Libertonian Servicemember's Bar & Grill

[Jane Hartman]

"Didn't figure you were the sort to keep count. It'd be right helpful if you called them in now and then." Hartman had given up on keeping track of that particular figure a long time ago. There were supercomputers that would struggle to keep track of favors where Lewis was concerned and Hartman had long since resigned herself to always being one down on that scoreboard. And soft? Perhaps she was. Hartman hadn't flown a combat mission in months, hadn't subjected herself to anything tougher than a freighter burn. She might have argued the point once, but what was the point? Lewis was right and, as much as she hated it, she knew it. There was little point being a hypocrite on top of everything else, so she let the barb pass without comment, glanced away, treacherous twist in her gut be damned.

Hartman remembered Arden, remembered it as one remembered a report - bases, contacts, strategies, each detail as bland and lifeless as the one preceding it. A Corps freighter, attacked by a Los Angeles based smuggling ring to keep their operation under wraps. A few more names for the Roll of Honour - whatever honour they could find among the worms, at any rate. Hartman could not remember their names. Oh you said you would, swore that you would keep their memories alive, and perhaps she had even meant in the first time. The truth was that you buried memories with the bodies and, just like the bodies, time gnawed them away until there was nothing but a hole where a person had been. That was the way of the world and there had been too many like them, before and since, for Hartman to remember names. Heavens knew the living gave her enough trouble.

"That'll kill you, you know." She nodded to the cigarette in Lewis' hands, still trailing faint blue smoke. Nasty, stinking things, cigarettes, and doubly so in the confines of the bar - but there were far worse things in the world. Hartman took half pace back, out of the worst of the smoke, glanced at the patch on Harrison's shoulder. "I heard Teerin's sitting in the chair now. Flew Logistics once too." She added. Commander Teerin hadn't been that long ago, as such things were measured. He'd climbed the chain of command quickly for a former transport jock, considering the Corp's usual reputation as a place careers went to die. That she'd served alongside him, well. There it was again, that familiar damnable lightness, that pride. It was foolish, she knew that better than most, but there it was just the same.

"Command still keeping you locked up in Special Operations, Lewis?" It was a strange thought, that she was closer to the near-mythical blame-magnet that was command now than she was to the troops on the ground, and it was one she tried not to focus on. Looking at Lewis again was almost enough to make her wish for simpler times. If she hadn't already been doing enough wishing for a division.

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OOC: (Highlight to read.) | Terribly sorry to keep you both waiting this long! I've been moving house over the last few weeks. Again. |

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