So many people have come and gone...

...Their faces fade as the years go by
Yet I still recall as I wander on
As clear as the sun in the summer sky

Its more than a feeling, when I hear that old song they used to play (more than a feeling)
I begin dreaming (more than a feeling)
till I see Marianne walk away...
I see my Marianne walkin away...

I freaking love the guitar in that song, and no mistake. One of my favorites.

So, I'm sitting in a little courtyard in Ibn Batutta Mall, using an internet cafe's wifi. I'm so metro it hurts, sometimes. This also marks the first time I've made back-to-back blog posts, other than updating Yon Lonesome Road - which reminds me, I should put up 2006's NaNovel, Searching For Avalon. Well, the completed parts of it, anyway. >_<

Seems I was mistaken about the UAE shutting out Flickr - despite all the warning signs I received when trying to access it on the USO wireless last night, I'm getting through just fine now. Weird! Updated, although most of the pictures I've taken (and I've been snapping away like a fiend lately) are fairly bland, and probably not of much interest.

Friday night (late afternoon/early evening, actually) - I'm planning on hitting the clubs tonight, or at least the bar at the Seaman's Center, and getting fairly well ripped. Tomorrow being Saturday, I've traded away my duty and have absolutely nothing on my plate except for coming back out this way and spending more time bumming around on the intarwebs. I'm fairly caught up on my comics and forums by now, so maybe I'll get some writing or some such done tomorrow.

Or, more likely, I'll be lazy and enjoy the time off. ^_^

Whoa whoa da di da dam dam baby...

...whoa whoa da di da dam dam baby,
I close my eyes
I tell you how much I care
then you smile and say to me 'let me be your destiny'

Latest music addiction is techno - managed to score several gigs of music(and more pr0n than I care to discuss in a public venue) from a friend on the ship, and I've been rocking out on a regular basis lately.

So, here's a new milestone in my blogging 'career' - I'm sitting on the signal bridge, the second highest deck of the ship, in what is easily ninety degree heat, never mind the fact that it's 8:30 at night out here. I'm hooked into the local USO wifi net, which despite being at Shed 66, probably a quarter mile from where I'm sitting, still reaches us. The connection's a bit wonky, unfortunately, which means the fistful of vouchers in my pocket, each supposed to last an hour, probably won't get me through the next forty minutes... but I'm online, on my own computer, with a decent connection rather than the snail-like ship's comp.

The UAE apparently has a bias against Flickr - I can't access the site, instead getting bright red warning labels telling me to turn back, for the love of Allah.

Okay, I'm being hyperbolic - but man, am I happy the ship lets me e-mail photos in, 'cause otherwise you happy people would be without visual reference on my oh so exciting journey.

So, as you can probably tell from the context clues, we're back in Jebel Ali... just another sprint of loading cargo and carrying it back to the fleet. I'm still waiting on a couple of packages, one from home and one from ThinkGeek, but I highly doubt I'll see hide nor hair from either before September... the fleet Postal Service just doesn't move that quickly. Funny, how I can beat a package across the Atlantic, even though I'm on a ship and it's (presumably) being flown.

Was contacted by an old friend on Facebook, a school chum I haven't talked to since she moved to Hawaii our junior year (Hi, Laura!)... hopefully she'll still be in the area when I make it home, I remember her being pretty fun. Admittedly, my exposure was sitting next to her in Oceanography class, so I might simply be remembering everyone who wasn't the teacher (with his Ben Stein monotone) as being bright and entertaining. Speaking of Facebook and old friends, another person I haven't talked to in forever tracked me down, presumably by looking for old classmates - Micki, my friend(?) Rob's ex-girlfriend. Haven't talked to her since she and he called it quits, which made seeing the friend request an odd thing - but since Rob and I haven't talked to each other in almost a year, now, I guess there's no reason not to.

A year ago. Last time I talked to Rob was when I moved into my 'new' place, living on my own for the first time...

A year ago today, I was on the USNS Apache, somewhere off the coast of Monrovia, Liberia. We'd recently put out a fire on the MV Tahoma Reefer, rescued a half dozen Liberian fishermen who'd capsized in rough water, and generally kicked ass and taken names. I missed home, but I was doing pretty well - holding my own, holding a turn. In five days, I'd get the word that my best friend and roommate had killed himself. Four days after that, I'd be sitting in a hotel room in Ghana, waiting for my flight home.

It's hard to believe it's been a year since Joe died... I still miss that boy so fucking much. I dream about him, sometimes... he never seems to know he's dead, but I always do. I'm torn between telling him and just enjoying the moment, knowing that I'm going to wake up soon. He's always happy... I hope he really is, wherever he might be.

I think my main reason for believing in life after death is because I can't stand the thought that this is our only chance at things. Reincarnation or afterlife, I hold onto the hope that I'll see old friends again.

I picture you in the sun...

...wondering what went wrong
And falling down on your knees, asking for sympathy
And being caught in between all you wish for and all you've seen
And trying to find anything you can feel that you can believe in
May God's love be with you
Always
May God's love be with you

It's somewhat ironic that the day I decide to update my blog is the day my little sister (hi, Jess!) leaves a comment on my last entry, asking me to update my blog - funny little coincidence there. Ahem.

Well, we're well and truly in the Burning Lands now. The temperature's been cresting a 100* Farenheit every day, the humidity ranging between 80 and 100%, the sun bright and cruel. This is our second time ducking into Jebel Ali, the port area of Dubai (or a neighboring city to Dubai, I'm not entirely sure - this whole area is very, very peculiar). We're working hard - running into port, loading massive amounts of cargo, unrepping the local battlefleet and running back in to rinse and repeat. It's pretty miserable, and the heat is murder - but the money's good, and it actually feels pretty nice to be working. The pace on the Supply when we're in the States is slow, the work pretty boring - it's good to be doing something for a change, and the faster pace of the work fills the days and makes them rush by pretty quickly. Well, usually - standing on the pier under the sun, a minute feels like an hour.

I'm keeping hydrated, refilling my Camelbak M.U.L.E (3-liter) two and even three times throughout the day, but I keep sweating it out as fast as I can suck it down - had some serious trouble with heat rash and chafing when we first got into the Gulf, but I think I'm over the worst of it now - just gotta keep changing my shirt as it gets soaked. I've found wearing an undershirt helps a lot, too... but that's probably more than anyone really wanted to know.

My external harddrive, "Wanderer", finally died on me the other day - it's been giving me a lot of problems lately, and finally gave up the ghost. I was lucky it did so on a day when we were in port - Dubai has a lot of electronics stores, and I managed to replace it within the day with a 160 GB model. Also picked up a nice set of headphones - together, the two cost me 700 dirham, about $200. After dinner at the Emirates mall, I had a couple pints of Guinness at the Seaman's Center in town, where a shipmate asked me to play wingman for him when he made his approach on a tableful of British chicks. Figured what the hell, ended up spending much of the rest of the night talking with them - turned out they were sailors off the HMS Richmond, although they kept Dino (my shippie) preoccupied by claiming they were in the UAE on a cruise ship, on holiday. Pretty amusing watching him try to prove that they were military - he finally got one to slip and spill the beans, probably 'cause she was the drunkest of the bunch. They eventually split off, and after hitting a couple more clubs Dino and I called it a night.

Next night I had duty (again - hurray for money!), and was suckered into washing the ship. We hooked a firehose up to the pier potable water source, and got busy spraying all the dust off the bulkheads and deck. Had a nervous moment when I spotted three women on the other side of the wall of connex boxes that surround our section of the pier; they seemed kind of off color. When I saw one of them gesturing at the ship and making counting gestures, I tipped off one of our security det. When he and I walked outside, they split.

Might be nothing; might be something. It's the thing I hate most about being over here, other than the heat; you never know when someone's being friendly 'cause they're friendly people, 'cause they're trying to get you to buy something, or 'cause they're getting ready to stick a knife in your back. They say Dubai's safe for us, or they wouldn't be letting us pull in; but there are way too many people with guns on board for me to really relax out here.

The odd cultural blend around here throws me sometimes, too. The stores one sees in the mall are often the same ones you'll find in the States, and people, I've found, are basically the same everywhere you go - same clothes, same attitudes, same mannerisms. Then you walk by a pack of women in burquas, or the mall PA system starts playing the call to prayer, and you suddenly remember you're a stranger in a strange land. So, in conclusion: I hate the sun. I miss home. But I love the money, and Lord knows I could use it right now. Keep on keeping on.

There's a light at each end of this tunnel, you shout...

'cause you're just as far in as you'll ever be out
And these mistakes you've made, you'll just make them again
If you only try turning around -
So breathe, just breathe...

Rota, Spain.

The city hasn't changed much since the last time I was here, summer 2006 on the Apache. I didn't get much of a chance to get out and around then, and I spent most of my time this time around on a bar stool or a patio watching the beach (and the local fauna), so maybe I'm not the best observer. It's a Navy town; they have lots of alcohol, and the priestesses of the sacred bar are devoted to their art, and the rest of the locals would be just as happy if you'd piss off and leave them alone. Air Force guys are surprisingly fun to drink with, although it helps if you tell them "Opsec" when they ask you why you're here. They think I'm Special Forces or something -guess he didn't see the swinging gut.

I'm trying to lose that, although it's a slow process not notably assisted by this weekend's intake of liquid calories in the guise of lovely lovely ethanol. Guinness really is the beer that drinks like a meal, and other than the occasional cushioning layer of fuzzy water piss beer and sweetening shot of Jameson, is about all I consumed this weekend. Still, I'm making progress; at the root of this sudden foray into fitness is a wager with the Chief Mate as to whom can lose the most weight within the first two months of the deployment. Given that I've got twenty years less and sixty pounds more than he, I think my odds are good - I'm already down between five and ten, though I should probably check that now that we're in port and the rolling seas aren't going to keep throwing the scales out of whack.

Finally watched Scrubs season 4, and it hooked me enough to pick up season 5. Watched all of Wonderfalls - a seriously awesome show in the vein of Dead Like Me, with special bonus appearances from Jewel Staite. Many thanks to Damaris for first bringing the show to my attention, and now I really wish I'd borrowed it from her rather than waiting this long. ^_^

I bought a new hat. I know, usually hats and I get along together about as well as tall bulky men with incredibly large heads and inevitably too-small flappy things can be expected to get along, but I think this one rather works - which of course is the usual first sign that I look ridiculous. The second one, of course, is when people compliment me on how well it looks - which has also occurred. But it shades my face and the fabric is SPF 50, and being bound for the Burning Lands and all, it's probably all for the best.

On the other hand, somebody just (quite literally 'just') referred to me as "Indiana Jones", so maybe I'm just missing the warning signs.

Next stop, the Burning Sands, sometime towards the middle or end of next month. Or the month after, nobody's really sure.

Once again with the tide, she slips her lines...

...turns her head and comes awake,
Where she lay so still there at Privateer's Wharf
Now she quickly gathers way
She will range far south from the harbour mouth
And rejoice with every wave-
Who will know the Bluenose in the sun?

So, we're deployed. Six months - or maybe more, although I plan to leave the ship and fly home sometime in December - overseas, ranging from Spain (briefly) to the Persian Gulf (not briefly). There's a lot going on - the lazy lethargy that's lingered over the ship for several months has been dispelled in a sudden frenetic burst of activity, as we loaded ammo, departed NWS Earle, and prepared for the arrival of our helicopter Airdet, all at once - and today has been nearly as hectic, with preparations for unrep intermixed with emergency drills. The fun starts early tomorrow and looks like it'll run for almost two days straight as we meet up with the ships making the crossing with us, and some who are returning home in need of fuel.

Busy, busy.

I made a wager with the Chief Mate sometime ago, as to who could lose the most weight in the first two months of the deployment - I'm off to a great start, I think. I've been eating healthier and hitting the gym, and the brutal heat is certainly taking its toll, too. Not to mention things like having to don my full firefighting ensemble or immersion suit under the sun today - not fun, but it certainly can't hurt my chances at winning any.

I feel oddly drained with all that's going on, beaten down and worn out - and yet, I can feel a peculiar energy under my skin, too. I wake up easier in the morning than is usual for me, and I don't feel tired during the day - maybe it's just early optimism before the grind of the deployment begins to wear me down, or maybe it's the change to a healthier diet, but I feel pretty damn good. Maybe this is what leveling up feels like.

I miss home, friends and family, but it feels great to be out to sea again - the wide open sea around us, the salt breeze stinging the eyes and filling the lungs with its fresh, clean taste.

Finally got around to watching Wonderfalls, and it was as good as expected - looking forward to the remaining two DVDs of the series. In the meantime, I've been catching up on Season 4 of Scrubs - the ending of Season 3 left a bad taste in my mouth, and it's taken me this long to get over my intense dislike of the main character to be able to sit down and watch it. It's still funny, I just have to restrain the urge to yell things at J.D. everytime Zach Braff comes on scene.

I feel like I've got more that I want to say, but I'm not entirely sure what... and seeing as how my coffee break has run overlong, I need to be moving along anyway. Maybe more later.

The tide has turned, and the ship bell chimes...

...So raise the cup and think betimes
Of this poor sailor 'pon the sea
Whose passing is but memory

'Tis not that I would have you think
Of this but as a friendly drink
For with my heart I loved you truly
Though I'm forced to treat you cruelly

For the fever's upon me
And the Captain is calling
I cannot stay with thee
My destiny's calling
I'll never be free, but I do what I must
A captive of my wanderlust

The tide is turned and so we sail
This brief sojourn has now grown stale
The wanderlust has me, indeed
I care not where my travels lead

The captain asks if I'm a-feared
A smile tangled in his beard
His laughter tells me he must know
The pain that I now undergo

For the fever's upon me
And the Captain is calling
I cannot stay with thee
My destiny's calling
I'll never be free, but I do what I must
A captive of my wanderlust

I cast my fate into the wind
I have no mate, nor kith, nor kin
For I must go where I am sent
A victim of self-banishment

Orion has become my guide
And Venus is my willing bride
With wanderlust my fuel and feed
I roam the world as 'tis decreed

For the fever's upon me
And the Captain is calling
I cannot stay with thee
My destiny's calling
I'll never be free, but I do what I must
A captive of my wanderlust

For the fever's upon me
And the Captain is calling
I cannot stay with thee
My destiny's calling
I'll never be free, but I do what I must
A captive of my wanderlust

~Heather Alexander, "Wanderlust"

This island is big enough for every castaway...

...but most of us are looking 'round for someone else to blame...

Sitting in a Borders somewhere in Red Bank, New Jersey as I write this... switching it up a bit from our usual Barnes & Noble visit, although the wireless is a bit pricier. $10 for 24 hours is certainly a better deal than $3 for 2 hours, but I won't likely be sitting in here for 24 hours - work in the morning, and the store needing to close, and all.

Visited home this weekend past, although only briefly - most of the weekend was spent driving, with a nice visit with Cat thrown in for good measure. She was taking part in a field trip in western Virginia, near Charlottesville, and I managed to meet her out there - we saw some of the sights in Charlottesville on Sunday, and I finally managed to meet her friend Kave, a medical student and generally cool guy. I've been hearing stories about him since Cat and I started spending time with each other, and it was nice to finally attach a person to the various anecdotes (like the one about how she cracked one of her ribs pouncing him one time...) Our stay was extended slightly when Cat lost her keys - fortunately, she discovered this fact before she and I separated and my rental car and I went speeding down the highway, so we rushed back to Charlottesville and rampaged about retracing our steps until we recovered them at an ice cream parlor. There was much rejoicing.

The drive back up to New Jersey sucked (but then, given the destination... I keed, I keed...), but I returned my rental and made it back to the ship intact and on time to get a little rest before starting an MHE - Material Handling Equipment, or fork truck - school bright and early Monday morning. The rest of the week has been spent driving fork trucks around and learning far, far more than I ever really desired about the buggers. Passed my written test today with flying colors (big surprise), but I'm feeling a bit nervous about the practical tomorrow - it doesn't help that the weather, hot and humid all week, has taken a turn for the gloomy and tomorrow might very well receive the rain predicted for today. Class isn't canceled for inclement weather, so if it's pouring rain when my turn comes to drive the truck tomorrow - well, them's the breaks. >_<

Still haven't begun work on my screenplay, and given that the end of the month is the day after tomorrow, I might as well admit that I'm a non-starter for this year. Not my proudest moment, especially given how excited I was in the months prior... but for whatever reason, I just didn't get into it. Ah, well... there's always NaNoWriMo in November.

Less than two weeks until we deploy. I think I'm ready, as far as stuff goes, but I'm not entirely sure if I'm ready, emotionally. A large part of me is ready to quit the States for a while - I get a sort of caged in feeling when I'm back in the world for a long time, and it's been six months since last I was overseas. On the other hand, some bit of me is already ready to say screw it and go home.

Guess we'll see how this one goes.

I can't get to sleep...

...I think about the implications
Of diving in too deep
And possibly the complications

Especially at night
I worry over situations
I know I'll be alright
Perhaps it's just imagination...

Kicked back in my bedroom, on my futon, looking over at the scattering of dirty laundry and clutter that really needs to get cleaned up before I leave. Just a few more days - then it's back to Jersey, and not long after that, back to the Gulf. The weather's taken a turn for the warm lately, riddled with summer thunder storms aplenty - and oh, how I love the rain - and searing heat and stifling humidity the rest of the time. I don't know what adds more to my misery - the uncomfortable temperatures (and mind, I've always been a cold weather creature) or the knowledge that the current 90+* heat is absolutely nothing compared to what we're going to see when we get back to the burning lands.

Despite taking most of the last week off to get personal business done, I've managed to accomplish pretty much nothing... par for the course, I'm a horrible procrastinator and as lazy as the day is long (and in summer, that's pretty damn long). This makes the weekend a little crowded as I try to squeeze in the last few things I need done, something not helped by getting woken up at an ungodly early hour this morning by my brother, who had discovered his apartment flooded and needed some help getting things back together. Turns out his water heater had developed a serious leak during the night... quickly replaced by maintenance, who also managed to get a carpet cleaner to the apartment in good time, although things are still uncomfortably damp over there at the moment. In the meantime, his two cats are running around my place. They surprisingly haven't done much damage to anything as of yet, although I did take the precaution of moving my fish (Moby, a Christmas present from Cat) to the master bathroom and keeping the door shut - best not to tempt the hellions, after all. I'd forgotten just how much I missed having a cat around the house, but it's not a situation I'm likely to remedy any time soon. After all, it's pretty damn irresponsible to have a pet when you're out to sea most of the year.

Cat and I caught Knocked Up the other night; I found it surprisingly good, plenty of humor (both in witty banter and in general goofiness), although it did little to encourage me to budge from my current anti-parenting stance. I don't think I'm cut out to be a father.

Speaking of Cat, I managed to install the drivers and support software for the MobilePro 790 I bought her - she's off to DC for the weekend, visiting the ex, and since she lacks a laptop this gives her internet (and some word processing) capabilities for her classes. I'm curious as to how the MP will work for her; as much as I adore Madb, I haven't used her extensively, or as my sole means of computing, thus far. She makes a wonderful backup when Cat monopolizes Eris for school work, though, so she's worth the money I put into her.

Speaking of computers and money, I've been toying with the idea of getting Liira fixed - since my printer has decided not to cooperate with Windows Vista, I wouldn't mind having an XP machine around the house, and you never know when an extra laptop might come in handy.

Joined my friends Mark and Elijah (and Elijah's infant son, Cyrus) for sushi today, a rather nice all-you-can-eat sushi buffet near our former gaming hang-out, the Hobbytown off of Virginia Beach Boulevard. Surprisingly good food, I ate until I was stuffed - which is good, because I'm absolutely ravenous right now. I'm supposed to be fasting in preparation for some follow up bloodwork tomorrow (cholesterol... sigh...), and I neglected to eat anything before my 9 PM cut off, thanks to an unforeseen nap this afternoon. Lord knows I can stand to miss a few meals, though, so I'm not in too bad a shape - it's just annoying.

Haven't actually gotten anything written for my screenplay yet - I never seem to get any writing done when I'm home, so I suppose it's just as well we'll be off to sea/New Jersey pretty soon. As things go, I'll have lots of catching up to do...

But I guess that about wraps it up for now. Despite this entry's choice in music, I'm going to need to take a serious shot at getting to sleep soon if I have any hopes of getting up early for the doc visit... I'm also supposed to meet up with Mark to maybe catch a movie (he nominated the third Shrek flick, about which I've heard disappointing rumors), and then meet my parents for lunch/dinner in the late afternoon. And somewhere in the middle, finish cleaning my apartment. >_<

And the sun's been quite kind, while I wrote this song...

...it's for people like you who keep it turned on...

Just another day in paradise. Out to sea once again, pulling in tomorrow... this'll be the last time the ship's in Virginia for a long, long while, though I'll hopefully get a chance to catch a train or rent a car and make my way down for a weekend or two before we deploy. Got a lot of things to clear up before we go, renewing my lease, picking up my medications, and all that rigmarole... I'll take the weekend and most of next week off, unless they suddenly decide I'm too vital to let go. O_o It's happened before, although usually the powers that be have more sense. I am, after all, just another deck ape - one of almost forty, and hardly irreplaceable.

Not a lot else going on, we've finished up a number of unreps - quick ones, for the most part, just a long line of tincans topping up their tanks before they pull into port, but it helps the day go by. Tomorrow's payday, which is good - lord knows, I can always use the money. Haven't played Neverwinter in a few days, which I suppose means I broke the addiction - I beat the original campaign, and Shadows of Undrentide just doesn't seem to grip me. I'm fooling around with the Winter Assault campaign for Dawn of War right now, but with Script Frenzy starting tomorrow I'll probably drop that, too, at least until the end of June.

Shipmate lent me Wonderfalls... haven't had a chance to watch it yet, but my friend Damaris has spoken highly of it (she also compared it to Dead Like Me, which is one of my favorite shows... so here's hoping good things will come of it).

And... that's about it.

I may be old and I may be bent...

...but I had the money 'till it all got spent.
I had the money 'till they made me pay,
Then I had the sense to be on my way.
I had to stay in the underground -
I was in the house when the house burned down.

Sitting in Barnes & Noble again, enjoying coffee and internet. They tell me the ship's computers are working again, but I haven't had a chance to prove it for myself - I'm going to need to do all the regular rigmarole of renewing my account and setting up. Nothing too major, just a hassle when I'm trying to juggle other things with my free time... like Neverwinter Nights.

I finally managed to get NWN and Vista to cooperate (thanks in no small part to downloading the offered patch), and I spent all weekend holed up in the rack playing obsessively. The last time I played I only made it to the opening of Chapter 2, playing with my roommates at my old house - meaning it was at least early '05, possibly even '04. I've made it further this time, and I have some hopes of actually finishing the game - finally. Of course, I picked up the Diamond edition, so I'll have two expansions and a fistful of modules to play through if I make it through the main game.

I've got a bad habit of picking up video games, playing them obsessively - like scorning food and sleep to cram in a few more minutes - and then losing interest as quickly as I gained it, letting them lie half finished and never touching them again. It's a waste of time and money, so I've mostly weaned myself of it; thank god I've never had the time for MMPORGs like Everquest or WoW, because I'd probably be one of those sad saps found dead at his computer. It's been a while since I've been hooked like this, but a good D&D-based game will do it to me every time.

The ship's still in New Jersey, but we'll soon be underway again - not going anywhere in particular, just cruising the water off the coast and doing training (and a few actual) unreps. It's kind of nice to be doing something, anything, again. I'm almost looking forward to deploying. Training squats, practice unreps, with another MSC ammo ship - the USNS Mount Baker, an older and smaller ship with a lousy reputation in the outfit.

Several of my friends are hooking together solid plans to attend Gen Con this year, which fills me with envy and sorrow - the ship will, of course, be overseas at that time. I could - maybe - make Origins, if I pushed, but a smaller group than normal is going this year, and they're going primarily to spend time with a friend whom, while I don't actively dislike, I also don't particularly get along with. They're also looking at flying up, and then staying at his house, which removes two of the things I enjoy about the con experience - the road trip to and fro (for whatever reason, I enjoy long car rides and road trips), and staying in the hotel at the con (while massively more expensive, having one's room so close is oh so convenient). So, no dice for Origins and bloody unlikely for Gen Con - which makes me quite the sad J.

And, as previously mentioned, incredibly envious of all those who are going.

And... that's about it for this update. Eagerly awaiting Script Frenzy in just over a week, although I'm still pondering just what I'm going to write. Here's hoping my NWN addiction doesn't get in the way of my writing. >_<

Whatever gets you through today...

Life continues on.

Ship's in New Jersey right now... I've been meaning to write for the last week or so, but at first, whenever I sat down at the computer I just couldn't think of anything to say. Then the ship's LAN and satellite linkup went down, and I was effectively struck mute anyway... I'm sitting in a Barnes & Noble in Holmdel, NJ right now, about ten minutes (and a $13 cab ride) from the ship. My bank account is at $-26 right now, but I've got about $200 in my pocket... and no way to get it into my bank account. 12 AM Friday is payday... so I guess I'll just keep on keeping on. There's little doubt that this temporary bankruptcy is doing horrible things to my credit, but I can't seem to bring myself to care overly much... I've been borderline burnout for the last week or so, and I don't even know why. I'm not depressed, or down, or angsty... I'm just kind of 'meh'. Like worrying about things is just too much of a bother... I'm still laughing. Heh, and iGoogle serves me an appropriate quote - "Ask yourself whether you are happy and you cease to be so." - John Stuart Mill. Thanks, Google.

There's a huge storm outside right now... much more impressive when it was coming on this afternoon, heavy winds forcing everyone in the Deck Department to seek shelter as it whipped the seas to a froth and rolled the ship, even tied to the pier, lightning lashing an angry sky, a gray curtain of rain rushing across the sea at us... all that potential, reduced to a paltry dribble and a chilly wind. Typical Jersey.

It's really not that I dislike Jersey, I just don't want to be here... but I didn't really want to be at home, either, and at least this way I'm saving money on food and gas, and I've got the extra motivation to work overtime and make more money. I just feel out of place, I guess, maybe with myself... like nothing fits right, and nothing feels right. It's pointless, and it's stupid, but that's the way things go, I guess.

I've been taking pictures like a fiend, lately, all the better to feed the blog... many of them are worthless (and I've learned, to my mental scarring, to never forget my camera in the crew lounge again), but a few might be worthwhile. I'll try to get them up before either my battery or my hotspot account run out... I've got another hour left, and even as slow as this connection is that should be sufficient. For the most part, they're just slices of shipboard life - things we're doing, none of which are momentously exciting (although some of the shots as we tie up or let go from different piers were nice enough).

I feel so metro, blogging away in a coffee shop. Emo blogging, at that. Tee hee. Which reminds me, it's time to satiate my poorly neglected caffeine addiction.

...mmm... Peppermint Mocha...

So, The Office of Letters & Light - the group behind National Novel Writing Month - are starting a new crazy adventure, Script Frenzy. The objective is to write a 20,000 word screenplay or stage play within the thirty days of June, and since I've proven myself incapable of writing anything without a firm deadline, I've signed on... even though my script writing experience is nil. But hey, 50,000 words was, once upon a time, an undreamt-of goal for me, too. I've bounced around on my ideas for a while, now, but I think I've finally settled on one - and like my first NaNoWriMo novel, it has its roots in a different project I was working on, once upon a time.

I dubbed the project "Odyssey". It was a roleplaying campaign, originally intended for D20 Modern, but other ideas were bandied about - it never got beyond the planning stages, so it's not like any of the mechanics ever mattered. The name has several homages, to Homer of course, and to an old TV show of the same title that I never really watched, but liked the looks of on the bits and pieces of episodes I caught - something about a kid in a strangely surreal post apocalyptic world where all the adults were dead. Or something. It also had links to a D&D (originally Palladium Multiverse) game I ran called Journeys.

The basic storyline involves a group of strangers - the players characters, of course - on a subway in a major East Coast metropolis (probably New York, despite my lack of actual experience with the city). The train wrecks, and the passengers are miraculously unharmed - but no help comes. When they finally get out of the train and hike to the surface, the find the entire city deserted - as if the population had simply dropped what they were doing, and walked away. What was supposed to follow was a journey across a strange, changed America, where the world - to use the parlance of Stephen King's Dark Tower series - had 'moved on'. In places, there is nuclear wasteland - in others, plague - in others still, the aftermath of natural disaster, or alien invasion, or other countries invading, or all of the above, at the same time. Sometimes, the disaster is fresh and new, still burning, still dying. Sometimes, the world has been dead for centuries... millenia. New life is growing. There are no explanations, and every scattered survivor has their own theory. Somehow, the characters have to make it across America... and maybe even further, across the world.

The original idea was pretty unstructured, but since then the possibility of apocalypse - and what people do in the aftermath - has become a hobby of mine, and writings in the genre some of my favorite. I would recommend S.M. Stirling's Dies the Fire, Brian K. Vaughn's graphic novel Y: The Last Man, Pat Frank's Alas, Babylon, George Romero's Dawn of the Dead - the original, of course - and numerous other works which I've no doubt overlooked and haven't the breath to mention anyway. Needless to say, I have a few more ideas to throw into the mix - chances are, though, I won't attempt a movie screenplay, but rather something more like a TV series pilot - meaning I won't actually have to worry about wrapping things up as much.

But I ramble on, and I realize my battery is slowly but surely dying - twenty minutes of power left, and this thing always lies. I should probably publish while I still have the chance, and offer vague promises of future updates... yes.

So, with any luck, I'll write more soon - getting started is always the hardest part. As anyone who knows me can testify, I do have a tendency to ramble for hours on any subject that fascinates me, and at least on a blog I don't have to worry - too much - about people getting bored and falling asleep on me. I mean, it's not like I have to look at you, dear Nobody.

It's so hard to find my way...

...now that I'm all on my own...

Not looking forward to the coming week. No particular reason not to, nothing particularly dreadful looms on the horizon; hell, the ship's coming out of the yards, so pretty soon things will be back to normal. For some reason, I've been pretty down the last half of the day today... started out a little meh, with my parents waking me up far too early asking questions about my Flickr album, but things went a bit smoother after that; Cat invited me out to lunch, which I declined, and then Mark invited me to see Hot Fuzz, which I jumped at. Cat at first agreed to join us, and then reneged, citing the need to study for her exam tomorrow. Can't say I blame her, as her grad school choices depend heavily on her GPA for the this semester, and work and school have been pressing her pretty hard.

Her loss, though, as the movie was excellent, as good or better than Shaun of the Dead; very funny, with a heaping helping of action thrown in at the end for good measure (and fortunately, without interrupting the laughs). Couple of predictable moments, but overall very solid, and definitely recommended for those who don't mind language and gore.

Hung around the mall after the flick, got sushi and coffee with Mark and Mike, and then headed for home; went shopping with Cat, and then after she got off work went and got dinner with her. Despite nothing going wrong, or even being wrong, I've been feeling weary and depressed since I got home; probably just the general sort of malaise I get every so often, and soon to pass (there's a reason Danielle once called me 'the moodiest man alive', after all), but it doesn't do much to help me out now.

Did indeed get my 900c, which I've decided (with some assistance from Dani) to name 'Madb'; unfortunately, this entry is still being written on 'Eris', thanks to Madb's inability to access the new entry page on Blogger. Still, she can handle most websites I frequent pretty well, and she has a word processor; that right there accomodates 90% of my computer needs, and probably 100% of my travel needs. If I could get Armies of Immoren to run on her (probably a feeble hope, given the lack of Java) and a better word processor than WordPad, I'd be one happy camper indeed.

That latter should actually be a possibility; I've been browsing the various Handheld PC fansites on the web since I became interested in getting the MobilePro, and there are an awful lot of add-ons and support available amongst the user/hacker/modder community. Some assembly required, of course, but I think the gains are worth the risks...

Just realized I mentioned Eris without explaining. As I mentioned way back in November, I name all my electronics; my (60 gig photo) iPod is Molly, my PSP is Alexia, Madb is my MobilePro 900c, and Eris is my Acer Aspire 5100 series notebook (her predecessors were Liira (an Averatec 3200), and Kimmi (a Sony VAIO whose model number I've sadly forgotten, not that it really matters to anyone but a die-hard techie... which even I fail to count as). There are generally reasons behind the name; Eris, in this case, is because my computers are almost always sources of chaos, mischief, and frustration - I just figured I'd acknowledge the situation up front, this time around.

So, there you have it. I desperately need to go grocery shopping... and come to think of it, I need to transfer my laundry from washer to dryer before I crash for the night. I'm hoping to make it to sleep within the next half hour or two; while our hours are shifting back to our normal schedule (meaning 0800 to 1630 for the work day, rather than 0730 to 1530), giving me an extra half hour to to get in to work tomorrow, I've an awful tendency to stay up far too late on Sunday nights - making Mondays extra miserable. Guess we'll just have to wait and see how this one works out.

Breathe in for luck, breathe in so deep...

...this air is best, you share with me...

Not a hell of a lot going on here in J-land, just thought I should write... trying to keep in the habit. Sorrowfell continues to toddle along, never quite dead but never as alive as I'd like... differing schedules, my own random approach to updating, and the slow pace of online roleplaying in general all combine to make a frustrating morass of the storyline, as events that take only seconds in the game - and would probably take a few minutes to play out in real life - go on and on for weeks or months.

But whine, whine... if that's the most I've got to complain about, then I'm doing well indeed, hey? Took today and tomorrow off from the ship to try to get some personal business done, and ended up spending today being a lazy bum - big surprise to everyone, I know. I've done a little laundry and spent some time burning myself at the beach, but other than that I've been right here, doing just this - glued to my computer, snorting frantically to get my internet fix. This is our last weekend in the shipyard, and probably our last weekend in Virginia for some time, coming up; I'm looking at working it, as my 'vacation' in San Diego set me back a little bit, and I haven't been working anywhere near the overtime I should be. I suppose it's pretty cheap to take two days off during the week and then work the weekend for the extra money, but you kinda take these things as they come to you.

The weather's taken quite a swing for the warmer - I'd almost gotten used to the late fall temperatures rolling through the area, and all of a sudden summer rears its ugly head. I've always been a cold weather kind of person, although New Jersey in February of this year came close to freezer burning that out of me; it doesn't help that the pier we berth at in Earle stretches about two miles out into Sandy Hook Bay, leaving us to the tender mercy of a biting wind. Still, I'm most comfortable when the temperature is in the 40-60* F range, and the recent surge into the high 80s has left me miserably overheated... an unwelcome, teasing taste of what we're going to be dealing with in a few months. And I'm planning on sticking around for the next trip to the Gulf, in the summer, where the temperature has been known to reach 120*...? Clearly I've gone crazy.

A random post on one of the NaNoWriMo forums triggered the kewl gadgets lust forever lurking just one small step below my conscious, this time for the very cool looking NEC MobilePro 900c, a handheld PC. Yes, I did just purchase a new laptop, but this one's smaller. I've got something of a craze for tiny computers which my current laptop and its 15" screen just can't handle... I was able to get the 900c for a song on eBay, but now I'm trapped in that horrid sargasso that is the wait for shipping, and the hours - don't even get me started on days, or even weeks - drag by like years. As Carrie Fisher once said, "Instant gratification takes too long."

But with luck, my next update to this blog will come from my new, tiny sidekick - which I like to imagine myself carrying everywhere, ready to spring into writing action at the very moment of inspiration, but which I will probably use in the same manner as I do its much larger cousin, currently comfortably settled into my lap. Now, I just need to think of a name for it...

With just one kiss, you could change the world...

...it might not be much better, but it certainly couldn't hurt.

So; I'm still alive. I know it's been some time since I've updated this, but I did warn you that it was random - and that I have an absolutely horrible track record when it comes to journals, blogs, diaries, and anything else that one is supposed to write in on a daily basis. To update the concerns from last time; the ship is back in the States (currently in a shipyard in Norfolk, VA, as a matter of fact, so I am actually home - a wonderful thing), I did make my goal of 50k words for NaNo, but once again failed to bring the novel to a satisfactory conclusion and then stopped work on it. I did add a little bit this past week, but I haven't a clue yet as to whether or not this is an indication that I'll actually pick it up again.

As far as my recent activities, I just flew home from San Diego; my cousin Curtis died recently from injuries sustained in Iraq, and my parents and I flew to California for the funeral, and to provide what help we could for his family. Curt was a couple of weeks older than I, and his older brother died last year - I'd only met them a couple of times, but their father is my favorite uncle and I hate watching him go through all of this. Funeral vigil and service were very sad, not something at all I'd like to go through again - but then, nobody ever said they were supposed to be pleasant, and having fun wasn't what I was there for.

That said, I'd like my funeral to be a hell of a lot more entertaining - held in a cabin in the woods somewhere, by a crystal blue, and very deep, mountain lake. I'd like an old fashioned wake all night, with whiskey, dancing, and song, and as the sun rises I'd like for my body to be laid in a longboat, with a backpack behind my head, a sword on my chest, and a bottle of whiskey in my hand. Then light the boat on fire and push it out in the lake. An Irish wake, a Viking funeral, and no crying.

Sounds like a plan to me.

If I leave here tomorrow, would you still remember me...?

...for I must be traveling on now, there's too many places I gotta see...

So... back in Dubai again, but leaving tomorrow. Just wrapped up a mid to four sea watch... we've been here four days now, two day watches (counting our arrival day) and two mid watches. Went out the first night we were here, after I got off the day watch; the watch officer had told me about a rock and roll cover band he enjoyed, a group called the Rock Spiders. Turns out they were all Filipino - yeah, a Filipino cover band in Dubai, how good can they be?

Abso-fucking-lutely awesome. One of the best live shows I've seen, bar none - and while I admittedly haven't seen too many live shows, I think I know my music enough to say 'wow.' Great band, the vocals were a little odd sometimes but their accents didn't get in the way half as much as I would have feared - they rocked out with my two favorite Pink Floyd songs ("Comfortably Numb" and "Wish You Were Here"), lots of old-school Guns 'n Roses, a little bit of Metallica and Iron Maiden, and closed up with "Freebird" and "Smells Like Teen Spirit" - all of which were excellent (especially the GNR and Iron Maiden). So, if some by some godawful chance you find yourself in the UAE - look up the Rock Spiders, playing pretty much every night from 10 'till 2, at the Music Room next to the Majestic hotel. You'll not be disappointed.

Stood the day watch the next day, barely managing to drag myself along after rolling back to the ship at four in the morning; crashed after watch, rousted out again for the mid to eight watch, caught a bus into town about ten that day to do some shopping. Hit the Dubai Harley Davidson to get some t-shirts for my dad, then wandered around one of the two (or three) ginormous malls in the city for a bit... hit Starbucks, a couple bookstores, a Woolworths (!) and a department store, gathering the necessities, then went back to the ship after lunch - slept a bit, dragged myself through watch again, then slept all day yesterday... roused up again about sevenish.

Got a bit more writing done for my NaNovel, though I am still horrendously behind - just a tad over 15K as of last counting, with hopefully more to come. Despite the great start I had, I'm falling further and further behind, and can't seem to get my head in the right place - barely five thousand words in nine days. But - whinewhinewhine, I can't get my wordcount high enough, it's NaNoWriMo, same old song. If I can't finish this beast by the 30th, I'm going to hate myself the rest of the year... so here's hoping I get my arse in gear soon.

Sorrowfell continues on nicely; not a lot more to say about that, other than that the pace seems to have sped up a bit and yet is still too slow for my tastes. I keep finding myself checking back on it almost religiously, the same way I look for e-mails from home - hoping that someone else will have posted, so that I can jump in with something new. I swear, I'm like one of Pavlov's dogs...

But I guess that's about it. Over to another berth in a few hours, then I believe out of here tonight... back to sea. Still not much new in the way of news on our homecoming, I heard some scuttlebutt that we'll be shifting down to Norfolk after offloading our ammo in Jersey, but the old hands are skeptical - thinking it'll take much, much longer than a week to get everything off here. :( This makes J der sad bunny, because it's beginning to look more and more like my chances of getting this Christmas at home are hosed. Eh, that's what I get for being a sailor, hey?

Show me the river, that leads to my home - back to the one I love...

...show me the wind that constantly blows , and I will fly away, fly away home...

I love eastmountainsouth.

So, it's been a rather mild week and a half or so since last I wrote; NaNoWriMo is in full swing, and although I had a great start (4K the first day!) I'm moderately behind on my word count as we roll into day 8 - barely 10,000 words to my credit, more shame to me. Still, those people graceful enough to read the work in progress have given me high praise - which probably defeats the point of the exercise, as then I worry about whether or not I'll be able to maintain that standard - but on the other hand, I'm a flattery junkie, however modest I may try to be. I just love being told how pretty I am, even though I strongly suspect the motivations and sincerity of anyone giving me a compliment.

Yeah, I'm just a giant bundle of neuroses and contradictions. It's a feature!

Life on the ship continues much as before, with the addition of NaNo thrown in for fun and excitement; I've been doing the majority of my writing during rover rounds on watch or immediately after (which probably explains my slow pace, to be honest - I really need to strap my ass into the chair and just work on pushing through the damned thing), with my free time spent on various other pursuits - ah, NaNoWriMo, the one month out of the year that writers everywhere come together to celebrate procrastination. I love it so.

I've restarted (or, at least, made the attempt to restart) my long-running, oft-delayed D&D PBP, Sorrowfell - it's a creative outlet at a time when my creative energies should be posted elsewhere, but it's actually given me some ideas for Searching for Avalon, my NaNovel - part of it's similar themes, and part of it, I guess, is I just need something else to blow off steam.

...I'm the only person I know who needs a hobby to distract him from his hobbies.

Good news on the home front, my parents took Molly (yes, I named my iPod - aren't I cute/pathetic? I name all my electronic gidgets) into the local Apple store, and the techs were able to fix her - at the predictable cost of all my music, damn the luck. A lot of the songs on there were garnered from friends, meaning they're irreplaceable, or damn close to it; the majority I have on CD, but the mp3 files were lost with my last external harddrive, meaning they are replaceable, but it's going to be a right pain in the ass putting all the music back on.

On the other hand, it's a damn sight better than having to buy a new iPod and do all that anyway, so I might as well quit bitching.

Speaking of new iPods, I like the concept of the 80-gig video iPod a lot better than I like the reality. I find the older Photo 'pods more aesthetically pleasing, since they don't have the 'cut off' look to provide the flat screen; I'm a tad irritated that the new generation iPods can't use the accessories from the old ones (so, for example, had Molly not been restored to me and I'd been forced to garner her replacement, I would have had to get a new FM transmitter - a vital necessity for the car, especially given the state of radio in Hampton Roads - and wireless headphones), and I think watching video of any length on a screen the size of even the largest iPod is a silly idea. Talk about iStrain.

...teehee. Yes, I thought of that myself. Please direct your death threats to the little comment link at the bottom of the entry, folks.

Which... pretty much wraps it up for now, I guess. It's five AM here, with an unrep due in an hour - not one, thank god, that I have to deal with, as I was up fairly late (for me, anyway) with an unrep this afternoon. This should be a bright, sparkly paycheck coming up; this pay period has had two unreps thus far for my team, a holiday on the eleventh, and it turns out the day we were restricted to the ship for fueling counts as penalty time - almost 11 dollars an hour for about sixteen hours, just because they wouldn't let us go out in town - which in other times, might have irritated me, but last time we were in port (and possibly this next time, as well), I had no interest in going out.

I am going to have to venture out into Dubai at some point, though, as my dad's asked for a Harley shirt from overseas for this year's Christmas present - his present last year was two shirts from Cadiz, Spain, and I guess I've started a tradition. Makes me wonder just what I'm supposed to do on a deployment where we don't visit new ports - I can see myself buying multiple shirts from different ports and squirreling them away, just to have a present source for the future.

Heh. Guess that's all for now.

I'm a million different people from one day to the next...

So, we're back in the UAE - and my luggage was waiting for me on the pier! Yay!

Other than that, there's almost nothing going on. Tomorrow's All Hallow's... and All Saint's after that, the long awaited beginning to NaNoWriMo 2006. The weather here is still entirely too warm, with a sun entirely too bright, but I think I'm adjusting to it, slowly but surely... today didn't seem as hot as yesterday, but the thermometer says otherwise - and how!

It's come to my attention that I'm a two-finger typist - I use my thumb to hit the space bar, and my right ring finger to hit the backspace key, but other than that pretty much everything is done with the index fingers on my right and left hands - my left, especially, never uses anything else. Odd, especially considering that I have a rather decent typing speed (with far too many mistakes, I admit) - no doubt a skill picked up from far too many years spent in chat rooms or are on instant messengers.

And I use my right pinky to hit the enter key. Wierd.

I found this shiny thing on the NaNo forums; a badge to mark one's NaNoveling progress in message board .sigs and on blogs. Since I have a blog... what the hell.



Is it not beautiful?

Although I'm eight hours ahead of the East Coast, I've left my default time setting to there - keeps me on par with my friends/rivals back in the area. Besides, I'm on a ship - we move around a lot. I'd hate to have to keep adjusting my time zone as we move west.

Whenever the hell we start moving west again. We're out of here on the 1st, but we'll be back a few more times before we head for home.

Sigh. I miss home.

Every day is a winding road...

So, I made it safely to the USNS Supply, currently overseas in the Persian Gulf - my luggage, alas, did not. It's somewhat amusing, really, as I make it a point to travel light - a single backpack with my electronics and books, a single seabag with my clothing, hygiene gear, and anything else that might be required (in this case, a water bottle and travel coffee mug). The backpack is always carry on - so at least I made it to the ship with my laptop, iPod (okay, Dad's iPod - he was kind enough to lend it to me, no doubt fearing for my sanity. Thanks Dad!), PSP (without power cord - that was in the seabag), camera, and PDA.

So, even if they haven't located my bag by the end of the week when we pull back into port, I'm in good shape for NaNoWriMo.

Unfortunately, this means I'm living out of a pair of coveralls for a week... one which, admittedly, is almost over, so it's a little late to complain about it - even here. I managed to get underclothes and personal hygiene supplies between the ship's store and the duty free store (before we left Fujiara), so I'm actually in fairly good shape, period.

But it is aggravating, to say the least.

They of course put me on watches after giving me a day to rest up and get over the worst of my jet lag; 12-4, which is my preferred watch, and I was surprised to find that I knew the watch officer, having sailed with him on the USNS Laramie. He's not the only person I know from there, either - the chief mate, two bosun mates, a steward utility and one of the D/Machs - probably others, too, as it's a large ship and I'm only just beginning to learn my way around and meet everyone. Amusingly enough, the man whose place on watch I took sailed with me on the USNS Apache.

Small world, eh?

The weather's warmer than I like, especially for October, and the ship's not due back until the middle of December - and when she does return, it'll probably be to her homeport in Earle, New Jersey. Which means freezing cold, most likely - if it's not one extreme, it's another. >_<

Former crewmember from the Apache drew my attention to this, an article in the Navy Times about one of the days we had in Liberia - there was another article for that week (busy week) that I've linked to in my Flickr account. Yanno, I was pretty negative and pessimistic when I joined the Apache in Crete - now, I kinda miss it, and wish I could have served out my full time on there. But life gets in the way...

Guess that's about it for now.

All my bags are packed, I'm ready to go...

Got my ship, and I'm heading out. No idea if I'll have access to this blog from ship's computers - they've been cracking down on stuff like that. Guess I'll see when I get there.

After much fun with delayed flights yesterday, I'm still in Norfolk, but 30 minutes away from boarding... sitting in the airport, enjoying my overpriced wireless access. I'm such a net addict, it's amazing that I'm a sailor... sooner or later, I'm going to get a ship that has no internet whatsoever, and then we'll see just how secure my sanity really is.

First stop's Atlanta, second's Paris - where I apparently have to run-not-walk across half the city to make it to my plane before it leaves, a mere hour and a quarter layover that requires me traversing multiple terminals. I also have to check with the gate to get my boarding pass, so if I don't make it damn quick like they certainly won't be holding the plane for me. Feet don't fail me - I don't particularly want to spend the night in Paris (too little time to do anything, and I'm broke besides), and it means I'll miss the ship's overnight stay in Dubai... meaning I'll have to spend a week in a hotel there, too. Fun. Fun.

I like airports, I like traveling, but I hate flying. I'm never comfortable on planes - they're sized for little people, and me, I'm larger than the average bear. I can never sleep, and I read fast enough where I can finish a good-sized novel in a few hours - meaning I go through one or two on each leg of these stupid halfway across the world plane rides. At least flying home from Africa, they routed me through KLM, Royal Dutch Airlines... movies galore, an individual screen to watch them on, and I could pick the time. No silly kid's movie on the main cabin screen.

My dad surprised the hell out of me when he dropped me off at the airport - he gave me his iPod. Just for the trip, of course, and he's going to try to get mine fixed while I'm out and about - but I was seriously touched. I'm incredibly fortunate to have the family I do.

Ah, well. Once more unto the breach...

Yon Lonesome Road: Chapter 5

*
5

Camelot Station had a proud history as one of the oldest structures in space; it was well known that much of the Station was a legacy from the First Empire, partially destroyed during the Fall, and popular legend had it that parts were actually older still, from that dimly remembered time before even the Empire. The space station was the size of a small moon, mostly spherical but littered with communications and sensor antennas, weapons placements, landing pads and observation bubbles; there were literally hundreds of hangars scattered about it like cavernous sinkholes, their magnetic fields glowing dimly against the dull gray metal of the station. Camelot had an ever fluctuating population thanks to the large quantities of transients on their way through to other systems or taking advantage of the central location to conduct business that might otherwise be frowned on either (or both) the Union and the Empire, but it was widely held to be somewhere in the region of ten million. A large number, it was true, but still barely a fraction of what the mammoth station could hold, and there were regions that had been closed to the general public quite literally for generations, sections damaged in combat or by natural (or unnatural) catastrophes that it had simply never been seen as worthwhile to repair. Despite the abundance of room inside, there were still those - as there were at most Independent, and even some Union, space stations - who preferred to live outside the walls, and they had clamped their ships into small communities near maintenance hatches and other entries into the station, like gypsies circling their wagons outside the city walls. The crew of the Lonesome Road, no novices to the ways of the underground, had learned to avoid these makeshift shantytowns, not just because their inhabitants often held only the most tenuous grasp on their sanity - though that was generally plenty of reason in and of itself - but because there was little to gain, versus the risks involved. Though not as dangerous as popular cinema would have one believe, these gypsy caravans were subject to meteor strikes from space debris, or fairly frequent power failures that sometimes dislodged a ship spiraling off into the void unless its current inhabitants could quickly bring its engines online. Considering many of the ships no longer even had engines...

So it was that the Lonesome Road made for Landing Pad Seven. Somebody at some point in the past had taken the time and trouble to spray paint "Lucky" in front of the numeral seven for the landing dock, but for all that it had overseen a large percentage of the Lonesome's wheeling and dealing, there was little luck to be found there. Seven was a working dock, a tradesman's dock, and ships without cargo or the means to transport it were unwelcome. Hawke stood on the bridge and observed the docks as they entered, noticing an unusual bustle of activity, even for the trader's docks; cargo lighters moved in squadrons and platoons, the exoskeletons bustling with pallets and crates. Forklifts rolled in and out of the larger ships in an intricate dance, offloading some and loading others seemingly at random; even from this distance, he could see racks of missiles being loaded into military cargo ships, some bearing the blue and white of the Union and others the Imperial crimson and black.

"Huh," Kate said, taking note. "Appears you were right about that military campaign, Captain. That's a hell of a lot of hardware loading up out there, for both sides."

Hawke frowned, taking in the level of preparations. "That is a hell of a lot hardware," He agreed. "Looks like more than just a pirate hunt... I haven't seen anything like this since before Angelsfall." There was a brief silence at the mention of humanity's finest hour, where the united navies of the Union and the Empire had beaten back the devouring Swarm.

Glenn poked his head onto the bridge. "Hey, our visitors are tucked away back in their bunkroom. Seem to be taking everything well enough, they know that we're coming into port but not where. I told them that once we're done here we'll cut them loose. You figure Rigeling will keep an eye on them until we're safely out of range?"

"Assuming he doesn't have us all bloodily murdered when we show up without his goods, yeah, we should be able to arrange something." Hawke replied, still watching the activity on the docks as they cruised closer to their assigned landing dock. "I'm not too willing to push the issue on that one."

"Understandable," Glenn said, ducking back down below. Kate turned to Hawke curiously, her hands moving automatically on the controls to bring them in.

"You think he's going to have us whacked, sir?"

"Could be," Hawke rubbed his stubbly cheek in thought. "Thing is, Rigeling is first and foremost a business man. We come in apologetically enough, and if he accepts what we took off the wreck, then we might just walk away with our skins intact. The trick is making it obvious that we're not trying to screw him, that we're not disrespecting him in any way."

"We are doomed," Ozymandias said blandly. Kate fought a giggle.

"The brain bucket here has a point, Captain." she said with a smile. "No offense, but diplomacy is hardly your strong point."

Hawke sniffed. "I can be diplomatic."

"Like a train wreck, sir."

"Or a Swarm Brood," Oz added helpfully. Hawke rolled his eyes.

"Who programmed you to be a comedian?"

*

Tommy checked the magazines on his pistols and slid them into their holsters, one after the other. Camelot had a long standing prohibition on longarms that was often ignored, but going to Deckard Rigeling's fourth level mansion toting a shotgun was a strict no-no. Still, it was a rough path between here and there, and every experienced spacer carried something to keep the dogs at bay - literally and metaphorically.

Not that Tommy went anywhere without his beloved pistols.

The crew was gathered in the cargo bay for a last meeting before they went their separate ways to take care of business - John, Glenn, and Tommy to deal with Rigeling, while the other three restocked the ship and put out feelers for employment opportunities. The Lonesome Road’s credit was running thin, but they had friends in Camelot, especially Cynthia, and Hawke had hopes that they might get enough of an advance payoff on whatever their next cargo was to at least get some fresh food.

Given their luck lately, though, he would be satisfied if they could just keep from being run off Camelot one step ahead of a raging mob.

Glenn finished loading his pistols and jammed them into his belt with a disgruntled mutter. “I miss my machinegun,” he told Cynthia. She leaned over and kissed him on the lips, handing him a loaded backpack.

“I’ll buy you a new one,” she said with a smile. Hawke was finishing giving his last minute orders to Kate, who was obviously eager to be off and about.

“Enough,” she said at last, waving her arms in the air. “You’ve got more important things to be worrying about, boss, like the Bloody Handed Dealer.”

"I don't think that'll be much of a worry," Hawke said with a strange smile. Kate paused, puzzled by the sudden flash of anger in his eyes, when they were interrupted.

“Yeah, about that.” A strange voice called from the foot of the cargo ramp. The crew spun, guns leaping to hand with almost frightening speed. The thin dapper man they called the Voice smirked as he took in the startled crew, his brace of bodyguards frightening in their black leather tunics. The two were giants among men, standing seven feet tall and absolutely identical beneath their masks. Lurid tribal tattoos covered every inch of exposed skin, and both carried huge sawed off assault rifles capable of cutting an unarmored man in half in a single burst - a hard suited man in two.

Hawke twitched his fingers, signaling Tommy and the others to stand down. Glenn and Cynthia lowered their pistols only grudgingly, Tommy not at all.

“I don’t like people sneaking up on me, boss.” he said shortly. “It’s bad for my reputation.”

“Yeah, I hear getting killed can be pretty bad for that too, Tommy.” Hawke hissed out of the side of his mouth. “So put that gun down before you do grievous harm to all of our reputations. You can’t shoot them all, Tommy.”

“Bets?” Tommy kept his gun trained on the Voice for a long moment, as if to tell the man in plain terms that he was unafraid, and then flipped it around and jammed it back into its holster. Hawke turned a placid smile towards the courier.

The Dealer’s Voice had been Deckard Rigeling’s right hand man for almost twenty years now, following the criminal mastermind up from the mean streets of Throne and into the halls of power. There had been rumors that he was supposed to be Rigeling’s heir apparent, but the Voice had chosen to follow his master into retirement to Camelot station. Now, he smirked as he gave Tommy Two-Guns a pitying look, then turned his attention back to Hawke. “Yeah, about the boss. See, he’s been real eager to speak with you. Something about being a week late with a quite valuable cargo.” He looked around the bay and quirked his lips slightly. “Hey, nice ship. Lots of room in here.” He looked back at Hawke, his voice going flat. “Not much cargo.”

“We ran into a little snag,” Hawke said calmly. “Which we’ll be happy to explain to Mr. Rigeling.”

“What makes you think Mr. Rigeling wants to listen to your explanations, Captain Hawke?” The Voice cocked his head sideways, like a bird staring at a particularly juicy worm. “Seeing as how you’re here late, and lacking your cargo and all. I’m sure it must be quite the interesting story, but Mr. Rigeling isn’t too fond of stories. Especially not ones that might upset him.” He popped his neck with a series of harsh cracks that echoed through the bay and smiled like a shark. “See, that’s what he pays me for. I make sure nothing upsets him. Occasionally, I don’t do so well. Then I have to expunge my failures by making sure they don’t upset him again.”

“I don’t think he’ll be as upset as you think,” Hawke said. He returned the Voice’s smile with a cold, flat grin of his own. “But then, we could let him decide that.” He flicked his eyes towards Tommy as the gunslinger’s hand crept towards his pistol again. “Or we could just settle things here, now, and all over the place.” He flicked his eyes back to the Voice, and his voice was openly contemptuous. “Of course, that doesn’t help me much. You’re dead, and Mr. Rigeling is twice as pissed off at me. I don’t see a winner either way. So, how about you do your job and take us to Mr. Rigeling, and I’ll just have to see if we can’t come to a mutually satisfactory arrangement?”

Hawke and the Voice locked gazes, and nobody moved for a tense minute. The two mooks shifted uneasily, for the first time realizing that the balance of power was against them. The Voice smiled after a minute.

“All right, Hawke. Mr. Rigeling always did say he admired your balls.” He turned, signaling for his mooks to follow, then paused. “’course, he often said he expected they’d end up bronzed, on his mantle, one of these days.”

“Well,” Hawke said, signaling Glenn and Tommy to follow him. “I’m sure that’s something we can all look forward to.”

*

“Aren’t you nervous?” Kate asked Cynthia curiously. “I mean, the Dealer has a hell of a reputation. The guys might be in trouble.”

“The guys are always in trouble,” Elise said with a mocking roll of her brows. “Oz, is that tracking device working okay?”

“It is for the moment,” the AI said. “I will remind you, though, Mr. Rigeling has a habit of employing jammers around his hiding spaces. I would not be surprised if our tracker is cut off before too much longer.”

“Well, at least we’ll have the general location down,” Cynthia said with a shrug. “And Rigeling has always been a tad obvious about his hidey holes, anyway. Very fond of Italian restaurants for some reason.”

“Some people define themselves by their cliches,” Oz said sanctimoniously. Cynthia shrugged.

“Whatever it may be,” she said, turning to where the Wild Cat was parked. “I’m sure they’ll be eating better than we will be. C’mon, ladies, we’ve got supplies to pick up, and I’m in dire need of a beer. Watch the ship, Oz.”

“Yes ma’am,” Oz said agreeably. He waited until Elise hopped off the ramp before bringing it up, checking his external cameras. There were more blind spots than he liked, places where the cameras had burned off during fights or merely violent reentries, but for the most part he had a good view of the ship’s environs.

Out of curiosity, he flicked his internal viewpoint back to where the two Imperials were being held in their bunkroom. They were still there; for a moment, he entertained the suspicion that they were spoofing his camera with recycled footage, for they were still in much the same position he’d left them last; the taller one was sprawled out on the upper bunk, his ankles hanging over the foot, the shorter below him on the floor doing an odd, dance-like movement with his eyes closed. He swayed back and forth, sometimes balancing on one leg, then the other, swirling his arms around him slowly as though swimming in an invisible stream.

Humans were such peculiar creatures.

He noticed the taller man, the one alternately referred to as "Garth" or "Frosty" was speaking, and turned on the local microphone out of curiosity.

"-they're going to have us killed?" he asked Cutter, rolling over on the bed. The mattress was lumpy and hard, but more spacious than his coffin rack back on the Hildagarde.

"Doubt it," Cutter said calmly, moving through the intricate motions from High Pat On Horse to Cross Wave of Water Lily Kick. "I don't think they'd have brought us this far just for the extra labor, and their captain strikes me as a man of honor."

"We know their names now, though. No matter where they turn us loose at, the Empire is going to be looking for them as soon as we report in."

"Who says we know their names?" Cutter stepped into the next form effortlessly, flowing through the katas with the ease of lifelong practice. His martial arts were the only thing his parents, refugees from Neo Edo after the Scourge had scoured the planet, had left him. "We've been kept locked away. We've had no interaction with the crew. They obviously feared the Emperor's wrath, so they dumped us as soon as they could and took off."

Garth froze. "You're saying we should lie."

"I'm saying there are some things that don't need to go on reports."

"We have a duty to the Empire," Garth said, a little unnerved at how their usual positions had reversed.

"For fuck's sake, Frosty, these people aren't hurting anyone." Toshiro paused through Step Up To Form Seven Stars, to turn and stare at his copilot. "I don't know what they found on that shell of a planet, but it wasn't worth the hell that's going to fall on them if we report in. I joined the Empire to help people, not persecute them."

Garth sat upright. "I'm not trying to persecute anyone, dammit," he said hotly. "But we took an oath to serve the Emperor with everything we have, and we can't go picking and choosing our duties the moment we have a moral dilemma. We're honor bound to report what we know to the first Imperial garrison or ship we come across, and everyone on this ship knows that. Hell, that Glenn guy looks like he's been around the Empire a time or two; I wouldn't be surprised if he's former Fleet himself.

"Army, I think." Toshiro said, continuing his exercise. "He doesn't move quite right for a spacer."

"Whatever." Garth rubbed his temples, then his eyes. "This whole thing is topsy turvy. It was a hell of a lot easier when they were just some ship we were shooting at."

"Yeah, well that's the problem with knowing one's enemy too well," Cutter said. "They stop being enemies."

Garth closed his eyes tightly. "Maybe they should kill us."

"Maybe." Cutter shrugged, not knowing or caring that his roommate couldn't see him. "But if the situations were reversed, could you?"

"...no."

"That's because you're a good man, Garth." Cutter chuckled softly, moving into the next form. "And so are they."

"Could you?" Frosty opened his eyes, keeping them fixed on the ceiling rather than looking down at the other man.

"Yes. If I was ordered to." Cutter didn't hesitate, didn't pause, continuing his kata as though it were the only thing in the galaxy. "But then, I never claimed to be a good man."

*

"Thirteen steps to my grave, no more the black flag will I wave." As Hawke and his merry band stepped into the bustling Market district, they found themselves awash in a sea of noise and music, the thick scents of cooking food barely drowning out the less pleasant odors of unwashed bodies, the musky scent of animals, the thick smells of oil and machinery. The air was smoky, a clear sign that the environmental system was hard pressed to keep up with the levels of pollution. Not far from the passage to the docks, a pair of female musicians had set up an impromptu stage, playing the banjo and fiddle while a small boy beat his drum smartly, a battered hat set out in front of them to attract donations. "Preacher tells me I've been saved - and calling me Sue Mundy."

"Huh," Hawke said conversationally to the Voice. "Haven't heard this one for a while."

The Voice hawked and spat. "I don't listen to this Border Planet rubbish," He said dismissively, starting to push on through the crowd. Hawke grabbed his sleeve, gave him a slight smile as he spun around.

"Think I'll listen for a minute. They sound pretty good."

The Voice started to open his mouth, closed it as Hawke's grip on his arm tightened. There was no love lost between the two, and the courier knew better than to push the ex-Union captain further than necessary.

"Suit yourself," He shook his arm loose. "You should know better than to keep Mr. Rigeling waiting, though." Hawke ignored him, turning to watch the two singers.

Marcellus Clarke is my true name,
Simpson County's pride and shame
Raising horses, hemp and slaves;
A son of old Kentucky.

"John," Glenn whispered in his ear, barely audible over the noise of the Market. "Is testing the guy's patience wise? We're in enough trouble as it is, hey?"

The orphan gray I did put on
Captured at Fort Donaldson
With my pardon I walked home,
Just a poor civilian-

"They're good singers," Hawke said again. "And what the Voice didn't bother to notice is that the one on the left there is Rigeling's niece, Anna." He patted Glenn on the shoulder as the man did a double take. "Keep it down, she doesn't like to advertise the fact. But the Dealer worries about his family, and if Anna's out in the Market like this it probably means they've had another fight. News like that, well, might just come in handy."

But Bainbridge called in martial law
For every Federal dead now he'd hang four
Whispering behind their doors - there goes a Rebel soldier.

"Nice song," Glenn murmured, only half sarcastically. The song was ancient, predating even the first Diaspora, its origin lost somewhere in the mists of time - but the themes were still current, and would be as long as man fought man.

"Oldie but goody," Hawke agreed. "Used to sing it back before the War." He stopped abruptly, unwilling to say more - Glenn nodded, letting the subject drop. Even amongst friends, there were some things that weren't discussed. The War, and what happened before, were subjects generally verboten - some things were simply too painful.

So I took to murder then
Stealing horses, robbing men
Burning wagons, bending rails
We were always hungry

Lord give me corn and give me beans
Faster horses and the means
To kill the Yankees as I please - and take back my good country

"Let's go," Hawke said abruptly to the Voice. The courier was in the middle of talking with one of his mooks, and was taken aback as the captain pushed past him deeper into the Market, Tommy and Glenn close on his heels.

"Well it's about frigging time," he muttered, moving to keep up. "Damned if I spent twenty years earning respect on the street to end up playing tour guide to every tin god starship captain that comes through here."

Tommy turned and fixed the man with a flat stare. "Your mouth is moving. You should look to that."

One of the bodyguards started to bristle and push forward, but the Voice caught his arm. "Not here, for God's sake." The lanky man was sweating in the crowded heat, and his eyes flicked back and forth nervously. "Hawke, muzzle your dog. We start fighting here, and Old Nick'll be on us before you can blink."

Hawke frowned slightly, though he didn't bother to turn or slow his pace. Last time the Lonesome Road had been through, Rigeling had an informal truce going with the Moderators, the heavy handed station police who served as law enforcement on Camelot Station. If Deckard's right hand man was sweating being picked up for a mere public brawling charge, things really had changed while they'd been gone - and that made him nervous. Desperate men did desperate things, and if the Dealer, officially retired, was being pressed by the law then Hawke couldn't make any guesses as to which way he might jump if pushed.

The heavy clatter of gunshots rang above the noise of the crowd, and people began screaming and pushing, diving for cover. In moments, the corridor was clear, revealing a pitched battle raging between two groups of men in oddly colored soft suits - enemy gangs, perhaps, or rival ship's crews.

"Want me to drop them, sir?" Tommy's voice was soft in Hawke's ear, but his eyes were bright and his grip on his pistol was firm and steady. He made a settle back gesture as the Voice guerrilla crawled over to them, keeping his head low with the same survival instincts instinctive to lower life forms like snakes and street thugs.

"We need to get out of here," the Dealer's Voice hissed. "The Peelers will be on these berks in no time flat, and if we get caught up in the scoop it could be all of our asses."

"Things have changed," Hawke shot back. "I remember a time when it wasn't illegal to be an innocent bystander at a gunfight."

"Yeah, well that was before the Union and the Empire got permission to put a garrison of their own troops in here to protect their trading ships." The Voice cringed as a bullet whizzed by his head, taking a healthy chunk out of one of the wooden stalls. "The Moderators have been cracking down on anything that smacks of civil disturbance, in case one or the other of the big guys decides to try annexing the station in the name of public safety."

Hawke was momentarily dumbfounded. "They can't do that! It would be an act of war to whoever didn't get the station - not to mention what the Independents would say about usurping the station's sovereign rights."

"Yeah, like the Big Two give half a shit about sovereign rights other than their own," the Voice snapped, ducking again. Hawke nodded to Tommy, and the gunslinger popped up and fired, twice. The amount of bullets coming their way abruptly dropped. "We've got to get out of here now, Hawke. See if your man can clear us a path to that maintenance tunnel across the passageway; we can take the back ways to the Dealer."

"Sounds like a plan," Hawke agreed. "What happened to those muscle bound bully boys of yours?" A quick glance around revealed no sign of the Voice's escort, and the herald cursed inventively. "Never mind, it doesn't matter. Glenn, you're with me." He gestured across the corridor towards the maintenance hatch the Voice had indicated. "Tommy, cover us, then follow with the Mouth here."

"Voice!" The Voice protested, but Hawke and Glenn were already on the move, ducking out from behind their makeshift cover and sprinting across the way. A couple of shots were fired in their direction as the shooters reacted to the movement, but Tommy was on the ball and let loose with a hail of gunfire before grabbing the Voice by the scruff of his neck and bodily dragging him along behind. While Glenn worked to pick the magnetic lock on the maintenance hatch, Hawke ducked out to provide cover for Tommy and his unwilling charge.

"Man, these guys just love to cause trouble," he mumbled as Tommy and the Voice squeezed in next to him. The little alcove had been crowded with just he and Glenn in it - even as lean as they were, the two extra bodies made it downright cramped.

Tommy laughed, eyes bright and exhilarated as he finished off the magazine, mostly with warning shots that forced both sides to keep their heads down. An odd, ululating siren filled the air, signaling the arrival of the Moderators; faceless behind mirrored black visors, they simply seemed to drop out of the sky, using special hatches in the overhead that had been installed for just such emergency purposes. The crackle of stun blasters began to replace the roar of gunfire, and the combatants forged a temporary truce as they struggled to escape.

“Got it!” Glenn snarled, snapping the lock free of the hatch and kicking it open. Just in the nick of time; loud shouts to halt followed the four of them as they piled into the maintenance corridor, and Hawke took a moment of schadenfreudistic pleasure as he slammed the door quite literally in one Moderator’s face. The banging of rifle butts on the hatch followed them as they raced down the corridor, moving quickly for all that they knew it would take the Moderators several minutes to get the door open. Slowly, the sound faded behind them and they entered a much shabbier area, the outskirts of Dog Town.

The maintenance hatches here were propped open more often than not, providing access for the seamier Camelot underworld to move about the station as they pleased. Maintenance didn’t often come down this way; it wasn’t that things didn’t break down in Dog Town, it was just that when they did, less people cared. Most of the overhead lights were out, and illumination came from trash can fires that filled the air with a thick, harsh smoke the air filters were hard pressed to disperse. The Voice led the way now, moving with assurance now that they were safe from the immediate danger of arrest and imprisonment; now and then, one of the lurking shadows made as if to accost the party, only to fall back as they took notice of the spacer’s firearms, or the sword strapped to Hawke’s back. After half an hour of brisk walking through the Dog Town corridors, the Voice brought them to a service elevator; the lift was out of service, but a rickety rope ladder dangled in the empty shaft, swaying slightly in the breeze that arose from the depths of the station.

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Hawke said flatly.

“Deckard’s restaurant is three decks up,” the Voice replied without turning around. He picked up a hooked pole that had apparently been left there for this very purpose and snagged the ladder as it swayed close to the edge, pulling it within reach. “We can go this way and be there in under an hour, or we can go back to the other side of Dog Town and see if the other lifts are working. Or we could go back to the Market and hope that the Moderators have already moved on rather than lingering to scour out any other strays. You’re welcome to decide as you like, but I-” and here he stepped onto the ladder, pushing off from the edge and beginning to clamber up with the natural agility of a monkey “-am going up.”

“Generi meno figlio de una capra,” Tommy swore in his native tongue, giving the ladder an incredulous look. The Voice was almost out of sight already, his legs vanishing into the shadows further up the shaft.

“Not much choice in the matter,” Glenn said neutrally. Hawke quirked his lips as he looked at the younger man; such a challenge was nothing to the former Imperial Ranger, who could probably have climbed the shaft barehanded.

“I’ll go first,” Hawke said. “Then Tommy, then you.”

“You honor me,” Glenn quipped, studying the gunslinger. “Try not to slip, hey? You’re looking a little heavy, I’m not sure I could hang onto you if I caught you.” Tommy gave him the finger with his cybernetic arm, the golden digit gleaming in the faint light. Hawke picked up the pole and snagged the ladder, swinging it close enough to clamber up on.

“Well, here goes everything.” he said as Tommy and Glenn held it steady, and started his long ascent.

The climb wasn’t too bad, though there was a hairy moment when Glenn boarded the ladder and it swung back out towards the middle of the shaft. None of the spacers were adverse to physical labor when the situation required it, and while tedious the climb wasn’t particularly arduous - especially not in the .9 standard gravities Camelot Station maintained, a number low enough to make them feel light on their feet without making their movements awkward and off balance. Clambering off when they reached their destination proved somewhat awkward until they managed to swing together to bring the ladder within safe distance of the landing, at which point Glenn hopped off and used the boathook to drag the ladder close enough for the rest of them.

Shortly after, they stood in the dining room of a rundown Italian parlor, stretching their sore muscles and trying not let their mouths water too much at the smell of tomato sauce and pasta. The Voice had vanished into the back a few minutes before with a terse instruction to them to wait, and the three were uneasily aware of dozens of eyes on them as they stood shuffling their feet.

After about five minutes, the Voice reappeared and gestured them on to the back room. Deckard Rigeling stood as they entered; a fit man in his early fifties, Rigeling had a shock of gray hair worn long in a loose pony tail and twinkling blue eyes behind antique rimless spectacles. He didn’t look like a mob boss, but Hawke had dealt with him enough to be wary; the man had reputedly single handedly wiped out a rival gang while still working the small time turf wars, and he’d been successful enough in his (alleged) life of crime to retire young. The presence of a half dozen armed men went a long way to make up for any lack of menace on Rigeling’s side, and the trio were careful to keep their hands away from their guns.

“You’re late,” Rigeling commented conversationally. Hawke didn’t let the apparent easy-going nature of the remark slide by him, though he refused to react.

“Ran into a few snags,” he replied.

“Where’s my cargo?” Rigeling pushed his spectacles higher up on his nose and folded his arms across his chest, a friendly smile on his bony face. Hawke held out his hand, and Glenn unslung his pack and passed it over.

“Lost it, I’m afraid.” Hawke said casually, unzipping the pack. One of the bodyguards went stiff as the captain reached inside, but Deckard waved him back irritably.

“Lost it? Now that’s a crying shame, Captain Hawke. I was looking forward to that, I was.” He unfolded his arms, put his hands in his trouser pockets. “Well, being the man of honor you are, I imagine you have the money to cover my loss?”

“’fraid not,” Hawke said. “Did manage to recover this, though. Funny thing, my ship’s engineer found it stuck in one of those thruster-sculptures of yours. Must have fallen in. Hope you like it.” Hawke pulled his hand free of the pack, cradling the tiny rag doll as though it would explode if jostled, and held it out. The room went still.

“Very nice. Hopi work, isn’t it? Incredibly illegal to transport outside of Hopi space, and a death sentence if the tribe gets wind of it - but very pretty. ‘course, a man would have to be an absolute berk to take one knowingly aboard his ship, and a man would have to be a right bastard to try to smuggle one in a cargo of other materials. That’s how I know it was only by accident that it fell in amongst your cargo, seeing as how we weren‘t paid nearly enough to transport something like this. Anyway, I figure a priceless Hopi kachina doll, looks like it might just be a First Earth relic, well, might be a man like you could be merciful enough to accept it as a peace offering between us. For losing your cargo and all.”

Deckard took his hands out of his pocket slowly and accepted the doll, holding it as he might a newborn infant. “Oh, aye. I think that‘s mighty generous of you Captain Hawke, turning over a find like this.” He beckoned the Voice over with a sharp jerk of his head, passed the doll on to him. “Find a place for that, Marcus. Some place nice.”

His eyes were smiling as he turned back to Hawke, though his face was serious. “Well Captain, I think it would be only polite to keep word of this buttoned up. I’d hate to ruin your reputation undeservedly, by saying you failed to deliver your contracted cargo and all. I‘ll make sure my bank delivers the rest of your payment to your account. For any future deliveries I might have for you.”

Hawke nodded. “Seems fair enough.” he said, reaching into the backpack again. “I’ve got a business proposition of my own for you, think you might find it interesting.” He tugged out the metal casket they’d found aboard the crashed ship, holding it out at arm’s length. Deckard paused, taken aback for a moment, then shook his head.

“Ah, Hawke... you always bring me the most interesting things. Come, have a seat.” He gestured to the table behind him. The two sat down, Tommy and Glenn careful to stay to either side of their captain, trading scowls with Deckard’s muscle boys.

“Interesting. If I didn’t know better, I’d say it was First Empire,” Deckard said. “Where ever did you find it?”

“On a First Imperial ship,” Hawke said, smiling inwardly at Deckard’s cool blink of surprise.

“Really? How curious. I take it this is why you were delayed?”

“A little more to it than that, but this is the end result.” Hawke leaned forward, prodding the casket with one finger. “Do you know what it is?”

“Do you?” Deckard leaned back, smiling enigmatically. Hawke shook his head, careful to keep his face clear of curiosity or irritation. “It’s a message capsule, not too different from the type used today. You seldom see them, of course; most things can be sent by cortex, properly encrypted. For especially large bank transfers, the type corporations are bought with, or for important military and political messages...” he tapped the casket lightly. “That’s where you want one of these beauties. Independently powered, it’ll last as long as a sun. Totally secure, almost indestructible. And without the proper key, well, you haven’t a hope of getting into it.”

“Damn,” Hawke muttered, letting his weariness and frustration show for the first time. “Where the hell are we supposed to get the key for a message a thousand years old?”

“Why Hawke,” Deckard said with mock surprise, smiling his enigmatic smile. “Didn’t you know? You already have it.”

*

...now God knows that war's a sin,
Sanctifying killing men
And no one's righteous in the end -
A song of old Sue Mundy.

The trio finished their song with a sad wail from the fiddle and took their bows to the enthusiastic applause of the few people who stopped to watch on their way through the busy Market. Cynthia shook her head. “C’mon, Elise,” she said irritably. “We don’t have time for you to stand around watching musicians.”

“But they’re pretty,” Elise protested. “And so is their music. Please, Cyn, throw them some credits.” She pouted at the older woman until she relented, digging out a handful of the gold sticks that functioned as solid currency throughout most of civilized space. Most transactions took place with simple account transfers, facilitated by the identification bracelets worn by citizens of both the Union and the Empire, but on the Border and Independent worlds, such things were a silly luxury... especially on a station like Camelot, where much of the business conducted was under the table, and financial trails were muddled as heavily as possible.

No matter how far humanity advanced, there would always be places where it was cash and carry only.

“Thank you, misses.” The banjo player bowed low, and the fiddler played a few quick notes in thanks before they swung onto their next song. The drummer boy stared at Elise with open surprise until a quick kick in the backside turned his mind back to his task.

The three ladies of the Lonesome Road turned deeper into the Market district, their minds on their assigned task but their mood light, happy to be out and about once again. It had been a long road for them, for even before the wreck on Darkon they had been hopping from port to port, barely spending more than a day before leaving for their next destination; their last extended period of shore leave was almost four months prior, on a backwards moon out in the Border planets, laying low to avoid the authorities.

It was a typical life for tramp freighters, but it made these rare occasions - 'working vacations', Cynthia called them - that much sweeter. Camelot Station was the closest thing the Lonesome Road had to a home port, and as they passed through the crowded Market district they were greeted by vendors and passersby, old friends and rivals both.

Shopping was a tricky thing, requiring all of Cynthia's diplomatic expertise. Despite having many friends in the area, the Lonesome was still fairly cash poor, most of her funds immediately turned into parts and supplies for the ship, or pay for the crew. Usually gearing up was saved for after the cargo was offloaded and payment had been delivered; unfortunately, in this case, there was no cargo to offload and likely no payment to be delivered. Worse, fuel was difficult to come by in the Camelot system; with no habitable planets, supplies of fresh water had to be imported, most commonly as ice from the asteroid belts. That raised the price from something negligible to somewhat significant; she winced as she walked away from the hydro booth to rejoin her companions at a noodle stand.

"Well," she said gloomily, taking the bowl of ramen Kate offered. "That's going to put a dent in our food for the month, and no mistake." She grabbed a pair of chopsticks from the container on the counter and dug into her meal hungrily, knowing it might well be the last decent food she would get for the foreseeable future.

"That bad?" Kate winced and returned to her own meal with gusto, seeing a return to ration packs. Elise finished slurping down hers and handed the bowl back to the counterman for a refill. "I was hoping we could get some meals that actually resembled food again. Be a nice change of pace."

"Not likely," Cynthia sighed, gesturing to the counterman as he handed Elise's bowl back to her. "Beer all around, brother. Might as well enjoy it while we can." She twirled a bundle of noodles around one stick and ate them hungrily, continuing to speak even though her mouth was full. "Bad luck having to come to Camelot Station in the first place," she said. "Food prices are higher, fuel prices are higher - everything grown on the station is either out of alley pots or hydroponics gardens, and that means the good stuff is imported. There were rumors of livestock die offs the last time we were here; I hope they got that under control." They looked down at their ramen bowls simultaneously as the question dawned as to what, exactly, they were eating - Elise and Cynthia both shrugged after a moment and resumed their dinner, while Kate pushed her mostly empty bowl away and picked up her beer enthusiastically.

"Speaking of hydroponics gardens, we'll need to get the Lonesome's overhauled soon," Kate said, taking a swig and making a face. "If this stuff was any thicker, you'd need a fork to drink it."

"Bah," Cynthia lifted her own and drank deeply. "You Core Worlders never did understand what a good beer was. That fizzy water you all guzzle just makes me have to piss."

"Delicate," Elise said with a muffled burp, covering her mouth with a hand. "You're always such a lady, Cyn." Kate stifled a giggle as Cynthia posed, holding her beer mug as though it were a tea cup, one pinky sticking out to the side.

"La, madam, a lady is a lady and is proper no matter what she does." She grinned and killed the rest of her beer, sliding it back across the counter for a refill. She dug a handful of credit sticks out of her pocket and jingled them speculatively. "Enough here for another round or two, I imagine. Who's up?"

"Not I," Kate raised her mug with an amused smile. "This one will be more than enough to keep me occupied for a while."

"Me neither," Elise licked foam from her whiskers and blinked drowsily. "You know how that stuff goes to my head."

"Pansies." Cyn took her refilled mug and lifted it to her lips, then paused and put it back down. "Well, look what's coming up the pike. I do believe that's the prettiest man I've ever seen."

The others turned to look, then to stare, and had to agree with her. The man coming down the passageway was tall, and slender enough that he looked like a strong breeze might break him in two. His long brown coat hung on him like a tent, and his thin, delicate features were almost girlishly pretty under a mane of long, wild hair. Behind a pair of rectangular spectacles, his silver eyes returned their regard with interest, and he smiled at the three as he stepped up to the counter.

"[SAYING HELLO AND ORDERING RAMEN IN CHINESE]," he told the counterman, disdaining the stools and leaning on the counter. Elise snickered around her mug at Kate's poleaxed expression, and nudged the girl in the back.

"Well? Aren't you going to buy the boy a drink?" She whispered sotto voice. Kate blushed and punched her lightly.

"That won't be necessary," the stranger said without looking at them. His voice was almost melodic, a faint accent coating the words with liquid tones. "I wouldn't mind your company, though, if I might ask to share this stretch of counter with you."

Kate's blush deepened as Cynthia laughed and gestured to the open seats next to them. "Help yourself, there's plenty of room." She raised a brow as she took notice of the ship patch on the man's shoulder. "No offense, but you don't look much like a spacer."

"None taken," he said easily, sliding into the stool down from hers and snagging his mug as it was slid across the counter at him. "It takes all kinds, after all." He turned and offered his hand, smiling crookedly at her. "Daniel Sharde, off the Heart's Repose."

"Cynthia Rho, Lonesome Road." she said, shaking it, then cocked a thumb at her companions. "The red one's Kate, the furry one's Elise. We all ship together."

"Lonesome Road?" he said with some surprise. "You're that Clydesdale that was having pirate trouble."

Cynthia stiffened slightly, but kept her voice congenial even as her free hand slipped towards her pistol. "Now, where'd you hear about that?"

"I'm the guy that saved your bacon." Daniel cocked a thumb and jabbed at his chest, grinning cockily. "No offense, of course. I'm sure you could have taken 'em."

"No doubt," Cynthia smiled in return, letting her hand fall away from her pistol. "Still, we appreciate your help. Sure we can't buy you another beer?"

He waved expressively, scooping up his ramen bowl and a pair of chopsticks as the counterman set it down. "Not a problem," he said easily. "We free traders have to stick together." He dug into his meal hungrily, and Cynthia had to admit to herself she was amazed at how quickly the skinny man could eat. They made small talk while they dined, and by the time they had finished their meals it seemed only natural to invite the man along - after all, they were headed for many of the same places, for Daniel also had shopping to do.

Ages later, Cynthia would look back and wonder at the hand of fate in the whole mess; but that was later, when things that seemed circumstantial, coincidental, and serendipitous had shown a somewhat more ominous face.

*

"What do you mean by that?" Hawke asked slowly, looking at Deckard as if the man across the table had gone insane. With Deckard Rigeling, that was all too distinct a possibility.

Deckard sighed. "Ah, Hawke. It's sad to see how little they teach at that famous Union Space Academy of yours, it really is." Hawke let the comment roll off of him without reply; Deckard, who grew up in a poor family on the streets of Camelot Station and had educated himself on a variety of subjects, was often digging at him about his fleet education... and anything else he could come up with, come to think about it.

Deckard leaned back in his chair and indicated the sword that jutted over Hawke's shoulder like a watching sentinel. "I'm guessing you got that marvelous pigsticker from the same place you did this message capsule - maybe even the same room, eh?"

"That would be a good guess," Hawke said guardedly, touching the hilt of the sword absent mindedly. Deckard smiled, ignoring the uneasy stirring of his bodyguards. "I'd be curious as to how you knew that, of course."

"Tell me, Hawke, did you ever hear stories of the Vanadir Knights?"

"Can't say that I have," Hawke said truthfully. "I'm guessing either they've got something to do with my sword, here, or else you've come up with an entirely annoying habit of dropping non sequiturs into your conversations."

"That would be a good guess," Deckard said evenly, ignoring the veiled slam. "The Vanadir Knights were the guardians of the First Empire, the most loyal forces the Emperor had. Most of them vanished along with him, of course, and those that remained were wiped out in the chaos of the Fall - took a lot of blame from the populace at large for the way things turned out, and found themselves on the wrong end of a lot of upset people. They were never a very large group to begin with, and towards the end... well. I digress.

"The Vanadir Knights were a mysterious organization, and there were some say they had powers beyond the ken of mere mortals. As it was, they were incredible warriors; there used to be a proverb along the lines of 'one Knight, one battle'. They were responsible for keeping peace throughout the Galaxy, a sort of super police force, called in when all else failed - and they were entirely sworn to the Emperor, body and soul. Naturally, when he had a cargo valuable enough to be shipped by message capsule like this, who else would he call upon to deliver it?

"The sword of a Vanadir Knight was a precious object; incredibly rare and valuable even then, by today's standards it would be beyond priceless. I could buy the better part of a battle fleet for that sharp stick you've got slung over your shoulder, Hawke, assuming I could find a buyer who could afford it." Rigeling smiled thinly, raising a hand as Hawke opened his mouth. "Relax, I'm not making a hint. I couldn't even come close to matching its true worth, and anyway, such things prove to be more trouble than value to those what carry them. Just a word of advice."

He leaned forward in his chair. "Anyway, amongst the powers entrusted to the Vanadir's sword was this; it served as a key to all Imperial locks. After all, these were men who had the absolute authority of the Emperor; when they spoke, it was the Emperor's voice that spoke through them, and their demands were his. An Imperial courier was the only person who had the key to the cargo he carried; and woe betide anyone who try to take it from him.

"That key was his sword." Rigeling leaned back in his chair, satisfied. "So, what say you draw that thing, Hawke, and we take a look at what's inside our little prize here?"

Hawke stood uneasily and slid the sword free of its sheath. "So, what precisely do I need to do?"

Deckard fiddled with the casket for a moment until a concealed panel slid open, revealing a curious mark. "There we go. Just tap your sword's pommel against this."

Hawke reversed the blade and rested the pommel lightly against the mark. The casket sprang open with a loud click, making both men spring back in alarm, then lean forward interestedly. Rather than being a hollow container, as Hawke had expected, the top of the casket curved away from a flat, glassy surface, broken only by a pair of buttons; one red, one green. Deckard hummed in thought, then leaned over and pushed the green button before Hawke could stop him.

The glassy surface sprang to life with a brilliant white light, and both men leaned back again. Whirls of sparkling light danced above the casket for a moment, finally coalescing into a series of numbers, then a hologram of a man in dusky white robes. Hawke fought the urge to gasp in surprise; the resolution was higher than any he'd seen before, the clarity making the image appear lifelike; as though a miniature man stood on the desk before them. The image began speaking without warning, his voice clipped and flat.

"This is the consular authority of Imperial colony 90135 "Danaan", regular progress report for the third quarter, 2695." He cleared his throat and continued. "Listening Post 21 Alpha continues to report disturbing noises coming from the Gamma Theta Ro Sector, but are still unable to determine what's been causing our ships to disappear around the system rim. I'm sending this message on the Oberon, as she's due for regular rotation back to the Fleet and is in dire need of upkeep and repair, and keeping the frigate Goodfellow on station here; our insystem garrison has been reduced to unacceptable levels with the casualties over the last two standard years, and I must repeat my plea for additional Fleet and Army resources. The indigenous population continues to be unrelentingly hostile, and it's only with the aid of the Special Guard and Vanadir Knights at the New Erico research facility that we've been able to withstand their assaults. I believe the last campaign exhausted their resources, but the rebels are more difficult to exterminate than cockroaches, and we require more troops to put an end to this uprising.

"The New Erico research facility has reported some new successes in surveying the quantum singularity that makes subspace communication from our system impossible, but otherwise no new progress on any of their projects. This lack is not surprising given the difficult conditions the scientists are working under; we haven't received any of our normal supply ships lately, and the civilian merchants that have ventured into the area have been skittish and unwilling to part with their goods for prices less than highway robbery. I've had to hang one captain outright for profiteering, but it doesn't seem to have served as an example for the rest of them.

"The imperium mines continue to have outputs of higher than normal yield, but because of the difficulties with our supply ships our stockpiles have grown almost unmanageable; I'm stuck with the unenviable position of having a surplus of ore, but no way to transport it back to the Empire proper. I've taken the liberty of removing the Oberon's shuttles and fighters and filling her holds with raw ore, but that still leaves us with our warehouses nearly full. If this keeps up, I'll have no choice but to close the mines.

"I've asked Knight Sergeant Donaldson to deliver this message to you. He's served this colony and the Empire well, and needs time to recover from wounds received during the latest incursion by rebel forces. It is my recommendation that he be given time sufficient to fully recuperate from the injuries he's suffered in the service of the Empire, as well as the care and aid of trained psychological professionals. I hesitate to speak ill of any honored servant of the Emperor, but the Knight Sergeant's behavior lately has led me to suspect some measure of psychological trauma, and this may make him a danger to himself and others. I'm also sending along a dozen of the 'Templar' model robotic sentinels, as the model has proven to be unreliable, and its programming buggy. My engineers have been unable to isolate the problem, and they're causing as many casualties among my own soldiers as they are of the enemy.

"In conclusion, I must again stress the colony's need for additional support from the Core. We have not yet reached a point of self sufficiency, nor are we likely to before the end of the decade; still, we've done well considering the hurdles we have faced and how rough our beginning was. It is my opinion that, given the proper nurturing, 90135 will be prepared for member status soon, and between the Imperial facilities and imperium mining, can support itself in trade.

"This is the Imperial consul, Colony 90135 "Danaan", out."

The image flickered and went out, the casket quickly dulling back to empty gray glass. They sat in silence for several minutes, the only sound the uneasy rustling as Rigeling's bodyguards shifted back and forth on their feet, uncomfortable in the quiet.

"Well," Rigeling said finally, breaking the stillness. "I think it's safe to say that I've never heard of a planet, or a system, called Danaan."

Hawke shook his head. "Me neither. Sounds like things weren't all paradisical there, though."

"2965," Deckard said musingly. "Not long before the Fall. Times were rough everywhere in the Empire; I can just imagine how one difficult it might have been on one little border colony. Still, their loss is someone's gain, Captain Hawke, and I think you and I might just be able to come to an arrangement after all."

"What do you mean?" Hawke asked cautiously.

"Think about it, Captain. You're an intelligent man. From the sounds of things, this colony had an extremely productive imperium mine, enough where they could fill a warship's holds and still have enough left over to push their storage capacity to max. You've no doubt noticed the Union and Empire's preparations for conflict; even in peacetime, imperium is worth more ten times its weight in gold. What we have here, Captain Hawke, is a genuine Lost Colony - treasure and all."

Hawke refused to let Deckard's enthusiasm brush off on him. "Yeah, the report says they filled the Oberon with ore. I can tell you Glenn and I didn't find a trace of the stuff on there, though."

Deckard shrugged. "There's plenty of explanations for that. Pirates, or other scavengers could have looted the ship; perhaps these Templar robots looted the cargo themselves to facilitate their repairs and upkeep. A thousand years is a long time, captain, and cargos disappear. Mines? Not so much." Deckard stood up, closing the casket with one long finger as he did so. "I have a good feeling about this, John. After all, in chaos there is profit; and there is so very, very much chaos in the galaxy today."

"Yeah, well I don't." Hawke stood up as well, swinging his sword back over his shoulder and sheathing it. "This sounds too much like those barroom stories the asteroid miners love to tell, about how there's a mother lode of ore out there just waiting for someone to stumble over. Nice story, but not something I'm looking to waste my life pursuing. Tell you what, though, I'll trade you the box for a tank of fuel and a box of cigars. Maybe you can get a point of origin for this 'Danaan Colony' from the routing codes."

"Well now John," Deckard's tone was one Hawke had always particularly hated, a smug 'I know something you don't know' voice that always drove him up a wall. "I would have thought you'd relish the chance to get out of the way for a while, keep away from the eyes of authority."

"Considering we've been 'out of the way' for the last six months, I'm curious to know why you'd think such a thing... Deckard." Hawke said, struggling to keep the irritation out of his voice.

"Not out of the way enough, I suppose." Deckard held out a hand, and the Voice stepped forward to pass him a flimsy. The transparent piece of plastic was covered with softly glowing characters that moved in accordance with the holder's point of vision, 'smart paper' that virtually read itself. "There's an APB out on a free trader, a heavily modified Clydesdale, for plundering and destroying a First Empire wreck and attacking Imperial vessels. Looks like they've already put a lifting restriction on the Lonesome Road to keep her docked until they can get a confirmation on her identity - good thing I control the docks, eh John?"

"Are you blackmailing me, Deckard?" Hawke's voice had gone cold and flat, and Tommy and Glenn glanced at each other nervously. Both had been with the man long enough to learn the danger signs, and this one was neon red and three meters high.

"Consider it the classic analogy of the carrot and the stick, John." Deckard folded his arms across his chest, staring the taller man in the eyes without so much as the trace of a flinch. "You find this lost colony, we're all rich beyond our wildest dreams. I swear to you, I'll do everything I can to set you and your crew up in style - new identities, new lives, whatever it takes. The stick, of course, is that if you don't do what I ask, you're stuck on this station until the Imperials decide to arrest you, try you, and probably hang you. And if you go for that sword, John, I swear to Allah they'll never find your body - but they'll all be wondering why the tomatoes are growing so fat and ripe this year."

Hawke bared his teeth, but kept his hands in the open. "It's always such a pleasure doing business with you, Deckard."

The Bloody Handed Dealer threw his head back and laughed. "That's what I like about you, Hawke. You know how to take these things in stride. Now," he resumed his seat, leaning back and opening his arms expressively. "What can I do to get you ready for this little trip you're about to take?"

*

Elise's personal handy-phone system rang as they were walking from the ramen stand to their next stop, a junk dealer two levels down who could usually be trusted to have some decent items hidden around his cavernous store. The others waited, some more patiently than others, while she argued for a moment with the person on the other end, finally hanging up with a huff.

"Captain wants me to go back to the ship," she told Cynthia with a scowl. "Apparently, the dealer man has arranged to take care of our passengers for us." She didn't glance at Daniel as she spoke, but it was clear that his presence was the reason for her circumspection. "Anyway, he wants me there when their handlers show up."

"What about the shuttle?"

"That's one of the reasons he wants me there. Apparently, it's due for a new paint job." She rolled her eyes. Anyway, he said it'll be a couple of hours, but we've got lines of credit at Pharsii's and Tallywhackers for any parts or supplies we need. Also, it's officially payday."

"Woo!" Kate said, punching the air with a fist. "Payday!"

"Ah, the life of a tramp freighter," Daniel said with good humor. "Wish it was payday for us."

"Don't worry about it," Cynthia said with a smile. "The least we can do for a nice boy like you is buy you dinner."

Daniel rubbed the back of his head. "I'm twenty three, ma'am."

"Tell you what, you don't call me ma'am, and I won't call you boy. Deal?"

"Fair enough."

Kate leaned over to Elise while Cynthia was talking. "How much of a line of credit are we talking, here? Enough where we can look at getting some fresh food again? Maybe even flush the hydroponics garden and get some new seed stock?"

"He said to keep it within reason," Elise said with a shrug. "You know Hawke, pinch every millicred until it squeals twice and then ask for change. Still," She grinned abruptly, flashing her needle teeth in amusement. "Within reason better include a couple of boxes of brownies for me. After all, I shared!"

"I thought chocolate was deadly to cats," Kate called over her shoulder as they separated.

"You want to see deadly, just try coming back without my brownies!" Elise waved and dashed off through the crowd, moving with the nimbleness that only a cat could muster. She was gone from sight within seconds.

"Nice lass," Daniel said with his hands in his coat pockets. "She's your ship's engineer? You're lucky, we're stuck with a standard issue cranky Scotsman from New Glasgow."

Cynthia laughed . "Elise is a genius. I don't think anyone else could keep the Lonesome running the way she does." She looked towards the lift down, then further down the market district to where Pharsii's lay. "Well, I guess a change of plans is in order. Still up for accompanying us?"

"Wouldn't miss it," Daniel said breezily. "Can't say I'm on much in the way of a schedule; we're still waiting to see what kind of cargo we'll be taking on. How about you guys? I wouldn't imagine you'll have to wait too long, seeing how most of the freighters in port are tied up with the military traffic."

"Certainly a lot of that lately," Cyn agreed. "Any idea what's going on?" She changed the subject smoothly enough where it took Kate a moment to realize just how thoroughly she'd dodged the question, and the younger girl shot her an amused glance.

"Bug hunt," Daniel shrugged, looking up at the low overhead speculatively. "Those pirates we ran into are apparently part of some big renegade fleet. Ex-Union commodore who hooked up with a bunch of Imperial deserters and run of the mill freebooters, made himself something of an armada. From what I hear, they overran a couple of small colonies and mining outposts, then mopped up a Union strike group that tangled with them out near Cormorant. They've been closing in on Camelot for the last couple of months, so the Empire and the Union decided on a joint venture to stop them in their tracks."

"So this whole system's about to turn into a war zone?" Cynthia stopped in her tracks, dumbfounded. "How is it we haven't heard anything about this? I mean, we've been out in the sticks for a while, but..."

"Hushed up, of course." Daniel gave her a crooked smile, but his eyes were dark and brooding. "Can you imagine what it would do to the government, on either side, if it got out that someone was thumbing his nose at them? Even the Independents walk wary around the Big Two. It would be an upset, a total paradigm shift of inconceivable proportions." He gestured expressively as he spoke, his entire demeanor changed from the laid back persona he'd worn just a few moments before. He looked, thought Cynthia, like a preacher at the pulpit.

"Why, Daniel," She said teasingly. "You're a revolutionary."

Daniel froze. "Wh- what do you mean by that?" he stammered.

She shook her head, laughing. "Listen to you. You're delighted that someone could give the Gruesome Twosome a run for their money, even if it is some piss-ant pirate skipper." She smiled, somewhat ironically. "Not that I blame you, of course. It's nice to see those hypocritical tyrants taken down a peg or two."

The man blushed, for a moment looking much younger than the twenty-three years he claimed. In the renewed swirl of music from the roaming minstrels, Kate companionably linked her arms through Cynthia and Daniel's.

"Come on, slowpokes," she teased. "We've still got errands to run."

*

They had no trouble passing back through Dog Town to the Market, though they took the more roundabout route rather than risk the maintenance tunnels again. Rigeling offered them the use of a coach, but Hawke had refused, quipping that the walk would do them some good - in truth, he needed the time to work off some steam, and Glenn and Tommy listened quietly as he ran through his entire vocabulary of swear words in three different languages. It was only when he started to repeat himself that the first mate stepped in.

"Looks like we're over a barrel, then." He said calmly. Hawke shot him a murderous look.

"That's one way to put it," he said thinly. "Another way is that we're bloody up shit creek without a goddamn motor." He managed to keep his voice down, but it was a near thing; for all that he was sure one of Rigeling's bully-boys would be following them, his temper made his throat tight. "We're committed to a wild goose chase."

"So, what's the big deal?" Tommy asked with a raised brow. "It's all on the Dealer's decicredit. We go out, we float around in the black for a month or two, we send him a beam saying we couldn't find the place. So sorry, just the way these things go."

Hawke caught himself before he snarled at the gunslinger. "Rigeling expects results. He'd hardly send us off on our own without some form of insurance - probably a tracking device planted somewhere on the Lonesome. Maybe something a little more serious, like a bomb. He decides we're dragging our heels..." he shrugged. "Or maybe he just puts out the word that anyone dealing with a certain Clydesdale gets the axe, starves us out. One way or the other, he's got us doing what he wants. And when we can't find this lost colony of his, he starts putting the screws in."

"So, we find it. How hard can it be?"

"Well, it's either somehow escaped humanity's attempts to recolonize it over the last two thousand years, meaning it's in the ass-end of nowhere or got glassed during the Fall, or else it's been rediscovered and renamed at some point. That would be just our luck, wouldn't it? Deckard's 'lost' mine is sitting fine and dandy under a Union fleet depot, or an Imperial Penitent Colony."

Glenn shuddered despite himself. "Can we not talk about that?"

"Sorry. Anyway, where the hell are we supposed to start looking? Pull into the nearest survey station and ask them if they've found any planets with impressive unclaimed imperium mines lately?"

Tommy scratched his head with his golden arm. "Why not check the routing codes, like you told Deckard? There has to be some star data there, right? Point of origin, all that milocky?"

"I was talking out my ass to Deckard. There's no reason for there to be any routing codes if the frigging thing was being hand-delivered. I hoped he'd buy it and let us out, but it looks like I managed to shoot myself in the foot."

"As usual," Glenn murmured innocently, ducking out of the way of Hawke's absent-minded smack.

"Anyway, our best bet would have been the astrogation computer on that wreck. Unfortunately..."

"Unfortunately, the damn thing went sky-high." Tommy winced. "There's nothing left of the Oberon but dust and atoms. Real dead end there, boss."

"No kidding." Hawke shook his head. "I figure we've got about a month before Deckard begins to lose patience, feels like flexing his muscles. We'll have to work hard and run fast to find some sort of lead on this thing so we'll have something to offer him before that happens."

Glenn spoke up suddenly. "Hey, what about the Library?"

Hawke shot him a despairing look. "Tell me you're not about to suggest what I think you're about to suggest."

Tommy was already nodding. "Yeah, the Memorial Library. Millions of First Empire files, enough data to choke a planetary supercomputer, every survey ever published and every book ever written. Could do worse for a start."

Hawke through his hands in the air. "People have spent lifetimes pouring over that data, and they haven't found a single strike worth the trouble from it yet. What makes us so different?"

"Oz." Glenn waggled his brows conspiratorially. "I can't think of too many other would-be fortune hunters who have their own AI to help them with data compilation."

"You've got to be joking. Turn Oz loose on the Library? God only knows what he'd do."

"Yeah, well, unless you've got a better idea on where to start..."

Hawke sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose between a thumb and forefinger. "I wasn't saying no. Just that this is the craziest, dumbest idea you've come up with since I've met you."

Tommy chuckled. "Now, that's saying something."

Glenn laughed. "Would have thought you'd be used to it by now, skipper." He shrugged. "But like I said, it's a start."

"Yeah. C'mon, let's see if we can't catch up with Kate and your wife before they shop Rigeling into bankruptcy."

"Must we?"

*

Cynthia was taking a much needed break in the Marketplace when Kate and Daniel caught up to her again, identical worried looks on their faces.

"We've got trouble," Kate said shortly.

"Imperial troops are sweeping the docks," Daniel reported grimly. "Probably looking for pirates, but Kate tells me you've had some nasty run ins with them over the last couple of weeks and would prefer to avoid any... misunderstandings."

"That's an understatement," she said with a wince. "Anybody got a handy-phone?" The other two shook their heads, and she swore under her breath. The PHS phones were only usable inside their station or city of issue, and Cyn had always found them more or less useless - Elise was the only person she knew off-hand to own one, although Hawke could somehow lay his hands on one at need. Still, they were a hell of a lot more private than radio comlinks, and with the Imperials sweeping the docks she was hesitant to go broadcasting their presence in the market.

"We'd best get back to the Lonesome," she said firmly, standing up. "We've got the necessities; we'll pick up anything else we need when we hit our next port. We can call Hawke and the others when we get to the ship, get everything loaded, and take off as soon as they get back."

"If the Imperials are looking for you, they've probably put lifting restraints on every Clydesdale on the station," Sharde said quietly, his hands in his pockets. He looked forlorn, though whether it was because he couldn't help or because he was soon to be left behind Cyn couldn't tell.

"We'll burn that bridge when we come to it," she said confidently. With any luck, Rigeling had already taken care of any problems in that department.

Daniel nodded. "I guess this is so long, then." He grinned wryly. "Merry meet, and merry part..."

"And merry meet again," Cynthia had to laugh. The young man from the Heart's Repose had astounding depths to him.

"Oh!" he said as she turned away. "I almost forgot..." She turned back, and saw him holding out a wrapped package. "For Elise," he said with a smile.

Her brownies. Cynthia shook her head and smiled again as she took it. "I'll tell her. Thanks a lot!"

"No need to call the skipper," Kate said suddenly. "Here they come."

"Oh, good." Cynthia turned, scanning the crowd. "Daniel, we don't really have time for extended introductions, but I'd like you to meet-"

Sharde had gone stiff as he saw the three men approaching them, and his hand slipped into his coat.

"[(Latin)THE BLOOD OF TEN THOUSAND VANADIRI CRY OUT FOR VENGEANCE,]" he snarled in a voice almost inhuman. Then he drew his sword and charged.