If you kick a space rock and there's no gravity to bring it back to earth, will anyone care?
27 Mar 2021User319792
I could smell the onionhead before I stepped into the outfitter's depot. I finally got back from my trip and the first thing in my inbox was another letter from the man in the black suit that basically said, and I'm paraphrasing, "[Go kick rocks until we figure out where we can place you.]" It always feels good to know I'm appreciated. That's not the way to do it, but it does feel good when its done the right way.
The post-script on the holo said something about the my Imperial rank freeze being lifted early in light of the extraordinary circumstances surrounding the premature ending to the Galactic Summit, which was a good thing to find out since I've been hoping to test out some new weaponry and gear. I managed to convince some tech-brokers to unlock my access after following-up on some old leads about these Guardian sites and ruins. The Codex doesn't say anything about the connection between them and Aisling's Guardians and the connection still confuses me but, I've been told, the gear is a solid bet for anyone trying to take down some of those useless thargoids.
With basically nothing to do, I stopped over at Jameson's Memorial a bunch over the past few days while working through some new blueprints and outfitting schematics I've been working on. I bumped into CMDR FilthyMick420 during one of my outfitting trips at a particularly pungent moment. He was staring at what I think was an old WWIII-era spoon. It was like a kitchen utensil or something.
We'd scrummed a few times for fun a while back when I was still spending most of my time in Hobbes and he walked me through some stuff about outfitting and engineering, suggesting a few different ways I could make my ship more lethal. I asked him what was going on with the spoon and he looked at me like I was insane before putting his index finger to my lips, barely touching the bottom of my nose.
"They'll hear you call it a spoon and then they'll know they've won."
It was, at the same time, the weirdest and scariest thing someone's ever said to me about a kitchen utensil in my entire life. I froze and stared at him, eyes wider around than cannon rounds before asking, "What? Who's gonna... what?"
"Don't ever let them hear you call something what it is. If you're ever around them, always call something by the inverse of its negative."
I couldn't tell if he was intentionally making a joke at my expense, because of the stupid look of vacant confusion I knew I was wearing on my face, or if he was talking about the suits, or any of the millions of other things currently happening in the galaxy. As a member of the Dark Wheel's Raxxla Squadron, he's part of a group working directly with Pilot's Federation. When we'd first met, he and some of his wingmen pilots were still working as independent pilots. All I could muster after that massive one-two punch-up was a question I already knew the answer to
"What's an inverse?"
He looked at me like I was crazy again before asking me what I was up to. I told him about my promotion due to my efforts in Hahn, among other things, before we laughed for a little while about Raxxla's prank in San Tu. He started going on about some intrigue within the Dark Wheel and I wasn't sure what to make of it, considering the insane degree of secrecy amongst the Pilot's Federation to begin with before he lifted the spoon back to my eye level and asked me if I knew what it was.
Again, I wasn't sure what to say, because even if I knew it was just a spoon, I also knew he was one of the squadron leaders of a pretty secretive organization within an organization that was extremely secretive in its own right.
I shifted my eyes away before turning my head to match my eyes to his.
"It's an unformatted onionhead delivery apparatus..."
He stare remained locked and he gripped the spoon even tighter before slowly shaking it in my direction.
"Never let them know that you know how to know what you aren't supposed to know how to know."
His face remained unemotional and matter of fact as my face couldn't not have been completely twisted around itself at the words that just left his mouth. He smiled, wishing me well, and letting me know I'm welcome around before heading over to his carrier. I rubbed my eyes and took a deep breath before finally walking over to the outfitters and letting them know that I'm gonna be around working through some prints for a while. They asked what I had in mind and I mentioned I'd visited some the Guardian sites Cannon Research has been suggesting people check out.
They seemed into it and I showed them some of the photos from the trip, which I'll include here
