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Hawk · 02-07-2011, 07:29 AM,

Jack Crow sat in the back room of a large bar on Vieques Shipyard. He had been there for days and his head was hurting. As he read over reports and sipped his drink, his oldest friend came into the room and sat down at his table.

'How you holdin up my friend?' Stephen Cruz asked him.
'As well as I can. How's the work going?'

'It's moving along. They'll have a new ship for us soon. It can fly now, but they're still working on the armor upgrade and the interior work. It's not nearly as nice as the Rocinante was the inside, but it will get there with some time.'

'I'm just glad you weren't on that ship Stephen. I'm sick over what we lost, but if you'd been killed too.'

'I damn near was on the ship. It happened so fast that they had to leave while I was still on the planet. I expected it to be a simple rescue job and that I'd be able to meet up with them in a day on Yanagi. If I had any idea what was going to happen, I would have been there. I'd have jumped any ship I could to get there.'

'You'd be dead if you had. I'd have lost a very old friend, a trusted advisor, and a great captain.'

'This is bad Jack, but we've been down before. How many times have we had ships blown up for no reason? That's part of being a Junker. We'll get through this.'

'I don't doubt that at all. I'm just thinking about those people. I'm thinking about that animal telling me this was my fault. He had the power to detain those ships and arrest everyone on board if they were such a threat to public safety. It was so much more fun to kill them and listen to them scream. Besides, if he had arrested them he'd be holding the evidence that we aren't the monsters he's making us out to be.'

'You know who the real villain is here Jack. Yamakuzi is just a pit bull following orders.'

'You know what Aquinas would say about someone who follows an order like that without question?'

'Don't start that Thomistic crap with me again. I don't have the head for that stuff.'

'You ought to read more Stephen. It would do you good.'

'I'm not like you when it comes to that and you know it. Whoever heard of a Junker that reads as much as you do.'

'If you want to be a leader, you have to have the knowledge of humanity Stephen, or at least what we are capable of understanding.'

'I'll still leave that to you.'

'Whatever. Do you have a ship ready so we can travel to Hokkaido?'

'You still want to go up there now?'

'It's the last place Yamakuzi would ever think to look for me. Besides, I told the ladies I'd come up there.'

'You're crazy.'

'Are you just now figuring that out?'

'I've known most of my life. It's why I enjoy working for you so much.'

'Ok, well we'll head out tomorrow then. Hopefully the new ship will be ready for us when we get back. We'll take the gunboat to get up there. It's probably safer anyway.'

'How much trouble are you expecting on the trip up there?'

'We'll see. It should be quiet until we get close to Kusari. When we get there, we'll be quiet and shouldn't have any problems.'

'What about more mercenaries?'

'They aren't going to hunt us down here Stephen.'

'How can you be so sure of that?'

'Because I don't think they are that stupid. They hate us being in Kusari, but at the same time they know we have limited our operations there because of the threat. If we were under that same threat no matter where we went, what incentive would we have for staying away from Kusari?'

'I doubt they are looking at it that way.'

'Of course they are. They tell us to stay out of Kusari or they will kill us. If they try to kill us whether we go in there or not, they have just taken the teeth out of that first threat.'

'I'm still not convinced, but I've learned to trust you. Where are you with talking to that Rheinland admiral?'

'Nowhere, he's blowing smoke up my tail and wasting my time.'

'What do you mean?'

'I'm no fool Stephen. We've seen the increase in Rheinland traffic in Sigma 13. We lost a ship because it got too close to a meeting with Rheinland and Kusari officials. We know whose side that admiral is on. I knew the minute he contacted me that he had no intention of offering us any help at all.'

'So what are you going to do about it?'

'Nothing. I've got nothing left to offer him and any complaint I make about his behavior will fall on deaf ears.'

'Yeah, but he can't turn a blind eye to that massacre.'

'Well, maybe he doesn't want to, maybe he does, but he's not going to damage his government's political standing over it. He'll do what he's told the way all soldiers do or he'll be retiring early. I'm just glad we got that damn warship out of there.'

'What were they thinking bringing that in there like that? I guess they weren't thinking at all.'

'Oh they were thinking alright. Our guys were mad as hell about what happened and the Mollies played right into that. They've been getting hammered by the KPT themselves in Dublin so they wanted to hit Kusari from a different front. They thought we'd provide them the perfect opportunity.'

'So why didn't they ever contact you to tell you they wanted to do that?'

'Because they knew I'd say no.'

'I guess so. Enjoy your reading and your drink. I'm going to make sure we are ready for the trip.'

'Thanks Stephen. As his friend walked away he looked back down at his data pad. He scanned the list of all the new friends he had made in the last twenty four hours. When he returned from this trip his new ship would be ready for him. He would celebrate its maiden voyage by inviting his new friends to dinner in the finished executive lounge. They would all meet face to face for the first time and would be able to get down to business.

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