The Experiment

[romer]

The flight from New Tokyo was little more than a blur in romer's mind. The greater part of Honshu rolled by in silence while he slowly pieced together what had happened. Maybe, he confessed, having a ship full of dragons was adding to the stress.

"Now I've seen it ALL!" he blurted, almost laughing. "Somebody's gonna cover my repairs, right?" This time leaning towards Ember, "I mean, we took some hits back there. And now I've got some guy fiddlin' with the guts on my trains reactor! It aint gonna be cheap. Not to mention, I've got a small army of dragons in my cargo hold. Just what the hell are we going to do with dragons?"

Ember did not respond. Instead she faced forward, ignoring him. They were soon in Sigma space with Atka Research dialed into the nav computer. Noone spoke to romer for the rest of the trip.

Upon docking with Atka romer made a beeline for the bar. He could feel he was nearing his wits end and a few stiff drinks were badly needed. Somehow, he knew this was not where they were going to part company. But a few shots later, he simply didn't care. Suddenly, one care did pop into his mind.

romer made his way from the bar down to the repair shop. He spotted the clerk's office and went inside.

"How may I help you?" asked the clerk.

"Yeah, um, if you could just bill my business partner for the repairs to my ship, her name is Merideth Harolds. She's right outside, and she'll take care of everything."

---