3308-11-13 Lamia
13 Nov 2023TechnoNomadic
Again, I have my regrets about trying to sleep through the night at Liz Ryder's place. Hours of silence punctuated by the explosions of her experiments. After a restless night, and I think someone knocking at the hatch, I needed coffee. First I headed to the cockpit to check comms. I slipped on something on the floor. There was a stack of yupo covered in drawings and lists of star systems. I flopped into the copilot's chair and tried to focus my bleary eyes on the slippery sheets. They reminded me of my time serving on the Gnosis. Shortly before I left a wild-eyed scientist I shared workspace with shoved them in my hands with a cackle. I'd stored them without much thought, they must have fallen out of the locker at some point. The top sheet read SYNUEFE TP-F B44-0 and an exhaustive list in shorthand followed. The next page was COL 173, and it was then that I remembered a lot of Guardian sites had been found in that sector. It was too much without that coffee.I found my way to the pilots' lounge. It was very early and the corridors were empty, as was the lounge when I got there. A large holoposter proclaimed that the coffee here was sponsored by Det 'n 8 Coffee and promised enough polyphenols and caffeine to have you moving faster than a shockwave. And a quick disclaimer that if too much is used in the brew the company wouldn't be responsible for the results. I took a mug with some retro-style art of a primitive bomb and filled it with the steaming dark potion. It had an oily sheen and was bitter at the first sip. But it made my scalp feel prickly, so it would work. Mug in hand I tapped at a nearby console and began to work out how to get Angurvadal through the brown dwarf desert between Eurybia and Yembo. What wasn't a problem for long-legged Tanngnjostr most definitely was for Angurvadal which was optimized for a different role. I found a route on the antispin side with enough fuel stars and logged out.
When I looked up from the console, a flushed and disheveled Liz came into the lounge. I finished my coffee and went to return the mug so I could return to my ship, but Liz brandished the pot awkwardly. I grimaced inwards, and let my eyes go to her fidgeting empty opposite hand. I let her refill my mug before reaching for a clean one which would be hers. She looked confused but filled it. I kept holding out the mug and sipped on mine until she realized it was hers and put the pot back in the machine. I knew she wanted something but I wasn't going to make it easy. We stood there sipping coffee without talking. Finally, my mug was empty and I put it with the other used ones and turned to leave. She quickly grabbed the sleeve of my Remlok and whispered she wanted to go to my ship badly.
She kept fidgeting as I escorted her to the dock. As soon as we got close to the ship she ran ahead and hurriedly opened a hull access panel. By the time I caught up, she came back out holding a pair of pliers. She'd lost them and had been looking all night, and they were her favorites. Good for her to find them before they bounced around and shorted something. She scampered back to the workshop, and I boarded the ship. I glanced at the stack of research papers and just stuffed them back in my flight bag. Very shortly after I was boosting for the stars.
After an hour of jumping, plotting, replotting because the autoplotter wasn't routing through enough fuel stars, jumping again and so forth, I'd made it back to Yembo. Docked out on Naddoddur and while checking in, saw a quick mission for bounty and with Liz's coffee making me feel braver than usual, off I went. This guy chased me down before I even completed my scan at the Nav Beacon. Made it all the easier to track him down. I don't think he even tried to get away. I just added his wreckage to my inventory. Back to the dock, turned in the mission, and was collecting the bond when comms pinged there was work to do in Lamia. So I flew out there and docked on Noon, but the coffee ran out and lack of sleep caught up with me. I darkened my helmet and closed my eyes.