He took a deep breath in, followed shortly thereafter with a measured exhale. Calm, even breaths. That was the ticket. He looked down at where the freshly brewed cup of tea had stained his shirt, his last clean shirt at that. Another breath in, another breath out. He braced himself to stand when another jostling shudder sent him tumbling back into his seat, spilling the last of his tea across his lap.
The resulting swear was lost in the sudden high pitched whine of the ever vigilant, and useless, proximity detector that was never but a moment too late, then the flare of light from the electrical storms outside and then another shudder of the ship.
David Chambers took no small pleasure in casually chucking his cup over his shoulder, relishing in the sweet delight of assuming control over one of the events to have happened these last few days.
For the last two days he had been squatting in Kepler's dark matter cloud, popping rad pills and biding his time whilst sitting on top of who knows what. He'd sealed up the cargohold as soon as he left Ames and hadn't been back down since. Of course at this rate he wasn't entirely sure he was coming out of this cloud in one piece at all, the folk as abide over all had been mighty incensed at his move of dropping word on what he'd done, not that one could accuse one of being surprised that the leadership of the Xeno movement wouldn't be a might wary about contacting strangers.
After getting his hide tanned he'd been ordered to the cloud to wait for the good word and of waiting he'd done plenty.
The ship's proximity alarm, damned if he knew how to shut the thing off, howled its trice damned howl. Shaking it off as yet another foulup of the sensors care of the nature of sitting in a dense cloud of non-matter he carried on with being bitter about life. Before the floodlight shone into the window that is.
With a jump and a yell David turned in his char to spot a crow sitting a few paces outside of his viewport. The vessel killed the flood and David could swear he saw something plastered on the other ship, blinking his eyes he leaned closer to see a piece of enormous paper pressed against the crow's cockpit canopy
"Order contacted, they're picking up that thing. Sit tight."
The ship must have reckoned he read it due to the sudden onset of wild waving and gesturing as it powered up and flew off.
David sat back down in his chair, rubbing his cast and his aching leg beneath it. Who the hell were the Order?
The ship shook, lightning flashed and the proximity signal screamed again, somewhere in there, David found time to curse his mother.
