We're Not Exactly Impatient, As Much As Extremely Curious
10 Jun 2021User319792
The suits were frantic when Coral and I left the man in the black suit's side. We'd been given little information beyond what the man in the black suit had already spoken to us about when we'd finally arrived at Mackenzie Relay:1. Our ships were all tied into the Pilot's Federation's central routing networks and what Coral found may or may not be a derivative of the INRA code that fractured CMDR Jameson's navigation and piloting systems at the end of his Thargoid mission;
2. An extremist wing of the neo-marlinists claimed responsibility for a terrorist attack that claimed hundreds of thousands of lives and the assassinations and attempted assassinations of members of the Imperial royal family;
3. breakaway faction of Core Dynamics- whom itself is chief contractor for the Federation's Navy and Auxiliary Navy- has repeatedly been thrust into war upon disclosures pertaining to their former leader Jupiter Rochester's role in the destruction of Starship One- which occurred, in historical time, as the Federation's political power's debated and successfully implemented a galaxy-wide surveillance program.
On top of that, the Empress' ex-fiance is the younger brother of Jupiter Division's spiritual leader, her father was killed by a neo-marlinist extremist in the days and weeks prior to the 9 Martyrs attack, and her cousin named by a potential informant to the new surveillance regime only to have the information declared unreliable.
Me and Coral did little for the past couple of days but sit around and laugh about this and that. We were half-way through another bottle of Burnham Bile Distillate when the man in the black suit stormed into the captain's quarters. He handed me a sheet of orders, at which point I stood up to put on my flight suit before stumbling into the bulkhead.
"Sober up, first... idiot." He looked at Coral, who waited on instructions. He smiled at Coral and asked if everything was ok with her. She nodded without breaking her gaze and he looked at me again before stiffening up.
"Nothing from our man here yet. I haven't seen him for a couple of days but we've been tasked with an information request and I want you on it, Cadence. Coral, you're free to return to Cubeo if you'd like, while Cadence is working on this." Coral nodded and agreed to hang back at Cubeo until further notice. By the time I dried out, Coral was showered and in her flight suit telling me she could collect the information if I needed. I slapped her across the face and shoved my index finger in her face with a hard look on my face, before pointing at the Pilot's Federation Trade Elite logo on my left shoulder. She laughed while cupping her left hand under her right armpit and flapping her arm up and down while rolling her eyes.
"... baby... you are such a big baby, Cadence." I disembarked from Mackenzie Relay and brought Coral straight over to Chelomey with the agreement that I'd pick her up once I completed the orders.