I was definitely surprised
12 May 2021User319792
"Do you know what an allegory is, Cadence?"The man in the black suit looked annoyed. His flight suit was ruffled and he had a necktie crumpled in his left hand, which slowly clenched and unclenched, making the veins in it gleam in the blue light on his end of the holofac.
"If I say yes, can I get back to the Cortez so I can finish outfitting Octavian?"
He looked back at me after peering over his shoulder with a snort.
"Cadence, is there a reason I have a note on my desk about how I need to get my shit together and help you get your internals in order so that I can get you back into space and out of Chelomey?"
He seemed frustrated with something and I knew it probably wouldn't be a good idea to play this cute, but at the same time I was still a billion credits short of Octavian being flight-ready, so I wasn't particularly sympathetic.
"Does it have to do with allegories? Because if it does I can't help you."
He looked above the holo sensors and clenched his jaw, repeatedly. He looked like he was trying to work out a way to explain what I already knew in a way that I didn't already know it and I let out a small guffaw.
"There's been a reassignment order for you for the past week and, apparently, one of our people in Chelomey rescinded the order after speaking with you at Chelomey. He says that he spoke with you and you told him that you hadn't been out of Chelomey for months, other than to test out one of the Keystones, and that you'd been working on the internals in order to make sure you could take the thing out and defend yourself if you needed to."
I knew exactly what he was talking about. I sent a holofac to Coral asking her to cover for me so I could finish up with the outfitting. She barely thought about it before saying something about how she didn't care and she had way too much to deal with in the Keystones to even bother asking any questions about why. She must have just walked up to one of the suits and announced herself as callsign Half-Lock of NAIN Inc. It must have worked perfectly. I fought a huge cheeser working its way through me.
"Wait a minute. You... you don't suppose he mistook me for Coral, did he? I mean, I know you don't want us flying around at the same time without seeking special permission from the Pilot's Federation. Maybe he just assumed that since we're operating the same call-sign we're the same person."
I gave him an exaggerated look of concern. He looked at the wall behind me and his breathing slowed.
"Cadence, I don't know what it is that you think me and the rest of the agents are up to, but we don't all have the time to sit around playing games with everyone else's pilots. You and Coral are operating a specific set of roles within our parent organization and NAIN inc. is the culmination of that."
I could feel the cheeser pushing hard to fight its way through my defenses and I turned away from the holofac sensor, showing him my new haircut. I coughed hard repeatedly to cover the gut-buster that burst through. He cleared his throat before lifting up his cup of coffee, taking a sip. His voice was raspy and curt.
"Cadence, finish up your refits and get yourself over to Achenar with some firepower and some horsepower. All previous orders, including the one our agent in Chelomey rescinded, are now superseded by this order. Make sure when you get there you can get to at least 150ly in short order and that you can also do so with or without anyone around thinking you're bringing the whole of the Imperial Navy with you."
I didn't know what horsepower was, but I said fine and shut down the holofac before falling off my chair and crawling back into the Cortez' cockpit, in horrific abdominal pain.