boxes laying around were of any indication.
She stood up after panning the weak white beam of light left and right and started spelunking. A weak, pale light came from a puncture above her, through the a hole in the side of the hull that wasn't buried, and as Amelia pointed the flashlight around, a huge and bulky metal body caught her sight: A tank.
----- Downed craft - Front end -----
Giani's entrance wasn't nearly so difficult, as he approached the front end he came to the same realization as Amelia. This wasn't the nice clean severance he might have expected, but then he reminded himself that by the standards of high explosives and anti-starship grade weaponry: this kind of severance was rare. More often, ships this size caught with bigger guns just - ceased to be in one form or another. They were disintegrated in fiery blasts and left drifting through space or maybe burning up in re-entry. He didn't even ponder anything like the might and anger of gods or goddesses. Instead he found a low-hanging segment and hopped up. It was hard to get a hand-hold at first, but he caught the edge on the second try, and with a swing to his cybernetic-armed side he was soon able to throw a leg up as well to finally begin pulling himself inside.
Sunlight cast a dim glow that did little good past the first few feet of the interior and so he quickly pulled a small flashlight from his belt. He found himself staring down a long hallways, spartan in its decoration. True to what he'd read up about them, Vampires were not vessels of creature comforts. They were for privateers and pirates, so they could move fast, and they had big cargo bays. He began moving down the hall, stopping at a small doorway and peaking inside. With a grimace he found himself looking into the medical bay. A stream of daylight was coming in hear from a gaping hole in the roof. And he saw it was shining down on what - looked like boots.
Illuminating them he saw a skeleton in the tattered rags of a Red uniform against the wall, with a dark stain across the wall behind it that he could only guess to be blood or burn damage. If there was any decent place to start looking for salvage, it would be here. Old medical equipment and supplies. Nothing that could be used but he was sure they could find collectors somewhere on the market if they looked.
----- Downed craft - Rear end -----
Amelia was standing on top of what was the bottom of the tank, slightly crouched down and looking around . The vehicle in question was a wreck, flipped over on its upper side, the barrel from the main gun that jutted from under the hull was bent and twisted from the brute force of the impact following the reentry. The harnesses that were securing the tank in place couldn't have resisted that ammount of force, and probably gave away and let the tank bounce freely inside the cargo bay like a pinball.
Finally finding what she was looking for, Amelia managed to open the escape hatch on the bottom of the tank, which was designed for that very situation of the vehicle flipping over, and then used her flashlight to illuminate what was inside. She grabbed the edge of the hatch, holding the flashlight between her teeth and eased herself down into the flipped over tank.
Once Amelia was inside the vehicle, two things surprised her, the first was realising that the vehicle had been occupied by two skeletons -adding to the morbid scenery and giving her a chill down her spine- still clad in faded but noticeably red uniforms, and the second was whatever kind of particles that were floating about inside the vehicle that irritated her nose and made her go into a sneezing fit.
Once she finally came down from it, and stopped sightseeing the interior of the vehicle, Amelia set about the task of finding whatever it was valuable there, unclasping the leather belt that carried what looked like holstered .45 pistols from the two 'occupants' and slinging it over her shoulder, then grabbing an old trench shotgun that was probably meant to be used by the crew to board off anyone trying to get into their vehicle.
After a brief moment of hesitation as her mind weighed down the ethics concerning the respect of the dead, she came to a conclusion and pulled out the red berett from the skull of one of the skeletons as a souvenir. Upon not finding anything else of valuable, the woman left the tank and jumped back down to the ceiling of the upside down cargo bay and started checking the boxes.
----- Downed craft - Front end -----
With the click of a rusty, visibly damaged buckle, Giani pulled the belt from the skeleton, and held it up before he pulled the .45 from its holster to examine it. It looked decent enough, if not very well operable. After all, it was hard to make a side arm as sturdy as a space vessel. Rolling up the belt with the .45 still holstered, he tossed it into his back and set about looking through the containers and cupboards. Most were thrown open, their contents thrown about on the deck and shattered or busted beyond recognition. It was clear looking around that the Vampire's re-entry had most certainly not been in any way stable. Then again, that wasn't really surprising.
Once he was sure that he'd found essentially anything in that room worth while, he left, and turned his attention back to the inky darkness leading further into the ship. He was just close enough now that his flashlight revealed a sealed hatch, but it didn't appear like it was locked in place. It was the only doorway left, sitting at the end of the long hallway, and Giani approached cautiously. As he drew closer he realized that it most certainly wasn't fully locked when he noticed something about it. Where was the emergency bulkhead that would have come down during the crash? He ran his light along the edge of the door. Burn damage to the normal door's surface, with jagged looking metal outlining the door.
It had been cut away. By a torch, too. A powerful one at that. Giani frowned and one hand twitched as he felt the the hairs on his head stand up. Who had cut the bulkhead open? Why? A gap in the normal door provided a handhold that he began tugging against after a scan beyond showed him what he could see of the cockpit was clear: catching residual light through what little of the windows that hadn't been completely buried. The door gave easier than he thought after some effort. As if somebody else had broken it from the tracks before.
Casting his light around inside, Giani stepped in and took stock of his surroundings at first.
----- Downed craft - Rear end -----
Running a gloved hand on the metal crates, Amelia dusted an area of the surface off, opened the crate in question and checked what was inside before moving to the next ones. It didn't matter who owned the spaceships or what was their main purpose during the time it was being used by a crew, some things about them never changed when it concerned what they transported, and such was the case with the crates in the cargo bay. Most of them carried things varying from different kinds spare parts, which could be sold, ammunition, which could also be sold despite their age, and even food, which she doubted anyone on their sane mind would dare to try eating.
She singled out the crates that she could push or carry, and left the ones that she couldn't open so that Giani could help her move them once he was done searching his side. Amelia kept doing that until she found two metal crates stacked on top of the other, the two barely taller than her, and started pushing the crate on the top off the one on the bottom.
Just as the crate fell with a dry thud on the hard metal floor, Amelia fell back down as something pounced her, catching her entirely by surprise, making her drop the flashlight that she was holding.
She yelled and pushed at whatever was grabbing her, startled and finally pushing it aside and scrambling for the flashlight that rolled away and now was shining towards her general direction. Once she grabbed it and pointed it back at her 'assailant', she gave a sigh of relief and a brief chuckle once she found out that she had been pounced and attacked by the upper half of a skeleton, surely vengeful towards the woman that had come to steal the cargo from its ship. Or so she thought.
Crossing her legs and slowly catching her breath and wits again, Amelia looked at a fixed point directly ahead. She was starting to dislike that business, feeling more like it was some kind of grave-robbing than actual salvaging.
----- Downed craft - Front end -----
The cockpit was - not undisturbed. As he looked it over, the thin film of dust and dirt that had settled in the cockpit was visibly disturbed. Things had been moved around. Inspected. Like - like somebody was looking for something. Or, Giani thought, looking to hide something. Then his eyes settled on the silver glint coming from the pilot's seat at the front of the cockpit. There was a skeleton there, still strapped in with belts that somehow hadn't rotted away in the heat and humidity even if they looked nearly ready to. The skeleton was slumped forward, its arms resting over something like it was trying to keep a good hold of it.
Something that looked far too new to be here. Warily, Giani approached. His flashlight was in one hand and he'd already drawn his .45 as he stepped closer. When he was sure the case wasn't about to explode from motion or vibrations, he holstered his pistol for the sole purpose of gently shifting the skeleton's arms aside. The skull shifted and looked nearly ready to fall off as he gently tugged the case away.
"Sorry old friend. Don't mean to wake you up, or anything." He whispered.
Setting the case on the flight controls, he found that it wasn't locked at all. Simple manual latches allowed him to pop it open. As he shined his light on what was inside, Giani drew in a sharp breath, and felt his heart-beat rising. He turned back to the door, case in hand.
----- Downed craft - Rear end -----
Back on the surface and on top of the rear part of the craft's hull, Amelia wiped the sweat from her brow once again and dusted her gloved hands on the front of her pants, then taking the time to adjust the belt on her hips that sported two new sidearms. She wasn't sure if the guns were even serviceable anymore, but she would keep them even for decoration once the job was done with.
The woman hadn't found a way to remove the boxes containing the more valuable stuff from the cargo bay, but she figured that just tying them with a rope and pulling them out would do it; That is, if she had a hope. Since she hadn't bothered to ask, she had to make her way back to the front part of the ship, vaulting over an overgrown root and up a small slope until she was facing the other part of the ship that got detached.
"Hey, you there?" She called out to Giani, going in through the same hole in the hull.
----- Downed craft - Front end -----
Giani did his best not to break out into a run at that very moment, and instead down the long hall that she'd find herself facing, Amelia would see his flashlight as he scanned over the floor to make sure he didn't trip over anything he might have missed earlier. When he drew closer, he stowed the light, and wasted no time in holding up the case to Amelia: all but shoving it in her face for a moment before he even started explaining.
"I - I just found something huge. Take a look." He didin't elaborate however, instead keeping the case held there in one hand for her to take.
"Okay, calm down." Amelia said, raising an eyebrow and slowly taking the case away from the man's hand, her own gloved hand ran over the smooth silver surface of the case as she flipped it around and unclasped the locks.
"Okay, what have we got he-" She started to say, but her voice caught in her throat as she stared at was inside. She felt a tightening sensation on her chest, like her heart had skipped a beat, and quickly closed the case, staring at Giani. "You found this here?" She said, still incredulous about what they had just found.
Giani nodded, thumbing back the way he had came, "Somebody cut their way through the bulkhead and left it there, keeping it with the skeletons."
Gears were turning in the Marine's head as he tried to work out just what was going on. Who would leave something so valuable laying around? In the middle of the wilderness, where nobody was likely to find it? That train of thought was punctuated by distant sounds. Or distant lack of sounds. Birds and other animals were beginning to grow quiet in the distance and coming closer. Something, or someone, was moving through the swamp towards them, and they weren't bothering to be subtle about it. Like they didn't expect somebody to be there or something.
"It's a dead drop." Giani drew his .45 again, "It's a fucking drop-site."
"I thought you said this place was empty!" Amelia said in a hushed tone, barely containing the surprise. Of course the 'bad guys' -whoever they were- had to show up just as they found the case, because life was just like that; And she had a previous incident that just confirmed how life could come and take a dump on someone's plan in a moment's notice.
She pressed her back against the nearby wall, her hand going for the holster with her actual, working pistol, but not drawing it. "What do we do!?" She half said to herself, half asked Giani as she looked around the place too.
Giani crouched down in the shadows provided by the wreckage, watching the treeline in the distance with a grimace, "It was supposed to be fucking empty." He replied, "Isn't like I went around asking the mob."
As the newcomers drew closer, there was the sound of something. A motor, drawing closer through the trees. Likely some sturdy vehicle, but Giani could think of nothing other than a four-wheeler that would be both reliable enough in the terrain and small enough to navigate between the heavy tree coverage surrounding them. There were at least a few of them, he'd wager. Two, maybe three, but no more than that as far as he could tell.
"Keep your head down." He clicked the safety off the pistol he had drawn, "You think you're up for a fight?"
"What!?" Amelia said, even though she drew the pistol nonetheless, almost adding a 'Already?' to her sentence. Her mind raced, the thoughts going from 'this isn't supposed to be happening' to 'what it feels being shot'. The woman drew closer to Giani, "Can't we just run away?" She asked, even though she didn't let go of the case; It was too precious a find to decide to let go of it on a whim.
Giani shook his head, "You want to get shot in the back? 'sides, they've got vehicles by the sound of it. We can't outrun that unless we get to the truck."
The sounds of engines grew closer and soon enough one of the four-wheelers broke the tree-line. It was olive drab and covered in faux foliage and camouflage. Two riders were on it, both stepping off. From this distance the best Giani could tell was that it was two men, in civilian clothes, and one of them had what looked like a shotgun while the other was possibly carrying an SMG. As they were climbing off and pulling their helmets off, a second came through the tree-line. This had only one woman on it, with a pistol on her thigh that she didn't seem interested in drawing as she stepped off her own vehicle.
"Think we could take 'em?" Giani asked, "Maybe kill one or two and grab one of their rides?" He stayed down low, in the shadow of the wreck.
The three toughs were talking but he couldn't make out what they were saying as they huddled together for a few moments.
"Do we really have to?" Amelia asked, her face contorting into a pained, or desperate expression. It was obvious that she was a reluctant killer, but once she started actually taking in what Giani said, and picturing in her head how it would likely be being chased down and shot in as swamp, her gaze set and her expression became serious again.
"We gotta try, just tell me when and what to do." She said, pulling her pistol's slide back and confirming there was ammo on it, next the safety was clicked off as Amelia got ready to what came next.
Giani frowned, double-checking his own ammo as he watched the trio disperse. The two men separated and kept watching the treeline away from the ship several meters away from their ride. The female was starting to amble towards the shuttle, looking over her shoulder to give a few parting words. Giani quickly worked out a quick plan in his head.
"We gun her, you hit the deck on the back half to put the slope between you and them. Give me some covering fire. I'll move up to see if I can't keep them suppressed." Hopefully kill them, he didn't say, "You ever killed somebody before, kid?" Flexing his cybernetic hand in and out of a fist.
"Do I look like I have?" Amelia answered brusquely, leaving the pistol at a ready-low stance. The answer was already pretty obvious. She looked down on the floor, then back up at Giani, nodding to signal that she was ready and waited for the moment for them to shoot.
"Just don't think about it too much, kid. It passes." Giani steeled his nerves and rose up.
He hopped down from the shuttle to the ground below and before the woman even had a chance to react he raised his pistol. Three rounds in rapid succession and Giani was running for the same "cover" provided by the slope of the ship. Throwing himself to the ground, Giani peaked over the lip and fired at her postion as the trio sought cover.
Amelia dropped shortly after Giani, but either by her inexperience or surprise, she didn't react as quick as the man had done. She found herself frozen in place, still with enough time to watch the other woman topple and fall over on the ground after she was shot. The raven-haired woman stared as the 'victim' seemed to look at her.
The trance was broken, however, when one of the two men shouted something -which Amelia assumed, even as her mind raced, was the other woman's name- and fired his SMG at her, startling her and putting her head back where it mattered: Getting out of there.
She started to run, head down and with one arm uselessly covering the upper part of her head as she moved towards the rear part of the downed craft, the shots from the 'bad guys' kicking plumes off dirt off the floor near her until she went over the slope and down again, putting the cover between her and her assailants.
"Holy shit, she's dead, I saw it!" She exclaimed to Giani, having to pause the phrase every time her partner's pistol barked and fired against their adversaries. Raising her head just a bit over the lip of the slope so she could see what the two men were doing, but was glad to see that the two remaining men had sought cover.
Giani emptied his magazine and swore in frustration as he wasn't able to peg either of the two men before they had gotten to cover. Tucking the empty magazine in its place on the holster, he had quickly pulled another, slammed it home, and brought the slide forward in a fluid and well-trained motion. He looked over to Amelia, a brow raised.
"That's good, kid!" He fired off another trio of rounds to keep the closest of the men pinned down and ducked away from the edge just in time to avoid a burst of automatic fire, "One less to shoot us in the ass on the way out of here!"
Amelia, in turn, recoiled as some of the bullets whizzed over her while others hit the dirt of the slope. She recovered in time and remembered the next part of the plan, the one where she had to cover Giani
"Ok, go!" She said, then raised quickly and fired her pistol towards the man with the automatic weapon. Her shots were off to the right, then to the left, but they were enough to make him duck back into cover again like he had done before; she even doubted that she wanted to hit them herself.
She still had the state of mind to keep firing in short intervals, not too fast as to depelete the magazine and give the two 'bad guys' a chance to duck out and fire again. At least that was what she thought was the best course of action.
Giani was running as fast as he could for the fallen woman when Amelia began opening fire. He only had a few precious seconds to get into a good enough position so that he wouldn't get mowed down out in the open and leave Amelia alone with these thugs. On a running grab he managed to snatch up the fallen woman's pistol from where it had been laying on the ground. Already he had begun firing with his own pistol with his dominant hand. It wasn't until the closer of the two men, the one with the shotgun, popped up that he got him. The man's head rocked back before more rounds hit him center-mass.
With a risky slide just as both he and Amelia would have clicked dry with their first magazines, he ended up using the four-wheeler as cover against the remaining mobster.
Amelia's pistol clicked twice before she noticed that the slide was retracted and realized that her pistol was out of ammo. She released the magazine, then fumbled with one of her belt pouches as she picked a spare one, unclasping it open and retrieving the other magazine. She fumbled again as she dropped the magazine trying to put it in the pistol, making her duck back down, pick it up and put it back in for good.
She released the slide, making the pistol chamber receive a fresh round from the magazine and slowly raise from behind the slope, spotting Giani behind the vehicle and the other guy that he had killed, but not the third and last goon.
Giani pressed back against the four-wheeler that was so far his only cover in the fight. There had to be at least one last hostile still around and kicking. He had the dead woman's pistol in his off-hand, and his own still empty pistol in his dominant hand. A quick switch and he started doing his best to keep an ear out for the final mobster to come out of cover now that he wasn't getting shot at in the lull of reloading pistols. All the gunfire had Giani's ears ringing just a little as he dropped the empty magazine and hurriedly stuffed it back in one pocket. He'd nearly driven the new one home when the mobster popped out of cover.
A spray of automatic fire strafed the four-wheeler and Giani nearly wanted to scream as he felt the burn of a round passing under the vehicle grazing his leg before he curled to the side to be further behind the wheel.
"Amelia, fucking dome him, kid!" He screamed
By then, Amelia had slowly risen from the slope she had used for cover, supporting her weight on her elbows and still having time to see the bullets ripping through the four-wheeler. Seeing that instantly sprung her to action, making her rise further and aim towards the man with the automatic weapon and start firing.
Although her shots didn't really seem hit him, they were enough to scare him back to his cover, where she could see him fumbling with his weapon as he removed the spent magazine, throwing it away.
Giani clutched at his leg for a moment and pulled it back to see the crimson mixing in with the stains from the dirt on his palm. This was not what he'd come here for, but the young girl seeking cover from the gunifre, and trying to keep him covered was reason enough not to just call it quits. Amelia was a good kid and could probably go places with that brain of her's - assuming she stopped taking it to dumps and dives like this joint. Quickly reloading his own pistol, he could tell from her fire that Amelia had kept the man's head down, and he had to be reloading by now.
And then he heard something that made his blood run cold. More motors, further off in the distance but closing fast. And there was no way they were local police coming to investigate the noise. He looked to Amelia as he chambered a round in his own pistol and got ready to pop from cover. They'd have to take out this thug fast, and then get out of there.
Giani stood from cover with his weight on his cybernetic leg. pistols akimbo, but the thug never got up, still with his back pressed against the tree, only to toppe to the side, hitting the muddy ground a few moments later . And with that settling moment?
The engines only drew closer.
"Kid, grab their fucking guns and let's go!" Giani moved to the woman's body, searching for a key to the ATV, while slowly but surely, Amelia rose from where she was, her hands, knees and belly caked with dark stains from the mud; She was still holding her pistol, seemingly oblivious that it was spent again, if the slide locked back was of any clue.
She quickly moved out of there with all the things she had gathered inside the downed spacecraft clanking against one another. Stopping near the first body, the thug with the shotgun, she took the weapon and moved to the last one, still downed besides the tree.
Once she got there, however, she caught herself hesitating yet again as she stared at the downed man. There was no doubt that she had shot him, even if it didn't look like that at first, which was still just as unsettling to her. Even though violence was common and pretty much everywhere in most of Nepleslia - and especially on a place like Kennewes- the fact that it had been her who had actually shot that man dead was what got to her. She crouched down next to him, only to find out that, much to her surprise, that he was still alive, but bleeding out quickly.
Amelia slowly reached out and took the submachinegun from the dying man. Even in her 'stupor' she could clearly see that it was just a Styrling Ripshot, as well as remember the most vague things about the weapon, despite the man staring at her, in a way that was both accusing and pleading. The raven-haired woman slowly rose, also finding out that the hand holding the newly acquired weapon had decided to go on a shaking fit whether she liked it or not, then she started running back towards Giani.
It was easy to blend in with the crowd of the spaceport that went to and fro, bustling with activity as it was during noon, it showed that the destruction wrought from the war against the Reds had damaged Kennewes but not crippled it.
The evidence from the war had become more than a happening in history, but also been ingrained into the planetary culture; Selling souvenirs and tokens was a common thing everywhere on the planet. Such a practice was clear from the number of stands and shops that were selling such things right outside the Arrivals area of the spaceport.
Another obvious sign that it was also a Nepleslian planet was the increased security, both from the spaceport, with marines standing guard on strategic locations, and civilians, who it was safe to assume were all armed with anything short of an assault rifle. Although it wasn't Funky City, the planet could still be as much or more dangerous since many of the Reds who didn't go back to legal service after the war had instead went into a more illegal path.
Sitting on a bench under an archway at the spaceport's lobby, Amelia noticed all that, one arm resting against a large duffel bag and a backpack sitting at the woman's lap. She was wearing the familiar grey jacket, which was folded all the way to her elbows, and had ditched the black sweater from under it as soon as the hotter swamp climate had hit her. She also wore green, faded cargo pants that were tucked inside a pair of boots.
Pulling a Datajockey from her backpack, the raven-haired woman tapped the screen with a gloved hand and sent a message to the person that was waiting for her.
Code:
I'm waiting under the archway, right next to Arrivals.Pulling the electronic aside, she looked around, right hand hovering next to the weapon holster she had. Although she didn't expect anything happening inside the very secure spaceport, it didn't cost to be cautious. That, and she knew she could expect trouble in the planet.
He'd hit the surface two days ahead of his partner, scouting out the area to see if he could find any sort of leads on salvage. For the most part it had been two days just trying to rest up and still having to work out the kinks and pains from time spent in a hospital recovering. Other than that? To find the kinds of things that he and Amelia were going to be looking for, a man only had to stand in any pock-marked field he liked, and throw a rock. So he wasn't too worried about their finding something to get money off of.
Walking the streets, he was dressed close to how he had been before. His Fleet cap announcing him as a Marine veteran had been lost the day he took a missile like a champ and he hadn't bothered to replace it with another. Instead he wore a simple and unremarkable black baseball cap to cover his shaggy hair and to help keep whatever glaring sunlight out of his eyes that the wrap-around shades he wore wouldn't catch. He preferred sunglasses from his days in Crypto: it was harder for people to watch his eyes and they helped with a poker face. Not that he needed anything like that, he hoped. If everything went well it would just be he and Amelia scavenging old tech and weapons for money by themselves.
When the message light blinked on for his datajockey, he had been too busy watching the road to keep an eye on the surrounding traffic. He was a bike man, personally. They were smaller, easier to weave in and out of traffic, and were really just fun to ride. But the nature of the business had called for a truck. A big, unyieldy, steers-like-an-overladen-merchant ship, truck. It wasn't until he had pulled into the appropriate parking for Arrival Pickups that he'd finally been able to send the message.
Code:
Red, rusty piece-of-shit truck in guest pick-up. - GAmelia was up and walking soon after reading the message, tucking the datajockey back into the backpack and then hefting the -manageably light- duffelbag. She slung the large piece of luggage over her shoulder and started walking, making her way through the groups of passers-bys in long strides.
The humid heat was the first noticeable thing she felt once she left the air-conditioned interiors of the spaceport, and as she made her way towards the parked vehicles she could already feel the sweat wicking through her clothes as the suffocating humidity prevented it from evaporating.
She eventually spotted the red truck sittling idle, and the all-too-familiar face on the driver's seat, and made her way there, looking around every once in a while. She tossed the duffel bag on the back of the truck before tapping on the window.
"Got room for one more?"
Giani had been able to see her as she came out the door. He had kept where he was and fished a cigarette out from a small silver case he kept tucked in the pocket of the white button-up shirt that he'd decided to wear. His thumb on the left hand had clicked open and he was busy getting a bright "cherry" burning when she'd finally thrown her duffel into the back of the truck. She'd find it wasn't alone, with his own duffel bag on the opposite side of the truck bed, and with what looked like several smaller crates of equipment of some kind, covered with a tarp, and lashed down to the truck bed by tie-downs.
He took off his shades and tossed them lazily onto the dash, rolling the window down with a press of the button on his door, "And where are you goin, stranger?" He asked with a smile.
"Oh, I don't know. I think I took the wrong spaceliner, they told me there would be this very nice car waiting for me." She said, jokingly, then added, "Think you could give me a ride?"
With a click, the door unlocked. Of course the truck rode high enough on heavy-duty tires that a short woman like her would probably get the best use of the running boards, which she did, putting one foot on the running board, then grabbing the door for support as she hefted herself up to the passenger's seat.
"How's life been treating you?" She asked once she was seated, door closed and window raised.
The air conditioner clicked on to blast them both with cold air. Frankly he'd been running it so much to fight the heat that he was surprised the fan hadn't died yet. As he backed out of the lot, he kept his eyes on his surroundings, with one hand on the wheel, and the other holding his cigarette as he drove.
"Just sore, kid." He chuckled, "Don't know if you remember, but I kinda got raped by a missile not too long ago." At a stop sign he flexed his cybernetic hand, the one gripping the wheel, "Doctor said he was half-tempted to put a jacket on my spine after everything that happened. Damn lucky I din' break my neck."
He still had a smile on his face while he said this. A man happy to be alive, while Amelia just had a faint smile on her face.
"How about you, kid? Din' have to beat off any cute boys with a stick while sittin' around waiting for me to come pick you up, did you?"
"No, I'm not the sort of person that has them come running." She said, scoffing at the remark as she looked out the window. "So, where and when do we start?" She added.
"Got word of some old Red craft crashed into a bog a few miles from the city. Only problem is, its not the sort of place that's real easy to reach by vehicle. How are you for hiking?"
"I'm good." Was all that she answered. The last time that she had went 'hiking' in the woods things had turned very sour, very quick and very violently. The event still lingered in her memory.
He left the spaceport and got over into the least busy lane he could find, heading north, while Amelia just stared out of the window, taking in as much of the planet as she could.
"Bribed the info from an old former pilot. Says his own plane crashed down somewhere in the bog when he had to bail. Only thing he really wanted from me was some DS and a promise that we'd try and 'be respectful' of any of the dead." Giani shrugged, "Easy enough."
"We're not gonna have any... Problems again, right?" She asked, not sure whether the event in Nepleslia Prime was as bad a memory for Giani as it was for her. For one thing, it had sure made her stronger, in a way.
Giani shook his head, "Nothing out there but nature as far as most of the rest of the world is concerned. Old man said he was one of the only people still alive who knew these things were out there. Bombs, ammo, old computer tech and commo that we can pull from the birds. Unless you believe in ghosts, we're gonna be fine. If not, then just don't touch the skel'tons too much."
The city was large but Giani had learned quickly over the last two days just how to get to the city limits as quickly as possible. As he drove and they moved further and further away from the spaceport, the buildings began to grow shorter. Their surroundings became less clean-looking, with graffiti sprayed across the walls of some buildings or the supports of overpasses. Traffic heading in their direction was beginning to die down. From between some buildings, the deep green of swamp-land and bogs in the distance, cut by the murky lines of rivers began to peak through.
"Man, would you look at that? Nature. Isn't something the normal city-types look at too often. I bet the pencil pushers in the business district'd piss themselves if they came out this close to the city limits."
"Yeah. Naaature." She said, mimicking Giani. She wasn't too concerned about it like she had last time, it was just a matter of going there, picking up what they could, and then getting the hell out. Touch and go. Or at least she told herself.
"Do you have a specific buyer for this kind of stuff?" She asked after a while, looking back at Giani and shifting on her seat once the marshes had became repetitive. She didn't doubt the value that some of the things could impose, and if push came to shove they could always sell it as scrap.
"Of course. The old man wants any unit patches, memrobilia, tags. That sort of thing. Plus if we don't like his prices there are always vendors who'll buy the stuff up in the Market. Any ammo can be sold to museums, and if I find any fuses that are still workable then we could probably sell those quick on the Market, too."
"Figures." Amelia replied. She woudn't be surprised if the whole planetary economy was based off selling souvenirs from the war. It was, for her, melancholic in its own way, a culture that tried to cling to the past while the rest of Nepleslia had simply moved on and faced other things like the squids.
Eventually he took an off-ramp and hit a road that was remarkably worse in quality. Only the truck's suspension and tires kept it from feeling like they were being bucked up into the roof of the truck with every pothole or dip in the "road" that they hit. Already they were drawing farther and farther from the city. Only the GPS display on the dashboard would let either know where they were exactly. Within a few feet, of course.
"Why? Nervous?"
"No, just... Wary. I heard this place can be more dangerous than your average planet." She answered; Being more dangerous than the average Nepleslian planet already spoke miles of the condition of Kennewes. She let go of that train of thought and held onto the grab-bar on the roof of the truck to stabilize herself as the vehicle gently rocked her frame around.
Giani chuckled, "Nothing is going to be out there but animals and some old skeletons to bother you. Plus maybe you'll get some mud in your boots."
"Yeah, I heard that one before." She retorted a bit dryly, not adding anything else.
The drive went slower than it had on the highway. Lacking the smooth finish of the previous roads, Giani tried to keep up a good speed without making the ride too uncomfortable for either of them, or risking heading off-road into deep water or the mud of bogs and swamps that could just about eat the truck alive and leave them stranded.
"Besides, why would pirates be interested in some old wrecks and corpses?" He shook his head, "This isn't anything like the magical freakin' super-mushrooms down in those old ruins. Honest pledge from a pilot who had his bird crash there."
"Yeah, sorry. Just being paranoid, I guess." She said. Maybe the last job had really made her pessimistic about any and everything. She still caught this change of attitude most of the times, and tried to stifle it, but that was not the case.
"I don't blame you, kid. Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean somebody isn't out to get you, sometimes." Giani shrugged, "A'sides, we've got guns with us, so we should be fine enough, I bet. A bird would have a hell time trying to peg us in this mess."
At an "intersection" almost unnoticable with how it was so overgrown and worn down by nature, he turned off the clearer path they'd been on, went forward just a bit further until the GPS display on the dash squawked at them, and finally came to a stop.
"So are you ready for a little explorin'?" He headed for the tailgate and waved for her to follow while he opened the tailgate and hopped up into the bed of the truck to start uncovering the crates in the back, "Brought some hand-held welding business, some 'splosives, some guns and ammo, and a sled for dragging back the heavier stuff we can't just stuff into our bags."
"Might as well get to it, then." Amelia said to herself as she jumped out of the truck, landing on the patched dirt beneath. She left her backpack inside, but grabbed a belt from inside of it that had a holstered pistol along with some pouches for extra magazines, then pushed the backpack on the truck's floor and closed the door.
She waked around the truck until she was besides Giani again. "Yeah, I'm ready to make some money." the woman replied, heavens knew she needed it.
=== Some Time Later ===
It wasn't more than a half mile from the path, but the thick undergrowth, the darkness from the canopy overhead, and the deep and murky water with mud seemingly intent to suck away a man's boots made it a painful journey. It wasn't until the water levels began to drop and they were eventually on dry ground, Giani hacking his way at low-hanging foliage with one of the machetes he'd made sure to pack for the two of them, that they'd finally started walking on more solid and dry ground than before. The trees and hazy mist over the ground began to dissipate and before long they could see it.
Amelia was just behind him, having ditched the sweater and tied the sleeves around her waist under the belt that carried her gun and spare ammo, which revealed the white tank-top that she wore underneath that piece of attire. The woman pushed the sled, following the way that Giani cleared through the foliage.
A long rut dug into the ground, at least fifty feet long, slowly overgrown with time by nature again as grass and smaller plants took over, and at the end of it sat a Vampire. Split in half near the center, resting on either side of a crest of a hill that it had likely made on impact with the ground years ago. Giani whistled, sheathing the machete and motioning to Amelia.
"Take a look at that, kid. That's some serious business." He chuckled, throat raw, and needing to wipe sweat from his eyes as he did before hanging his sunglasses from a pocket of his shirt, "Shit looks ancient by the standards, you know?"
Amelia watched the wrecked spaceship, wiping the sweat from her brow and bracing her hands against her legs to catch her breath. The thing looked like it had been long claimed by nature, but she knew that military spaceships were built to be durable, so there was no doubt that they would find something salvageable in there, it also looked like they were the first to set eyes on it; The ship looked untouched.
"I wouldn't be surprised if we could activate some of the subsystems in it. Some of the ships from that war were built to outlive us." The woman said once she caught her breath, standing up erect and walking besides Giani. "We should check for the components first, if those are busted then we can just cut out parts of the hull for scrap metal." She said. ' That is, if that blowtorch has enough fuel.' She thought.
Giani began heading for the Vampire, walking to the outside of the dug out trench leading up to it. Even as they drew closer, battle damage showed through, in holes and large dents in the hull where the shields had failed to defend the ship and its crew from harm. All the while he listened to Amelia while also keeping an ear out to their surroundings. Listening to the sounds of animals further in the swampland, of the wind that carried through. As he drew closer still, coming to the rear of the shuttle, he reached out and ran two fingers across the sun-warmed steel hull.
Looking back at Amelia, the treasure hunter nodded towards the very section of craft he was touching, "Sounds like a good plan. The blowtorch ought to have plenty of fuel to get some decent scrap and we can always refill it and come back later if it runs out. So you up for pilfering around back here while I search up front?"
"Sure." She replied, letting go of the rope that she was using to push the sled, dusting her gloved hands against the faded green cargo pants that she wore. It was hard to discern at first, but as the woman approached the wrecked rear half of the spacecraft, she noticed that it was upside down, unlike the front half.
----- Downed craft - Rear end -----
Her booted feet touched something sturdy and firm, and she realized that it was a part of the rear hull that was the starboard side. Another thing that she noticed was that, unlike in the cheap sci-fi novels that she liked to read, that part of the ship wasn't neatly cleaved in half; The brute force of the impact along with the forced reentry had made it looked like some angry deity had grabbed the ship and torn it in half with its bare hands, leaving the sturdier metal struts jutting out from where the hull abruptly ceased to exist.
Crouching down near one such place, Amelia found her entrance to that section of the ship, grabbing a nearby root and giving it a tug, the woman turned around and eased herself down, dropping the last feet into the hard metal that was the ceiling of that compartment. She unclasped a small flashlight from her belt and turned it on, realizing that she was inside the patrol craft's cargo bay, if the boxes laying around were of any indication.
She stood up after panning the weak white beam of light left and right and started spelunking. A weak, pale light came from a puncture above her, through the a hole in the side of the hull that wasn't buried, and as Amelia pointed the flashlight around, a huge and bulky metal body caught her sight: A tank.
----- Downed craft - Front end -----
Giani's entrance wasn't nearly so difficult, as he approached the front end he came to the same realization as Amelia. This wasn't the nice clean severance he might have expected, but then he reminded himself that by the standards of high explosives and anti-starship grade weaponry: this kind of severance was rare. More often, ships this size caught with bigger guns just - ceased to be in one form or another. They were disintegrated in fiery blasts and left drifting through space or maybe burning up in re-entry. He didn't even ponder anything like the might and anger of gods or goddesses. Instead he found a low-hanging segment and hopped up. It was hard to get a hand-hold at first, but he caught the edge on the second try, and with a swing to his cybernetic-armed side he was soon able to throw a leg up as well to finally begin pulling himself inside.
Sunlight cast a dim glow that did little good past the first few feet of the interior and so he quickly pulled a small flashlight from his belt. He found himself staring down a long hallways, spartan in its decoration. True to what he'd read up about them, Vampires were not vessels of creature comforts. They were for privateers and pirates, so they could move fast, and they had big cargo bays. He began moving down the hall, stopping at a small doorway and peaking inside. With a grimace he found himself looking into the medical bay. A stream of daylight was coming in hear from a gaping hole in the roof. And he saw it was shining down on what - looked like boots.
Illuminating them he saw a skeleton in the tattered rags of a Red uniform against the wall, with a dark stain across the wall behind it that he could only guess to be blood or burn damage. If there was any decent place to start looking for salvage, it would be here. Old medical equipment and supplies. Nothing that could be used but he was sure they could find collectors somewhere on the market if they looked.
----- Downed craft - Rear end -----
Amelia was standing on top of what was the bottom of the tank, slightly crouched down and looking around . The vehicle in question was a wreck, flipped over on its upper side, the barrel from the main gun that jutted from under the hull was bent and twisted from the brute force of the impact following the reentry. The harnesses that were securing the tank in place couldn't have resisted that ammount of force, and probably gave away and let the tank bounce freely inside the cargo bay like a pinball.
Finally finding what she was looking for, Amelia managed to open the escape hatch on the bottom of the tank, which was designed for that very situation of the vehicle flipping over, and then used her flashlight to illuminate what was inside. She grabbed the edge of the hatch, holding the flashlight between her teeth and eased herself down into the flipped over tank.
Once Amelia was inside the vehicle, two things surprised her, the first was realising that the vehicle had been occupied by two skeletons -adding to the morbid scenery and giving her a chill down her spine- still clad in faded but noticeably red uniforms, and the second was whatever kind of particles that were floating about inside the vehicle that irritated her nose and made her go into a sneezing fit.
Once she finally came down from it, and stopped sightseeing the interior of the vehicle, Amelia set about the task of finding whatever it was valuable there, unclasping the leather belt that carried what looked like holstered .45 pistols from the two 'occupants' and slinging it over her shoulder, then grabbing an old trench shotgun that was probably meant to be used by the crew to board off anyone trying to get into their vehicle.
After a brief moment of hesitation as her mind weighed down the ethics concerning the respect of the dead, she came to a conclusion and pulled out the red berett from the skull of one of the skeletons as a souvenir. Upon not finding anything else of valuable, the woman left the tank and jumped back down to the ceiling of the upside down cargo bay and started checking the boxes.
----- Downed craft - Front end -----
With the click of a rusty, visibly damaged buckle, Giani pulled the belt from the skeleton, and held it up before he pulled the .45 from its holster to examine it. It looked decent enough, if not very well operable. After all, it was hard to make a side arm as sturdy as a space vessel. Rolling up the belt with the .45 still holstered, he tossed it into his back and set about looking through the containers and cupboards. Most were thrown open, their contents thrown about on the deck and shattered or busted beyond recognition. It was clear looking around that the Vampire's re-entry had most certainly not been in any way stable. Then again, that wasn't really surprising.
Once he was sure that he'd found essentially anything in that room worth while, he left, and turned his attention back to the inky darkness leading further into the ship. He was just close enough now that his flashlight revealed a sealed hatch, but it didn't appear like it was locked in place. It was the only doorway left, sitting at the end of the long hallway, and Giani approached cautiously. As he drew closer he realized that it most certainly wasn't fully locked when he noticed something about it. Where was the emergency bulkhead that would have come down during the crash? He ran his light along the edge of the door. Burn damage to the normal door's surface, with jagged looking metal outlining the door.
It had been cut away. By a torch, too. A powerful one at that. Giani frowned and one hand twitched as he felt the the hairs on his head stand up. Who had cut the bulkhead open? Why? A gap in the normal door provided a handhold that he began tugging against after a scan beyond showed him what he could see of the cockpit was clear: catching residual light through what little of the windows that hadn't been completely buried. The door gave easier than he thought after some effort. As if somebody else had broken it from the tracks before.
Casting his light around inside, Giani stepped in and took stock of his surroundings at first.
----- Downed craft - Rear end -----
Running a gloved hand on the metal crates, Amelia dusted an area of the surface off, opened the crate in question and checked what was inside before moving to the next ones. It didn't matter who owned the spaceships or what was their main purpose during the time it was being used by a crew, some things about them never changed when it concerned what they transported, and such was the case with the crates in the cargo bay. Most of them carried things varying from different kinds spare parts, which could be sold, ammunition, which could also be sold despite their age, and even food, which she doubted anyone on their sane mind would dare to try eating.
She singled out the crates that she could push or carry, and left the ones that she couldn't open so that Giani could help her move them once he was done searching his side. Amelia kept doing that until she found two metal crates stacked on top of the other, the two barely taller than her, and started pushing the crate on the top off the one on the bottom.
Just as the crate fell with a dry thud on the hard metal floor, Amelia fell back down as something pounced her, catching her entirely by surprise, making her drop the flashlight that she was holding.
She yelled and pushed at whatever was grabbing her, startled and finally pushing it aside and scrambling for the flashlight that rolled away and now was shining towards her general direction. Once she grabbed it and pointed it back at her 'assailant', she gave a sigh of relief and a brief chuckle once she found out that she had been pounced and attacked by the upper half of a skeleton, surely vengeful towards the woman that had come to steal the cargo from its ship. Or so she thought.
Crossing her legs and slowly catching her breath and wits again, Amelia looked at a fixed point directly ahead. She was starting to dislike that business, feeling more like it was some kind of grave-robbing than actual salvaging.
----- Downed craft - Front end -----
The cockpit was - not undisturbed. As he looked it over, the thin film of dust and dirt that had settled in the cockpit was visibly disturbed. Things had been moved around. Inspected. Like - like somebody was looking for something. Or, Giani thought, looking to hide something. Then his eyes settled on the silver glint coming from the pilot's seat at the front of the cockpit. There was a skeleton there, still strapped in with belts that somehow hadn't rotted away in the heat and humidity even if they looked nearly ready to. The skeleton was slumped forward, its arms resting over something like it was trying to keep a good hold of it.
Something that looked far too new to be here. Warily, Giani approached. His flashlight was in one hand and he'd already drawn his .45 as he stepped closer. When he was sure the case wasn't about to explode from motion or vibrations, he holstered his pistol for the sole purpose of gently shifting the skeleton's arms aside. The skull shifted and looked nearly ready to fall off as he gently tugged the case away.
"Sorry old friend. Don't mean to wake you up, or anything." He whispered.
Setting the case on the flight controls, he found that it wasn't locked at all. Simple manual latches allowed him to pop it open. As he shined his light on what was inside, Giani drew in a sharp breath, and felt his heart-beat rising. He turned back to the door, case in hand.
----- Downed craft - Rear end -----
Back on the surface and on top of the rear part of the craft's hull, Amelia wiped the sweat from her brow once again and dusted her gloved hands on the front of her pants, then taking the time to adjust the belt on her hips that sported two new sidearms. She wasn't sure if the guns were even serviceable anymore, but she would keep them even for decoration once the job was done with.
The woman hadn't found a way to remove the boxes containing the more valuable stuff from the cargo bay, but she figured that just tying them with a rope and pulling them out would do it; That is, if she had a hope. Since she hadn't bothered to ask, she had to make her way back to the front part of the ship, vaulting over an overgrown root and up a small slope until she was facing the other part of the ship that got detached.
"Hey, you there?" She called out to Giani, going in through the same hole in the hull.
----- Downed craft - Front end -----
Giani did his best not to break out into a run at that very moment, and instead down the long hall that she'd find herself facing, Amelia would see his flashlight as he scanned over the floor to make sure he didn't trip over anything he might have missed earlier. When he drew closer, he stowed the light, and wasted no time in holding up the case to Amelia: all but shoving it in her face for a moment before he even started explaining.
"I - I just found something huge. Take a look." He didin't elaborate however, instead keeping the case held there in one hand for her to take.
"Okay, calm down." Amelia said, raising an eyebrow and slowly taking the case away from the man's hand, her own gloved hand ran over the smooth silver surface of the case as she flipped it around and unclasped the locks.
"Okay, what have we got he-" She started to say, but her voice caught in her throat as she stared at was inside. She felt a tightening sensation on her chest, like her heart had skipped a beat, and quickly closed the case, staring at Giani. "You found this here?" She said, still incredulous about what they had just found.
Giani nodded, thumbing back the way he had came, "Somebody cut their way through the bulkhead and left it there, keeping it with the skeletons."
Gears were turning in the Marine's head as he tried to work out just what was going on. Who would leave something so valuable laying around? In the middle of the wilderness, where nobody was likely to find it? That train of thought was punctuated by distant sounds. Or distant lack of sounds. Birds and other animals were beginning to grow quiet in the distance and coming closer. Something, or someone, was moving through the swamp towards them, and they weren't bothering to be subtle about it. Like they didn't expect somebody to be there or something.
"It's a dead drop." Giani drew his .45 again, "It's a fucking drop-site."
"I thought you said this place was empty!" Amelia said in a hushed tone, barely containing the surprise. Of course the 'bad guys' -whoever they were- had to show up just as they found the case, because life was just like that; And she had a previous incident that just confirmed how life could come and take a dump on someone's plan in a moment's notice.
She pressed her back against the nearby wall, her hand going for the holster with her actual, working pistol, but not drawing it. "What do we do!?" She half said to herself, half asked Giani as she looked around the place too.
Giani crouched down in the shadows provided by the wreckage, watching the treeline in the distance with a grimace, "It was supposed to be fucking empty." He replied, "Isn't like I went around asking the mob."
As the newcomers drew closer, there was the sound of something. A motor, drawing closer through the trees. Likely some sturdy vehicle, but Giani could think of nothing other than a four-wheeler that would be both reliable enough in the terrain and small enough to navigate between the heavy tree coverage surrounding them. There were at least a few of them, he'd wager. Two, maybe three, but no more than that as far as he could tell.
"Keep your head down." He clicked the safety off the pistol he had drawn, "You think you're up for a fight?"
"What!?" Amelia said, even though she drew the pistol nonetheless, almost adding a 'Already?' to her sentence. Her mind raced, the thoughts going from 'this isn't supposed to be happening' to 'what it feels being shot'. The woman drew closer to Giani, "Can't we just run away?" She asked, even though she didn't let go of the case; It was too precious a find to decide to let go of it on a whim.
Giani shook his head, "You want to get shot in the back? 'sides, they've got vehicles by the sound of it. We can't outrun that unless we get to the truck."
The sounds of engines grew closer and soon enough one of the four-wheelers broke the tree-line. It was olive drab and covered in faux foliage and camouflage. Two riders were on it, both stepping off. From this distance the best Giani could tell was that it was two men, in civilian clothes, and one of them had what looked like a shotgun while the other was possibly carrying an SMG. As they were climbing off and pulling their helmets off, a second came through the tree-line. This had only one woman on it, with a pistol on her thigh that she didn't seem interested in drawing as she stepped off her own vehicle.
"Think we could take 'em?" Giani asked, "Maybe kill one or two and grab one of their rides?" He stayed down low, in the shadow of the wreck.
The three toughs were talking but he couldn't make out what they were saying as they huddled together for a few moments.
"Do we really have to?" Amelia asked, her face contorting into a pained, or desperate expression. It was obvious that she was a reluctant killer, but once she started actually taking in what Giani said, and picturing in her head how it would likely be being chased down and shot in as swamp, her gaze set and her expression became serious again.
"We gotta try, just tell me when and what to do." She said, pulling her pistol's slide back and confirming there was ammo on it, next the safety was clicked off as Amelia got ready to what came next.
Giani frowned, double-checking his own ammo as he watched the trio disperse. The two men separated and kept watching the treeline away from the ship several meters away from their ride. The female was starting to amble towards the shuttle, looking over her shoulder to give a few parting words. Giani quickly worked out a quick plan in his head.
"We gun her, you hit the deck on the back half to put the slope between you and them. Give me some covering fire. I'll move up to see if I can't keep them suppressed." Hopefully kill them, he didn't say, "You ever killed somebody before, kid?" Flexing his cybernetic hand in and out of a fist.
"Do I look like I have?" Amelia answered brusquely, leaving the pistol at a ready-low stance. The answer was already pretty obvious. She looked down on the floor, then back up at Giani, nodding to signal that she was ready and waited for the moment for them to shoot.
"Just don't think about it too much, kid. It passes." Giani steeled his nerves and rose up.
He hopped down from the shuttle to the ground below and before the woman even had a chance to react he raised his pistol. Three rounds in rapid succession and Giani was running for the same "cover" provided by the slope of the ship. Throwing himself to the ground, Giani peaked over the lip and fired at her postion as the trio sought cover.
Amelia dropped shortly after Giani, but either by her inexperience or surprise, she didn't react as quick as the man had done. She found herself frozen in place, still with enough time to watch the other woman topple and fall over on the ground after she was shot. The raven-haired woman stared as the 'victim' seemed to look at her.
The trance was broken, however, when one of the two men shouted something -which Amelia assumed, even as her mind raced, was the other woman's name- and fired his SMG at her, startling her and putting her head back where it mattered: Getting out of there.
She started to run, head down and with one arm uselessly covering the upper part of her head as she moved towards the rear part of the downed craft, the shots from the 'bad guys' kicking plumes off dirt off the floor near her until she went over the slope and down again, putting the cover between her and her assailants.
"Holy shit, she's dead, I saw it!" She exclaimed to Giani, having to pause the phrase every time her partner's pistol barked and fired against their adversaries. Raising her head just a bit over the lip of the slope so she could see what the two men were doing, but was glad to see that the two remaining men had sought cover.
Giani emptied his magazine and swore in frustration as he wasn't able to peg either of the two men before they had gotten to cover. Tucking the empty magazine in its place on the holster, he had quickly pulled another, slammed it home, and brought the slide forward in a fluid and well-trained motion. He looked over to Amelia, a brow raised.
"That's good, kid!" He fired off another trio of rounds to keep the closest of the men pinned down and ducked away from the edge just in time to avoid a burst of automatic fire, "One less to shoot us in the ass on the way out of here!"
Amelia, in turn, recoiled as some of the bullets whizzed over her while others hit the dirt of the slope. She recovered in time and remembered the next part of the plan, the one where she had to cover Giani
"Ok, go!" She said, then raised quickly and fired her pistol towards the man with the automatic weapon. Her shots were off to the right, then to the left, but they were enough to make him duck back into cover again like he had done before; she even doubted that she wanted to hit them herself.
She still had the state of mind to keep firing in short intervals, not too fast as to depelete the magazine and give the two 'bad guys' a chance to duck out and fire again. At least that was what she thought was the best course of action.
Giani was running as fast as he could for the fallen woman when Amelia began opening fire. He only had a few precious seconds to get into a good enough position so that he wouldn't get mowed down out in the open and leave Amelia alone with these thugs. On a running grab he managed to snatch up the fallen woman's pistol from where it had been laying on the ground. Already he had begun firing with his own pistol with his dominant hand. It wasn't until the closer of the two men, the one with the shotgun, popped up that he got him. The man's head rocked back before more rounds hit him center-mass.
With a risky slide just as both he and Amelia would have clicked dry with their first magazines, he ended up using the four-wheeler as cover against the remaining mobster.
Amelia's pistol clicked twice before she noticed that the slide was retracted and realized that her pistol was out of ammo. She released the magazine, then fumbled with one of her belt pouches as she picked a spare one, unclasping it open and retrieving the other magazine. She fumbled again as she dropped the magazine trying to put it in the pistol, making her duck back down, pick it up and put it back in for good.
She released the slide, making the pistol chamber receive a fresh round from the magazine and slowly raise from behind the slope, spotting Giani behind the vehicle and the other guy that he had killed, but not the third and last goon.
Giani pressed back against the four-wheeler that was so far his only cover in the fight. There had to be at least one last hostile still around and kicking. He had the dead woman's pistol in his off-hand, and his own still empty pistol in his dominant hand. A quick switch and he started doing his best to keep an ear out for the final mobster to come out of cover now that he wasn't getting shot at in the lull of reloading pistols. All the gunfire had Giani's ears ringing just a little as he dropped the empty magazine and hurriedly stuffed it back in one pocket. He'd nearly driven the new one home when the mobster popped out of cover.
A spray of automatic fire strafed the four-wheeler and Giani nearly wanted to scream as he felt the burn of a round passing under the vehicle grazing his leg before he curled to the side to be further behind the wheel.
"Amelia, fucking dome him, kid!" He screamed
By then, Amelia had slowly risen from the slope she had used for cover, supporting her weight on her elbows and still having time to see the bullets ripping through the four-wheeler. Seeing that instantly sprung her to action, making her rise further and aim towards the man with the automatic weapon and start firing.
Although her shots didn't really seem hit him, they were enough to scare him back to his cover, where she could see him fumbling with his weapon as he removed the spent magazine, throwing it away.
Giani clutched at his leg for a moment and pulled it back to see the crimson mixing in with the stains from the dirt on his palm. This was not what he'd come here for, but the young girl seeking cover from the gunifre, and trying to keep him covered was reason enough not to just call it quits. Amelia was a good kid and could probably go places with that brain of her's - assuming she stopped taking it to dumps and dives like this joint. Quickly reloading his own pistol, he could tell from her fire that Amelia had kept the man's head down, and he had to be reloading by now.
And then he heard something that made his blood run cold. More motors, further off in the distance but closing fast. And there was no way they were local police coming to investigate the noise. He looked to Amelia as he chambered a round in his own pistol and got ready to pop from cover. They'd have to take out this thug fast, and then get out of there.
Giani stood from cover with his weight on his cybernetic leg. pistols akimbo, but the thug never got up, still with his back pressed against the tree, only to toppe to the side, hitting the muddy ground a few moments later . And with that settling moment?
The engines only drew closer.
"Kid, grab their fucking guns and let's go!" Giani moved to the woman's body, searching for a key to the ATV, while slowly but surely, Amelia rose from where she was, her hands, knees and belly caked with dark stains from the mud; She was still holding her pistol, seemingly oblivious that it was spent again, if the slide locked back was of any clue.
She quickly moved out of there with all the things she had gathered inside the downed spacecraft clanking against one another. Stopping near the first body, the thug with the shotgun, she took the weapon and moved to the last one, still downed besides the tree.
Once she got there, however, she caught herself hesitating yet again as she stared at the downed man. There was no doubt that she had shot him, even if it didn't look like that at first, which was still just as unsettling to her. Even though violence was common and pretty much everywhere in most of Nepleslia - and especially on a place like Kennewes- the fact that it had been her who had actually shot that man dead was what got to her. She crouched down next to him, only to find out that, much to her surprise, that he was still alive, but bleeding out quickly.
Amelia slowly reached out and took the submachinegun from the dying man. Even in her 'stupor' she could clearly see that it was just a Styrling Ripshot, as well as remember the most vague things about the weapon, despite the man staring at her, in a way that was both accusing and pleading. The raven-haired woman slowly rose, also finding out that the hand holding the newly acquired weapon had decided to go on a shaking fit whether she liked it or not, then she started running back towards Giani.
Oreza's plate was empty by this point, and he was on his third brandy as he listened to Amelia conclude her tale, intrigued. He paused a few moments as he let what she told him sink in, pensively holding the snifter at his nose. Eventually, his head slowly began to shake. "I have to admit, Amelia," he said with newfound repsect in his voice, "I had no idea your life had been so... colorful thus far."
"Colourful is one way to put it," the astrogator admitted, idly using the end of her silverware to scratch the porcelain of her empty plate. Her head felt light and she was a little tipsy from the single glass that she had, but, most importantly of all, was the fact that she felt like she had taken a huge weight off her shoulder by telling the Nepleslian that.
As Amelia ran her fork across the plate, it emitted a grating, high-pitched screech that only lasted an instant, but more than long enough to cause Oreza to wince slightly, and draw more than a few annoyed glares from the surrounding tables. Oreza lifted his palm just high enough off of the table to give Amelia a subtle "don't do that" gesture, coupled with a very slight shake of his head, but otherwise ignored the stares around them. "I could think of more 'colorful' ways to phrase it if you like," he joked, trying to lighten the mood.
"Right," she answered, setting for fork down. "Well, I ended up in Amatsu-Nova afterwards, and that's when I met you guys," she added, with some finality to her voice.
"And the rest is history," Oreza concluded, taking another drink and setting the snifter down. "Well, you have your health intact, and some spending money in your pocket now, at least, yes?"
"Yeah," she admitted, although she didn't have any idea of what to spend it now that she had it. Her eyes briefly flashed with some acknowledgement, at least she could spent it to get Crash something after the freespacer had gotten her several not-so-cheap 'gifts' when they last spoke. "What are you spending yours in?" she asked.
"A fair portion of it may very well go to getting my leg fixed," Oreza said with a shrug. "After that, I'm not sure."
The tone of his last comment didn't pass imperceptibly by her. "Why?" she asked.
He looked her way, slightly puzzled. "What do you mean?"
"Nothing. Nevermind," the astrogator said, dropping the matter. She leaned with her elbows on the table, hugging her arms once again she took a brief glance around the restaurant.
Oreza just watched her for a moment in silence, then smiled quietly again. "Did you enjoy your meal?" he asked.
"Yeah!" Amelia piped up, smiling faintly. "How can I repay you?" she added.
With a wave of his hand, Oreza shook his head and brushed the offer away. "I told you, it was my treat," he insisted. "I thought you could use the time away, if nothing else."
Her smile broadened at that. "I'm just not used to people buying me stuff all the time," she explained.
Oreza's eyebrow raised again, and a mischievous grin spread across his face. "All the time?" he pointedly asked. The astrogator opened her mouth to speak, but nothing came out, and her face started flushing at that as she cursed herself for letting that small detail slip up.
Amelia quickly looked away from the bearlike Nepleslian, trying to mask her distress.
"So," Oreza chuckled, settling back into his seat, patting around in his pockets looking for his pipe before he realized that smoking was more than likely prohibited in the city. He didn't look too terribly disappointed at the realization, though, as the amusement written all over his face at catching Amelia in whatever little game she was playing more than made up for it. "You were saying?" he chided.
The astrogator didn't reply at first, not wanting to reveal what she was actually talking about. "There's this person," she simply said, somewhat ashamed that she was still omitting some of the more important information from the ship's First Mate.
"Yes?" Oreza said, his smile broadening. "Go on."
"He buys me stuff all the time, and I feel like I don't derserve it, because I really didn't give him much- if anything, in return," she continued, briefly glancing at Oreza.
Oreza now looked thoroughly amused. "So you have a paramour you're keeping secret, eh?" he said jokingly. His comment only made her face flush further.
"It makes me feel like I'm using him," she said in a low tone, not admitting or denying his question.
The grin faded slightly as the big man's face turned gentler, setting aside the jokes for the time. "But you aren't, are you?" he asked.
"I'm not, but, it looks that way to me, and I don't want to deny them to offend him," she said, raising a hand to scratch her head.
"Have you asked him to do any of these things for you?" he asked, raising his snifter again. "Or suggested it in any way?"
"No."
Oreza shrugged. "Then it sounds to me as if he is doing it of his own free will," he replied, and took another sip of his brandy. The glass was nearing its end by this point. "Have you discussed it with him?"
"He just kinda waves it off," Amelia said, recalling that particular conversation with Crash.
"Then it seems to me that this man wants to impress you," he said conclusively, still holding the nearly empty glass. That comment made Amelia flush more, although she smiled at that. She never considered herself as someone who would receive that kind of attention. Oreza's grin returned, only this time it was warm and pleased, rather than merely amused. "And the way you're blushing makes be believe you are, and not just by the gifts he gives you," he said with a wink.
The astrogator still didn't add anything else to that, still too embarassed to form any sort of reply.
Oreza finished his glass and set it to the side, still smiling, and folded his thick hands on the table. "May I ask how long you've known him?" he asked.
Amelia paused, weighing in how she would come out with that information without sounding like she had been lying to everyone the whole time. "It's complicated," she said.
"It is?" the big man asked, sounding slightly confused. "How so?"
"Because he's part of the crew," she admitted, her eyes darting away from the large Nepleslian.
The puzzled frown deepened on Oreza's weathered and bearded face. "Part of the crew?" he repeated in quiet bewilderment, his eyes drifting a few degrees off of Amelia's face as he mentally went through the Veil's very short crew roster. Focusing back on Amelia with a bit more intent, obviously not reaching a satisfactory conclusion on his own, he wordlessly prodded her for an explanation.
And the astrogator told him, going over from the moment when she joined the ship, experiencing the ''computer glitches,'' to the moment where she actually found out about the spiderbot on Halna, and then until the present moment from when they arrived at Dawn, omitting the instances of when she and the freespacer went ashore on the Black Moon and the embarassing, very embarassing moment of when the captain walked in on them and mistook it for something else.
Oreza's face stayed mostly expressionless while Amelia finished the story, one of his hands curled up in a loose fist with his knuckles resting on the table. He didn't say anything for a moment while he took it in; somehow, he didn't seem as surprised to hear about the Freespacer's existence as Amelia might have expected, but this was clearly the first time he'd had it explained to him plainly.
After a moment's thought, he slid his jaw to one side, rubbing his beard. "Does Sienna know about him?" he asked.
"Yes," the astrogator admitted. "She found out during our salvage op," she added.
"Hmm," he mused, still rubbing his beard. "I wonder if that would account for her rather irritable behavior."
"I guess. They don't like each other much," Amelia also admitted. In a way, she had partially been dragged into that problem too.
"I feel somewhat sorry for this Freespacer then, too," Oreza half-joked, cracking a slight smile as he looked back at Amelia.
"He's had a hard time, so you know how I feel when he gives me all that stuff," she said, not noticing the half-joke form the first mate.
Oreza nodded. "I can understand that perspective," he replied. "But if it's what he wishes, perhaps you should allow it. It may be that, if he has indeed had as difficult a time as you say, the companionship is worth far more than any material thing he could ever give you." Another brandy had appeared where Oreza's empty glass was, and the waiter had done so apparently without being seen. Without taking his eyes away from the young woman for more than a second, he pulled the glass to him, bringing it to rest in his cupped hand on the table directly in front of him. "Much like this dinner has been worth more to me than the cost of the bill, as I hope it has been for you."
"I'm glad you enjoyed the company, I never thought I was much to talk, to be honest," the astrogator admitted, smiling faintly.
"I know," the first mate replied, nodding again. "But I'm happy you were comfortable enough to do so with me. It seems like you benefitted from it."
"It feels good telling it to other people, you know?" she admitted, but left it at that.
"It does," the big man agreed, musing over the rim of his glass as he took another small sip. "It does indeed."
Without anything else to add, Amelia simply shifted in her seat, idly looking around the bar.
After another period of silence amid the murmurs of the restaurant's patrons, Oreza broke it with a soft tap of his hand on the table's surface. "So," he began with a breath, smiling again. "I take it you will be staying with the Veil, in light of this new revelation?"
"I guess so, unless the captain doesn't want to keep me around after what happened," Amelia said, wincing slightly as she remembered the discussion with Sienna.
Oreza considered her words for a second, his jaw moving slightly up and down as if he was idly chewing some small, unseen morsel as he thought. "Difficult to say," he sighed, shaking his head in resignation. "I would think she is smart enough to know how much of an asset you are to her. But she can be... unpredictable, as you've witnessed yourself."
"Yeah, well, at least you'll be there to keep her in check," Amelia said, smilling at the first mate of the ship.
For the first time, Oreza didn't return her smile.
"What?" The astrogator asked, noticing the clear change in demeanor.
He hesitated again, as if unsure how to answer. He took a slow breath in and held it for a moment, his mouth slightly agape for a silent moment before he finally spoke. "No, I won't," he said finally, in a quiet voice.
"Why?" Amelia asked, concerned and hurt at the same time.
"It's... rather difficult to explain," Oreza said, regret and apology plastered all over him. "Aside from my knee, of course. I feel as though my path and Sienna's are simply not meant to overlap any longer than they already have."
"If you're not there to keep her in check you know she'll act crazy all over again, and won't stop," Amelia said, still with the same expression on her face.
Oreza sighed again, and looked into his brandy. "It isn't quite so simple," he said. "I think my presence there is not helping matters as much as you may think. Certainly, I can stop her from getting too far out of line in the moment, but in the long run I only compound the problem." He said nothing further, taking a much longer drink of his brandy than he had previously.
The astrogator noticed the change in demeanor, and leaned back against the chair. "It just told you the story of my life, you could at least tell me what's going on, because I don't buy it," she said, crossing her arms in front of her chest.
The big man turned his eyes without his head following to Amelia, and an eyebrow inched upwards. He couldn't help the little half-grin showing as he set his glass down, swallowing the drink. "I suppose you're right," he reluctantly agreed, then leaned back in his seat again, pondering exactly what to say. "Do you know how Sienna and I know one another?"
"No," the astrogator admitted, leaning closer to listen to that bit of story.
"Her father and I were close friends once upon a time," Oreza explained, reclining even further into the booth as he rested his extended arm on the surface of the table. "Very close, in fact, for years. Before Sienna and her brother were born." A wistful smile appeared on his face as he stared off into nothing.
"She has a brother?" Amelia asked, somewhat incredulously, before Oreza could continue.
He looked at her and nodded. "She does, though I don't think she's spoken to him in a long time, Neither have I, for that matter." He paused for a moment, collecting his thoughts. "Anyhow. Carson and I met when we were young boys. A right pair of troublemakers, we were," he went on, grinning in spite of himself. "Nepleslian men to the T. Never anything too outrageous, of course, but we managed to upset more than our fair share of our elders. I dare say the man was a bad influence on me," he added, chuckling. Then he tapped his fingertips on the table, as if forcing himself to get back on track, and peered across at Amelia, the faux-candlelight casting dancing shadows across his dark, bearded face. "Of course, eventually we came of age and our paths diverged. I went on to enlist in the navy, but Carson stayed in Los Apagos. He had some rather strong opinions about serving in the military, see. I always knew he was something of a firebrand, but I didn't realize the extent of his rather anarchic beliefs until much later."
He paused for a moment to take another swig of his brandy, while Amelia simply listened to him, resting her chin on her hands, and swallowed a hiccup, excusing himself quietly before he went on. "I returned home as often as I could to see my family and friends, of course. I made an effort to see Carson as time permitted, but when he married and had children, I made certain to see them as often as I could." The nostalgic smile returned. "I loved those kids like they were my own. They even called me 'uncle,' though I don't think they understood the literal meaning of the word. It just stuck, I suppose." He refocused again, looking squarely at Amelia. "In fact, I dare say they were the very reason I even attempted marriage the one time."
"Then what happened?" The astrogator asked, genuinely interested and leaning forward and closer to the first mate.
Catching himself getting off-track again, Oreza shook his head and lightly twiddled his fingers. "Remember the Hyperion?" he asked. "The cruiser I told you about whose reactor melted down?"
"Yeah, I remember" Amelia admitted. It was still a pretty sad story that his life had turned for the worst so suddenly.
"Well, while I was on medical leave on Nepleslia, after that incident, that's when I learned where Carson's true loyalties lay all those years. He still considered me a friend, of course, and we spoke on many occasions when he'd visit my hospital room. He began to press me hard to drop out of the military, I suppose because he figured that my morale would be shattered to the point that I would actually consider it this time." He sighed again. "Carson's reactionary views had blossomed to the point that he had become not only a Reds sympathizer, but in active service to them.
"I was upset by the news, of course, and vehemently turned down his repeated insistence that I join his cause, but it only got worse from there. By the time I had made my recovery and was again placed in command of the destroyer Orion, things were said between us that could never be taken back." He paused to take another long drink, collecting himself. Although his face remained completely stoic, the regret in his eyes was unmistakable. "Decades of friendship destroyed in a matter of days, over a difference of opinion."
He cleared his throat and continued. "Carson decreed that I was never to see or speak to him again until I 'came to my senses,' and unfortunately that included his family. I didn't know the extent of the damage that doing so would cause back then; it wasn't until much later that I learned that he and his wife's service to the Reds left their children to their own devices for long periods of time. I have no idea what they were exposed to in my absence.
"I fought in the Kennewes Offensive in which the armed forces of the Reds were destroyed. Against my own countrymen." His eyes misted up for a brief instant. "And quite possibly against Carson himself. I will probably never know. Once the war was over, I tried to contact him. I never succeeded, and was only able to learn through a lengthy search that he and Midori were unaccounted for, and that Sienna and Jacob, according to the system, never existed."
A long, controlled breath whistled through Oreza's nose as he stared off into some distant plane that only he could see. "I abandoned Sienna and her brother, you see," he said quietly. "Left them in the hands of a madman. In a way, I feel responsible for making Sienna into what she is today." His eyes focused back onto Amelia, and she could plainly see the pain buried deep inside of them, laid out bare for her to see now. "And after the time I've spent on the Veil thus far, I've come to believe she's never forgiven me for it."
"And how do you know that if you're just gonna leave?" Amelia asked after a few moments of silence. She was still trying to digest the information that he had just told her, it somehow made her understand more why the captain was so insufferable most of the times, despite her frustrations.
Oreza shook his head slowly. "Because I can see it all over her face," he explained softly. "It was good to see her again after all these years, but the longer I stay, the more anger I can see welling up inside of her. It will only get worse the longer I'm around, and it won't be only me that suffers for it."
Amelia leaned back against the chair, crossing her arms in front of her chest. The indignation was plain on her face, but instead of pushing the matter on, she simply looked to the side. It seemed that the first mate had already made his mind, and she doubted she had any measure of persuasion to convince him otherwise. "So that means this is the last time I see you?" she asked.
A quiet, bittersweet smile appeared on his face again. "I certainly hope not," he replied. "It only means that I won't be serving on your ship any longer."
The astrogator continue to look at the first mate. How it seemed just so familiar that life would once again come and screw with her, taking the one crewmen that had a chance to stop the captain from becoming a total psycho. She wanted to say something, anything, but was simply at a loss of words on how to continue, so she kept quiet.
"I'm very, very sorry to do this to you, Amelia," Oreza said, his voice even more genuine than ever. "Please understand I didn't come to this decision lightly. I know that in leaving, there will be consequences. But they will be worse if I stay." He paused, waiting for her to say something, almost desperately hoping she would, even, by the look on his face.
"Hey, man, it's your life. If you want to do it it's your choice," Amelia said, trying to force the bitterness from her voice. She found, much to her surprise, that it was hard to hate him, even if doing so would just make it easier for her to deal with it. The astrogator tried to force a smile to give some weight to her argument, hoping that the first mate wouldn't notice it.
Oreza just stared at her for a moment, gauging the sincerity of her reply. He smiled a smile of his own, but it was a far cry from a happy, or even a satisfied one. But in lieu of trying to change her mind, he only nodded his understanding. "I know it is my choice," he said. "But one's life is not just their own. I've learned that over the years. The choices you make send ripples, and affect countless lives around you." His gaze became more intent as he paused to be sure he had her attention. "No person is an island, Amelia. We're all connected in one way or another, and we owe more allegiance than just to ourselves."
Again, Amelia didn't reply. The astrogator gripped her arms tighter as she stared at the ship's first mate. "Our captain would disagree with you," she commented briefly, not sure if she completely believed him either.
"Our captain--" Oreza began somewhat tersely, but then cut his own words off in mid-sentence, as if realizing he was about to speak too rashly. With a sigh, he closed his eyes and began again. "If you say you don't believe in gravity, does it make it any less real?" he said, somewhat whimsically.
"Gravity is a proven thing," Amelia replied, somewhat irritated.
"So is what I said," the big man replied quietly, "if in something of a--"
"Will you still be around by the time we leave port?" the astrogator suddenly asked, cutting him off.
Oreza's mouth hung open on his unfinished sentence for a second before he smiled again and closed it. "That depends on how long you stay here, doesn't it?" he commented. "But more than likely, yes. And you are more than welcome to contact me any time you need to talk." His smile warped slightly into a teasing grin. "Assuming this Crash can't help you, of course," he added, eliciting a laugh from the astrogator.
"Thanks," she said, brushing a strand of hair off her face. "It's nice to stay in touch with people," she added, and a her expression changed to something more pained.
He nodded his agreement, then looked at her in concern. "Is something the matter?" he asked.
"No, just, stay in touch alright?" Amelia said, in a way that sounded like she was almost pleading.
Oreza nodded with a gentle smile again. "You have my word," he told her. "On one condition."
The astrogator raised on eyebrow at that. "What?" she asked.
"Look after Sienna in my place."
Amelia let out a long sigh, scratching her head one again. She wanted to refuse that, she wanted to refuse it so much. "Alright," she said, looking at the ship's soon to be former first mate.
It was easy for Oreza to tell he was asking a steep price, but his smile broaded devilishly again. "I know," he said jokingly, "my friendship is expensive."
Amelia suppressed a chuckle at that.
Oreza's smile lingered for another moment, never looking away from Amelia as his expression softened again with an encouraging nod. "You'll be fine, I'm sure of it," he reassured her. "After everyone's had the chance to blow off some steam away from one another, I would wager that Sienna will be a bit more tolerable. And I would like to think she's learned a few things since we left Amatsu-Nova."
"Yeah. I hope so," the astrogator agreed, blowing off another strand of hair that had fallen in front of her face. "I honestly have no idea what to spend my pay on now that I have it," she added afterwards.
"Then save it," Oreza replied. "Hold onto it for something you really need later. Just because you have money doesn't mean you have to spend it." He shifted in his seat, idly tapping the base of his empty snifter, and he grinned a bit. "Of course, you could save most of it, and take a little to blow on something fun for yourself."
"Yeah, I know. I guess I'll do that," Amelia said, leaning back in her chair. She looked around the restaurant again, realizing that she couldn't think of anything to say, and leaving the conversation at an awkward silence once again.
Their server appeared at the table once more, smiling politely at the two as he took advantage of the lull in their conversation to check on them. "I hope you enjoyed your meal this evening," he said. "May I interest either of you in a dessert, or perhaps a hot drink?"
Oreza returned the polite smile to the young man and nodded approvingly. "It was excellent, thank you," he replied, then looked back across the table at Amelia, eyebrows raised in question, allowing her to answer the waiter's offer. The raven-haired nepleslian raised both hands with her palms upturned in a shrug. She felt like she couldn't eat anything else after the meal she just had.
"I think we're finished," Oreza said as he nodded to Amelia and looked back at the waiter. "Thank you very much."
"Very good, sir," the server replied with another rehearsed smile, and placed a brown leather half-folder on the table surface. "I can take care of this anytime you're ready."
The bearlike ex-soldier nodded again as the waiter vanished once more, and looked back across the table. "Thank you for joinng me tonight, Amelia," he said with clear sincerity. "I enjoyed the company immensely."
"Thanks for the invitation," she asnwered sincerely, eyeing the leather folder on the table. She felt uncomfortable in letting him pay for that by himself. "How much, uh, do you think this was?" She asked right after.
"No amount you need to concern yourself with," Oreza said with a sly wink, and Amelia slumped back in her seat with a sigh. The big man placed his paw on the folder and slid it across the table in front of him. "The company and discussion was payment enough," he continued reassuringly. "It was... cathartic to talk about some of these things for me, as I hope it was for you. And I pray it's shed some light on your captain's behavior as well."
"It did," Amelia admitted, watching the other Nepleslian take the bill. "But that doesn't mean that I agree with it," she added.
Oreza looked a little puzzled. "What is there to agree or disagree with?" he asked.
"That she can still act like that," the astrogator explained.
"Ah," the big man replied, rubbing his beard. "No, I'm not trying to say that the way she behaves is acceptable. It isn't. I'm only trying to help you understand why I believe she is that way."
Amelia nodded at that. "Okay, I'm just saying how I feel about it all, is what I meant," she explained.
"I understand," Oreza assured her. "And were I in your shoes, I would feel the same way, I'm sure." A melancholy smile crossed his face. "But now that you have a bit more insight, perhaps it will be a little easier to tolerate it, and you may have a better understanding of how to handle her."
"I guess," she conceded. Amelia realized more and more that it had only been by a stroke of luck, or something else, that Sienna had managed to become captain. Her lack of experience with that aspect showed.
"Anyway," he said with a conclusive wave of her hand. "Enough about Sienna, yes?" he asked with a smile.
"Yeah," Amelia agreed. That conversation had shed some insight on not only Sienna, but also on Crash. Her cheeks reddened a bit at that, and she hoped that her conversation partner would mistake it by the single glass of brandy that she had.
Oreza stiffened slightly, and he thumped his fist lightly against his chest, looking like he was either trying to suppress a hiccup or work out some heartburn, but he grinned at Amelia's blush nonetheless. "Now what?" he chided her.
"What?" Amelia asked.
He motioned towards her face with a wave of his hand, finally settling whatever was ailing him. "You're blushing again," he observed, still grinning.
"I do that when I drink," the astrogator said, which was still true.
"I see," Oreza said, though the grin on his face gave away the fact that he likely didn't believe that was entirely true. Regardless, he didn't press, but instead opened the bill, and after reading over it once, placed his credit chit inside and placed it on the edge of the table and folded his hands before him once more. "I think I've had enough for now as well," he added, holding another hiccup in check.
"Well, you certainly drank for the both of us," Amelia commented, smirking after she saw him attempt to conceal the hiccup.
Oreza laughed slightly. "I'm quite possibly twice your size," he commented. The waiter appeared from nowhere again, and carried the bill off.
"Possibly?" she asked.
"Definitely possibly," Oreza replied, chuckling again. Wiping the corner of his eye with his index finger, he sighed contentedly. "I would join you in gallavanting about the city tonight, but this old man needs a good night's sleep, I believe," he continued. "Then in the morning I'll be visiting some clinics. Is there anything I can do for you before then?"
"Not really, this has been more than enough," Amelia said. The faint smile appeared on her face again, she felt like resting more than she felt like looking around Dawn.
He nodded, smiling warmly. "You have my network address and commlink information," he told her. "If there is ever anything you need, no matter how trivial, I will be but a message away."
"Thanks, Oreza," she replied sincerely. Noticing that as a cue that the dinner had ended, Amelia slid her chair back, fishing her backpack from the floor and getting up. "I should probably go, then," she added, putting one arm through one of the backpack's straps.
"Anytime," the big man answered, producing his cane from beneath the table and rising shakily to his feet. "I do have one final request, if you'd humor me," he said as he leaned on the cane. With the paternal, inviting smile again, he extended his free arm in Amelia's direction. "Indulge an old man?"
The astrogator took the proferred arm, approaching the massive Nepleslian as she tried to hug him. Oreza's gigantic arm enveloped the small-framed Amelia firmly but without undue force, and Amelia almost disappeared, dwarfed by the massive older man, and the two shared a bittersweet embrace for a moment.
It took a few moments before she broke the hug. Not being someone used too much to that degree of physical contact, it still managed to be both awkward and welcoming at the same time. Expensive friendship indeed.
Oreza stepped back, leaving his bearlike hand on her shoulder for a brief moment as he looked her squarely in the eyes. "I mean it," he said with a serious expression. "Anything you need at all, I will be here."
"Thanks," Amelia replied, noticing how she couldn't hold the Nepleslian's gaze for very long at all. She took a step back from him, and was about to turn around to head out before something occurred to her. "Goodbye, Oreza," she said, waving one hand and stuffing the other one in her pocket.
"The best of luck to you, Amelia," he replied, still leaning on his cane aside the table as he watched her go. She had barely turned out of sight before the big man's face fell, and he lowered himself back down into the booth. Leaning the cane against the table's edge, he sigh a long, heavy sigh and rested his chin lightly on this thumb and forefinger, propped up on the table's surface, lost in thought as he waited for the bill to return.
Even when the waiter returned to thank him for his patronage, he was still wondering if he was making the right decision.
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