Flying Free

[Commissar]

F l y i n g F r e e

<div align="right]Underboss Sarah McFarlen
Liberty Rogues
New York System

[color=#CCCCCC]Dust filled Sarah McFarlen'€™s nostrils. Curling her nose, the girl forced her hand another inch under her bed and did her best to ignore whatever it was under the carpet that kept pressing into her cheek. She knew she should have cleaned the room out before now, but somehow piracy hadn'€™t kept to the great work hours it had promised on the holo-sets. Cool plastic touched her questing hand, familiar despite the month'€™s worth of grime it had collected. She grinned in triumph and immediately regretted it, coughing the dirt from her lungs. Moments later, the Rogue extradited herself from her position under the bed, her spine objecting to the morning'€™s poor treatment as she straightened up. It was all those hours in space that did it, constant g-forces weren'€™t exactly beneficial to back health as far as she knew. Perhaps a massage would be in order when she got to Gran Canaria. If they even offered them. Somehow she doubted colonies on the borders of known space had a running population of masseuses, not that she really minded. It was enough to be going back to those clouds.

The device in her hand beeped a power warning as she flicked it on. Journeys to the bottom of her bed didn'€™t usually have a high survival rate, but the diary seemed to have made it through okay. An Ageria 27X, toughened casing. When it was released it had been top of the line. Sarah'€™s mother had given it to her for her sixteenth birthday. Before she ran away. Now, four years on, the diary was obsolete by Manhattan standards. She hardly cared; she had never really been big on writing anyway. The only reason she'€™d kept it so far was because it was one of only a few things she still had from home. That, and she occasionally used it to record passwords and maintenance orders. Or she had before she'€™d lost it two months ago. Between now and then she'€™d checked her room for it at least six times. It seemed that disappearing and reappearing on a whim was a phenomenon unique to whatever it was you needed, and only when you needed it. Since the BDM had caught her tail she wished she had the same ability. With a sigh, she walked across the room and tossed the diary into a crate waiting by the door.

Hazy purple light filtered through the windows, casting the shadows of passing asteroids across the bare room. She remembered how she'€™d struggled to sleep her first night on Buffalo, the way the unnatural light seemed to weave its way between your eyelids. She had lost count of how many times she woke that night. Now though, it was different. The light meant safety, home. Nowhere else in Sirius had quite the same light as the Badlands. Sarah smiled at the thought, leaning on the window, and her reflection smiled back at her. A tired reflection, she noted dryly. Blonde hair hung messily around her ears, framing sharp features made dull by exhaustion. Dark grey rings sat heavily under blue eyes that tended to glance around the object of her attention rather then settle on it. Years as an engineer among the Rogues combined with a habit of running nearly everywhere she went had robbed her of whatever spare weight she had once possessed and, tall as she was, in her present state she looked closer to a scarecrow then a human being. Attempts to run marathons back on Manhattan in her school days hadn'€™t quite been successful, but she still nursed the hope that one day she would go home and finish the city circuit race. Manhattan was a million miles away though, and her move to the Omegas wasn'€™t bringing it any closer.

Robbed of its contents, her room was barely recognisable. If objects had souls, then Buffalo base was losing a little piece of its spirit. Marks trailed across the floor from where the other Rogues had reclaimed most of her furniture. It felt as though they had taken a part of her memories with them. The communicator she'€™d used to talk to Norman O'€™Connor was now in Moka'€™s stockpile. The pillow she had thrown at Christopher Dangen when he materialised one night had found its way to the engineering deck. It had missed his head, but at least it had made her feel better. She had to keep reminding herself that leaving here didn'€™t mean leaving them, not forever at any rate. At least she was keeping the Harmless. Converting the old Greyhound fighter to carry cargo instead of weapons hadn'€™t been too hard, a bit of rewiring and a few welds and she had a nice cargo bay to play with. Just one box away from packed. With one last look out the window, Sarah slung the wooden crate over her shoulder and closed the door behind her.

The walk to the flight deck seemed longer then usual. Groups of Rogues drifted past her, filling their spare hours in with gambling, drinking, and other things Sarah didn'€™t like to think about. Once they would have stopped her, but the pale engineer had become such a common sight that they barely even noticed her anymore. Only a handful knew she was leaving, and she intended to keep it that way. It wasn'€™t that she didn'€™t trust them, just that the Rogue idea of a going away party usually involved enough liquor to topple a battlecruiser. She couldn'€™t remember the last time she had been to one, and it had nothing to do with time. Inviting a porcupine to nest in her skull again didn'€™t strike her as a particularly good idea, regardless of how many times Natalie told her otherwise.

It was too early in the morning for most Rogues to consider flying, so the hanger bay was next to empty. Nearly all the ships from the last raiding party had come back, and those that hadn'€™t probably weren'€™t going to for a long while. Alone among the grey steel sat a familiar shape.
[color=#FFFFFF]'€Hey girl.'€ Sarah grinned, dumping the crate on the ground at the Greyhound'€™s feet. Technically, they should have been landing gear, but she and Mostly Harmless had been through too much for her to consider the machine as less then sentient. As always, the engineer was half-surprised the old ship didn'€™t answer her. She reached out a hand and stroked the ship'€™s nose. Every Rogue had their own pre-flight rituals, and talking to the ship was hers. Yeah, it was odd, but it helped focus her on the flight. Besides, if their positions were reversed, she would want the Harmless to talk to her.

[color=#FFFFFF]'€One last flight, okay? Then we'€™re done with this.'€ She didn'€™t need to explain that after that flight Harmless would no longer be a Rogue ship. Maybe it was the way the light seeped in through the bay windows, but the ship seemed sharper that morning, as though she was looking forward to going. '€You too, huh?'€ Sarah asked, lifting the box into the cargo hold, where three others were already waiting. It didn'€™t take much, it was woefully light. Once she was sure the crate wasn'€™t going to jump around too much during the trip, she heaved the cargo bay door shut behind her. The metal toes of her boots rung as she climbed the short ladder to the cockpit, making sure to seal the compartment door once she was through. She'€™d already made that particular mistake once, thank you very much.

A gentle humming filled the cockpit as she flicked the master on. Amber screens flashed into existence, summoning status reports that she read and dismissed. There was the usual warning about disconnected weapon mounts, which she ignored, and another do not fly notification from the Liberty Navy which she took no small amount of joy in deleting. Shortly after she closed the last notification, a pair of lights flickered from red to green, signalling the primary fusion reactors powering the engines were ready to go. Sarah touched the appropriate switch and a duo of nuclear reactions roared into being. Another poke at the dashboard and the artificial gravity in the hanger cut off, leaving the Harmless free simply to float halfway to the ceiling. Which she did. Once the ship was more or less aligned with the slowly opening airlock, a series of gas exhausts mounted in the nose turning her, Sarah dialled up Rogue control.

'€Buffalo, Sarah here. I'€™m going out for a while.'€ Understatement of the century she thought, but kept it private.

'€Freelancer Alpha-6, this is Newark you are cleared for take-off. Good luck out there.'€ The response was uncharacteristically quick and unusually clean, courtesy of a drone Sarah had borrowed from a passing station supply ship. She hadn'€™t been able to figure out how to reprogram the thing to realise where it was and who it was talking to, but no-one had complained since the human Rogue controllers had that problem too. At least the robot didn'€™t ask you to pick up a crate of ale on your way back. Smiling at the memory, Sarah slid the throttle full forward, sending the Greyhound rocketing into the Badlands. A few button presses later, and the Harmless was flying herself. She would be, at least until they hit the border worlds. The Rogue tapped the dashboard fondly, indescribably grateful for the old ship. '€Your turn now. Wake me if anything happens.'€

She was asleep before the chair finished reclining.

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May you live in interesting times.
| Sarah McFarlen | Jane Hartman |