The Fenning flew through Omega 49, Dublin, New London, Leeds and finally arrived in Newcastle.
There, it landed on Scarborough Shipyard. As soon as the ship had come to a stop the hold doors swung open. Bellock jumped, smashed and body-checked his way through the filled cargo hold to set foot on port floor.
'unload this junk, I mean, cargo lads. And Mike, throw me that giant monkey wrench, will you?'
One of the loaders climbed over some sick livestock, took a giant metal heavy duty wrench of the hold walls and threw it to Bellock who catched it. Bellock then spun around and ran off to the Blue Lion, leaving the Fenning and its contents behind in the docks.
He ran through the station, heading for the elevators. Once he had arrived at the closest elevator a man who was waitning for the elevator as well spoke to him:
'I say, congratulations on that promotion of yours. And why are you running around with a giant monkey wrench, old chap?'
Bellock tapped his feet inpatiently, ignoring the man. He was too annoyed to bring forth a sensible reply.
'Bellock, you allright?' the man asked.
Bellock ignored him, cursing silently at the lethargic elevator. it must have been Zoner build, to be this annoyingly slow.
'I say man, are you deaf?' the man now asked with a loud voice and slightly annoyed
'I'M NOT DEAF MUST KILL PETERSON STOP ANNOYING ME AND TELL THIS ELEVATOR TO HURRY UP I HAVE A SKULL TO SPLIT OPEN DAMN ZONERS!'
Bellock was now jumping up and down, brandishing his giant metal wrench. The man backed away slowly, avoiding getting hit by the giant wrench which was swung indiscriminatly.
'yes... quite.... I'll, I'll take the next elevator...'
The man turned around and ran off. Finally the elevator arrived and Bellock charged in, hurling people out who were too slow to leave the elevator on their own in Bellock's opinion. He smashed the button for the right floor and the doors closed.
As the elevators moved up, people could hear a psycotic, hollow laugh emerge from the elevator shaft.
The elevator stopped and Bellock ran out, knocking over a catering cart and its owner. The Blue Lion was at the end of this hallway. He charged the doors, threw them open and barged into the Blue Lion.
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After being cautiously checked over by the bouncer for Bellockesque characteristics, a rather haggard looking Andrew Peterson wandered into the bar. He'd just overseen the movement of 270 refugees from Leeds to the Colonial Authority transit point for Port Jackson. That was some 45 families, full of boisterous screaming children and unsettled flapping adults.
One little girl had snuck a cat onto the Leeson in her hand luggage, which had then escaped and thrown up under one of the chairs. It had then refused to come out. Andrew had eventually given up, and left a dock hand to try and prod it out using a broom handle. All this while the little brat in question bellowed that she wanted her kitty back.
They say war is hell, but in reality, refugee duty takes the biscuit.
Hearing a commotion from outside, he looked over his shoulder. The bouncer was preventing Ms Hidamari from entering, due to her obvious Kusari lineage. Peterson leaned out of the door and tapped him on the shoulder. "You do realise that young lady in front of you was once a Chief Inspector in the BPA, and is currently your superior as an agent of ExSec?"
There was a loaded pause as the unfortunate security guard turned white and looked sidelong at Kiriko. Andrew raised an eyebrow. "Huh. That's what I thought." He sauntered back off inside and ordered a glass of orange juice, a pint of bitter and a packet of jam and bacon crisps.
Kiriko smiled up to the bouncer who was very large indeeed compared to herself, not a malicious smile but a kind, warming little smile. Being very used to such treatment due to her size, age and heritage. She bowed respectfully to him and continued inside the bar, bopping along in close behind Mr Peterson, bumping into his back as he stopped at the bar to order the drinks.
"Ow" she exclaimed quietly before peeking round Mr Peterson to see the bar. The bartender looking down to kiriko while he made the drinks, with a few glances that seemed to spell "whats she doing in here" without any words being spoken. Looking at Mr Peterson for a moment while making the drinks he decided that he wouldnt press the matter since he will surely know about her being there.
the man placed a large tall glass filled with an opaque orange liquid onto the counter, the smell of the orange citrus flooded down the counter and made Kiriko shiver in anticipation, the man returned a moment later with a wider shorter glass that had a dark almost black opaque liquid inside with a tall bubbly top. Kiriko looked at the second drink getting as close to the bar as possible, the drink didnt seem to have a scent like hers, and the bubbles on the top looked fun, making her almost want the same drink.
"that be 4 credits there mr Peterson" the bartender said casually. Kiriko stared at both the drinks, wanting to pick hers up and drink it right away but keeping herself calm so that she didnt embarrass Mr Peterson or make him look bad. *she bobbed up and down on her tip toes in excitement*
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Andrew flicked the credits across and grabbed the glass of orange. Seeing Kiriko fidgeting like that edged a little awkwardness back into the situation. She was a child, at the end of the day. She looked 12, if only because of some genetic condition or another.
He'd been briefed on her situation, along with the other new ExSec Manager, Farbridge. There'd been concerns, but, well... An ex-Chief Inspector. They could hardly say no. The rest of the staff were slowly adjusting to her - some faster than others - but in person, Andrew still found her odd. In space, it wasn't so bad. They were both professionals, just doing their jobs. Out of the cockpit, he could see how small she was though. He wouldn't want his (theoretical) daughter out on the firing line, he knew that much.
He realised he'd been frowning, and hurriedly passed the glass down. "There you go." He nodded towards a table and picked up his own drink and crisps. Taking a seat, he looked around the room. A lot of the fixtures still looked fairly new. "Y'know, the Zoners actually closed this place down straight after it opened. Caused quite a stir with the Colonial Authority. We only re-opened it fairly recently."
Kiriko watched the glass closely with excitement as Mr Peterson passed it down to her and she clutched it tightly, still watching it to make sure it didn't spill. Peterson motioned in the direction of a table and Kiriko -as if she had been made of wood- turned around awkwardly trying not to jostle the drink, which was filled to the top.
Peterson sat down and Kiriko walked slowly to the table as if on a balance beam, "fwah!" she exclaimed as she reached the table and put the cup on its surface. shuffling up the seat she looked at the glass, and groaned a little, in her seated position, the cup was a little difficult to drink from as it was quite tall, too embarrassed to ask for a bumper seat or some kind of equivalent she held onto the table and knelt on the chair, raising herself to a more comfortable position to drink from the glass.
Peterson explained about the shop and how it had been open previously but closed down by the Zoners, Kiriko leant onto the table and finally tasted her drink made a small but delighted sound of approval as the drink was nice and cold and also very tasty. beaming happily to herself almost unaware that Peterson was talking, Kiriko placed Cly onto the table for a moment before straightening her dress and sitting back on her heels holding Cly closely, still kneeling on the chair.
Kiriko pointed Cly's camera at the tall glass of orange juice, "click" she said with a big smile on her face, ::Remembered..::Cly responded as the AI saved the image of the glass. putting Cly gently on the table she knelt up high again to drink some more of her drink, her eyes looking at Peterson before she smiled happily to him and then down to his rather strange bubbling drink, "your drink looks nice too... do the bubbles taste good?"
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"Ah, well. The point isn't really to drink the bubbles, I'm afraid. If you've got too many of them sat on the top - the head, it's called - you should probably complain to the bartender. If half your pint is a head, you're being extorted." Looking at the drink he'd been given, it seemed the 'Legs was either skimping on training for its barmaids, or was run by penny-pinching obnoxious weasel. He suspected both statements were true, and somewhat intrinsically linked.
Taking a sip of his ridiculously foamy bitter, he peered at the small machine Kiriko was holding. She'd used it to take a picture, at which point it'd spoken back to her. VIs were common enough, but AIs tended to make people uncomfortable. More to the point, they tended to make security managers who'd seen AIs 'harvesting' innocent citizens for their own nefarious purposes uncomfortable.
He knew the robot that was sat on the table in front of him could hardly be considered dangerous, or prone to genocide. It looked like an external hard-drive, for crying out loud! Even so. Andrew had once seen a full grown man beaten within an inch of his life by a Hruung* Belt 7 year old Wichu-kan master. Appearances could be deceptive. He decided he'd broach the subject with a cough. "Ms Hidamari, where exactly did you acquire that little machine? Er, you know, 'Cly'?"
*Hruung is a theoretical 'virtual colour', categorised by the Cambridge Union of Metaphysical Art (CUMA) as 'a potential cross between red and lettuce'. When physically manifested as an actual colour, it tends to make people nauseous and look away.
Kiriko took another sip of her drink holding the glass tightly to avoid dropping it, she smiled at Mr Peterson, "you can call me Kiriko if you want to" she said cheerfully, licking the orange juice from her lips with a smile. Looking down at Cly on the table Kiriko wiped her mouth and picked up her friend. "Cly was a present to me long ago, by the people that brought me to Bretonia, by the people that saved me" she paused looking at Cly's darkened display with a small smile that seemed to carry the love for a family member within it.
"Cly"Kiriko said gently to her PDA, the computers display lit up but didnt do anything further, to acknoledge that it was listening. "Peterson-sama would like to ask where you came from..." Kiriko said politely, *a thumbs up appeared on the screen for a few seconds* Kiriko smiled and then held Cly out to Mr Peterson so that he may hold her. "be careful ok.." she said to Peterson trying to hide her worries about letting somebody else hold her friend, regardless of disembodiment.
At a table near the bar three Hallorans had taken up stance, ordered rounds. Their boisterous nature and party attitude, after the long haul through Dublin and Omega 49, had attracted a small crowd, and other tables had been pulled near. Into the evening, Sean Halloran opened a tale. He sat with his chair reversed, legs straddling the seat, his arms draped over the top, hands drawing the small crowd near to him as he uttered his tale.
"So, three days into a four day journey, just as we're approaching the Snowdown Cambridge Jumpgate, we get word, about halfway down the lane from Freeport One, of two lobster ships down the lane, from a broadsystem announcement of a transport coming the opposite direction."
"Lobsters!" Lilly bursts in: "Lobsters, typically, mean Bretonian ships. We were't sure why this was an emmmuuuprh!" Sean had clamped his hands across Lilly's head, silencing her.
"Shush you! Its my story! So, as I said, the bloke got on the comm and said we had lobsters down the lane. In any case we went to alert, cycled fresh men to the guns and the old man stayed on the bridge and bumped up second shift rotations, for a fresh active crew. When I came on duty, we were within a half an hour from the lane terminus, with no experience with hostile ships yet."
"So we buckled down, and sure enough, unknown ships showed up on scans, broadcasting no IFF, nothing but silence and hints of distorted Rheinland drive signatures, you know, the sort of thing that you get through the soup in those clouds in Snowdown, whispers of a ship mirrored in the mists. Gave Ops a bloody nightmare to find the thing, afore it was on us."
"And then it was on us!"
Sean brings his hands together with a clap, shocking the huddled crowd. "Suddenly bursting out of the clouds by the gate, Jan's yelling about how its got no core containment, Old man is calm as a bell. Bastard looks at me, then glares...At which point, I figure its time for me to do my job, so I thumb open the shortwave and call out a shaky "Allo there!"
"Get nothing back from the thing again, until Jan at Ops declares its scanning us and then its got a weapons lock. Weapons! So we light up thrust for the gate, plug in our docking keys, and watch the thing blaze in behind us as the gate warms up, from kilometers out to just meters behind us, dropping scans over our hull..."
"Just afore the wormhole opened up around us, Ops gets a clear image of the thing: Its a bloody twisted mess, looks more like a wreck or a squid than anything spaceworthy, huge coils of piping and tubes connecting separate sections like a pair of bugs screwing. Horrific thing, then we're gone."
"We come hurtling out the event horizon of that hole with the characteristic leftwards hull plates smacked together with no space for you feeling, all dried out and exhausted, groggy, with the computer slamming in full burn first thing, Jan perking up first off and yelling orders, the G pushing us all back into our couches, up to five, six times Leeds regular in the pull, one, two minutes, then there's alert's blaring across comms, an impact alert, the lights flicker, and everything drifts, Zero Gs but for the mag plating."
"We'd been hit, the way you're all familiar with, hard engine disruption, and just as we were getting those affects sorted out in the hindbrain, we've got more alerts, the damn...thing, has erupted out just seconds behind us, a Baffie's rushing down on us, right in front of a goddamned Wraith."
"Baffie's the first to drop a line on us, telling us to hit burn, like we didn't know. So we hit burn, and again get pressed back, and seconds later, disrupted again. Fairly standard as a pirate operation, except we're getting nothing at all on the comms but Baffie screaming at us to run... and we're running, bout half an hour, till that thing catches up, starts loosing all sort of hot matter down our throats."
"Here, the old man orders full stop and drift, cause what's a Baffie in a Templar against something slinging mass at a rate that can tear into a fully loaded shire?"
"The thing pulls up beside us, and then things get bloody odd. The Wraith starts broadcasting the most cryptic damn questions, getting toward points about the Sprague colony, then a bit about the Gauls. Bloody thing was like a ghost that crawled out of a rock after fifty years sleeping and started asking questions about the world."
Sean settles back into his chair, and delcares, as though the story's over.
"And top that, will ye? Unknown contact and a firefight inside of Bretonian borders!" While Lilly mutters "'s not even how it happened.."
Eileen walks into the Empress wearing her regular overall, she did not really care about protocol. 'If they don't like it they can toss me out' she thought. 'But now i need a drink' On her way through the bar she noticed it was busy, apparently a lot of crews decided to take a drink. She came at the bar and looked for the bartender 'A scotch without ice and two additional bottles and some glasses' he nods and fills a glass and puts the rest of the order on a tray.
With the tray balancing on her hand she starts making her way through the bar to the table where the rest of her crew sits. when she arrives a cheer goes up, 'Free drinks?? cap'n what the heck?' She laughs 'You earned it lads.' and she sits down. 'So what was that laughter all about?' She asks with a smile.
William also known as fat Willy the radio operator grins 'Oh cap'n we were talking about the convoy and then Riley' he points at the cigar smoking bearded man 'brings up the hawkings thing.' Eileen raises a eyebrow 'That was awkward situation indeed' They burst in laughter 'Awkward cap'n?' Willy shouts. 'It was bloody hilarious, we were in a holding pattern when that civilian, probably a accountant in a fancy startracker?, comes flying past and rams into the side of Hawkings, the skipper shouted at him to watch out but you know those lawyers!! Think they are god almighty.' He laughs. 'Yea' Continus Riley now Willy doesn't appear stop laughing. 'Next thin' we than see on tha radar is ne'cloud of debris. And the skippeh' of the Hawkings goes simply ..ohhh bloody crap...
Willy start pouring in more liqueur for the entire group sitting at the table.... 'guys did you also noticed the Keynes back in space?' 'Duhu matey ye think we're blind?' Comes from one of the crew. Willy looks a second at the young man but than decides to continu his story 'Well i know a little fact about the old tub......................." Slowly the night passes and more shipping crews arrive to get some well deserved drink.