Board Thread:The Mech Bay Bar'n'Grill/@comment-24866242-20140514220513/@comment-24866242-20140605021847

The Darwin

Ben only slept for about five hours, despite, or maybe because of the fact that it was his first night planetside in years. The sounds were all familiar yet strange at the same time. On the other hand, Sandra wasn’t with him. He loved her, but she kicked in her sleep. The end result was he awoke around ten thirty and felt reasonably refreshed.

He had left the ‘grill at about five and began the three kilometer walk to his cabin. The sun wasn’t above the horizon yet, that would be a couple of hours still, but the first signs of light were already present. Birds were chirping like mad. Some distance to the north along the road a dog was barking, but he left the road before he got close enough to see the animal.

He had found the old horse path just where he’d left it. It still looked well used enough. It wasn’t overgrown with weeds in any case. He followed it to the west, remembering the correct turns to take when the path branched, as it did a couple of times along the way. He didn’t rush, enjoying the familiar trees and sounds and smells, but his long legs ate up the distance quickly.

It surprised him to find the cabin’s porch light turned on. The grey light in the east had grown to the point that he could see the grounds around the cabin had been maintained, even to the point that flowers had been planted in strategic eye pleasing locations, something he had never bothered with when he had lived here. If Kat hadn’t assured him the cabin was still empty he would have sworn it was lived in.

He heard the door lock click open as he approached and the system recognized him. The lights in the windows lit up as well. He stepped inside and smiled. The furnishings were all the same, and the house had clearly been cleaned. He could still smell the chemicals. He remembered Kat’s call to Tarin, although he hadn’t paid attention to the substance. Tarin must have sent someone out while he had been occupied with Kat and Ry.

He took a few moments to walk around, opening the windows, partially to clear out the cleaning smells, but mostly because he had always liked sleeping with the windows open in this cabin. A brook ran behind the cabin and the sounds of running water had always soothed him.

Before he climbed into the freshly made bed he sent a message to Sandra, letting her know where he was. She would have been asleep by then and there was no sense in waking her.

She was there when he woke up, sitting in the kitchen, her legs curled up beneath her on the padded bench under the window, reading and drinking coffee. They were all falling back to old vices fairly quickly, he mused as he kissed her. He could smell the coffee on her breath, but it wasn’t displeasing. It had been years since he last had a cup.

“Morning, sleepy.” She smiled. “I brought breakfast.”

“And coffee!” He growled happily as he grabbed a mug from the cupboard and poured. On a hunch he opened the refrigerator and found it freshly stocked. Tarin was incredible. Cream went into the coffee and he took his first sip. Sitting down next to her, he comfortably rested his free hand on her thigh and looked at her tablet screen as she read.

This drove her crazy, as he well knew, since she read slightly faster than he did. It wouldn't be long until he asked her to "wait a second" or "go back". She decided to preempt this and switched the tablet off, setting it on the table and leaning into him while she sipped her coffee. "How was your reunion?" she asked.

"It was good. Only got hit twice."

She tisked. "Such violence."

"How are things back home?" he asked.

"Better it seems. The major fighting ended a couple of years ago, but there is still some sort of underground rebel movement. Jim's family seems to be safe for the most part. They seemed glad to finally know."

Ben nodded. He didn’t ask about her own family. Her parents had passed years before the war, having been older when she was born, an only child. They were both orphans. “Who’s in power now?”

“Looks like a Riordan has been crowned. Lord Philip? King Philip now I guess.”

Ben nodded. “I remember him. Something of a weasel. House Riordan is a good family though. Most of the time. They seem to go in cycles.”

“Well, it seems like he didn’t waste any time in renewing the warrant on you.” She shook her head. “The military has returned to the fold and has been ordered to end all contact with you. Not that it mattered up until now, what with us being declared dead.”

Ben frowned, “We’re dead, but there’s an active warrant out on me? That makes sense.”

“Well, you did kill your brother,” she said, her voice dripping with irony. “I guess they’re just keeping their bases covered.”

“I’ve still got friends high up the chain. I’ll get a message through and figure out what’s what. I guess we’re not going home anytime soon though.”

“What’s this ‘we’ you speak of?” she teased. “I can go home anytime I like.”

“Oh? You’d leave me behind just like that, huh?”

“Never,” she kissed his cheek and stood up, putting some breakfast in front of him. “Eat up. LaeAnne tells me Tarin has the rest of your day all planned out. Takes a lot of work to come back from the dead.”

It didn’t take that much work to come back from the dead. Galiese’s government, such as it was, didn’t really care about such things. Ben’s property had all reverted to the Company after he had been missing for more than a year and as far as the company was concerned he was “merely” delayed.

Ben and Sandy beamed to the company’s main office at Star’s End and met with Tarin. Once there Sandra kissed him on the cheek and left him in Tarin’s grasp. Tarin was proud of her numbers and wanted to show off how well the company had done in his absence. It was here that he remembered how glad he had been to hand off this work to her in the first place. Kat had made a good choice naming her CEO. Business was good.

“So what are your plans?” she asked him.

“Still trying to figure that out,” he answered. “I’m not in a huge rush.”

She nodded. “If you want to resume your captaincy we have ships,” she told him. “Nothing as large as the Colorado or the Krita, but there are choices. If you’d prefer, I can always use your help here…”

Sandra chose that moment to rescue him, coming back into the room and handing him a tablet, schematics shining up at him from the screen. He looked at her questioningly and she nodded. “Tarin, tell me about the Darwin.”

The Darwin had been acquired by the company three years before and hadn’t really found a niche. The first captain assigned to her had requested another ship after about four months. The ship was more heavily armed than others her size and was more suited to escort duty than the profitable long distance cargo runs most captains wanted to take. To crew her properly would take eight people which meant splitting smaller commissions more ways.

She was a combat ship, there was no question about that. Six guns and two torpedo launchers made that obvious. And she was fast, pushing sublight speeds of point seven five c and a hyperdrive navicomp that was competitive with the fastest ships.

Sandra had left Ben in Tarin’s office and gone straight for the databanks. Ben needed a push back into space it seemed and she knew how to do that: put a ship in front of him. She started looking through the inventory at the unassigned ships and the Darwin had jumped out at her almost immediately. She was small enough to dock in the hangers of either the Vextis or the Krita but large enough to spend two months without resupply if necessary. A little bit of automation work on the weapons and they could run the ship with three or four people easily enough.

Jeff and Chico wouldn’t want to jump back into space, she knew. Galiese was home for them, but Jarrid would be game, as long as he didn’t have to spend too long away from Marissa and Becky. The Darwin seemed ideal for that. She would make mostly short runs and longer runs would be in the company of the Vextis or the Krita. There was plenty of room for his wife and daughter on trips like that.

The Darwin was docked at Nash Station. Tarin called for a shuttle and the three of them rode up to take a look. Ben seemed surprised to see the flurry of activity around the station. The last time he had been there it had been mostly abandoned. Tarin had revived it.

The large dry docks were empty at the moment, and one of them had been removed completely. Vextis was docked there, having left Galiese orbit shortly after taking care of their rescued passengers. The huge ship actually massed more than the station, even though the facility took up more space than the ship. The shuttle skipped past the lower section of the station, making for the docking bays on the upper ring. Tarin directed the pilot to bay thirty-seven and they skimmed past ships coming and going until they found their destination. The bay doors opened and there was the Darwin.

The ship was well maintained and gleemed, despite her lack of use. The shuttle set down beside the larger vessel. Ben and Sandra looked her over through the windows while the bay doors slid closed.

She was more or less saucer shaped. Gun pods stood out from her sides and the cockpit stood apart from the main body of the ship. The cargo bay dominated the front edge of the ship, destroying any sense of aerodynamics, but Sandy dismissed that. Space borne vessels rarely looked aerodynamic, even those designed to make landfall like the Darwin. Shaped energy fields were used to stream through the air and the Darwin’s spec sheet indicated she could move through the atmosphere with ease, topping fifteen hundred kilometers per hour.

“Let’s take her for a spin,” Sandy whispered in Ben’s ear. He grinned.