preparing the banquet

The closest ship is perfect, and only a few hours away. It's half our size and moving for the Michaela system almost as fast as we are. There are no jump points nearby, so it probably won't just disappear into the black. No scanners made can track ships into a jumpspace, in fact, the reason there are jump points so carefully set up is to prevent the collision of ships and whatever gets in the way. NO one knows what is waiting at the other side, but if you do know, you can slip in and out of almost anywhere. You just have to feel it, see the other side, trust yourself and your ship. With enough information, you make your own luck. I've made a career of it.

Ice showed us the new scanners she's upgraded, similar to what Feds have. She scanned our own ship to demonstrate, Caban and I studied the image of Oberon with tiny heat markings where each crew member is. Three of us clustered together on the bridge, Kon in his quarters. The Doctor moving back and forth in the MedBay next to the sleeping form of The Sneak. She landed herself there after our meeting, poisoning herself with chems on some frantic, paranoid rant. Caban has never been as shocked as I saw him then, and it brought to mind how they said he was when I went down. The amount of used patches I found in her room made me cringe, but at least she's not on dredge or spacedust. Glass won't kill her, but it will rust her brain, sure as an airleak. Stupid shaking girl. I hope she'll be alright.

When we get close to our target, we'll scan them for clues, send them a quick line, and unless they decide to give in easily, we'll fly in close and take them. Oberon is tilting fast and we've readied the boarding equipment. A quick pop and we'll be on our way. I'll be at the Nav seat, not breaking holster with the rest of them. Em will stay in the MedBay with the Doctor. We could all use something to eat.

highway robbery

Popping other ships has always made me nervous. It is so blatantly violent, impossible to prevent one side or the other from breaking holster. I've done it plenty of times, with plenty of men and women dying all around. The biggest problem is that you don't know what is waiting for you. Even with the most extensive of scans...knowing the number, location and size of folks and guns inside...it is impossible to tell what factors will be thrown against you. Maybe it will be a sharpshooter, maybe it will be a pregnant woman. I prefer walking into a room before anyone else, so I can see and feel and report, or pull back if need be. It's how I have always worked, and I'm still alive after a decade and a half of it. More than can be said for any number of poppers.
Runners who prey on other ships are brutal, their ships and crews the toughest and fastest around. Some pop only fellow runners: scavengers picking on predators. Others choose easy marks, settlers or private ships, and in general they are the most despicable rusters in space. The most highly regarded are those who pop corporate ships: those are dangerous, profitable runs, and those crews risk everything knowing that any other Runner worth bolts will protect them. Men like Zacharias, who undermine even the strongest corps...they are the force that keeps this universe in order, strange as it seems. Even those who try to pop Federal ships are not so highly thought of, though they tend to use their own blazing suicide to make some sort of political statement, they are quickly forgetten.

Caban hates attacking other ships, he is still too close to his small-trader past to feel entirely comfortable destroying livelihoods. The problem is, of course, is that we're completely out of food. I calculated some jumps that would get us out of here fast, but it makes my hull hurt just thinking about them. Caban looked over my shoulder at the potential paths, squeezed my arm, and told me it wasn't worth it. Even if I was strong enough, I wouldn't really want to pull them. Maybe Jamieson would have gotten me to do it, but that man never learned the definition of impossible, and he was always hungry. I haven't thought of him in a long time.

Ghosts don't have to eat. We do.

empty belly

Good Runners pay attention, bad Runners pay.

We opened our last crate of foodstuffs only to discover the entire crate spoiled and unusable. Last time we ever buy from Spenser.
We're days out of anywhere, even with jumps I'm still too weak to manage. The nearest spot is Rigon, several days away. Xylos would be closer, if it wasn't a chunk of rusted scrap and busted bolts hanging in the airless night.
It's easy to lay blame here, but it won't save us anything. We've got a few days of protein shakes left, and some of the supplies I've picked up from various ports. Caban says we'll make it, and there isn't much else to do but believe him.

back

Today was the first day I've ben able to be up and around without worrying terribly about rupturing the Doctor's careful suturing, and bleeding out once more. My legs are weak, but most of the pain is gone. I hate painkillers...while effective, the floating feeling is confusing, and the dreams far too realistic. The Doctor should keep them well locked up, with the Sneak prying around.
I stumbled over to the bridge, which was empty, and sat at my nav system. We're drifting out toward the Michaela system again, as Caban had said, though what awaits us I am not sure. I set in a new route that will save us 16 hours, though we'll have to jump, if I'm up for it.
When I walked into the kitchen area, I realized suddenly just how long I'd been gone. Kon and Caban were draped in sheets, and the Doctor was treating them each to an old-fashioned haircut and shave. Caban, fresh-faced, leapt up and squeezed my shoulder, still wary of my tenderized body. Kon greeted me heartily, but remained seated and fully lathered, and the Doctor grinned cheerfully before returning to his careful work. Ice sat in the corner, program pads before her and a bemused smile on her face. Em perched on the countertop, her legs dangling as she chuckled quietly.
A strange family scene, to be certain, but a family nonetheless. And I joined them, sitting there with them as long as my strength lasted.

thirty

Most of the day now I lie here in the Medical Bay, which is much improved since an actual doctor has taken up residence, but has also become the most boring place I've been since I escaped the classroom back in New South Wales.

I'm getting careless...I have never before written my origin on this Log. I fear that this could be found, used to trace me. But I know now that if I were to die, the only folk to go through my things would be Caban, Ice, and probably Em, and I suppose I don't mind that so much. So I have been lying here, thinking, doing some programming and record-keeping instead of any more active jobs. It hurts to stand, though the pain of breathing has mostly gone. This must be something akin to old age...no obvious infirmity, simply the ever-present knowledge that my body doesn't work. I'm turning thirty-one in a matter of days, with no remark but the wear on my bones.

All this thinking that I've been doing, it hasn't been about what I expected it would be about. I've thought about my home on Earth, wondered when the next time I'd see those hills again. But I've thought more about our next job, which is waiting until I'm back on my feet. I've thought about why Ice got so protective of my sleeping body and has barely visited since. And about what I heard Caban said, and the 'ponic fruit Kon and I made a mess of the Med bay while eating, and how he said Em screamed like rusty bolts as we scrambled out of Paquin.

I came so close to sharing the same fate as Lys, bleeding to death from pulse blasts, but there were folk around to help me out. He didn't have anyone but me, and I was so banged up that there was nothing I could do. It's not luck or fault, it's fact. The Doctor had to take off my necklace to operate on me, and it's still lying over on the counter, out of reach.

There are so many questions yet to be asked, and I'm not sure at all if any of the answers lie behind me.

new stories

This doctor is a fount of new information, new perspectives. I asked him how he found the crew, and the new life he has found. He talks so much in part, I think, to try to put me at ease, to cover the potential awkwardness of the situation.

“I’ve never been offworld before, I didn’t know we were even taking off until I came out of the medbay and looked out the window. It’s…it’s amazing. I never knew. But its strange, to suddenly be here in the crew. They offered to take me back to Paquin but…why should I? The ship is well enough, and the folk are…well, they’re friendly.”
I tried to laugh, but it hurt, and the Doctor looked concerned and checked my vitals on the screen I realized I was hooked up to.
“They accepted me because I was helping you, I think. They all sort of hung around, waiting. The Captain helped as much as he could, waited with you most of the time, when the others sent him off the bridge to sleep he came here. Kon found excuses to wander by and look in on you, that girl Em perched over on the stool and peered at you, saying strange things here and there. Ice…well, half a day before you woke up, you got real restless, started rolling around a bit, muttering, and she got plenty fierce and insisted on waiting with you alone.”
This doesn’t make any sense, but he didn’t know that.

“They’ll be glad you’re awake now.”

“So am I.”

piecing together

There isn't much else to do but sit here, waiting to sleep or feel better. When the others are off doing ship business, I write in this log.

Caban came in with a young man I didn’t recognize. He put his hand on my arm, one of the only places on me that does not hurt. Caban's face bore the marks of healing scrapes, and worry fluttered up inside me. He smiled at me, reassuringly, and introduced me the ship’s new doctor. The man who saved my life, it seems.
He left us alone, me and this stranger who had suddenly found a place in our home. He smiled at me too, more nervously, and turned his attention to the medical supplies in his hand. He has a narrow face, sharp, with small eyes. Brown hair, olive skin, a light frame. It was almost embarrassing, this meeting, as he had been looking at me, inside and out, for days. Did he know what I would be like, did he even wonder? Did his imagination match up with what he would discover?
“What happened?” I asked, finally. He looked at me, and the intensity of his gaze was surprising.
“I live in Paquin. A passerby, the type you pay no mind to. Didn’t know that your folk were making a deal right there on the street, even when the fighting started.”
As he spoke I recalled the deal, the words exchanged turning quickly to drawn guns. Words change easily to bullets.
“I didn’t even see the guns, at first, but I heard them. People started screaming and shouting, trying to get out of the way. It took me a moment to see who was shooting, I saw a woman sort of leaping up, pushing a man out of the way, pushing him over. Pulse blasts dusted into the wall behind them, and she dragged him down and didn’t get up. He struggled free of her, and then there was another man and woman…that would be Kon and Ice, I ‘spose…standing over them shooting out at the other people, they hit the man with the pulse gun. When I saw that she…well, you…when I saw you didn’t get up I just ran over, don’t know what I was thinking. I’m a doctor, you know…I had to help. Didn’t know that you part of it, just thought…you’d been hit, needed help. So I helped to grab you and we ran for it, I just followed along and didn’t even realize we were shipboard.”

I didn’t know what to say to that story. So strange to hear it from another perspective, like I wasn’t even there at all. I don’t remember seeing the pulse gun, or pushing Caban, or falling.
“I got hit with a pulse?” I said, realizing why my body ached, every last muscle and bone.
“They’re deadly.” the doctor replied, “You were bleeding out from the inside. You can repair it if you know how, if you do it soon enough, but there are so many veins and…you got lucky.”
“I don’t believe in luck, Doctor.”
He grinned, his face even sharper for it. “The Captain said you don’t.”
“He’s right.”
“Maybe you should start.”

awake?

I just woke up.

The last thing I remember is hearing the thumping approach of a pulse blast, and then getting knocked back onto the hard ground. Everything else is a blur of static, and even now its taken me some time to piece together where those memories took place, or how I might have gotten from there to the Medbay aboard Oberon.

Em was here, but scampered away when she saw my eyes flutter open. Eventually she came back and pressed this log program into my hand, though I haven’t been able to use it until now, it’s been too hard to think.