Spinning in Everfall - Prologue: A Call to Arms
19 Sep 2024Quillmonkey
‘We stay out of politics. We don’t get involved.’ Quillmonkey waited for the bio-ident to register and the transaction to go through – 114 million credits for coffee, steak and a few pirate skulls. Yeah, the money was nice but he was looking forward to the day the Summit ended and he could get out the bubble again, stretch his legs in the black, away from the prying eyes of people with too much time and too many questions about the past. ‘I’m not talking about politics. I’m talking about civic responsibility.’ Oh, Baylee. When Quillmonkey picked her up off the back of Operation Augeas a couple of months back, she’d been in bad shape. He’d taken her in, given her a job on the Taipan decoy, paid her good money and now look at her. Where had that timid deference gone? Where was the yes commander, no commander, he had grown used to? Here she was, rubbing him the wrong way and he’d not even stopped for breakfast.
‘Civic responsibility? You’re talking about the NMLA here, Baylee.’ That’s Imp business, nothing to do with us. I’ve kept my nose clean with that family for over one hundred and fifty years…’
‘Have you not been listening to Galnet, Commander?’ Baylee shook her head, her auburn bob swinging in zero-G. She punched the comms and the oily dock wall of the megaship Laelaps was replaced by images of burning orbitals, casualty lists, live feeds from those panicking and trapped. ‘They attacked Fed space, Alliance, Independents, all of them. There’s no sense to it.’
‘The Old Worlds?’ Quillmonkey felt it before he saw the words but when he did he still felt the hammer blow take away his breath: Lave Station. He placed his mug of coffee carefully on the dash and pulled his feet off of the scanner where they’d been resting. ‘They attacked Lave? The NMLA?’
‘That’s what they’re saying.’
‘Not Thargs? I could understand Thargs. That would make some kind of sense. But the NMLA? No… There’s more to this …’ Quillmonkey sighed deeply. There may have been the start of a tear in his ageless eye but he quickly clipped on a pair of wayfarers and set his jaw.
‘Listen Baylee, I’m going to visit a very old friend. We’ve not spoken in a long time and when we did we got into a lot of trouble for it. So I’m not forcing you to come.’ Quillmonkey was cycling through the navi-base looking for systems he might have left a ship or two. He tried his best not to smile as his pilot pulled on her helmet.
‘They were dark times back then,’ he continued, ‘and I’m not proud of what we did. But maybe it’s time to undo all that. Maybe it’s finally time to bring back GalCop.’
‘Just give me the co-ordinates, Commander.’