Familiar
30 Mar 2020Robert Lees
3306-03-30 1800Commander Slepov was nowhere to be seen when Lees arrived at the tavern. He made his way through the tables and cliques, letting out a grunt as he planted himself on a stool at a rounded corner of the bar and signalled to the keep.
The Whistling Limpet was affectionately named for the array of mechanical parts lining its interior, all salvaged from various mining mishaps and recovery contracts gone awry. Its constituents ranged from shifty-looking traders huddled over the blue glow of PDA screens, to vainglorious fighter pilots decked out in fur collar jackets, and everyone in between. Lees caught the eye of one man with an unusually shrewd expression, who in all likelihood could recount the full history of each and every one of the collector carcasses protruding from the walls. He cast a cursory gaze over the room before glancing back towards the man, giving him an involuntary nod, partly intended as acceptance, but mostly admitting a Why are you still looking at me? demeanour. The gesture must have been interpreted badly, as it was met with a snarl and spit, thankfully directed harmlessly to the floor at the man’s side.
Lees ran his hand over his shoulder, subconsciously confirming the lack of embroidery from a Sirius emblem or any other obvious sign of corporate affiliation. He knew the Forces were not given a warm reception in such circles, which was why he liked to try and keep a low profile whenever possible. But here he conceded that he must have already misread the air, or botched some form of established vagabond etiquette, because now he was getting funny looks from other regulars sitting near the spitter. Clearly there was some inherent part of him that screamed ‘government legman’ and kept potential business associates at bay. This was something he would have to work on.
Questionable decor and clientele notwithstanding, it didn’t take long to get comfy. Sitting in a pilot seat, particularly in zero-g, never truly felt like sitting at all, and Lees was always glad for an opportunity to let his whole weight slump beneath him. He splayed his hands on the counter top, flexing his fingers, pretending to get to know the ceramic faux walnut grain. A glass of Indi Bourbon was set down in front of him, and he spent a moment to draw the glass under his nostrils, savouring the caramel notes before taking his first sip.
“Just gonna ignore me, huh?”
The voice from the adjacent seat startled him, sending the liquor the wrong way.
“Oh. Nice, Bobby. Real smooth.”
“Andrea!” Lees spluttered through the burning sensation and watery eyes. “Fancy seeing you here.”
“This is our home station,” came the mordant reply.
“Sure, but weren’t you off gallivanting across the arse-end of the bubble?”
“I was. We needed a data injection in Gurabru, so the trip got cut short.”
Lees smiled, wiping his mouth with a napkin. “Shame, I’ll bet.”
“Eh, it was only twenty K out. Make that back in an afternoon.”
Only twenty thousand light years?
Lees’ smile faded as he suddenly recalled his own haphazard excursion into the sectors of space beyond the murky backyard of the SSF. It had been for the sake of the much sought after high-grade thruster module blueprints. The galaxy’s most famed engineering prodigies were known for imposing lofty demands in return for their services, but this one - ‘the Professor’ they called him - took the proverbial biscuit.
“Attain a maximum distance from your career start location of at least 5,000 light years.”
He would never forget the sinking feeling that washed over him upon reading the requirements just for the honour of meeting this esteemed fellow, let alone convincing him to cooperate with a lowly Sirius grunt. After eventually acquiring the dirty drive blueprints and receiving remote access to the Professor’s workshop, Lees had made a personal vow never to visit the Arque system ever again - for both their sakes.
He tried to redeem the smile, making his follow-up quaff of whiskey look as professional as he possibly could.
“Aw, don’t worry,” his companion flashed, raising her own drink. “I’ll be out of your hair again in no time.”
Despite having close to no desire for a repeat experience himself, Lees had nothing but respect for hardened explorers, especially those who managed to retain a personality. He hadn’t met many commanders whom he could call ‘noble of the black’, but Andrea Maehara upheld that moniker with panache. She was of a rare breed that not only avoided losing herself while traveling through the bleak nothingness between distant stars, but frequently seemed to come back more switched on than when she left.
His glass clinked against hers - rather more carefully than intended - and he at last managed a genuine grin.
“I’ll never understand how you do it.”
“And I’ll never understand your hard-on for that little DeLacy number! Good luck taking her anywhere more than a stone’s throw away.”
“You’re jealous.”
Maehara laughed a little too loud at this, clapping a hand over her mouth as she felt eyes aimed at her from beneath several raised brows around the bar.
“Careful now,” joked Lees. “We don’t want to spoil the mood in here.”
“What are you doing in a place like this, anyway? Still trying to rub shoulders with Fontenay’s finest?”
“Got a rendezvous with Slep. He should be here soon. What about you?”
“Just needed somewhere cosy; somewhere to wind down after a long tour.”
Lees absentmindedly tapped his glass, rubbing his temple with his free hand while looking around the tavern once more.
“You call this cosy?”
“It’s not without its charm. The locals have some pretty good stories.”
“Most of them look like they’ve never seen sunlight.”
“Whatever you say, slick! It’s you that needs to get out more. See the world, you know?”
“Yeah. Maybe you’re right.”
Lees took another sip. Maehara had been a trusted cohort since the SSF’s initiation in 3303. Though he was her senior in age, and they shared admiralty status, she more than lived up to her rank. He wasn’t ashamed to admit that she regularly outclassed him on the battlefield and consistently proved an asset to the group through scrupulous intel gathering. Despite her frequent stints outside the bubble, she still managed to shift more influence for their private faction on a daily basis than he could normally muster in a week. The Forces had also seen a recruitment surge as of late, and he felt it wouldn’t be long before he was outshone by the new bloods as well as the vets.
However, he wasn’t one to brood about such matters. There were certain sensitive tasks that couldn’t be entrusted to an apprentice, and Lees was content to wait for these to come his way. When they did, he carried them out without question or incident. When missions were sparse, he drank, and tried to make connections where the top brass wouldn’t dare to look. But when the bottle ran dry and the churn of society’s seedy underbelly got the better of him, that was when he began to drift. This was starting to seem like that time; a prime moment at which to embrace the spark of inspiration.
“Sell it to me, then. What’s so great about life in the black?”
“I’m not your travel agent, Bobby!” Maehara looked a little incredulous, but her playful tone remained intact.
“Come on, humour me!” Lees grinned. “What can I hope to find out there? And you’d better not say ‘yourself’.”
“Hmm...”
Her face scrunched in a display of sham reflection. (Indeed, this was a topic that had already been given a great deal of thought.) Her tone suddenly took on a more deliberate quality, and Lees couldn’t help but get swept up in it as the conversation switched gears.
“Depends on who’s flying. You might find nothing at all. You might find nostalgia. Some people do claim to find themselves, but I think it’s different. It’s more like...like finding another you.”
“Another you?”
“It’s almost as though there’s an alter ego out there, someone who’s been everywhere and seen everything before you. Someone you slowly catch up to but who’s always a few steps ahead.”
“So you haven’t caught up yet?”
“No, but maybe that’s not the point. They’re supposed to remain out of reach. You call out to them, and they find you the words you need to keep going.”
“Words, huh.”
“When you’re at a loss for what to say, sometimes the universe speaks for you.”
Lees hid his consternation behind a ‘vaguely impressed’ face and downed the rest of his Indi.
It took a certain amount of willpower, as well as brainpower, to try and fathom what it was you were looking at when staring into the dark backdrop that held all of the stars and all of us. A man could go quite mad wandering the outer arms of the galaxy, left to only his thoughts, his ticking fuel gauge and a tentative link to his ship’s life support. This was a woman that had brushed against the folding duality of light itself as it struggled in vain to escape an event horizon. She had witnessed colonies of space borne microorganisms giving rise to gigantic crystalline wonders; finer than sand, ethereal as smoke, more effortlessly stunning than any human-informed artistry. She had navigated an SRV over the ancient remains of an alien civilisation, collecting their indecipherable relics with all the reverence of an Earth farmer ploughing the autumn field. She had flown through a stellar storm cloud who’s electrical dissonance could have cleaved a small moon in two. And yet, it wasn’t any of this that kept Maehara’s frame shift drive spooled.
Guess everyone needs to find their own private dialogue. For her, it was the void.