Nepleslian Space, A Commercial Space Station
♫ Leonard Cohen - Nevermind♫
The concourse of the spacestation was relatively packed with people. Compared to the more ragtag independent spacestations like Halna, or the migraine-inducing sterile white of Yamataian stations like Dawn, the Nepleslian counterparts were somewhere inbetween, people with their own business moving quickly and organising what they wanted and needed, while the regular pair of GOLEM-clad marines patrolled the concourse, hands cradling their automatic rifles across their chests as they looked for any sign of trouble. Weaving between those with a clue were those looking for a clue or a score.
Two men with a clue were examining a datapad since they were in the market to grab themselves a pilot. Some back and forth had been done with someone calling themselves 'Banshee' who ran the lanes in a refitted Hoplite. Danny had spent a few evenings examining the classifieds and local grapevines for a good pilot on Desmond's orders.
"They said they've had plenty of flight hours, enough for a license anyway," The blonde pointed out on the lead he was chasing, with a photo of a person in a custom-made flight suit and helmet that made identifying them impossible, aside from the suit. "They didn't want to go planetside for a meeting though. Must've been born in space."
"That's a good sign," Desmond answered, raising the pair of sunshades he was wearing to take a good look at the 'curriculum' that was being shown to him. He knew from experience. The dark-haired Nepleslian reached for something inside the brand new leather jacket he was wearing, and grumbled something inaudible once he didn't seem to find it. "You go talk to them, I'll go interview the other one," he added. After he replenished his supply of coffin nails, of course.
"Of course," Danny replied, diverting from Desmond as he followed the trail to where he'd agreed to meet 'Banshee'. "You handle 'Screamer', and we'll stay in touch," now out of sight, Danny was talking with his comm bead. "Meet back at the Neppies on West Quadrant. Stim Burgers are on me."
Barely after that being said, Danny's datapad beeped with a new arriving message.
Danny's eyes flicked down to his datapad, making a satisfied "Hm!" as he now had an accurate location. Before, the instructiosn were vague, just the hangars in the North Quadrant of the station. Now it was Hangar YK#81. He tapped out a reply.
With that, he started moving through the crowds of men and women of all sorts of different stripes, ranging from prissy Yamataians who didn't want to set foot on the planet and buy bubble gum duty free; Lorath women of different castes cruising for one of those 'real men' the Nepleslians kept saying they were; and people and aliens just trying to get on with their lives.
Soon, he crossed through the hangars in the Northern Quadrant, where the public hangars for the station were. The duo had arrived in it, and it seemed Danny was heading back from the central hub of the station. He could see flyboys and wrenchists working in garages and hangars, treating their many and varied machines like deus ex machina with fusion ramjets and a durandium hull. The blonde bounty hunter, dressed for business today with the SQUID suit obvious under a t-shirt and jacket soon came to Hangar YK#81.
"Are you kidding me? Fucking impounded!", a feminine voice shouted out as he approached the hangar, audible even amidst the sounds of heavy machinery and the dull muffled noises of too many people talking at the same time. As the bounty hunter's vision centered on the figure in front of the person-sized airlock to the designated hangar, he also noticed a second, larger one of one of the dockworkers, an ID-SOL hybrid dressed in greasy coverals, who had a nose far too large to indicate a healthy childhood.
The -comparably giant- dockworker was unmoved by the outburst of the smaller person, who by then was clearly the pilot Danny had been contacting, since she was still wearing the custom-made suit. "You can retrieve any personal effects from the hangar, but until the docking fee is paid the starfighter stays impounded there," he said, walking away from the hangar and leaving the very pissed, and clearly starfighter lacking, pilot to boil over in her own rage.
Seeing any chance of talking her way out of that, 'Banshee' simply clicked at the cold metallic deck in frustration, raising a few loose sheets of paper that hadn't been fossilized by the fine layer of dust against the metal. Still not being done, the short Nepleslian woman gave the leaving dockworker a very unkind hand gesture, paying no attention that her interviewer, and possible contractor, had arrived on the scene.
As the ID-SOL brushed past Danny with an aroma dank enough to grab from the air and roll into candles, Danny wrinkled his nose at both the dockworker and at 'Banshee', who certainly seemed to be screaming like one. His footsteps, however light managed to echo through the hangar, prompting her to turn and face the new arrival.
"Trouble in paradise, then?" Danny asked, approaching brazenly as Banshee was sorting through the paperwork she was left with. "Squid here, on behalf of the pilot job," he introduced himself, leaning against a shelf full of equipment.
It took the pilot a few moments to react, and since her face was obscured by the helmet, it left interpreting the situation a quagmire. 'Squid' was expecting an explosive reaction of some sort since it sounded like their ship was gone, but it didn't come, making him raise an eyebrow. "You?" 'Banshee finally spoke out, her arms falling by her side.
"Me?" Danny replied incredulously, still confused as he pointed to himself, blinking and wondering where he'd heard that voice before.
Seemingly realizing that her face was entirely concealed by the helmet, the pilot reached under the piece of headgear and twisted it to the side with a pop, then to the opposite, with a hiss. When the helmet was unblocked, she removed it, craddling it against her side with her right arm.
"Yeah, what are you doing here," the no longer faceless pilot said.
"Amelia?!" Danny leaned forward, positively geeking at her, face in a sturgeon-like frown as he was taken by surprise. A little too much weight went into pushing off of the shelf and its contents rattled. He put his hands up defensively now that he remembered what'd happened a few months ago. "A-a-alright listen-"
"I'm listening," Amelia replied, letting her other free hand rest against her hip. Compared to the last time they had met in Dawn, the only thing that seemed to change was that her hair was noticeably shorter, although retaining the same unkept look.
"What happened on Dawn Station's just dust in the wind," He tried to explain as his recollection of the events tried to come forth amongst the confusion, "I really was buying medicine for my job as search-and-rescue operative with - my -" In the heat of the moment, the wrong word came tumbling out: "Boyfriend."
The girl's expression shifted to something between amusement and smugness. "Yeah, I guess that was kinda obvious," she replied, then turned around to stare at the Hoplite behind her. "You're also out of luck, they just grounded my fighter," she added, seemingly a couple notches calmer than her previous outburst.
The blonde, meanwhile looked left and right, and focussed his attention on the Hoplite, then the airlock, which was projecting a hologram with a stop sign on it, and helpfully telling the occupant that their ship was impounded and if they didn't like it, to shove it up their arse. "Well then, what are our options for getting the fighter out," Danny said, eying the machinery, "let's make this worth both our whiles."
The black colored starfighter was decorated with a few orange streaks, roughly the same color of the details on her suit, while the fuselage beneath the cockpit had a distinct "Banshee" written on it, with a -unremarkable- two skulls crossed with falchions diagonally painted further down the nose. It signified one thing: Pirates.
"I was thinking of selling some of the ammo to pay the minimum to get it unimpounded," she admitted. The fees and percentages they charged in Nepleslian space were the pilot's version of sharecropping. "At least before I found another job or a better place to go. What did you have in mind?" She asked, turning her gaze from the fighter and back to the hunter.
"Hook or crook, mostly," Danny shrugged, suddenly holding some manner of PDA in his hand, having pulled it from under his jacket. "I thought inefficiency permeating day to day life was a Yamataian thing," he glibbed. "Otherwise, we could sell some of the ammo and I'd cover a bit of the cost," he stepped forward, rubbing his fingers together, "but that'd leave you in debt to my employer before we start and that's no better than being impounded."
He glanced at the PDA to look at all the errant signals through the hangar, trying to narrow down the one which handled screwing a pilot's day up with impound notices and other erroneous 'fees'. He gave the PDA a wiggle, groaning as it scanned.
"So what do you suggest?" She asked, staring at the scene unfolding in front of her with interest.
Bip bip! A signal was tracked down. "Ever go to a vending machine with a quarter on a string?" Something was telling Amelia that Danny's occupation went beyond Search and Rescue as he'd presented himself, and while she didn't answer, it was clear that she was taking the hint as her eyes visibly narrowed at the comment. "We'll do a phantom payment. The money changes hands and disappears once its in their till."
On the PDA, it was mentioning that it had found an unprotected data signal from a passer by, who was securely connected to a cafe's 'free' data signal, which in turn lead to the Station's data service, bounced back and forth between various other locations, and terminated at the Hangar's management office. "Or we can fudge some numbers, and pin it on someone who keeps..."
With morbid curiosity, he watched what his first point of contact was browsing, who'd be the pin for this. It was some form of Lorath social media network, Lazarus network. They were scrolling through pictures of spaceships and starfighter model kits. "...model kits." That last one didn't sound nearly as glib. It was hard to make that sound interesting, but by then Amelia was already cranning her neck to see what was going on the datapad's screen with morbid curiosity.
"So you're pinning the fee on somebody else?" She asked.
"Basically yeah, doing it with more than one person, skimming off of all of them with a vague fee just for breathing in a station like this," he was nodding deviously. Soon, Amelia saw lots of other devices light up. A good chunk of unsecured devices with sensitive information were highlighted as the 'donors'.
He then squinted at something. One of the donors was in the management office for the hangar. "Hey, is that...?"
"What?" Amelia asked, too caught up in the process that was happening in front of her to even question the morality what was going on. Being someone that was uncomfortable at the slight gift, stealing should have bothered her more.
"The guy you were yelling at as I walked in?" He asked. She nodded in reply.
He accessed the identification. The nose and the general unpleasantness of the person, logging every impound they'd done, right or wrong and gloating about it to friends of theirs over messages.
A smile came across his face. "What is it they say about poetic justice?"
"That it's best served cold?" Amelia replied, recognizing the face in the datapad. Suddenly, she didn't care about what was being done anymore.
"Or hot and steaming, with lots of screaming if you go that way," he added a collary as he pushed the button. Roughly two hundred people had 5 KS skimmed off of them under a vague fee listed as 'Lazarus Public Account Maintenance', totalling to 955 KS in pocket already. However, for the ID-SOL that'd scammed Amelia, they made up the difference.
"Wait, how much was your impound?" Danny asked, realising that he didn't have that number yet.
"Five kay," Amelia replied, visibly pleased with the amount that she was owing just a few moments before. The blonde's eyes went wide. He had to make the net broader, mumbling something in Lorath as he made another scan for donors, this time making it look like the station was charging additional fees for breathing.
There were plenty of those walking around, to say the least. The biggest shares of them came from the hangar staff and, in particular, their strongarm gang who enforced the impounds.
"Damn," was all the the dark-haired Nepleslian said as she continued to watch that. Turning around back to the starfighter, she saw that the hangar doors were no longer blocked with the big holo STOP sign.
"In essence, they'll be getting their money back, just very slowly through wages, or something," He said as he watched the STOP sign fizzle out and fade. "So, would you like to hear about my contractor? What I did was just what I can do with my equipment."
"Yeah, sure. We haven't even discussed wages and my fighter isn't impounded," she said, leaning back to a comfortable distance.
"You'll be hired as an official pilot to our bounty hunting crew," he detailed, now standing straight as he put the PDA away. "You'll receive a fixed wage, paid fortnightly plus a share of any bounties or missions you are involved in." He explained, businesslike as he nodded. He was a part of this deal too. "Rewards or demerits may be awarded at Captain Stroud's discretion for exceptional, or poor performance."
The most surprising thing that happened at the mention of the name was that Amelia's expression turned completely neutral at that. "Who?" She asked again, as if for confirmation.
The blonde raised his eyebrow again. "Uh, Captain Stroud." Danny repeated.
"You're joking, right?" Amelia asked, her voice slightly wavering as she a step towards the bounty hunter. Her expression had gotten serious again, as if she thought that it was all a joke by her apparent contractor.
Danny shook his head, furrowing his brow as he gave it a dab. Surely there must've been some confusion. "Wait, why would I joke to you if I got your spaceship free from the lot?"
Taking a step back, Amelia visibly tried to recompose herself, moving her head around and reaching for the collar of her suit which had suddenly become very uncomfortable. "Nothing," she said, although her expression was still the same; she just hoped that Danny would mistake that for it being her surprised at the decent contract. "It's good by me, what else?" She asked.
Something wasn't right, and Danny kept his eyebrow raised. Maybe this Amelia lady was a previous member of the Bounty Hunters, was around long enough to have heard of Desmond, or had some other kind of connection. He just had to see if he could tease it out of her instead, with a misplaced "Don't tell me - do you know Desmond too?" coming out of his mouth.
The reaction was almost instantaneous from her, and Amelia didn't immediately speak right after it too. Either that was some very fucked up way of messing with her, to show that he had some kind of leverage by knowing her family, or -and it was the most scaring prospect - that he was actually with her brother. "I don't think I do anymore," she said, which was as close to the truth as it got.
"So... are you still interested in the offer?" Danny asked, trying his best to get back to businesslike as he went from blunder to blunder. It was either his lucky day that so many stars were aligning, or a very unlucky day.
The Nepleslian girl straightened herself, adjusting the belt of her suit in the process before looking back at the Nepleslian. "Yeah, we're cool," she said, although her expression remained the same.
With the tension still hanging in the air, Danny looked about the hangar for something to put his attention onto while he fished his datapad out of his jacket. "In that case, sign here, a-and we'll call it a deal." Amelia was also given a stylus to write with, and a dotted line was blinking for a mark.
She stared at the dotted line for a few moments after picking up the proferred items with some mild surprise. "What, you're just going to hire me like that? Not even gonna get to meet the boss?" She asked.
"You already seem to know him, but okay," Danny said, letting snark creep through his voice, "lock up here before anyone realises you've been unimpounded, and I'll take you to meet Captain-" He cut himself off since it made Amelia very jumpy for some reason. "The captain, yeah."
By then, Amelia had put the heavy helmet back on. "I'm actually good to go," she said, checking the pouches around her belt for anything she could've forgotten to bring.
The blonde nodded, and the two were walking out of the hangar in the Northern Quadrant of the space station, and on their way to the proposed rendezvous point for a stim burger. Along the way, Danny tapped his Comm. Bead. "Desmond. Banshee is a go, they'll be meeting us at Neppies to sign on."
Along the way, he saw people looking about themselves, and looking at their handheld devices suspiciously. As though for a split second, something unpleasant had just flashed onto all of their screens and they didn't know what it was. "How'd Screamer go?" He added.
The communicator squeaked with static for a moment before the slightly garbled voice on the other end replied. "Guy was a bum, he was too drunk to understand what I was saying," Desmond replied.
"Banshee's got the ship and flight suit to match, for certain. Modified Hoplite, just as advertised," Danny smiled back into the comms as he moved through the central area of the space station, meandering towards Western Quadrant. "Don't you love it when there's a little honesty left in Nepleslia?"
"Let's just get this over with. This station is shit," the other bounty hunter replied. "I'm already at the Neppies, out," he added, before the commbead cut off.
When the communication cut off suddenly, Danny blinked, then sighed. He never was one for the poetics or romanticised view of things. "Tch..." he mumbled as he walked under the green N of the Neppies shop, finding Desmond sitting at a booth seat. Danny waved as he sat down on the opposite side to him, leaving a space for Banshee. "Captain Stroud, Banshee; Banshee, Stroud," he made brisk introductions. He saw Desmond get up and start to extend a hand, opening his mouth to speak until the bounty hunter just froze without saying anything.
Before Danny could inquire further into what was exactly playing out, the helmet from Amelia's custom flight suit whizzed besides his head, prompting Desmond to deflect the improvised projectile with his extended arm, and before he even had the chance to recover the smaller frame of the pilot was already upon him, before even the helmet had a chance to land back on the floor of the restaurant.
As the patrons were starting to crane their heads around to see what was the motive of the altercation, Amelia had already let out a "You shit!" escape from her lips as she seemingly tried to brain Danny's partner with her own hands. Only two of the trio knew that Desmond was her younger brother, and vice versa.
Meanwhile, a very confused third man who was watching things unfold was stunned by the sudden display of violence before mouthing a simple "what the fuck?" in Nepleslian.
The altercation continued to unfold, toppling the wooden table back on the floor as Desmond kicked the smaller pilot back up. "Amelia," he had managed to say as he got up before the aforementioned Nepleslian's gloved fist connected with his face with a dry 'smack.'
Both of them took a brief moment of respite from the fight, Amelia shaking her hand from how back it had hurt her own hand, while Desmond wiped the blood from his once-again-split upper lip as he fully got up.
"Desmond!" Danny shot back, now standing up and kneeling down between the two, prepared to grab their hands. "Amelia- for fuck's sake! Now I feel like the one in the middle of an elaborate cosmic joke!" For the first time that Desmond had seen, Danny had lost his cool, and he letting his Nepleslian stripes fly in the wind tunnel.
"Who the hell are you two?! Cuh-Clones?" He grasped at straws for an answer as someone with a phone was recording the fight looked disappointed that things were winding down. "Twins? C-cousins?!"
Desmond took a step forward, only being stopped by Danny's extended arm, while Amelia did the same; when things seemed like they were about to boil up again and explode was that the first of the two talked again. "Why did you stop talking, brother?" She suddenly asked, her voice wavering again.
To the other side, Desmond looked the same impassive himself as always with the same grimmace. "It's a long story," he started to say as he started reaching for a pocket inside his jacket again. "But I'm sorry," the bounty hunter quickly added, which seemed to make 'Banshee' deflate a little bit and back off from continuing the fight.
Then it clicked. Brother and sister. The blonde hunter's eyes widened and he looked between the siblings, backing off cautiously and letting go of them to see what happened. He was quietly monologuing his day's events, and that which had happened a few months ago. The atmosphere was still uneasy, with some of thepatrons that were still hopeful there would be a fight still watching the group while the employees of the restaurant orbited around them in case they caused any more property damage.
The two of them stared at one another for another long period of time in silence, even though it was all each one needed to unspokenly convey what it would take several words to express to one another. "How's life?" Desmond asked as he started to move and picked up the overturned table, setting it upright where it had previously been.
"Shitty like always," Amelia answered, letting out a faint laugh and brushing a strand of hair that had gotten in front of her face. She reached to pick her helmet up again and clip it to her belt.
Noticing the employees hovering around, Danny snapped his fingers to get their attention and made a simple request: "Three SuperNeppy meals, please," while holding handful of crumpled DA bills at them. "Desmond, Amelia, what do you want for drinks?"
"A beer," both of them replied while they moved to take a seat to either side of the booth.
Desmond sat down and slid to the corner against the wall, once again wiping the blood from the punch. "Nice hook," he commented, while his sister continued to rub the sore wrist under the reinforced glove.
"Phoenix energy, please," the blonde finished his order before sitting down awkwardly aside from the two. An employee took his banknotes, counted them and shrugged, walking off.
He really didn't have much to say or do about today's events, but his datapad was still resting on the table while the stylus was tucked inside of it.
The two siblings continued to stare at one another until Amelia glanced at Danny, then back to her brother. "He's alright, we can talk here," Desmond said, finally fishing out a cigarette from inside his jacket and plucking it between his lips.
"What have you been doing?" Amelia asked expectantly, interlacing her fingers on the tablet. She somehow seemed to have forgotten the slight of being shut off from talking to the only person in her family who cared for almost ten years, but instead was taking it as ten years they had to catch up.
Desmond started to light up the cigarette, flicking the lighter closed once he was done. "I can tell you, but I need you to sign that thing first," he said, nodding towards the datapad on the table.
Amelia picked up the small electronic and the stylus and quickly scribbled on the surface.
SOME TIME PASSED...
♫ Blur - Coffee and TV♫
A very grumpy waiter removed the three empty dishes from the table, as well as the many empty beer bottles that had started to pile up on the center of it. The surprisingly Yamataian-looking waiter seemed like the excess of empty plates and bottles that he was cautiously building a pyramid off would fall off at any second, but when that looked as if it was about to happen the man just moved his arm to the same direction and it righted itself again.
The decreasing clattering of the dishes was a sign enough that talking was a viable option once more.
"No shit, you mean there was an actual cat that killed all those pirates?" Desmond asked after taking a sip of another bottle, while Amelia just replied with a nod.
She had spent the entire meal telling about her misadventures in Kennewes and then on Nepleslia Prime, while Desmond had only been the one nudging her on to keep going. Danny meanwhile was happy to sit back, having drunk his third can of Phoenix Energy, and somehow all he had to show for the REAL LIGHTNING that was alledged to be inside of the can was fingers drumming against the table.
"What about you?" Amelia suddenly asked Danny. "How long have the two of you been working together?"
Danny's lips made an 'ooh' as he looked over to Desmond, smiling chipperly and nodding. "Well, your brother contracted me to assist with a raid against a gang on Delsauria!" He said, nodding as he was talking with his hands, using his index fingers to indicate himself and Desmond, marching his hands across the table towards the beeramid, which elicited a suppressed giggle from Amelia. "They were the - the - ...shit, Desmond, who were they again? All fur coat, no underpants; desert motif, lots of robots?"
"The Danger Knives," Desmond chimed in. Those guys had been a pain in the ass to root out, but wiping one of the major gangs in Delsauria off the face of the planet had been well worth it. The money that entailed was also a big factor, too.
"Ruh-really? I liked it better when we called them target alpha," Danny sighed, turning his two fingers outwards, pointing at the ceiling. "Danger Knives? More like ... more like ..." He snapped his fingers on that hand that was representing himself, coming up short.
"Dork Knives?" Amelia suggested, failing to hide the smile on her face. Compared to the captain of the Fringe, that reception had been much better, and she already felt herself warming up to some of the crew.
Danny's hands banged against the table gently, but the beeramid shook and clattered threateningly, causing him to freeze, and, strangely, the SQUID suit covering his body to suddenly camouflage with the table and the booth seat. The clothes he was wearing over them did not shift colour with the rest of the suit.
"Oooooooh stone me that was close," he clicked his tongue as he slowly turned his fingers back up. "Luh-like I was saying, Desmond and I, well your brother's a badass motherfucker because," he put his hands down on the table, pinkies against the wood, "he was driving, and they were driving," he slid the pinkies of his hand across the table towards Desmond, "and it, was, mental."
Amelia glanced towards her brother, who just just took another sip of his bottle and nodded towards Danny, who made finger guns at Desmond, wiggling his index fingers at him. "Come on now, that was all you."
"Well you boarded the top of that car and diced the asshole who was driving," Desmond pointed out.
Danny's eyes widened and he tilted his head at Desmond, his left hand tapping the top of the right hand, "Wh- You make it sound so dramatic!" The blonde shook his head, now with open palms at Desmond, "I was persuading him to stop the outrider a-and we had a disagreement."
With a rising interest, Amelia had leaned forward and was listening to the tale unfold intently. "What then?" She asked.
"Uh," Danny tripped over his words as he remembered what went down, well, his version of the events anyway.
He remembered all of the SMG fire that was ripping through the interior of the Outrider from the Ripshot he was given, then tried to make a glib suggestion to the driver to pull over even though they'd been shot through the head. "It's a little difficult to be... uh, smooth with someone who has a 10x25mm transcranial lead injection, so I had to jump back to Desmond's."
He let that settle in for a bit, then added: "And his Outrider was on fire!" It may have been a stretch, but there was definitely something cooking under the hood. Desmond, on the other hand, remembered very well that the HMG on top of the outrider they were chasing had done that damaged.
"Then they crashed into an empty building on the way, and that was the end of it," her brother explained. He didn't want to go on detail about how they entered the building, took pictures of the dead gangers, and then left before the building completely caught fire. Nor did he want to explain the proccess of having to clear out the place they had raided for any valuables.
"That's intense," Amelia commented. "The two times I've had to shoot someone down wasn't even close to that. You're seeing their fighter through a screen anyway, so it's kind of like doing a sim," she added, spinning an empty beer bottle around on the table. "The other times it wasn't as easy, though," the pilot concluded.
"Still takes nerves of steel to fly one of those things though," Danny remarked, impressed by the modest kill count. To him, so much more had to go into thinking ahead when you were flying than stalking - to him, anyway. "So noisy."
"Well, it's a matter of who makes the most mistakes if it's an even fight," she started to explain, remembering her first kill. "The first one was even until the other guy tried to coax me into a nine-gee turn, which lasted for about a minute until he probably passed out," Amelia explained, since at one point the enemy fighter had stopped turning, which allowed her to get on its tail and take it down with the her fighter's main cannon.
"The second one was simpler, it was just a Scimitar." She explained with a shrug and looked away, like that was all they needed to know as Danny was counting on his fingers, reaching five before putting his palm back down and amiss for words.
"What was our final bodycount?" Danny asked Desmond. "I think the mistake at Delsauria was our enemies getting out of bed that morning."
"All in all everybody accounted for twenty something, plus a bunch of those robots," he said, glancing over at his sister. It only took him a split second to realize that she was very intently looking at him, and he didn't want to admit what his job was all about this early.
"Ruh-robots don't count!" Danny interjected, not paying attention to Amelia's stare as he put his index and middle fingers down on the table with his palm up, mimicking a person.
Then he noticed the silence that'd fallen over the conversation, and his gaze shifted gently onto Amelia. "We kill people, dear," he filled in the blank left by Desmond. He wasn't exactly thinking of the social niceties of murder for fun and profit with a head full of energy drink.
"I noticed," Amelia answered, still looking at her brother. How things had changed. Some time ago, she might have made a big deal out of that, but she too had to change her line of work out of necessity; it simply paid better to kill people.
Looking about himself, Danny realised they'd stayed at the Neppies for a quite some time now. The beeramid they'd accumulated, each of the beer tube coming up empty on the promotional scratchie under the can where you could win an all expenses paid trip to Albini, was beginning to lose novelty, and Danny decided to rearrange it by taking the top can down, then placing it by the bottom, then taking the uppermost cans down and creating a circle on the table of beer and energy drink cans.
As Danny placed the last can, an empty can of Phoenix Energy down that rattled because he had put the ring pull inside, he asked, "Did I ever tell you guys about when I met this guy before he got famous?"
He shuffled out of the booth, ready to leave and hoping the other two got the hint.
"Come on, I need to get you a room in the ship," Desmond said, fortunately getting the hint. Despite having just downed probably a dozen tall beer cans there was only a slight slur to his speech. Nodding, his sister shuffled out of the booth after him as he counted a few DA bills and set them on top of the table.
"Where is your fighter docked?" He asked her as he put the rest of the bills back on one of his pant pockets, as Danny walked beside him. "If it's on this station, you're taking it somewhere else; it's dogshit over here," he added before she could even reply.
"When?" Amelia asked, as she followed the two out of the restaurant. Once they had cleared the grease-smelling establishment she unclipped her helmet and put it back on again.
"Now," Desmond said, reaching for something inside his jacket. Once he found the cigarette pack inside he tapped the underside of it and fished a deathstick out with his lips. "Danny will send you the ship's coordinates, just take a shuttle there. You won't be using your fighter for now," he added.
Once more fully clad in her EVA-suit, Amelia just nodded, then started to make her way out. Desmond started to do the same, but there was a noticeable stagger in his step as he hesitated and turned around. "'Melia," he called out, making her turn her head around once he got her attention.
"It's good to see you again."
Danny was looking back and watching the moment, stopping when he noticed Desmond making a conscious effort to turn around and be personable. Perhaps it was an admission. He was unable to feeling the sibling connection, since he wasn't even sure if he had siblings - or parents.
When Desmond turned back around, he saw Danny's fingers against the bandage on his forehead and a tightening of his lips and eyelids as he sent Amelia the coordinates for the Iron Ferret with his other hand, which wouldn't be caught dead anywhere near this station. By then, the Nepleslian's face was back to its old, frowning self.
"Come on, there's work to do," Desmond said. His partner grumbled in reply as they walked off together.
♫ Leonard Cohen - Nevermind♫
The concourse of the spacestation was relatively packed with people. Compared to the more ragtag independent spacestations like Halna, or the migraine-inducing sterile white of Yamataian stations like Dawn, the Nepleslian counterparts were somewhere inbetween, people with their own business moving quickly and organising what they wanted and needed, while the regular pair of GOLEM-clad marines patrolled the concourse, hands cradling their automatic rifles across their chests as they looked for any sign of trouble. Weaving between those with a clue were those looking for a clue or a score.
Two men with a clue were examining a datapad since they were in the market to grab themselves a pilot. Some back and forth had been done with someone calling themselves 'Banshee' who ran the lanes in a refitted Hoplite. Danny had spent a few evenings examining the classifieds and local grapevines for a good pilot on Desmond's orders.
"They said they've had plenty of flight hours, enough for a license anyway," The blonde pointed out on the lead he was chasing, with a photo of a person in a custom-made flight suit and helmet that made identifying them impossible, aside from the suit. "They didn't want to go planetside for a meeting though. Must've been born in space."
"That's a good sign," Desmond answered, raising the pair of sunshades he was wearing to take a good look at the 'curriculum' that was being shown to him. He knew from experience. The dark-haired Nepleslian reached for something inside the brand new leather jacket he was wearing, and grumbled something inaudible once he didn't seem to find it. "You go talk to them, I'll go interview the other one," he added. After he replenished his supply of coffin nails, of course.
"Of course," Danny replied, diverting from Desmond as he followed the trail to where he'd agreed to meet 'Banshee'. "You handle 'Screamer', and we'll stay in touch," now out of sight, Danny was talking with his comm bead. "Meet back at the Neppies on West Quadrant. Stim Burgers are on me."
Barely after that being said, Danny's datapad beeped with a new arriving message.
Code:
<Banshee> Meet me at the docks. Hangar is YK#81, I'm on my way there.
Code:
<Squid> Understood. Looking forward to the meeting.Soon, he crossed through the hangars in the Northern Quadrant, where the public hangars for the station were. The duo had arrived in it, and it seemed Danny was heading back from the central hub of the station. He could see flyboys and wrenchists working in garages and hangars, treating their many and varied machines like deus ex machina with fusion ramjets and a durandium hull. The blonde bounty hunter, dressed for business today with the SQUID suit obvious under a t-shirt and jacket soon came to Hangar YK#81.
"Are you kidding me? Fucking impounded!", a feminine voice shouted out as he approached the hangar, audible even amidst the sounds of heavy machinery and the dull muffled noises of too many people talking at the same time. As the bounty hunter's vision centered on the figure in front of the person-sized airlock to the designated hangar, he also noticed a second, larger one of one of the dockworkers, an ID-SOL hybrid dressed in greasy coverals, who had a nose far too large to indicate a healthy childhood.
The -comparably giant- dockworker was unmoved by the outburst of the smaller person, who by then was clearly the pilot Danny had been contacting, since she was still wearing the custom-made suit. "You can retrieve any personal effects from the hangar, but until the docking fee is paid the starfighter stays impounded there," he said, walking away from the hangar and leaving the very pissed, and clearly starfighter lacking, pilot to boil over in her own rage.
Seeing any chance of talking her way out of that, 'Banshee' simply clicked at the cold metallic deck in frustration, raising a few loose sheets of paper that hadn't been fossilized by the fine layer of dust against the metal. Still not being done, the short Nepleslian woman gave the leaving dockworker a very unkind hand gesture, paying no attention that her interviewer, and possible contractor, had arrived on the scene.
As the ID-SOL brushed past Danny with an aroma dank enough to grab from the air and roll into candles, Danny wrinkled his nose at both the dockworker and at 'Banshee', who certainly seemed to be screaming like one. His footsteps, however light managed to echo through the hangar, prompting her to turn and face the new arrival.
"Trouble in paradise, then?" Danny asked, approaching brazenly as Banshee was sorting through the paperwork she was left with. "Squid here, on behalf of the pilot job," he introduced himself, leaning against a shelf full of equipment.
It took the pilot a few moments to react, and since her face was obscured by the helmet, it left interpreting the situation a quagmire. 'Squid' was expecting an explosive reaction of some sort since it sounded like their ship was gone, but it didn't come, making him raise an eyebrow. "You?" 'Banshee finally spoke out, her arms falling by her side.
"Me?" Danny replied incredulously, still confused as he pointed to himself, blinking and wondering where he'd heard that voice before.
Seemingly realizing that her face was entirely concealed by the helmet, the pilot reached under the piece of headgear and twisted it to the side with a pop, then to the opposite, with a hiss. When the helmet was unblocked, she removed it, craddling it against her side with her right arm.
"Yeah, what are you doing here," the no longer faceless pilot said.
"Amelia?!" Danny leaned forward, positively geeking at her, face in a sturgeon-like frown as he was taken by surprise. A little too much weight went into pushing off of the shelf and its contents rattled. He put his hands up defensively now that he remembered what'd happened a few months ago. "A-a-alright listen-"
"I'm listening," Amelia replied, letting her other free hand rest against her hip. Compared to the last time they had met in Dawn, the only thing that seemed to change was that her hair was noticeably shorter, although retaining the same unkept look.
"What happened on Dawn Station's just dust in the wind," He tried to explain as his recollection of the events tried to come forth amongst the confusion, "I really was buying medicine for my job as search-and-rescue operative with - my -" In the heat of the moment, the wrong word came tumbling out: "Boyfriend."
The girl's expression shifted to something between amusement and smugness. "Yeah, I guess that was kinda obvious," she replied, then turned around to stare at the Hoplite behind her. "You're also out of luck, they just grounded my fighter," she added, seemingly a couple notches calmer than her previous outburst.
The blonde, meanwhile looked left and right, and focussed his attention on the Hoplite, then the airlock, which was projecting a hologram with a stop sign on it, and helpfully telling the occupant that their ship was impounded and if they didn't like it, to shove it up their arse. "Well then, what are our options for getting the fighter out," Danny said, eying the machinery, "let's make this worth both our whiles."
The black colored starfighter was decorated with a few orange streaks, roughly the same color of the details on her suit, while the fuselage beneath the cockpit had a distinct "Banshee" written on it, with a -unremarkable- two skulls crossed with falchions diagonally painted further down the nose. It signified one thing: Pirates.
"I was thinking of selling some of the ammo to pay the minimum to get it unimpounded," she admitted. The fees and percentages they charged in Nepleslian space were the pilot's version of sharecropping. "At least before I found another job or a better place to go. What did you have in mind?" She asked, turning her gaze from the fighter and back to the hunter.
"Hook or crook, mostly," Danny shrugged, suddenly holding some manner of PDA in his hand, having pulled it from under his jacket. "I thought inefficiency permeating day to day life was a Yamataian thing," he glibbed. "Otherwise, we could sell some of the ammo and I'd cover a bit of the cost," he stepped forward, rubbing his fingers together, "but that'd leave you in debt to my employer before we start and that's no better than being impounded."
He glanced at the PDA to look at all the errant signals through the hangar, trying to narrow down the one which handled screwing a pilot's day up with impound notices and other erroneous 'fees'. He gave the PDA a wiggle, groaning as it scanned.
"So what do you suggest?" She asked, staring at the scene unfolding in front of her with interest.
Bip bip! A signal was tracked down. "Ever go to a vending machine with a quarter on a string?" Something was telling Amelia that Danny's occupation went beyond Search and Rescue as he'd presented himself, and while she didn't answer, it was clear that she was taking the hint as her eyes visibly narrowed at the comment. "We'll do a phantom payment. The money changes hands and disappears once its in their till."
On the PDA, it was mentioning that it had found an unprotected data signal from a passer by, who was securely connected to a cafe's 'free' data signal, which in turn lead to the Station's data service, bounced back and forth between various other locations, and terminated at the Hangar's management office. "Or we can fudge some numbers, and pin it on someone who keeps..."
With morbid curiosity, he watched what his first point of contact was browsing, who'd be the pin for this. It was some form of Lorath social media network, Lazarus network. They were scrolling through pictures of spaceships and starfighter model kits. "...model kits." That last one didn't sound nearly as glib. It was hard to make that sound interesting, but by then Amelia was already cranning her neck to see what was going on the datapad's screen with morbid curiosity.
"So you're pinning the fee on somebody else?" She asked.
"Basically yeah, doing it with more than one person, skimming off of all of them with a vague fee just for breathing in a station like this," he was nodding deviously. Soon, Amelia saw lots of other devices light up. A good chunk of unsecured devices with sensitive information were highlighted as the 'donors'.
He then squinted at something. One of the donors was in the management office for the hangar. "Hey, is that...?"
"What?" Amelia asked, too caught up in the process that was happening in front of her to even question the morality what was going on. Being someone that was uncomfortable at the slight gift, stealing should have bothered her more.
"The guy you were yelling at as I walked in?" He asked. She nodded in reply.
He accessed the identification. The nose and the general unpleasantness of the person, logging every impound they'd done, right or wrong and gloating about it to friends of theirs over messages.
A smile came across his face. "What is it they say about poetic justice?"
"That it's best served cold?" Amelia replied, recognizing the face in the datapad. Suddenly, she didn't care about what was being done anymore.
"Or hot and steaming, with lots of screaming if you go that way," he added a collary as he pushed the button. Roughly two hundred people had 5 KS skimmed off of them under a vague fee listed as 'Lazarus Public Account Maintenance', totalling to 955 KS in pocket already. However, for the ID-SOL that'd scammed Amelia, they made up the difference.
"Wait, how much was your impound?" Danny asked, realising that he didn't have that number yet.
"Five kay," Amelia replied, visibly pleased with the amount that she was owing just a few moments before. The blonde's eyes went wide. He had to make the net broader, mumbling something in Lorath as he made another scan for donors, this time making it look like the station was charging additional fees for breathing.
There were plenty of those walking around, to say the least. The biggest shares of them came from the hangar staff and, in particular, their strongarm gang who enforced the impounds.
"Damn," was all the the dark-haired Nepleslian said as she continued to watch that. Turning around back to the starfighter, she saw that the hangar doors were no longer blocked with the big holo STOP sign.
"In essence, they'll be getting their money back, just very slowly through wages, or something," He said as he watched the STOP sign fizzle out and fade. "So, would you like to hear about my contractor? What I did was just what I can do with my equipment."
"Yeah, sure. We haven't even discussed wages and my fighter isn't impounded," she said, leaning back to a comfortable distance.
"You'll be hired as an official pilot to our bounty hunting crew," he detailed, now standing straight as he put the PDA away. "You'll receive a fixed wage, paid fortnightly plus a share of any bounties or missions you are involved in." He explained, businesslike as he nodded. He was a part of this deal too. "Rewards or demerits may be awarded at Captain Stroud's discretion for exceptional, or poor performance."
The most surprising thing that happened at the mention of the name was that Amelia's expression turned completely neutral at that. "Who?" She asked again, as if for confirmation.
The blonde raised his eyebrow again. "Uh, Captain Stroud." Danny repeated.
"You're joking, right?" Amelia asked, her voice slightly wavering as she a step towards the bounty hunter. Her expression had gotten serious again, as if she thought that it was all a joke by her apparent contractor.
Danny shook his head, furrowing his brow as he gave it a dab. Surely there must've been some confusion. "Wait, why would I joke to you if I got your spaceship free from the lot?"
Taking a step back, Amelia visibly tried to recompose herself, moving her head around and reaching for the collar of her suit which had suddenly become very uncomfortable. "Nothing," she said, although her expression was still the same; she just hoped that Danny would mistake that for it being her surprised at the decent contract. "It's good by me, what else?" She asked.
Something wasn't right, and Danny kept his eyebrow raised. Maybe this Amelia lady was a previous member of the Bounty Hunters, was around long enough to have heard of Desmond, or had some other kind of connection. He just had to see if he could tease it out of her instead, with a misplaced "Don't tell me - do you know Desmond too?" coming out of his mouth.
The reaction was almost instantaneous from her, and Amelia didn't immediately speak right after it too. Either that was some very fucked up way of messing with her, to show that he had some kind of leverage by knowing her family, or -and it was the most scaring prospect - that he was actually with her brother. "I don't think I do anymore," she said, which was as close to the truth as it got.
"So... are you still interested in the offer?" Danny asked, trying his best to get back to businesslike as he went from blunder to blunder. It was either his lucky day that so many stars were aligning, or a very unlucky day.
The Nepleslian girl straightened herself, adjusting the belt of her suit in the process before looking back at the Nepleslian. "Yeah, we're cool," she said, although her expression remained the same.
With the tension still hanging in the air, Danny looked about the hangar for something to put his attention onto while he fished his datapad out of his jacket. "In that case, sign here, a-and we'll call it a deal." Amelia was also given a stylus to write with, and a dotted line was blinking for a mark.
She stared at the dotted line for a few moments after picking up the proferred items with some mild surprise. "What, you're just going to hire me like that? Not even gonna get to meet the boss?" She asked.
"You already seem to know him, but okay," Danny said, letting snark creep through his voice, "lock up here before anyone realises you've been unimpounded, and I'll take you to meet Captain-" He cut himself off since it made Amelia very jumpy for some reason. "The captain, yeah."
By then, Amelia had put the heavy helmet back on. "I'm actually good to go," she said, checking the pouches around her belt for anything she could've forgotten to bring.
The blonde nodded, and the two were walking out of the hangar in the Northern Quadrant of the space station, and on their way to the proposed rendezvous point for a stim burger. Along the way, Danny tapped his Comm. Bead. "Desmond. Banshee is a go, they'll be meeting us at Neppies to sign on."
Along the way, he saw people looking about themselves, and looking at their handheld devices suspiciously. As though for a split second, something unpleasant had just flashed onto all of their screens and they didn't know what it was. "How'd Screamer go?" He added.
The communicator squeaked with static for a moment before the slightly garbled voice on the other end replied. "Guy was a bum, he was too drunk to understand what I was saying," Desmond replied.
"Banshee's got the ship and flight suit to match, for certain. Modified Hoplite, just as advertised," Danny smiled back into the comms as he moved through the central area of the space station, meandering towards Western Quadrant. "Don't you love it when there's a little honesty left in Nepleslia?"
"Let's just get this over with. This station is shit," the other bounty hunter replied. "I'm already at the Neppies, out," he added, before the commbead cut off.
When the communication cut off suddenly, Danny blinked, then sighed. He never was one for the poetics or romanticised view of things. "Tch..." he mumbled as he walked under the green N of the Neppies shop, finding Desmond sitting at a booth seat. Danny waved as he sat down on the opposite side to him, leaving a space for Banshee. "Captain Stroud, Banshee; Banshee, Stroud," he made brisk introductions. He saw Desmond get up and start to extend a hand, opening his mouth to speak until the bounty hunter just froze without saying anything.
Before Danny could inquire further into what was exactly playing out, the helmet from Amelia's custom flight suit whizzed besides his head, prompting Desmond to deflect the improvised projectile with his extended arm, and before he even had the chance to recover the smaller frame of the pilot was already upon him, before even the helmet had a chance to land back on the floor of the restaurant.
As the patrons were starting to crane their heads around to see what was the motive of the altercation, Amelia had already let out a "You shit!" escape from her lips as she seemingly tried to brain Danny's partner with her own hands. Only two of the trio knew that Desmond was her younger brother, and vice versa.
Meanwhile, a very confused third man who was watching things unfold was stunned by the sudden display of violence before mouthing a simple "what the fuck?" in Nepleslian.
The altercation continued to unfold, toppling the wooden table back on the floor as Desmond kicked the smaller pilot back up. "Amelia," he had managed to say as he got up before the aforementioned Nepleslian's gloved fist connected with his face with a dry 'smack.'
Both of them took a brief moment of respite from the fight, Amelia shaking her hand from how back it had hurt her own hand, while Desmond wiped the blood from his once-again-split upper lip as he fully got up.
"Desmond!" Danny shot back, now standing up and kneeling down between the two, prepared to grab their hands. "Amelia- for fuck's sake! Now I feel like the one in the middle of an elaborate cosmic joke!" For the first time that Desmond had seen, Danny had lost his cool, and he letting his Nepleslian stripes fly in the wind tunnel.
"Who the hell are you two?! Cuh-Clones?" He grasped at straws for an answer as someone with a phone was recording the fight looked disappointed that things were winding down. "Twins? C-cousins?!"
Desmond took a step forward, only being stopped by Danny's extended arm, while Amelia did the same; when things seemed like they were about to boil up again and explode was that the first of the two talked again. "Why did you stop talking, brother?" She suddenly asked, her voice wavering again.
To the other side, Desmond looked the same impassive himself as always with the same grimmace. "It's a long story," he started to say as he started reaching for a pocket inside his jacket again. "But I'm sorry," the bounty hunter quickly added, which seemed to make 'Banshee' deflate a little bit and back off from continuing the fight.
Then it clicked. Brother and sister. The blonde hunter's eyes widened and he looked between the siblings, backing off cautiously and letting go of them to see what happened. He was quietly monologuing his day's events, and that which had happened a few months ago. The atmosphere was still uneasy, with some of thepatrons that were still hopeful there would be a fight still watching the group while the employees of the restaurant orbited around them in case they caused any more property damage.
The two of them stared at one another for another long period of time in silence, even though it was all each one needed to unspokenly convey what it would take several words to express to one another. "How's life?" Desmond asked as he started to move and picked up the overturned table, setting it upright where it had previously been.
"Shitty like always," Amelia answered, letting out a faint laugh and brushing a strand of hair that had gotten in front of her face. She reached to pick her helmet up again and clip it to her belt.
Noticing the employees hovering around, Danny snapped his fingers to get their attention and made a simple request: "Three SuperNeppy meals, please," while holding handful of crumpled DA bills at them. "Desmond, Amelia, what do you want for drinks?"
"A beer," both of them replied while they moved to take a seat to either side of the booth.
Desmond sat down and slid to the corner against the wall, once again wiping the blood from the punch. "Nice hook," he commented, while his sister continued to rub the sore wrist under the reinforced glove.
"Phoenix energy, please," the blonde finished his order before sitting down awkwardly aside from the two. An employee took his banknotes, counted them and shrugged, walking off.
He really didn't have much to say or do about today's events, but his datapad was still resting on the table while the stylus was tucked inside of it.
The two siblings continued to stare at one another until Amelia glanced at Danny, then back to her brother. "He's alright, we can talk here," Desmond said, finally fishing out a cigarette from inside his jacket and plucking it between his lips.
"What have you been doing?" Amelia asked expectantly, interlacing her fingers on the tablet. She somehow seemed to have forgotten the slight of being shut off from talking to the only person in her family who cared for almost ten years, but instead was taking it as ten years they had to catch up.
Desmond started to light up the cigarette, flicking the lighter closed once he was done. "I can tell you, but I need you to sign that thing first," he said, nodding towards the datapad on the table.
Amelia picked up the small electronic and the stylus and quickly scribbled on the surface.
SOME TIME PASSED...
♫ Blur - Coffee and TV♫
A very grumpy waiter removed the three empty dishes from the table, as well as the many empty beer bottles that had started to pile up on the center of it. The surprisingly Yamataian-looking waiter seemed like the excess of empty plates and bottles that he was cautiously building a pyramid off would fall off at any second, but when that looked as if it was about to happen the man just moved his arm to the same direction and it righted itself again.
The decreasing clattering of the dishes was a sign enough that talking was a viable option once more.
"No shit, you mean there was an actual cat that killed all those pirates?" Desmond asked after taking a sip of another bottle, while Amelia just replied with a nod.
She had spent the entire meal telling about her misadventures in Kennewes and then on Nepleslia Prime, while Desmond had only been the one nudging her on to keep going. Danny meanwhile was happy to sit back, having drunk his third can of Phoenix Energy, and somehow all he had to show for the REAL LIGHTNING that was alledged to be inside of the can was fingers drumming against the table.
"What about you?" Amelia suddenly asked Danny. "How long have the two of you been working together?"
Danny's lips made an 'ooh' as he looked over to Desmond, smiling chipperly and nodding. "Well, your brother contracted me to assist with a raid against a gang on Delsauria!" He said, nodding as he was talking with his hands, using his index fingers to indicate himself and Desmond, marching his hands across the table towards the beeramid, which elicited a suppressed giggle from Amelia. "They were the - the - ...shit, Desmond, who were they again? All fur coat, no underpants; desert motif, lots of robots?"
"The Danger Knives," Desmond chimed in. Those guys had been a pain in the ass to root out, but wiping one of the major gangs in Delsauria off the face of the planet had been well worth it. The money that entailed was also a big factor, too.
"Ruh-really? I liked it better when we called them target alpha," Danny sighed, turning his two fingers outwards, pointing at the ceiling. "Danger Knives? More like ... more like ..." He snapped his fingers on that hand that was representing himself, coming up short.
"Dork Knives?" Amelia suggested, failing to hide the smile on her face. Compared to the captain of the Fringe, that reception had been much better, and she already felt herself warming up to some of the crew.
Danny's hands banged against the table gently, but the beeramid shook and clattered threateningly, causing him to freeze, and, strangely, the SQUID suit covering his body to suddenly camouflage with the table and the booth seat. The clothes he was wearing over them did not shift colour with the rest of the suit.
"Oooooooh stone me that was close," he clicked his tongue as he slowly turned his fingers back up. "Luh-like I was saying, Desmond and I, well your brother's a badass motherfucker because," he put his hands down on the table, pinkies against the wood, "he was driving, and they were driving," he slid the pinkies of his hand across the table towards Desmond, "and it, was, mental."
Amelia glanced towards her brother, who just just took another sip of his bottle and nodded towards Danny, who made finger guns at Desmond, wiggling his index fingers at him. "Come on now, that was all you."
"Well you boarded the top of that car and diced the asshole who was driving," Desmond pointed out.
Danny's eyes widened and he tilted his head at Desmond, his left hand tapping the top of the right hand, "Wh- You make it sound so dramatic!" The blonde shook his head, now with open palms at Desmond, "I was persuading him to stop the outrider a-and we had a disagreement."
With a rising interest, Amelia had leaned forward and was listening to the tale unfold intently. "What then?" She asked.
"Uh," Danny tripped over his words as he remembered what went down, well, his version of the events anyway.
He remembered all of the SMG fire that was ripping through the interior of the Outrider from the Ripshot he was given, then tried to make a glib suggestion to the driver to pull over even though they'd been shot through the head. "It's a little difficult to be... uh, smooth with someone who has a 10x25mm transcranial lead injection, so I had to jump back to Desmond's."
He let that settle in for a bit, then added: "And his Outrider was on fire!" It may have been a stretch, but there was definitely something cooking under the hood. Desmond, on the other hand, remembered very well that the HMG on top of the outrider they were chasing had done that damaged.
"Then they crashed into an empty building on the way, and that was the end of it," her brother explained. He didn't want to go on detail about how they entered the building, took pictures of the dead gangers, and then left before the building completely caught fire. Nor did he want to explain the proccess of having to clear out the place they had raided for any valuables.
"That's intense," Amelia commented. "The two times I've had to shoot someone down wasn't even close to that. You're seeing their fighter through a screen anyway, so it's kind of like doing a sim," she added, spinning an empty beer bottle around on the table. "The other times it wasn't as easy, though," the pilot concluded.
"Still takes nerves of steel to fly one of those things though," Danny remarked, impressed by the modest kill count. To him, so much more had to go into thinking ahead when you were flying than stalking - to him, anyway. "So noisy."
"Well, it's a matter of who makes the most mistakes if it's an even fight," she started to explain, remembering her first kill. "The first one was even until the other guy tried to coax me into a nine-gee turn, which lasted for about a minute until he probably passed out," Amelia explained, since at one point the enemy fighter had stopped turning, which allowed her to get on its tail and take it down with the her fighter's main cannon.
"The second one was simpler, it was just a Scimitar." She explained with a shrug and looked away, like that was all they needed to know as Danny was counting on his fingers, reaching five before putting his palm back down and amiss for words.
"What was our final bodycount?" Danny asked Desmond. "I think the mistake at Delsauria was our enemies getting out of bed that morning."
"All in all everybody accounted for twenty something, plus a bunch of those robots," he said, glancing over at his sister. It only took him a split second to realize that she was very intently looking at him, and he didn't want to admit what his job was all about this early.
"Ruh-robots don't count!" Danny interjected, not paying attention to Amelia's stare as he put his index and middle fingers down on the table with his palm up, mimicking a person.
Then he noticed the silence that'd fallen over the conversation, and his gaze shifted gently onto Amelia. "We kill people, dear," he filled in the blank left by Desmond. He wasn't exactly thinking of the social niceties of murder for fun and profit with a head full of energy drink.
"I noticed," Amelia answered, still looking at her brother. How things had changed. Some time ago, she might have made a big deal out of that, but she too had to change her line of work out of necessity; it simply paid better to kill people.
Looking about himself, Danny realised they'd stayed at the Neppies for a quite some time now. The beeramid they'd accumulated, each of the beer tube coming up empty on the promotional scratchie under the can where you could win an all expenses paid trip to Albini, was beginning to lose novelty, and Danny decided to rearrange it by taking the top can down, then placing it by the bottom, then taking the uppermost cans down and creating a circle on the table of beer and energy drink cans.
As Danny placed the last can, an empty can of Phoenix Energy down that rattled because he had put the ring pull inside, he asked, "Did I ever tell you guys about when I met this guy before he got famous?"
He shuffled out of the booth, ready to leave and hoping the other two got the hint.
"Come on, I need to get you a room in the ship," Desmond said, fortunately getting the hint. Despite having just downed probably a dozen tall beer cans there was only a slight slur to his speech. Nodding, his sister shuffled out of the booth after him as he counted a few DA bills and set them on top of the table.
"Where is your fighter docked?" He asked her as he put the rest of the bills back on one of his pant pockets, as Danny walked beside him. "If it's on this station, you're taking it somewhere else; it's dogshit over here," he added before she could even reply.
"When?" Amelia asked, as she followed the two out of the restaurant. Once they had cleared the grease-smelling establishment she unclipped her helmet and put it back on again.
"Now," Desmond said, reaching for something inside his jacket. Once he found the cigarette pack inside he tapped the underside of it and fished a deathstick out with his lips. "Danny will send you the ship's coordinates, just take a shuttle there. You won't be using your fighter for now," he added.
Once more fully clad in her EVA-suit, Amelia just nodded, then started to make her way out. Desmond started to do the same, but there was a noticeable stagger in his step as he hesitated and turned around. "'Melia," he called out, making her turn her head around once he got her attention.
"It's good to see you again."
Danny was looking back and watching the moment, stopping when he noticed Desmond making a conscious effort to turn around and be personable. Perhaps it was an admission. He was unable to feeling the sibling connection, since he wasn't even sure if he had siblings - or parents.
When Desmond turned back around, he saw Danny's fingers against the bandage on his forehead and a tightening of his lips and eyelids as he sent Amelia the coordinates for the Iron Ferret with his other hand, which wouldn't be caught dead anywhere near this station. By then, the Nepleslian's face was back to its old, frowning self.
"Come on, there's work to do," Desmond said. His partner grumbled in reply as they walked off together.
