Wheels within wheels
07 Jun 2021User319792
"Twist off the ends of the wires and screw the panel on. You should be good to go." Coral was sweating and her eyes looked unfocused. I'd been alternating between driving in circles and napping in my SRV for a few days before she finally sent the holofac request. She said she'd noticed the bug in the coding while working on one of her Keystones and she'd managed to isolate it before walking me through the process of rewiring the internals of Galileo to isolate the affected board. I told her I'd meet her at Chelomey and she said she'd try to make sure the man in the black suit would be there to meet me. I took a little time on my way back, taking some photos
Coral was already waiting on the landing pad. She looked at me with her eyes wide and gave me a big hug before walking into the Ovid with me.
"He's in Ts'ao Tach, right now. I dunno if you've been paying attention to what's going on, but Jupiter Division is at war."
"Again?"
"Yeah. That guy McKenna over at Core Dynamics backed Silver Legal Group when Jupiter Division tried to expand into Ts'ao Tach and dad's over there now reading between the lines."
I squinted and looked over at her at the use of the word "dad" to refer to the man in the black suit. I remembered her being taken in and her first few days of training and she'd started calling him dad after screaming that he wasn't her real dad during an argument about the exposed wires in his Diamondback Explorer 1000 Yard Stare. She continued,
"Rochester is sitting in prison somewhere but Jupiter Division is winning some followers in the Federation and its rubbing some people the wrong way." The unfocused look in her eyes returned when she mentioned Rochester's name. I'd been paying attention to what's been going on since the invitation to HIP 54530 at the start of Rochester's break-away from the rest of Core Dynamics. His mother is still Shadow Vice President under Winters and his brother is still a relatively high-ranking diplomat in the Federation. The engagement between Jordan and Aisling is old news at this point, but with everything happening with the 9 Martyrs attack, its hard not to think the man in the black suit might be following up on some of the things we'd talked about.
We were sitting in our pjs in Ovid's captain's quarters when the holofac request from the man in the black suit finally came in. Coral immediately took the request- in my ship- and barked out a series of numbers and letters to the man in the black suit that he immediately took down with a pen and pad.
"Did you replace the board in Cadence's ship, Coral?" Coral nodded and turned to me.
"Galileo's good to fly. You look better than you did the last time I spoke to you." The man in the black suit looked at me with no expression on his face before looking back at Coral.
"She'll need to hang on to the board and get it to me here in Ts'ao Tach. I want you over here, Cadence." Scarlet left me a note about undocking Vercengeterix and Phoebus in a nearby system when she and the Furcas returned to governed space and something else about being a little bummed that I couldn't stay for the rest of the vacation. I hadn't said a word to her about why I had to ditch the Furcas trip until well-afterward.
"I thought you said these types of things aren't our fight." I gave him a little head rock to sass it up while saying it, thinking he'd lighten up but he did little more than look at me again and look right back at Coral. It was a little insulting that he'd just ignore me after pulling me away from my vacation and I looked away.
"Make sure she isn't all pouty like this when she gets over here Coral. I need her awake and with her eyes wide open." He turned to me, and noticed I was staring at him with hard eyes.
"Just like that, Cadence. I need you ready, and you're right: this isn't our fight. But, I need your help finding out whose fight it is and if we want a fight with them." I squinted at him and Coral pointed at the half-curl at the corner of my mouth, laughing, before telling the man in the black suit to go away because we were gonna have a slumber party now. He looked back and forth between she and I before looking down at his pad again.
"Get it done, you two. I'll see you here, shortly, Cadence." After closing the comms, Coral turned to me and asked if I knew what he was talking about. I looked at her and she was looking back at me with that look of innocent curiosity and I told her that I might. We sat in silence for a while before she began pelting me with questions about the ETA Carina and Statue of Liberty Nebulae. We laid sprawled out on varying parts of the floor of the captain's lounge in Ovid for the rest of the night, alternating between laughing and serious conversations. Docked in Chelomey, with Coral in our pjs again like the old days, it was the closest I'd felt to being home since I first docked here after receiving my PIlot's Federation License.