'Oh, so you want to know how I met her?' I asked. 'Well, obviously. I know you'd told this to other crewmembers already, but I haven't heard it yet. I'm also wondering, how the hell you both are so spiteful to each other, yet you listen to each other and follow each other's orders. If I were you, I'd probably threw her out of the airlock.' Lam answered.
I love talking to this girl. I love looking at her. I love her. But she's so withdrawn, every time she wants to talk to me, I feel inexplicable joy. I don't know how to tell her though... 'Okay, let's begin the story then...'
It was about one and a half a year ago. As you might now, my father was an exiled Rheinlander, Gottfrid Capashen was his name. Due to some tax issues, he had to flee his home on New Berlin. He managed to get to Kusari, he said it wasn't very easy. I don't necessarily want to talk any more about this, but enough said, after he had died, I found myself with his Saishi, his life savings and sadness about his passing away. One time I was sitting in the bar on Shinagawa, getting drunk, when I met a guy from IMG. He was looking for someone to assist him for a quite long journey to his sister. He also said he could probably get me employed into the IMG, if I wanted to. Not like I had any other option, did I?
'We've been sitting here for a while, and you still haven't told me anything about her,' said Lam. 'I know, but I can't just give you everything on a silver platter,' I laughed.
Quite a while later, we found ourselves in Tau-23. We were talking a lot during the journey, but pretty much only thing I managed to squeeze out of him was his name, and I'm not even sure if this was a real one. He called himself Yanuari Zhalfir. He was flying a ship I've never seen before, he called it 'Spatial'. It seemed almost like an Eagle, which in and of itself was a very rarely seen one, but was almost twice as large and looked a lot bulker than the aerodynamic design of GMG's. 'We need to dock at Java. I need to resupply and you probably should prepare yourself, we'll be going through one more jump hole,' said Yanuari and immediately after issued a docking request. I followed and docked my Saishi to Java. For the longest time, I've thought that this is actually the last IMG base around, and then it's just Gallia and Omicrons.
'It's been already two months since our coming to Tau-39. Yanuari had left me near the jumphole, saying he needed to go to some mysterious place called Timor. He sent me the coordinates to Jakarta and told me to wait for his sister there. He thought we would be getting along quite nicely. He didn't even tell me her name, he was in such rush. So I just spent my time in Jakarta bar, wasting money on beer and waiting for something to do.'
One time, this girl sat near me. She looked younger than me, but she seemed like she lived on the station - she didn't have the one of the coats IMGs usually use in their ships in cold conditions of Taus. 'You mind?' she said, pointing at the stool to my right. I nodded and she sat along. 'What are you doing on this station? I've been seeing you for quite a while in the bar, but you don't seem like you're working on here.'
'I'm a friend of Yanuari Zhalfir. He told me to wait for him on Jakarta, so that's what I'm doing.'
'A friend you say. Then I'm saying you're a liar, because he never makes friends.' From this point along, I knew she was his sister.
'Okay, you got me. He told me to visit his sister here. Who, I'm assuming, would be you.
'You're not as stupid as I thought. Indeed, I'm Yanuari's sister, my name is Sisay.'
'My pleasure.'
'You know, I'm aware we've just met, but listen, I don't want to spend my whole life working at smelteries for the IMG. And because you're looking like someone without any occupation, you might be just the person to assist me. What would you say about buying a miner and start our own operation?'
'But... how are you going to manage this? We would need a crew, equipment, insurance and myriad other things for such a big ship!'
'I have a few friends here and there. They also are sick and tired of sitting their asses off in Tau-39. I don't blame them.'
I stared down my glass.
