T. Finnegan, Junker

[TFinnegan]

The Sextant and the Spyglass, part 4

"Three weeks..." muttered Connor Sinclair, rubbing the stubble on his chin and glancing repeatedly out of the enormous window at Culebra Smelter in the mist. "Three bloody weeks...."

Alone he paced the shiny deck of the recently completed bridge. Console lights glittered and reflected from gleaming, untouched bulkheads. Shrinkwrap still clung to most of the crew chairs, and white packing material piled in tiny drifts at the corners of dock consoles. The bridge of this salvaged Spyglass-class battleship veritably sprawled, the far corners lost in darkness. Gangways, platforms, console banks, and the command dais broke the huge space into multiple areas, with work stations for twenty-eight crewmen.

It gleamed, sparkled, and shone. Waiting for a captain who was nowhere to be found.

"Claymore, this is Culebra hailing." said a voice from the speakers above, halting Sinclair in his tracks.

"Go ahead Culebra. Sinclair 'ere." he answered into the air as he moved towards the commrack, knowing the smartcomm system would follow him with hidden speakers and microphones to his station.

"Connor, duty crew seven is outbound to you now, shuttle away." announced Andy Riddick, Chief of Comms for the station. "Also have a wave from the Ambassador, it's not good. Still no sign of Finnegan." he paused. "Ive pulled those strings I was tellin' ya about, an' still nuthin. Best i could do was an IFF ping from Barrier Gate Station about three weeks ago. Noone's seen him, his crew, or his ship since. An' I mean noone."

"Roger tha' Riddick." frowned Connor. "Keep tryin'. I finally get this bird spaceworthy n' the Cap goes off'n gets hisself lost." He spotted the blue driveflame of the crew shuttle bringing the cleaning crews in from the space station. "I'll be glad ta see the last of the scaffolding gone, anyway... thanks, lad. I'll be on the next shuttle back. Nuthin' left ta do 'ere, an' it's high time I went out lookin' fer the Cap'n."

Sinclair flicked off the open comm channel with disdain and leaned back in the plastic-wrapped chair.
"Three bloody weeks...."

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Coppery tasting blood pooled between his teeth and his split and swollen lips. Too damaged were they to even spit, so it ran down the corner of his mouth into his greying yellow beard. His head lolled drunkenly as he tried to bring his blackened and nearly swollen-shut eyes up to meet his antagonist.

Tim could make out the wheezing form of Murphy in his cell. Curled into a ball on the floor cradling broken ribs with one hand and a pulped and bleeding nose with the other, he had mercifully passed out and been tossed into his cage until further need to dehumanize him arose.

Finnegan's arms were tied to the chair behind him, and his naked torso bore the bruises and cuts of the most extreme form of interrogation, one with no real answers. Or questions. Or end, except sweet death. As his view rolled past Murph's cell, it wandered past the grinning face of his tormentor, and upwards to the moldy ceiling before he caught it and in a vain effort at control, brought it back down squarely into the eyes of his Colonial Remnant jailer, and his cocked Colonial Remnant fist, which pounded it back to the left and up to the ceiling again as the flesh sledgehammer slammed into his cheek, spinning his head as far as the sinews of his neck would allow.

"Fphurg yer mmllurgh, blurch.." was the best he could muster as he tried again to right his disobeying head. "I'll 'aff yer fphurgin' eed, you Fphu.."

"Shut the hell up, slaver!" growled the Colonial.

CRACK! CRACK!

Shooting pain and darkness....

Moldy ceiling, bootsteps fading. Pain. Darkness...

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"...Aye an' thanks again Strick. This ol' Salvager oughta do the trick." grinned Sinclair into the antique commset, as he set course for Invergordon, the Spyglass dropping away below and behind as the rusty, overworked Junker ship made for the Texas jumphole. "Just hope I can get this bird there by mesself. In one piece."

"Don't mention it Connor," Replied the voice from Vieques. "Go find 'im. I put the word out on all Junk channels, should be a crew waitin' for ya there. Told em Finn needed help. He's got friends, you'll probably be turnin' em away."

"Aye an' Tess managed to put together a crack team of ass-kickin' Junker marines awaiting pickup at A-town." Connor grinned toothily as he wound up the jump engines for engagement with the anomaly. "If he's out there, we'll find 'im. Sinclair out."

"Roger that. Clear skies, Junk, clear skie..."

The universe twisted.

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Darkness...
Darkness and pain.
Loud noises. Pain. Darkness....
Gunfire. Pain.
Murhpy's truncated wheezing cough. Gurgling. Darkness...
Gunfire?

Finnegan lifted his head, unable to open his eyes. Dried and drying blood smacked and crackled as he unstuck his head from the clotting smear on the steel floor. He could still hear Murph in the cell with him, his punctured lung giving away his presence in the confusion of sounds.

Gunfire and running boots sounded through the steel bulkheads of the Colonial ship. Shouts and alarms raising in inensity as the door to the brig hissed open. He strained at his bonds, but his hands were bound together with a wire-tie, which were bound to his feet behind him with more ties. With herculean will he rolled to his cut and bloody knees....and was slammed face-first into the deck by the WHUMPH! of a shock grenade detonating very nearby.

Pain and Darkness....

...He was being dragged by the armpits, his bonds gone. Blind and unable to lift his head, he bobbed between two men as he tried to gather his feet beneath him. Gunfire erupted in his ear, and hot spent shells danced off his head and back. Answering shots were fired from somewhere nearby, one hand dissapeared from his armpit and something wet and warm splashed across his side. Bullets dink-dink-dinked off of a bulkhead nearby, and he was unceremoniously dumped to the deck.

More gunfire. More Pain. Darkness...

WHUMPH!
CRACK! CRACK!
"Get Murphy! Get the crew!" he tried to shout from the bottom of a deep pit of awareness, turning it into more of a pleading gurgle as darkness once again stole him from the world.

Blinding light, ruddy red through swollen eyelids.
The sound of a drive engine humming.
Hushed voices.
PING.
"He's coming around." a female voice, sweet like rain on a lake in the sunshine. "Ten CC"s of somazine."
PING.
Shooting pain in his lip as another stitch was sewn into it.

"Mrph?" he asked out the corner of his mouth.

"He'lll be fine. Just fine." a male voice. Close. "We got the whole crew. Kelley was hit in the firefight. Workin' on them both now."

Finnegan strained to open his right eye, and the blurry image of a man in battle armor, splattered with blood, coalesced above him. The sounds of others engaged in triage came to him from nearby. The medic smiled at him and bent closer, needle and thread in hand. "Tess sends her best." he said as he reached across to apply another stitch. The Junker Guard patch on the medic's shoulder reassured Tim, and he closed his eyes, relaxing at last. Safe.
PING PING PING PING
"We're losing him!" shouted the female voice. "Crash cart now!..."

Darkness...

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"Well Connor, ol' boy. I dinna know what else I ken do fer ye." Tim Finnegan stood with one hand on Sinclair's shoulder, both men made silhoutes by the glowing red of the Culebra cloud as seen through the enormous bridge window. Silent and clean no longer, the bridge sang with the sounds of a crew at work. The view drifted to the starboard as the gigantic ship was brought about and pointed towards the jumphole.

"Nuthin' ya can do Ca...erm, Tim." stammered Sinclair. "The early retirement would be enough, but ya had to throw in the whole mining corp too, huh?" he shook his head. "Still an' all, I'd do it again fer free."

"An' that, lad, is why ye get yer own chance. I'll nay 'ave th' man who risked his life fer me n' mine beholden to me fer nuthin'." said Tim through healing lips from behind a soon-to-be-removed eyepatch. "Yer at the very least an equal now, laddy. Go make yer fortune, second in command to noone. Yer ship's in th' main hangar bay, and the ol' Fall River corp awaits it's CEO." he grinned, hooking an arm around Sinclair's shoulders and steering him toward the portside lift.

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Murphy grinned as much as the bandages on his shattered nose would allow, and nudged Seamus Kelley, whose arm hung in a sling, and whose left leg was still in an aircast. He remarked quietly what a different relationship those two had as of late.

He'd always thought for sure he'd see the Cap'n space the engineer. Now Finn was giving him everything. His highly profitable mining company, his personal Salvager-class frigate, and his entire life savings of four hundred million creds.

Everything but the enormous ship recently christened ~Claymore.O'Gordon~ that now put it's nuclear-hot engines between them and Puerto Rico system. A sleek reconditioned Salvager slid off into obscurity in the cloud behind them, the name Parliament.Junkadelic gleaming freshly on her prow.

"Bloody hell!" Tim bellowed as he strode onto the bridge, kilts flaring, his trusty sawed off shotgun in one hand, resting across his shoulder. "Never seen a sorrier lot in all me days! Snap to ya dogs!" he shouted, grinning as he mounted the command dais and spun his chair about.

"I'm bleedin' broke now, and we're gonna hafter start all over. No pay for you lot till we break profit margin, and before ye go off whinin' at me, let's remember, I bought all'a yer lives today. An' yer no' cheap! So ef ye'd like ter keep em, ye'd best put another bloody system in tha' bloody window. FAST! I'm bleedin sick ter death of Puerto Rico."

He crossed his legs, flung his boots up onto the console before him, and surveyed the gleaming hulk seeming to emanate from him. His kilometer long ship, his crew, and the healing scars on his legs and hands.

"Aye, an there's some Colonial puke-rats what's got some answerin' ter do...."
"Kelley! get those weapons batteries tight as a prom date!"
"Murph, you old dog, let's see what this betch can do! Kick 'er in th' teeth once, lad!"

From near Vieques Station, Connor Sinclair watched as the Claymore's trio of engines lit like a star going supernova, and winked out of existence at the texas jumphole.

"Crazy ol' dog's gonna need me" he said to noone. "Best keep the comms open."

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