The Charming Rover had landed in Cordes' hangar bay, the one with a big red 4 on it. The hangar doors shut slowly, followed by the hall getting pressurized again and filled with breathable air. A comm channel with the flight deck control was open, receive-only, so the officers could inform the Curacaoan when to leave his ship. Using the time try and calm his heartbeat, Ezrael lay rather loosely in the piloting chair, laid back while looking through the cockpit windows. They couldn't look into the cockpit with bare eyes, as the window was black from the outside. Cordes was merely an outpost and thus didn't have the overwhelmingness in terms of aesthetics, size and CORE GALLIC VALUES as installations in Gallia had - according to what Sombra had told him, and showed him from her journeys outside of Sirius.
Taking some deep breaths, Ezrael tried to collect his mind. Any mistake, a fauxpas, a freudian slip, one single wrong word, gesture or look was enough for this situation to end up catastrophical. His crew, his ship and his life was at risk. A sovereign introduction and appearance were required to neither disappoint the Amiral, nor to appear weak or unworthy infront of her. Thinking back, he wondered how a person like, for example, Jack Daniels from the Core would deal with this in his stead.
Time had come. Emerging from his piloting seat, Ezrael took a final deep breath, looked at his reflection in the window and did as the flight deck officers instructed him.
The instructions were easy. Leave the ship, allow the security to check body and clothing for any items - this time not commenting on the professional touches in rather private areas - and follow the security to the airlocks to leave the hangar. Little did Ezrael know, he wouldn't have a silent walk to the control tower to the Amiral's office to ultimately meet her host in person: She was waiting for him already behind the airlocks.
As said airlocks slowly opened, the Amiral would find two of her flight deck security grunts sandwiching the otherwise normal-sized Curacaoan, dwarfing him by a head and, volume-wise, another curacaoan. Vertiga was slim and athletic like a surfer, but next to the two men escorting him, he looked like a stick, with long straight black hair and a, by contrast, rather pale, yet healthy skin color. Green eyes as opposed to the filter-altered transmission avatars he frequently used on the neural net. The, from her perspective, left eye area was marked by a scar. His lips formed a smirk, hinting a certain anticipation he had for this meeting, despite all the risks.
His uniform was mostly black, skin-tight, with blue highlights, the material looked like a mix of elastic rubber and shiny leather, one of the typical fabrics used for flightsuits in space. Covering everything from below the chin, including hands and feet in boots, it didn't have any pockets, which was why he wore a black leather jacket over it. Where other people arrived in noble dresses and highly decorated gala uniforms, he arrived as if he was about to enter a club. The pockets of his jacket were empty except for the inner left pocket, which, as the security officers had found out, contained a PDA. Nothing else. No guns, no wallet, no chewing gum, no pen.
"Monsieur Vertiga", the Amiral greeted him, and Ezrael almost opened his mouth in surprise, not having expected her to be here already. It caught him off-guard. The moment he had his eyes on her, he forced himself to keep them on her and not look away, around or at the uniformed piles of muscles around them. With the focus on her, his heart was beating faster again. That was Amiral Isabelle Montlaville de Chanteloup standing infront of him, pride and superiority in her stance commanding respect at once.
The first seconds had passed and Ezrael hadn't managed to find an appropiate way to return the greetings. He was merely staring at her, his charming smirk on his lips trying, probably mostly successfully as far as he can tell by the stability of his facial muscles despite the tension, to cover his surprise-induced temporary insecurity. Nothing respectful came to his mind. In that case, be yourself, Ezrael, he thought.
"Amiral," he said in his best gallic tongue adaption, with a short break afterwards, throwing short glances at the men left and right from her,
"I'm certain we'd both look more impressive to each other if your security personnel was two heads shorter in size."
