Outsider

[Laowai]

The Venganza's massive bulk hung tethered to the Tripoli dry-dock. Her engines, still unfired and not powered up lay silent and minimal power was running throughout the ship, dim auxiliary lighting barely illuminating her many passageways and hatches.

In this Quarters, on deck one a hundred meters or so from the entrance to the main bridge, Ben Laowai sat in his chair with his feet up on his desk. In his hand he held a data pad with the latest reports on the repair of the ship. Just after a week ago, she had been ambushed by three Bounty Hunter Cruisers in Omicron Minor and badly carved up.

Her crew had been forced to abandon ship after a reactor in engineering ruptured and blew, demolishing a large section of the rear of the vessel and decompressing the ship from stern to bow.

Initially he had thought the whole crew had got away, it was only after the pods had been retrieved by a salvage Vessel sent out by the Order that he had realized that several of them had not made it, and he did not know if they had died during the ships decompression or been taken by the Bounty Hunters.
He wore their loss heavily for it was his responsibility. He had acted rashly following the first Cruiser into Omicron Minor knowing as he did that there had been reports of increased Bounty Hunter activity in the area.
He had just not expected three cruisers so close to Toledo and the Isis; what were the order doing??? Sleeping?
Still, the fault lay with him and him alone.
He pressed a small button on his desk and a voice answered "Yes Captain?"


"Authorize the transfer of the money to the families of the Crew that are missing Diego" he said to his aide, Diego Bazan who was on the bridge. Pausing he added "and Diego... Double the amount."

His aides voice answered quickly "Yes Captain, consider it done "and the line clicked off.

The ship was looking better but was still far from combat ready. She needed at least another one entire engine, and the ruptured reactor was still in the process of being repaired, not to mention the rear of the ship. Her exterior had been replaced and patched allowing the technicians to restore atmosphere throughout the vessel, but inside looked like something resembling a dismembered android, shattered panels and loose wiring hung everywhere makeshift patchwork wiring jobs lay duct taped all over the deck allowing bridge control of the engines she still had in working order, although on his Engineers insistence they had dared not fire them, until the superstructure surrounding the massive engine mounts had been thoroughly inspected; which was being done at the moment.

He would have to take the Nuren to Sigma 13, and had already ordered her crew to have her standing by; which she was doing at his hangar on Crete. He would take a shuttle back there in an hour or two, after he had finished overseeing operations here. He had been spending a fortune of late, it was getting to the point that his offshore ventures would have to be expanded, that or he was just going to have to get busy taking a lot more of other peoples' money.
A voice chirped through his desk comm speaker "Captain, Structure checks out, engines can work, but we dont know about cruise yet."

Laowai stroked his chin and beard, considering... "How long till you'll know that?"

His engineers voice replied quickly, obviously the man had anticipated the question "Sorry Captain, that'll be at least another 24 hours."

Laowai cursed under his breath, "very well, get it done, Ill be on the Nuren if anyone needs me."

He cut the line, no use wasting the technicians time with worthless banter. However the tinkerer in him was tempted to roll up his sleeves and go down there with them to fix this mess he had made.
He sat on his bunk and slipped on his boots, in an hour or so he would get back to Crete and then head out and get the parts for the last engine, it seemed not that long ago that he had just made that same trip for that same purpose.

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