"Hey, I gave up direct promotion...maybe to oberst...or even polizeidirektor rank...when I decided to don´t bring you to nearest jail back there in Omega-7," Laura returned to ironic tone and chuckled.
"It seems I will stay simple detektiv for near future, because now I even can´t say anybody where you are. They would ask how I know it and why I didn´t arrest you instantly, hm? And I don´t think it would be safe to share this information with anybody," she added with more serious tone and made short pause.
"Just be careful. And let me know...in some safe and secret way...how the things go. Or if you need some help. I will try if it would be possible. You know, it´s getting risky every time we meet. It could end badly for me if somebody would somehow find it out. I will escort you near Heisenberg and then return to Stuttgart, so nobody would see us approaching to station together. If you don´t mind. Or do you want help with something else there? And do you have some money so you can hire room and buy food?"
"I'll be careful." Erich stated in as confident a tone as he could muster when they regained comms contact after a jump hole spit them out into Koeln. In that moment of brief signal loss, he was anything but confident. The Raven's Talon scarcely held itself together, and it would almost certainly be a total loss once it touched down upon a docking bay.
"Don't worry about me." He charged his cruise engines in the direction of Herne Moon, green MOX-and-H-fuel-derived smog exuding from the engine. "And I'm sorry for creating this risk, Laura. We'll remain in touch." After a moment of hesitation, Erich moved to switch off his comms receiver. He didn't need to be infused not only with the guilt of fleeing from a revolutionary wildfire he had a hand in sparking, but also with endangering a genuinely well-meaning Policewoman.
As he drew closer to the Herne Moon, his mind flitted to the images of those he felt he fought and bled so hard for; The Children at Bielefeld, the workers at Zwickau, Magdalena. Each face and voice sounded as if it were seated just beside him in the cockpit; whether due to vividness of his troubled imagination, or feedback from near-asphyxiation.
He switched on his comms receiver again, near-broken as it was, to hear Heisenberg's docking instructions. There was a great deal of work to be done.
