The Olive Grove - "Catching Up"
18 Feb 2018Jemine Caesar
Sitting in her office at The Olive Grove, Jemine tapped her desktop display, bringing up a k-cast message interface. She began to type...* * * * *
To: Edward Harvard,
Bear Island,
Home,
REORTE
27 November, 3303
Dear father,
First of all, I must apologise for not having written to you in so long. I just hope this letter actually manages to reach you. Living on a remote island with basic tech makes communicating with you rather difficult. Then again, I suppose that is precisely what you wanted, isn’t it?
Secondly, you’re probably unaware that my mother and her husband, Barnes, tragically died in an accident last May. Whilst walking in the countryside on Abukunin A1, they’d apparently stumbled over the edge of a cliff and fallen into a fast-flowing river. Their bodies were discovered on May 31st. There being no evidence of foul play, the coroner had ruled death by misadventure. I later learned from their lawyers that they’d bequeathed all their worldly goods to me, but huge debts and exhorbitant fees meant the inheritance would be greatly reduced. I’m still waiting to find out by exactly how much. Anyway, I know you were very fond of mother, and I’m sorry for your loss.
Now, I ought to let you know what’s happened to me since we last saw one another. After I left you at Davies High, I went to Pegasi to carry out a bounty hunting contract. I won’t bore you with the details, suffice to say it didn’t end well for me. In fact, the whole affair made me decide to turn my back on the spacer life for good.
So Sam and I have settled down, in a system called Inara. I sold my ship and bought a place on Citi Gateway starport. I say “a place”; all right, it’s actually a pleasure house. Yes, father, your daughter is a brothel madam. A good friend of mine used to call me ‘Goody Two-Shoes’. I don’t think she does anymore.
My place is called The Olive Grove. We opened on November the first, 3303, and we’re doing quite well. Sam helps out from time to time with things in the bar, but his main source of income is ferrying cargo and tourists in his Asp Explorer. Most of my employees came to me from The Organ Grinder, which was what The Olive Grove used to be called before I bought it. My senior Meet-and-Greeter, Suki, is worth her weight in gold for her efficiency and dedication. She’s also become a good friend to me. My Bar Manager is a woman named Cee. She seems to know every drink recipe in the book, and has a habit of bursting into song while she’s tending bar. She’s very popular with the patrons.
No two days are ever quite the same at The Olive Grove. We get all sorts of characters coming in. Less than three weeks after we opened, I was sitting in my office (yes, I even have an office!) watching security cam footage from the bar. One of my girls, Candi, was sitting with a woman who was wearing a bright orange corset and very little else. Now, I don’t know if you know much about organised prostitution (‘The Life’, as we call it in the profession), but one thing you do not do is poach clients on someone else’s territory. That is exactly what I suspected this woman was up to, so I went to the bar and confronted her.
She told me her name was Esma Eld. Now, that sounded like a made up name if ever there was one! I asked her outright who she was working for, and she told me she was freelance. Well, to cut a long story short, it turned out that Esma Eld had come to The Olive Grove thinking it was an ordinary bar. She’d seen some fellas playing strip poker at an adjacent table, and somehow jumped to the conclusion that going semi-naked was some sort of local custom. So she blithely took off the flightsuit she’d arrived in. Don’t ask me why she was wearing a corset underneath, because I’m still trying to work that one out myself!
Anyway, once she realised what had happened, Esma seemed genuinely mortified by her error, and said she was simply trying to fit in with the locals. She explained that she came from an isolated clan who took everything very literally. Although it seemed a bit far-fetched to me, what else could I do but apologise and let her have her drinks on the house as a goodwill gesture?
You remember my good friend Nathalie Hudson, of course? She was the one who came with Sam and me to find you at Koyans. Nath leads a somewhat mercurial lifestyle, mainly due to her bounty hunting career. Well, she contacted me by k-cast from Earth in the middle of November. She told me that she had taken a break from her crusade against Archon Delaine, mainly thanks to becoming involved with the Thargoid threat in the Pleiades. She’d heard about The Olive Grove on social media, and decided the time was right for the two of us to renew our acquaintance for a bit of a catch up. I naturally explained that, since I’d sold my ship and was a permanent resident on Citi Gateway, trips away from Inara were going to be few and far between. Well, Nath solved that problem by coming to Inara just a few days later!
She found The Olive Grove straight away. Sam and I met up with her in reception, and we all went along to my office for a chat. I told her my job was mainly administrative, dealing with a surprisingly varied amount of datawork. Rotas, contracts, laundry bills, publicity, health records, security, facilities management... though I think I may have made it sound a bit more onerous that it actually is, to be perfectly honest with you.
Nath, in turn, told us she’d helped quash a pirate faction in some far-off system. Then, when the news of the Thargoids reached her, she went out to the Pleiades to take a look for herself. Whilst there, she received a distress call from a freight convoy, and dropped down just in time to see it decimated by a single Thargoid vessel. She wasn’t ashamed to admit that she ran for her life.
I asked Nath where she was thinking of heading for next. She said she had no definite plans, so I suggested that she might consider staying in Inara. I told her it was a decent system, with a decent ruling faction in Inara Nexus.
“Of course,” I said to her, "not everyone sees things with quite the same attitude of tolerance. There are a number of factions openly opposed to Inara Nexus. Conflict, sadly, is never far away. And even a peace loving faction such as Inara Nexus has occasional need for good combat pilots..."
I hoped that the possibility of combat opportunities in and around Inara might be enough to persuade Nath to stay. I didn’t for a moment expect Nath to remain, if truth be told. But, to my surprise, she said she would. I was delighted, of course, and promised I’d help her find a good place to live in Citi Gateway’s Hab Ring. We decided to celebrate the decision with drinks in the InGaBa, an extremely popular bar in the starp
* * * * *
Jemine stopped typing mid-word. She frowned, leaned back in her office chair, then yawned and stretched her arms upwards. Leaning forward again, she gazed at the screen before her. The words on it swam in her vision, moving and shifting focus. She blinked twice, then shook her head and frowned once more.
“Well,” she said, tapping the desktop interface to save the document, “I suppose I’ll simply have to finish this tomorrow.”
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Author's Note:
Thank you to commanders Esma Eld, Sam Hodkin and Nathalie Hudson for the RP on which parts of this entry are based.