TUELLER: “You want back in?”
TUELLER: “To that?”
STORY: She doesn’t answer, exactly. “Do you ever think about the people on those moons?”
STORY: “How they’d fare without us?”
STORY: She shakes her head. “I dunno, T. I know it was mostly stealing from other bad people, but I think I did more to help people back then than I have since I left.”
STORY: “Is it better to be happy or useful?”
TUELLER: Tueller doesn’t pause at all. “Happy.”
STORY: She nods. “Yeah, I guess.”
TUELLER: You can’t help but love your father, even if he’s an interplanetary crime boss. Odero Ya’Makasi treated everyone as a business relationship. It wasn’t the best environment to grow up in–to have a powerful irrational love for a man who treated you as a dubious long-term investment. Tueller was thirteen when Odero told him, “Huh. You are starting to get interesting.” Tueller treasures that memory above almost all others–only in part because his father was assassinated a week after saying that, in an attack that left a quarter of Europa dangerously irradiated for a decade after.
—
STORY: Akilah pulls the cab up and out of the market square, not looking back at the wreckage of Miguel’s ship or the place he died. She is silent.
ALEJO: Alejo sits in the seat next to her. He turns back to look at Tueller and Millie. “You both okay? Tueller, that was a hell of a fall.”
TUELLER: “Damper caught us. You didn’t happen to pick the damper off of him, did you?”
ALEJO: He shakes his head. “Busted.”
MILLICENT: “Those dampers are fascinating!”
TUELLER: “Shame. Been wanting to try my luck against one of them.”
TUELLER: “Oh well. Next time.”
ALEJO: “You got the file.” It’s an observation, not a question. “Thanks.”
TUELLER: “Here you go, Doc.”
TUELLER: Tueller hands it over.
MILLICENT: Millie accepts the, what was it, a data pad?
MILLICENT: A data stick, maybe?
TUELLER: Disc, basically.
TUELLER: Mimetic diamond disc.
MILLICENT: Right on.
MILLICENT: Millie pockets it. “I could access this from our office, but I’m betting it’s still crawling with A-Sec right now. The ship is probably a better bet.”
TUELLER: “We were just attacked multiple times. Back to the ship definitely.”
ALEJO: “We definitely need to regroup.”
TUELLER: “Also, _Noma_.” Tueller points to the disc. “I am not captain, but I’d love to be ready to ship out immediately to wherever we need to be in the galaxy.”
MILLICENT: “Good point. What do you think, Captain?”
ALEJO: “Doc, can you please let Kahn know to get the ship prepped and get everyone ready to ship out, if shipping out’s what we need to do, after we see what’s on this thing?”
MILLICENT: Millie comms a message over to Kahn and then the rest of the crew to get ready to go, possibly within the hour
ALEJO: Alejo sits back, and instinctively touches the device Calixta gave him long ago, hanging around his neck.
TUELLER: Tueller sits in that extremely still way that you now know he gets when he’s very tense and nervous as they travel back to the ship.
MILLICENT: Millie reaches over and squeezes his hand. Low, “We’re going to find her.”
TUELLER: Tueller nods at Millie but doesn’t say anything.
STORY: The cab won’t make it out on its own, so Akilah parks it near where your shuttle is parked and ditches it, setting off the alarm before you do so the cops will find it and get it back to its owner.
STORY: She still hasn’t spoken.
ALEJO: Alejo walks next to Akilah. He gives her a gentle nudge, shoulder to shoulder, as they head off towards the ship. “You alright?”
STORY: She watches the ground as you walk, nods absently. “Mm.”
ALEJO: “How bad was your cab crash?” He says, back over his shoulder, playfully to Tueller, trying to lighten the mood, just a little.
TUELLER: “Anyone you can walk away from is a good one, I guess.”
ALEJO: “Amen.”
TUELLER: “Had to take the tube to find you, though.”
ALEJO: “Know how you love public transit.” He gives him a weak smile.
TUELLER: “Hate having to resort to public transit in a chase.”
STORY: Akilah docks the shuttle with Peregrine and exits silently, giving Alejo’s hand a small squeeze before heading below decks.
ALEJO: He looks curiously after her, but stays with the disk. “Let’s see what we have?”
TUELLER: Tueller anxiously walks with Millie towards a terminal…then stops, and goes off, “I’ll help prep the ship. Let me know what you get.”
ALEJO: Alejo nods, absently and sits down beside Millie at the terminal.
TUELLER: Tueller goes and acts like a guy who has lived on ships his entire life, and preps for a bug-out.
MILLICENT: Millie gets to work
ALEJO: Alejo watches, fiddles around with the console, and feels generally useless. “So, uh, think this is going to take awhile?”
MILLICENT: “It only takes longer when I’m also engaging in sparkling conversatio-oh!”
TUELLER: Tueller works at: inventories the crew, checks the securing of our cargo, makes sure the cannons are loaded, checks the firearms stowed for use, and readies his quarters, unless things get in the way.
ALEJO: He looks at the screen with the “oh,” anxiously.
MILLICENT: Millie types furiously.
MILLICENT: “Captain, be a dear and pull up our Sol astrogation charts, won’t you?”
TUELLER: Tueller’s new space armor is displayed in his quarters, like power armor in Fallout 4.
MILLICENT: “That console there, please.”
ALEJO: He nods, stands and heads to the console, pulling up the charts.
ALEJO: The clear screen flickers, and he gives it a sound hit on the side, making it come fully to life.
ALEJO: “Got ’em.” He says, flipping through the screens.
MILLICENT: Millie flips through what look like chemical compounds on her screen and the astrogation charts on the other, leaning between screens
MILLICENT: “Ah!”
ALEJO: Alejo steps back, watching intently.
MILLICENT: She kicks back from the consoles, rolling away in her chair, tucking her legs under her as she throws her hands triumphantly in the air!
ALEJO: He raises his eyes and smiles.
ALEJO: And waits. For the good news.
MILLICENT: “It was the sulfuric acid, see?”
ALEJO: He nods. “No. Not at all.”
ALEJO: He’s still smiling, however.
MILLICENT: “Chandra keeps his ship tight along the super-rotation of the Venusian atmosphere.”
ALEJO: Now his nods gets slower and more deliberate. “Fucker.”
MILLICENT: “It’s heavily armored,” Millie scrolls through pages and pages of construction invoices on her screen, “and he’s written some kind of complex piloting algorithm to control the ship.” Millie stabs at the screen. “See here? He’s using the changes the solar winds make in the atmospheric cloud _as an integral part of the collision checking_!”
ALEJO: Alejo leans over her, examining the screen.
MILLICENT: Millie sighs at the blank faces. “He’s not just flying around physical debris, he’s treating breaks in the cloud cover or cumular changes as impacts to avoid!”
MILLICENT: “It’s incredibly complex.”
MILLICENT: “And I ah, I can’t really tell how he finds out, you know, where the ship is when he returns to it.”
MILLICENT: “That’s a very different nut to crack.”
ALEJO: “Always is.” He stands up straight again. “Well, we have a place to start.”
ALEJO: “What do you need to crack it?”
MILLICENT: “But he put a lot of work into making that ship impossible to find. If he knows what he’s got, she’ll be there.”
MILLICENT: Millie laughs, suddenly.
ALEJO: Alejo nods, having already reached that conclusion.
MILLICENT: “Twenty very talented interns and a couple years, along with twenty one machines strong enough to brute force it?”
MILLICENT: “That’s just an estimate, but I could run those numbers.”
ALEJO: “Right, right.” He shrugs. “So, you’ve got Figgan, and . . . Figgan. Tueller might be good with numbers? Aki?”
MILLICENT: Millie types. “I think I could do it with a dozen interns if we first devised an simple AI, but that would bring down the Collective and ah.” Millie smiles weakly. “That’s not ideal.”
ALEJO: He sighs. “Not ideal, no.”
ALEJO: “Is there a super machine somewhere that we could, um, borrow?”
MILLICENT: “Oh, ah. Good question!”
STORY: Why don’t you Assessment + Interface that question?
MILLICENT: /roll 2d6 + 2
STORY: josh rolled 3 + 2 = 5
STORY: There is a computer that you know of that is powerful enough to run the necessary queries to nail down that location!
TUELLER: You are distracted by Tueller cranking “The Chain” from his room.
STORY: It’s at Erde-Maris university.
MILLICENT: “There’s one, I know.”
MILLICENT: Millie’s face falls.
MILLICENT: “Not sure the owner is going to be really thrilled to let us use it, though.”
ALEJO: “It’s Earth, isn’t it?” He scrunches up his face.
ALEJO: “Other options? Like . . . could we build some sort of probe and . . . ” He trails off, knowing, even though he doesn’t know a damned thing, that that won’t work.
MILLICENT: “Close. Erde-Maris University. It’s on the moon.”
ALEJO: “Same place.” He says, a slight bitter edge to his voice.
ALEJO: Alejo goes to the nearby console and pings Tueller’s room. “T, wanna join us to brainstorm, please?”
MILLICENT: Millie shrugs. “I’m sure there are a dozen other civilizations that have built computers as powerful that I could access, but they’re farther from the Sol system, so by the time I crack the algorithm it will have changed. Besides, the language structures are complex enough that I’d have to reprogram their machines, which could take years.”
TUELLER: Tueller comes out, in a tank top and loose pants, obviously been working hard physically.
ALEJO: He then pings the bridge. “Start moving us towards the gate, please. Looks like we’re going home.”
TUELLER: “Sol?”
ALEJO: Alejo catches Tueller up, letting Millie do most of the talking.
TUELLER: “Of course Sol. This was always going to bring us back.”
MILLICENT: Millie nods.
MILLICENT: “We may want to consider going in under cover.”
MILLICENT: “I want to get Noma back as much as anyone, but we’ll be no help to her if we’re picked up on our entry to the system.”
TUELLER: “Our ship’s altered. We don’t put in in any port we don’t have to.”
ALEJO: Alejo laughs at this. “Good idea. So many people are going to want us dead, I think even you’ll have a hard time keeping count.”
TUELLER: “We have new crew to handle affairs in any port we put into.”
MILLICENT: “We need a cover story. Cargo, preferably.”
ALEJO: Alejo looks at Tueller. “Cargo thoughts?”
TUELLER: “We _have_ cargo.”
TUELLER: “We’re a stealth craft coming into the solar system.”
TUELLER: “Schulak thread would be great for the rich fucks on Earth.”
TUELLER: “They eat that shit up. And I wouldn’t mind getting it off the ship, if we ACTUALLY want to trade.”
MILLICENT: Millie checks and turns off comms to the rest of the ship. “And last, but not least, we need a good financial reason to report to our new crew and our CEO, who likely has known this all along.”
TUELLER: “You think Serj was holding out on us.”
MILLICENT: “Of course I do.”
MILLICENT: “And if we head to Sol without a good reason Chandra could get word and he’ll rabbit with Noma.”
TUELLER: “You got a basis for this, or just a hunch?”
ALEJO: “Chandra is a slippery asshole. He’ll be watching everything. Very carefully.”
TUELLER: “Because if you’ve got anything solid I’m just going to go kill him and no one in Sol will know anything.”
ALEJO: “I’m not going to lose any sleep if Chandra dies. But we have to get close to him first.”
MILLICENT: Millie shrugs. “We have to credit Chandra with being at least as smart as us.”
ALEJO: “Oh, you meant Sergio, didn’t you.” Alejo shrugs.
TUELLER: “Yeah. Sergio’s the one I’m not crediting with smarts.”
MILLICENT: “We would try to leverage our former relationship with Sergio, therefore Chandra will.”
MILLICENT: “Or, we must assume he will.”
ALEJO: “If he hasn’t already.”
MILLICENT: “We must assume that if our story is not pressure-tight that he will run with Noma and we will spend _another year_ chasing after him like _assholes_.”
MILLICENT: “I want Noma back, but we are going to have to do this _right_.”
MILLICENT: Millie looks to Tueller and Alejo.
TUELLER: “What’s the job, in the first place?”
ALEJO: Alejo agrees. “You’ve grown, Doc.” He smiles warmly.
TUELLER: “We need to get to the moon. What’s after that?”
ALEJO: “Borrow time on a super computer without getting caught.”
TUELLER: “Let’s just take this very slow and explain it to me like I am just a lowly spoiled rich kid. We are in a stealth craft altered in a way so no one in the solar system knows what we look like. We haven’t been attacked by sol assassins in over half a year. But we need to get to the head rich fuck university of the planet that’s the rich fuck central.”
MILLICENT: Millie nods, like a pleased teacher.
MILLICENT: “Go on.”
ALEJO: “This is gonna be fun.”
STORY: Heist heist heist
TUELLER: “Luckily, I’m a rich fuck myself. On my own. Without my family.”
TUELLER: Tueller sighs.
TUELLER: “What kind of time do we need?”
MILLICENT: “Okay, good. So, what is it that you, as a rich fuck, want from rich fuck university of the planet rich fuck central?”
MILLICENT: “What is so compelling there that we’d risk going back to the system that has our faces hanging up in every cop shop?”
TUELLER: “Well. I suppose it would have to be a problem that they would think we would think could only be solved by the brilliant minds on Earth.”
TUELLER: “If I’m going back as Tueller, well, then, I’m turning to Earth because my family wants me dead, and I need help with…well, my morkfish business?”
TUELLER: “If I raise them wrong they turn into psychic rage monsters? I don’t think that’s a pandora’s box I want to give them.”
STORY: “Disguises.”
STORY: Sweet leans casually against the door frame.
STORY: “Obviously you need disguises.”
ALEJO: Alejo spins around. “Disguises.” He smiles broadly.
ALEJO: “So, I think the question is whether we tell Sergio a damned thing, or sneak into the system covertly.”
TUELLER: “Sergio doesn’t know shit about Earth. Ndranghetas hate it more than Ya’Makasis do. Especially Italy.”
ALEJO: Alejo points at Tueller. “So, we don’t tell him anything and hope like hell no one spots us.”
TUELLER: “Well, we tell him something. It just doesn’t have to be adamantine.”
ALEJO: Alejo grimaces. “Maybe we don’t. But maybe we plant some bread crumbs. So, if we get caught, and if he starts asking around, we have a plausible ‘big job’ that we wanted to keep to ourselves. A cover job.”
ALEJO: “But if we outright tell him we’re coming back to Sol, we’re inviting him — and Chandra — to watch us like hawks.”
STORY: Sweet picks something out of his teeth. “So don’t tell him.”
TUELLER: “So, we make a story–maybe that we’re following up on Three-Sing’s tech on his request or that we’re monitoring my morkfish empire, and fuck off.”
ALEJO: “I like you, have I said that.” Alejo smiles at Sweet.
STORY: He smiles back. “I know.”
TUELLER: “Those are jobs he gets no percentage on, which will piss him off, but they’re _plausible_.”
MILLICENT: “Do you think that will work?”
TUELLER: “Sergio lost a bunch of his contacts, and his personality is shit, so we’re his main eyes and ears here.”
TUELLER: It is entirely possible that Tueller underestimates Sergio, of course.
MILLICENT: Millie nods.
TUELLER: “I think with our fucking stealth ship and the fact that we are heading out now that we can get ahead of this.”
MILLICENT: “Okay, as long as we can tell him something that he’ll believe.”
ALEJO: “It’ll work if we lay some other trails for him to pick up, if and when he finds out we’re in Sol. We need him to think, if he finds us, that we’re fucking him over, but that we’re doing it for our own profit, not to get to Chandra. He’ll respect that.”
TUELLER: “You’ve the contacts for that. Get to work.”
TUELLER: “Onion layers of cover works for me.”
ALEJO: “Aye, aye.” Alejo gives him a weak salute.
MILLICENT: Millie claps. “A plan!”
TUELLER: “I’ll prepare whisp now about us heading back to New Vesta for me to sort out some business issues that I’ll drop when we near the gate.”
MILLICENT: “He’ll believe that we’re trying to screw him, because it’s what he would do.”
MILLICENT: “Sweet, can you help me with disguises?”
STORY: Sweet nods. “I’ll find my sewing machine.” He gestures for you to come with him and heads down to the barracks.
ALEJO: “Doc, why don’t you get your stuff prepared. We need to know exactly how long we’re going to need with that computer. I’ll start dropping breadcrumbs on our fake job and work with Tueller to make it plausible. Then we need to figure out how to get to that computer. But we’ve got a couple of weeks to do that, I guess.”
TUELLER: “Oh yes. We’ll also need a plan for the university depending on whether we’re breaking in, walking in, or…I’m not sure what our other options are.”
TUELLER: “Burning it to the ground, I guess.”
ALEJO: “Yeah, let’s try to avoid the last one.”
TUELLER: “You can heist a lot during an inferno, actually.”
ALEJO: “For sure! But . . . you know. Death. Destruction. Calls a lot of attention to things.”
TUELLER: “No one questions why you’re moving things away from the fire.”
MILLICENT: “Oh, I think the alumni gala is coming up. I’ll see what the theme is this year.”
ALEJO: “A gala! It’s like . . . our thing!”
TUELLER: Tueller has some rival school spirit, since he went to, like the Stanford to Erde Maris’s Harvard.
STORY: Tueller, what’s the gala theme this year?
TUELLER: The Wonders of Old Earth.
TUELLER: Basically cosplaying as all the things Earth has culturally superior to the rest of the system.
ALEJO: Fucking fantastic. And horrible. And fantastic.
ALEJO: “So, we get in the door as alums, or alums with dates.”
STORY: All right. We’ve got some down time while you travel to Sol. Anything you want to handle during the trip?
TUELLER: Yes! Tueller wants an Advancement!
STORY: Tueller, what do?
TUELLER: Heavy Lifting (Ignore Clumsy Trait inflicted by Heavy Weapons, heavy armor, encumberance, and high gravity)
TUELLER: That might come in useful at some point.
TUELLER: I think the most appropriate new trigger for me to take is “A ludicrous stunt turns the tides.”
MILLICENT: Millie comes up with some pharoh costumes
STORY: Groovy!
MILLICENT: I’ll take Scapegoat
STORY: I like that a lot
ALEJO: Very nice! I think Alejo will spend 1 to research the layout of the university, figuring out the optimal routes to the computer and backup routes for us to get in and out.
STORY: All right! Gain a Data Point about Erde-Maris University
STORY: All right! Let’s do Cramped Quarters.
STORY: Any volunteers for going first?
TUELLER: I think Tueller and Akilah need to speak.
TUELLER: I don’t have a solid hold on their relationship, to be honest, after all this time.
STORY: Roll them bones!
TUELLER: /roll 2d6
STORY: chris.stuart rolled 7
STORY: All right. Let’s take it from right now, actually. Figgan is taking the ship out of the Ring and heading for the jump relay. Tueller, Akilah is hanging upside down from the catwalk, her dangling arms brushing the deck. She swings gently.
STORY: She’s wearing the custom boots you and Sweet welded that hook in to the deck and allow you to practice maximum resistance crunches. They’re entirely too big for her and she looks like she could slip out anytime.
TUELLER: Tueller has what looks like a titanium alumimum soda can in his hand, with a parabolic bottom that’s the skip drive nozzle.
STORY: She’s just dangling, her hair swinging around, sort of gazing absently at the rear bay door.
TUELLER: “So. Going back. Once more unto the breach, and all that shit.”
STORY: She sighs. “Yeah.”
TUELLER: “Kiki. I’ve been giving you space. This has been a weird and new time for us, but before we go back to where the highest number of assholes actively want us dead, I just have to ask. Are you alright?”
TUELLER: “You’re…muted. You seem both happier with Alejo and less…vibrant, I guess.”
STORY: “Uuuuuuh..” She answers in a high pitched voice.
TUELLER: Tueller sets the skip drive down in safe place.
STORY: She swings back and forth a bit. “Don’t you miss home?”
TUELLER: Tueller gets very still.
TUELLER: “Io isn’t home.”
TUELLER: “It is a literal hell planet. It made me strong.”
TUELLER: “I haven’t felt home there since dad died.”
TUELLER: “Nandini was home. But now. This is home.”
TUELLER: Tueller gets quiet after that torrent of words spilled out of him.
STORY: “Mm.”
STORY: She gathers her hair up, ties it in a knot, swings a bit more intentionally now.
TUELLER: “We never figured out who killed dad. And that we think _it could have even have been Esi_ is…I don’t know how to end that sentence.”
STORY: At this, Akilah places her hands on the deck, putting some weight on them to unhook the boots and holding a brief handstand.
STORY: “She loved him. As much as we did, I think.”
STORY: “Just in her way.”
TUELLER: “The Family sometimes just gets in the way of our family.”
STORY: The boots hit the deck with a loud clonk.
STORY: She stands. “How it goes.”
TUELLER: “You want back in?”
TUELLER: “To that?”
STORY: She doesn’t answer, exactly. “Do you ever think about the people on those moons?”
STORY: “How they’d fare without us?”
STORY: She shakes her head. “I dunno, T. I know it was mostly stealing from other bad people, but I think I did more to help people back then than I have since I left.”
STORY: “Is it better to be happy or useful?”
TUELLER: Tueller doesn’t pause at all. “Happy.”
STORY: She nods. “Yeah, I guess.”
STORY: And unsnaps the boots. “Thanks for coming to get me back there.”
STORY: “Sorry about the, uh. Fall.”
TUELLER: “Of course.”
TUELLER: “I mean that. Not coming wasn’t even an option.”
TUELLER: “Not falling out of a fourth floor wasn’t even an option.”
TUELLER: “Though to be fair you didn’t _need_ to push us out the window.”
STORY: She smiles a little. “I wanted to see the damper work.”
STORY: “Always been curious about those.”
TUELLER: “So did I!”
TUELLER: “I had plans! Theories!”
TUELLER: “And then they all went out the window.”
STORY: She laughs.
STORY: “I think I’m gonna opt out of joining the ground crew on Sol, if you don’t mind.”
TUELLER: “Okay. But you owe me a fight with an asshole with a damper.”
STORY: “Yeah, I’ll keep an eye out.”
TUELLER: “Does Ejo know your….well, whatever this is? Homesickness.”
TUELLER: “Ennui.”
STORY: She inhales. “Uhm.”
STORY: “Probably better if he doesn’t. He doesn’t need another thing to worry about.”
TUELLER: “He doesn’t know you like I do, but he’s going to figure something out eventually. So, either do a better job of hiding it, or work on your excuses. Your call. Your relationship. You know I’ll back you no matter what, though.”
STORY: She nods. “Yeah.”
STORY: Then more nodding. “Yeah.”
STORY: She pats you on the arm. “Talk to you later, T.”
TUELLER: “See you Kiki.”
STORY: She slips her feet out of the huge metal boots and slips away.
TUELLER: Tueller goes off to launch the skip drive, giving a glance back to Akilah as she leaves.
STORY: All right!
STORY: Who’s next?
MILLICENT: yo
STORY: Yo!
MILLICENT: KAHN
STORY: KAHN
TUELLER: KAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHN
MILLICENT: hell with it
MILLICENT: /roll 2d6 + 2
STORY: josh rolled 8 + 2 = 10
MILLICENT: YEAH BABY
MILLICENT: I want to find out more about the Exodus and the splinter religious group it formed from
MILLICENT: “Mr. Vespertine. I, ah, I have something for you.”
STORY: It’s a few days into your trip. Kahn is on the bridge, taking his shift at the pilot’s console.
STORY: He looks up. “Oh?”
MILLICENT: “I got to thinking about the difficulty you might have with traditional optics in a stormy environment. So I wrote a simple program that can analyze wind patterns and compensate visuals slightly. Should held in rainy or sandy environments.” Millie holds out a small cylinder. She snaps it forward and it expands into a scope.
STORY: He takes it, turning it around in his hands. “Huh.”
STORY: “Thanks, Doc.”
MILLICENT: “It, ah. It should fit into your. New limb.”
STORY: “Oh.”
MILLICENT: Millie points to the snap.
MILLICENT: “I’ve been thinking a lot lately about my past. And trying to find the points I can, in small ways, atone for.”
MILLICENT: “I’m not looking for your forgiveness, Mr. Vespertine, but I am making an effort to improve my footprint on the galaxy.”
STORY: He looks at the scope for a long moment. “Doc.”
STORY: “Look.”
STORY: He sighs.
STORY: “I really appreciate it, but. I feel like you don’t understand.”
STORY: “I don’t want to be better.”
STORY: “I just wanted to get back to being me.”
STORY: “You already fixed my arm.”
MILLICENT: “Oh.” Millie nods. “I see.”
MILLICENT: “I didn’t. I see. I didn’t mean to. Obviously your arm was yours and your new arm is, well, also yours.”
MILLICENT: “But it’s not.”
MILLICENT: Millie shrugs, kind of hopelessly.
STORY: He exhales. “Sit.”
MILLICENT: Millie sits
STORY: “Have you ever been to Enceladus?”
MILLICENT: Millie shakes her head
STORY: “Covered in ice. Completely. To get a farm started there, you had to install these industrial size machines that would keep the area for a few hundred yards hospitable. It was atrociously expensive.”
STORY: “But the beef was undeniably good. Something about the right mix of low gravity and nitrogen in the feed.”
MILLICENT: “What an appalling use of resources.”
STORY: “It paid well.”
STORY: “You know, in fifteen years living on a cattle farm I never had a bite of our beef?”
MILLICENT: “No!”
STORY: “Wasn’t for us, my dad would say. Was for our customers. For their families.”
STORY: “So I worked the pastures, kept them moving, helped with the slaughter when it was time, packed it and shipped it off. And wondered what it tasted like.”
STORY: “Of course it was all bullshit. It tastes like beef. The pedigree is the kind of thing only the rich care about.”
MILLICENT: Millie nods slowly
STORY: “But the work, dad was right about that. We served our customers. We cared for them by providing for their, well, probably their galas, but feeding someone’s feeding someone.”
STORY: “Anyway, not sure why I thought of that. I guess I mean to say that good work’s its own reward. I’ve got a duty here. I just want to be fit to perform it.”
STORY: “Don’t need to be better than I was.”
MILLICENT: Millie nods again
MILLICENT: Turns to go. “Thank you, Mr. Vespertine. I don’t think I have it in me to make you better than you were. But for what it’s worth, I think Dr. Guosin did that for us. Both of us. I’m sad he’s gone, but I’m glad he was with us for a while. He made us both better.”
MILLICENT: Millie smiles at Kahn.
STORY: “Guess so.”
STORY: All right! Alejo?
ALEJO: Lol or Jenny, Game Master’s choice.
STORY: I will do no such thing!
ALEJO: Haha. Fine. Lol.
ALEJO: /roll 2d6
STORY: ablair01 rolled 2
ALEJO: Haha!
STORY: You’re just about to make the jump to Sol. She’s experimenting in the kitchen. It smells good.
ALEJO: Alejo sits down. “Smells amazing, Lol.”
ALEJO: He slides down the table, getting a closer look.
STORY: “It’s not human spicy.”
ALEJO: “What is it?”
STORY: “I believe the closest approximation to human food would be… curry.”
ALEJO: He smiles and nods. “Curry. I miss a good curry. Maybe you should try to make that sometime. You’re a damned good chef!”
STORY: She narrows her eyes. “What do you want, Captain?”
ALEJO: He raises his hands. “Just being friendly.” He eases back. “And seeing how you’re healing up. Things could get dicey back in Sol.”
STORY: “I will be fine.”
ALEJO: “All right. All right. Just . . . worried.”
STORY: “Captain, please do not treat me like you do your weaker employees.”
STORY: “I am in no danger. Certainly no more than you.”
STORY: “And I most certainly do not need to be rescued, like your woman.”
ALEJO: He stands. “Huh. Well, I’m pretty sure she’d kick your ass up and down this ship right now. You’ve been spending an awful lot of time in this kitchen and not much rehabilitating those legs.”
ALEJO: He turns to leave. “None of you are my employees, by the way.”
STORY: “All of us are, Captain.” She says the last word with spite.
STORY: “But you are right, perhaps we should not be.”
ALEJO: He looks at her for a long moment. “Enjoy your curry.” He leaves.