Remnants of the Earth

It was new roommate day. Ugh.  Cross hesitated just outside his door.  He knew the name of the guy who'd be in there—Malachi McLain—but he'd never really met him.  Not in any significant way.  He'd seen him around but they ran in different circles.

Just please don't be totally lame, he thought, spending a moment wishing they hadn't assigned Raley elsewhere. He'd been just about the perfect roommate, someone Cross got along with and who pulled his own weight keeping the place up to standard.  But Raley was struggling, stagnating actually, and having a roommate he was friends with was part of the problem.  So they said.

Cross took a breath and entered.  He was prepared to walk in and pull the alpha male thing if he had to, but he'd really rather not.  It was their rec day and he'd much rather spend it decompressing.  His eyes landed on McLain and he gave a neutral first greeting.  "Sup?"

Blaine was so shaky he nearly sloshed his latte all over the condiment stand in his efforts to get it set up with sugar and cocoa powder.  He put the lid back on to get across the floor with it and reach his table.

He was sat near the window with a good view of Sabela and Keziah.  "Okay ladies.  I can see you just fine.  I'll send you alerts as I get them."

They'd injected him with adrenaline just prior to taking position.  It would accelerate his precognition, but it also had his feet bouncing and his hands wringing in his sweater.  He was dressed head to toe in black.  It was his spy outfit, stylish of course, and topped with a jaunty black hat sitting askew upon his head.

To help out, he was keeping a nervous internal dialogue, following threads of thought that involved the mission going badly, a fire fight breaking out, stuff like that.  Anything to keep his adrenaline up.  It was working already, flashes of certainty starting to hit him in rapid blinks of images, many of them having nothing to do with the mission.  He was to pass along anything relevant to the other two Pilots.

"Wait a minute."  He'd gotten something, minor but certain enough to warrant mention.  "Don't stand there.  He'll be out of your initial line of sight and you'll miss his first contact.  Move about ten feet to your right and watch the intersection."

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Captain

• The highest authority on Cancer.
• Chapel Meridia

First Mate

• Second in command to the captain.
• Currently Open!

*Marshals*

• The Marshals oversee Cancer's private security forces.  There are Fleet Marshals, who command Cancer's space fleet, and Station Marshals who command the station guards.

*Reds*

• Technically called peace officers, but everyone calls them Reds on account of their intimidating red uniforms.  They are both fighter pilots and station security guards who keep the peace among Cancer's rowdy crowd.  A rough, ruthless group adept at putting down troublemakers.

*Citizens*

• Cancer is the size of a large metropolis, and many people have chosen to make the station their home.  They can be shopkeepers, mechanics, black market traders...anything they want to be really.  Cancer is vibrant with opportunity and business—both legitimate and illegal.

Too much had changed on Cancer since the last time Nathan had been there.  Most of it was because Meridia had decided to up and move the station to the gods only knew where.  Shenanigans like that made folk nervous, made them rethink just where and why they put down their roots.  And it meant Nathan had lost some decent contacts.

His mechanic was gone.  Now, he'd found that the guy who hooked him up with some jacked planet-grown food supplies had also taken off.  No one knew where.  He asked around, made some discreet inquiries, and that was how he found himself standing out Bhaskara's door.

"Wait, do I have the name right?  Bhaskara?"  Nathan stopped himself just short of pressing the door's buzzer.

"Yeah, that's right."  Yvette was one of his newer connections herself.  She trafficked almost solely on information.  "Ehh...before you go in though, I should warn ya.  He's a little weird."

Nathan's recent potato-chip-and-werewolf encounter came to mind.  And Cian.  And Papillion.  And Willow!  "Please," he said, shooting the kid a look of profound disdain.  "Have you met my crew?"  Nothing could phase him anymore.  Nothing.

"Don't say I didn't warn ya," she muttered.

Nathan let out a sigh and shook his head.  Mere moment after he pressed the buzzer, the door slid open and he stepped inside.

A few things jumped out at him right away.  Like the huge snake tail taking up a third of the room. Huge.  Looked like it could fit him inside of it.  Then there was the human torso attached to it, half-seen behind a counter top, black tats scrolled across pale skin.  All of this under the warm glow of the longest heat lamp Nathan had ever seen.

A second glance, and the empty beer bottles scattered here and there jumped out at him.  That, and the pile of underaged porn comics sitting on a stool.

Nathan narrowed his eyes at Bhaskara.  "Well played, sir.  Well played."

"Everyone in or I'm leaving your asses!"  Those were the last words Justin said before hitting the button for the cargo door.  The stragglers of his crew jumped on board and got themselves behind the airlock with him.

Justin got on the intercom to the bridge.  "Take us up."

While the rest of the crew took to their stations, Justin stayed behind to get the cargo in order, or at least make sure it was all there.  They'd had to take off in a bit of a hurry, and he wanted some time alone.  This was their last flight after all.  He had a buyer all lined up for the ship, and most of the crew had already made plans for when they got back to Cancer.  He was putting them out of work, but he'd been doing this long enough.

The ship had two smaller bays attached to its main cargo hold.  They wound around and connected to the port and starboard halls by alternate doors.  You could also pry the paneling off in certain places and find your way up through the walls and ventilation spaces right up to the gun turret doors, which would also give you access to the bridge if you knew where you were going.

Justin found himself in one of those smaller cargo bays. It was dark—two of the three lights had gone out and no one bothered to replace them—and the place was stacked high with crates.

Chapel drew plenty of glances from the crowded streets of the Red District, but he was wearing his don't-fucking-bother-me face so no one stopped him or got in his way with their grievances and concerns.  There'd been plenty of that up in the Gold District, with Aedolis and Edanith breathing down his neck like he owed them anything.  Libra was better about it.  Mal got how it worked.

All he really wanted now was to do some needed shopping.  He needed shoes.  He was on one of the busiest streets in the district, with neon signs flashing at him above storefronts and crisscrossing streets branching off at odd angles all over the place.  His long tail swung behind him, waving and swishing all on it's own.  It was covered in a fine red fur and tipped with a tuft of long black hair.  Dreadlocks—two-toned red and black—swayed about his shoulders, beads clicking.

He paused for just a moment to look over the heads of the crowd at a shoe store on the other side of the street.  He was tall enough to see over most people.  As soon as he turned to continue on, though, his tail swept through a stack of something behind him.  Whatever it was clattered to the ground and everyone in sight paused to stare at him.

Chapel sank his face into his palm before turning around to see what kind of damage he'd done.  Damn tail did it again.

Laptop has a virus and desktop doesn't want to get online for some reason. So I'm gone until I can find a fix. P: I'll be on MSN every now and then with my phone if anyone needs me.

Quick update to direct everyone's attention to Visions of the Earth! =D

Deviantart has rolled out their groups feature, so if you have a deviantart account, check it out and join up! You can submit all your RotE pics to the club there and it will help all of us artists keep up with each others' work. ^__^ Who knows, we might even be able to have contests and stuff too. <3

There was always music playing on Diva.

Tonight—night and day being only a comfort and conceit out here—Nathan had soft old beat jazz playing over the speakers.  Old old.  Nearly a century old this album was, from back in the day on Aedolis when some old folks endured the particular torture of remembering the flavor of freedom even as they saw any hope of regaining it die off.  Their music imparted despair, and memories of something more.  Nathan heard the breakdown of it, the chromatic harmonies, the parts of the whole.  He heard the math in it.

But!  It was starting to depress him.  Him in his little bubble of life, surrounded by black for millions of miles.

'least I'm not alone.

Without a pilot, it fell on him to fly Diva himself.  Sad that, but there'd been no takers on Cancer.  Without a cook, he had to make his own meals, and they were simple, boring dishes even if they did keep him alive.  And without a doctor, he did the best he could to patch up the little things.

But Cian was here.  Another living presence kept a little light burning in him, made it all bearable.  He didn't even care that Cian's exact function on the ship had never been established.  So long as the man wasn't setting fires or reneging on their agreement regarding personal hygiene—specifically that Cian would see to his on a semi-regular basis—then it was all aces.

Nathan flicked a switch and the music cut off.  He rose from the pilot's chair and stretched his arms above his head, back popping.  Was about time for his nightly before-sleep routine.  He'd learned the hard way just how important routine was out in the black.  Too easy to lose your way out there, with nothing but emptiness staring at you hour after hour.  Routine kept him well-groomed and kept these small quarters feeling normal.  Routine kept the handguns at his hips clean, oiled, and loaded.  And with him at all times.

He was halfway out of the bridge when a hail came through and lured him back to the helm to check it out.

A distress code.

Nathan hesitated.  It wasn't uncommon for pirates to put out a distress call and snare any well-meaning ship who came along to help, and Nathan was naturally distrustful.  He patted at his pockets for a coin to flip, but found none.

Oh well.  Leap of faith it is.

Nathan plopped himself back into the pilot's seat and sent a wave ahead of him to the other ship.  "Ibis Minuet, this is Blackjack Diva.  We are on route to your coordinates.  We're a jumper, be there in a few."

Before changing course, he punched the button for the intercom.  "You up Cian?  Wakey wakey, we might have some visitors and I prefer you up and alert just in case."  He set the course, then thought better of it and told the jump engine to drop them a decent distance away from the other ship.

If they had to run, he wanted plenty of room.

They called them the lead rooms, though the name was misleading.  There was very little lead in the walls.  Mostly they were a mixture of other metals and synthetic substances with a high attenuation coefficient.  They absorbed thought.

Roman stood in front of the door leading into the lead rooms.  He flashed his wrist under the door scanner and it slid open.

He couldn't believe he was here again so soon.  It was by Scheherazade's orders.  A few Pilots had to go through the Axis Point a second time.  Discrepancies.  Pilots cutting corners or getting lazy with their responsibilities.  The typical complacency you expected people to settle into when circumstances were easy.  Every few months the dragons would get hardassed about it and make them all shape up again.  It would hold for awhile, then the whole process would start over again.  But this time, with Temple still MIA, the dragons wanted every detail to be squared away so they could focus their attention elsewhere.

That wasn't why Roman was here.  No, he had to play security for the Pilots going through.  They liked to have two Pilots on standby for these routine screenings, and Roman would be relieving Letendre.  He'd get to stand there for four hours with Blaine Clé for company, listening to the young Pilot gush about...dandelions or folk music or whatever the hell his infatuation was this week, all while waiting for Sade to get out of the Axis Point.

He stepped into the tomb and the door closed behind him.  He felt the silence as all psychic chatter in the Citadel outside was shut out.  This was the point of the lead rooms.  Thought wave attenuation.  Nothing got in, nothing got out.  Whether they needed to keep a Pilot's thoughts contained or keep outside thoughts from intruding, this is what the lead rooms were for.  Trying to reach past the walls was like casting your thoughts into an oblivion.  They absorbed and dissipated most of the electromagnetic spectrum.  As a side effect, no radio waves got through either.  They had to use hard lines to communicate.  

Roman passed his wrist under a scanner on the wall and the intercom dialed into Scher automatically.  "All right, I'm in.  Confirm connection."

"Confirmed," came her mechanical, rasping voice.  Letendre's, Clé's, and Sade's dragons would all be on the same line, as those three were also somewhere in here.

They would be able to hear everything that went on within the lead rooms.  Even knowing they were still in communication, the hollow feel of the place made Roman feel both claustrophobic and adrift at once.  The walls were a light, uniform gray.  Two exits opened back out into the 279th floor of the Citadel.  The other went to the Axis Point.  The lead rooms themselves made a circle, with two dozen cells jutting off from the main hallway, not all of them necessarily designated for containing Pilots or other psychics under military arrest.  Some were equipment rooms or used for interrogations.

All of the doors opening off the hall were shut.  From one corner, a surveillance camera watched.  It was very quiet within.