Catching up
23 Oct 2023Danzra Le Clerc
It's been a while since I've logged in. A lot has happened. First of all, they've good reason to call me Captain now. I took the flight test to serve as a Vanguard and I aced all the levels. ALL THE LEVELS. Sam's piloting lessons helped a lot I'm sure, but damn, I didn't realize I was that good. The Freestar Rangers sucked me in too after I de-escalated a bank robbery. That led me back home to Neon where I'm currently working undercover pretending to be an agent for Ryujin with Andreja. I've gotten to know these people at Constellation better because of all this, some more than others. Andreja, she's oddly timid for someone so cold blooded when killing, as though apologetic for whatever mystery is in her past. She's overly concerned with fitting in. I have a feeling she doesn't feel she fits in anywhere. Sam, on the other hand, speaking of fitting in somewhere, fit in with smugglers when he was younger, then the Rangers when Lillian pulled him back on his feet, but he walked away from the Rangers to be a dad because Lillian couldn't or wouldn't put her work aside for her own child.
Cora is a treasure. I used to have to steal books in Neon. Books were my escape from the wet crappy city I lived in. For Cora, books are gravy that her mind devours as though her brain is starving to be fed information. Every mission I go on now, if there's a book lying around, and doesn't have blood on it, I loot it and hand it to her. Just so Sam doesn't think I'm spoiling her, I tell them it's payment for tuning up the ship's manifold, or doing the pre-flight checks, or warming up the engines if we radio ahead that we are making a running escape.
I don't especially like the idea of having a child on my ship when we could be shot down any time we grav jump into a system that happens to be occupied by Spacers, but Sam insists it's a package deal and he's too valuable to not have him onboard and beside me on a mission. He and Lillian had a fight over it, over me, and she blames me rather than Sam because I'm not booting them both off my ship. I don't really care if she likes me or not. She walked away from her own child to bleed Freestar colors. Sam keeps calling her "an incredible woman." I beg to differ. My mother stopped bleeding Crimson Fleet colors and put raising me first. I'd be a pirate with Stockholm Syndrome right now were it not for my mother.
But enough of Sam. I guess I have a lot of opinion where he's concerned because I'm closest to him. We get each other, and when we are on a mission we flow around each other like water, never in each other's line of sight, always know where the other one is and if we need to toss a healing pack to one another. Barrett keeps getting his head in front of my rifle, Andreja tends to drift off to do her own murderous stabbity stabbing while I'm working my way down a staircase, and there's just no sneaking around with Sarah who's always announcing where we're ducked behind cover with her taunting them. If she yells out "You've picked the wrong day to piss me off" one more time, I might throw an ammo magazine at her head.
Sarah is often distracted with the red-tape of running Constellation. Barrett is often deep into his own thoughts of his deceased husband. Andreja, well I've no clue where her head is at, or even where she came from or was raised for that matter. But Sam, he's all there in the open. He gets the smuggler thing and doesn't judge my habits of being a crate-rat, grabbing the unattended cred-stick or pilfering a locker or two...or six. He knows what it's like having a bigger than life ancestor and having a parent that leans way too hard on that fact as though it should mean something, like it gives them special privileges or something (despite that Delgado doesn't give a shit who Francois Le Clerc was.)
I dunno, I think if I'd not spent the first six years of my life in the Key or spent the rest of it growing up in Neon, and if I'd had a choice (though no kids gets that choice, right?) I'd have picked Freestar territory to live in. Less bureaucracy, and less hiding the ugly under the streets. I think people there tend to hold out more helping hands.
Well I'm all caught up in my logs. I've not gone after any more artifacts yet. Letting Matteo have a chance at the next big discovery. He was a bit disappointed that I have two now and he's come up empty handed. He really wants that experience that Barrett and I have had, as thought it might bring him closer to what he considers his God.