Some Bar, Some Where

Posted on Sun Nov 3rd, 2019 @ 8:48pm by Commanding Officer Soto Nabaal & Commanding Officer Mickey Serendipity & Comm Tech Wulf Edevane

Mission: The Forgotten Arm
Location: The Tropics Lounge, Rhea Industrial Complex, Saturn Lunar System
Timeline: A few years before the Eros Incident

The tables drink dispenser hummed happily to itself as it inflated three drinking bulbs. With a merry little ping it announced that the order, inputted through the laminated touch screen of the table, was completed. It also highlighted with little arrows all of the ancillary businesses that were part of the advertising co-op. It suggested that after a nice drink a nice meal would be welcome! Or maybe a 5% discount at Mama Niska's Tea Rooms, which the graphic made very clear served a lot more than tea.

The bar was a bar in the way romance is a genre: it was dark, it was quiet, and it served as a bunker in which the exterior world could wail and do nothing of consequence. A tame fog tube hologram set up behind the bar ran a silent news feed from one of the Inner Planet affiliate stations, CNN or BuzzFeed. Riots on Pallas Refinery over a new O2 tax on shipping. Ceres Station's UN-appointed Governor yet again voted in on a wave of 'better the devil you know than a Martian jackboot'. And Earth's climate reclamation project was still treading water, in some cases literally.

Same shit, different channel.

"Patience," Soto said as Mickey began to open his mouth. The neatly groomed captain of the Albatross hadn't even looked at him as he tugged the drink bulb free of the dispenser.

"You know there is a point where patience becomes a form of denial right?" Mickey responded. "More than likely someone spoofed the job listing just to waste our time. Rhea isn't exactly the jewel of Saturn you know? Black bean curd stands and..."

He leaned over the tables display and rubbed a little condensation that had pooled there.

"'2 for 1 girls'. Yeah, this place scream's bountiful opportunities," he said and took his drink. He eyed the third drink they had ordered in preparation. "A UN Dollar says I end up drinking that before we see hide or hair of your prospective new hire."

Wulf stood and watched the two men seated at the table from the far side of the bar. He cradled a bottle of beer, a special treat in recognition of a monumentally shitty week and the very last of his current finances. They looked alright.

But then everyone looked alright when you were skint and needed work. He leant on the counter, elbow in someone’s spilled drink, and resisted the urge to touch the single headphone in his right ear as he looked left. He could hear them just fine, every word, via his hacked access to the table, and he couldn’t resist a quick grin as the older one responded to that 2 for 1 offer he’d implanted.

Yeah, they sounded alright. Seemed genuinely to be seeking an extra person, which was the main thing he cared about. He sighed, raised his beer to the woman behind the bar, the one rushed off her feet serving Belters who was totally oblivious to him. Then he took one more sip of the amber liquid and wandered across the full width of the room to greet his waiting employers. Maybe.

“I think you owe him a UN Dollar,” Wulf said. “But don’t go for that offer, it’s bogus.”

The two men turned to regard Wulf. The one of the left had the look of someone from the Pan Asian Economic Zone of Earth, or one of the off-world colonies many of the Rim Of Fire nations had sent their undesirables to back in the early days. Solid shoulders, confident bearing, neatly groomed back beard and hair spoke of a background in an organisation that enforced that sort of adherence to rules. No kanji tattoo work on show so not Yakuza, or Triad. Military.

The guy on the right had more of an everyman appeal, round face, average features, brown hair. He didn't have the same rigid bearing as the other guy, but then he held himself in that loose/tense stance professional fighters have. He played the part of the friendly and affable bar patron well.

And they were both armed, shoulder holsters. On Rhea, and its many interconnected cavern settlements and surface industrial complexes, the difference between life and death sometimes meant you carried a bigger stick than the other guy. And if the guy who ended up on the losing side of that arrangement was a thug, local security contractors tended to look the other way. Less paperwork.

"Don't need you to tell me that kid," Mickey said as he tapped the tables plastic screen. "The fact it has a medical issued bill of health tells me everything I need to know about Mama Niska's."

"You are Edevane I presume?" Soto asked, his accented English almost perfect as he gestured to the stool opposite them. "Your application for the job listing was interesting."

Well, they definitely looked more impressive up close and personal, this odd combo of souls. Their immediate vibe implied they were capable of keen violence, but not inclined to deliver such to him, not yet. Good or bad? It was impossible to tell…. Wulf wasn’t a mind reader and even if he had been, the whole nice or nasty thing was way more than simply an easy label. Humans weren’t canned goods, they were filled with cheeky little nuances, hidden depths and emotion-based surprises. No one was entirely good or evil. It all came down to incentive, motivation and point of view.

He wondered what they saw when they looked at him, as he lowered his gaze and shook his head as the younger one called him ‘kid’. Wulf had seen more of the solar system than a lot of people his age, but they didn’t know that. He put his hands on his hips - well-kept hands that showed no overt sign of any manual labour in his past - and he let his light jacket push outwards from his lithe frame, to show them that, unlike them, he wasn’t carrying a concealed weapon.

Dark brown eyes levelled at the one who’d spoken first - Amicable Fighter Guy. Wulf shifted position, allowed them to see him for what he was, confident, streetsmart, but not overtly dangerous. “The bill of health is at least genuine,” he said, with a shrug. “And yes,” he answered the other’s question. “I’m Edevane.”

Wulf took his seat as Military Guy offered and ignored that sense of foreboding in his gut at admitting his real name. Wulf knew he looked young, but he had the talent, damn it, and he could prove it if he needed to. What he couldn’t do, and he felt the adrenaline spike as he sat down, was get himself out of this mess with physical prowess. He had friends here, he had back-up if he needed an out. It would be okay.

“Apparently interesting enough for you to come have a chat,” he said, with a smile coloured with confident amusement. “And your advert was… flexibly worded…” Wulf relaxed a little into his seated position, tilted his head to the side and raised an eyebrow. “You two really aren’t cops, are you? You’re really recruiting for a shipboard post?”

"Freedom. Quality. Choice," Mickey/Amicable Fighter Guy said, quoting the Pink Water Security slogan as he took a sip from his drink. "Freedom costs extra. Quality is not in their handbook. And the choice is to pay your dues or have an accident. I've worked alongside Pink Water before, and like most places, it depends on the people. These guys aren't so bad, better than the Star Helix folks on Ceres Station. But they'd not be down here in the low levels without riot gear."

"What my Executive Officer means, is we are not the security contractors for this station," Soto/Military Guy said. "I am Captain Soto Nabaal, and this is my XO Mr Serendipity. We are the hiring council for the courier ship Albatross. Normally we'd have the other members of our crew here, but our Engineer and Pilot are working with the dockyard on a problem with a forward radar array."

Soto narrowed his eyes and looked at Wulf.

"Our job posting was for a Comms Technician, with current certification on modern systems, as well as broad and tight beam array qualifications. Language skills are a necessity, given our ports of call range throughout the Inner and Outer Planets," Soto explained. "Do you meet these skill points?"

Wulf’s eyes went big as the tone shifted between these two from casual complexity - Freedom costs extra - to definitely interesting. It depends on the people. Now that was an ethos he could get behind. He wasn’t, however, about to leap from one bad situation to another, which meant he needed more information to go on. He needed to study these two closely, hook into more data than he’d gleaned from their ‘private’ bar conversation.

So, he canted his head to the side, sipped from his beer and Wulf quietly listened to every word coming from Captain Nabaal’s mouth. He didn’t speak until that utterly serious gaze locked with his own and he pushed down the sense of foreboding in his gut. That was normal. Change was fraught with emotions. And this was just a job offer, right? He could take it or leave it.

“I do,” Wulf answered simply. He didn’t smile, or bullshit, or make some smart comment, he simply told the truth as he held an unwavering eye contact with the older gent. They’d given him a wealth of information here, data they didn’t need to share at this moment in time. He liked that. He respected the trust laid out before him.

“I could give you a resume,” he added, with a nonchalant shrug as window dressing. “But we both know I could have faked that. I’m guessing you’d prefer some actual proof?”

Mickey chuckled and took a pull from his bulb, making his free fist bob up and down. He then looked at his CO.

"(1)Dĕk s̄eīy welā k̄hxng reā xỳāng chạdcen," he said Soto, before looking to Wulf. "No davay, malysh, vpechatli nas."

Without missing a beat, and with an utterly serious tone lazily picking up the correct accents each time, Wulf replied.

"(2)T̄ĥā c̄hạn t̂xngkār thī̀ ca s̄eīy welā k̄hxng c̄hạn c̄hạn ca pị k̄hx h̄m̂x chā thī̀ Mama's," he told them both. "U vas vse khorosho, no derzhu pari, chto vy ne mozhete poprosit' poderzhannyy toplivnyy inzhektor so vsemi pravil'nymi forsunkami vo vremya peregovorov po delu o vodke s verkhney polki?"

"(3)Jūbun'na." Soto said, holding up a hand as he looked at MIckey with a questioning glance.

"Kid knows his Thai and Russian. Enough to insult with at any case, which in trade and comm's mean the same thing," Mickey said with a shrug. "Those are the big trade tongues out in the Jupiter and Saturn systems, and if we get close enough to Mercury to need Spanish we're all in trouble."

"Linguistic skills aside, I assume you have some sort of demonstration in mind to show off your computer skills?" Soto asked dryly, gesturing to the table display. "Apart from malicious advertising code infringement?'

“(4)Pasé seis meses con una chica en una estación cerca de Mercurio, oscuridad permanente, tapas y sangría y... bueno, estoy seguro de que no quieres detalles sobre el resto...”

Yes, he was just showing off now, but that fancy education at the posh school had cost his parents a great deal of money and if he hadn’t been exactly grateful at the time, Wulf had reaped many benefits from those long days of classes since. He couldn’t hate his folks for that.

“Sure,” Wulf nodded. He did indeed. He’d wanted to suss these guys out before doing anything actively illegal, because even in this downtrodden little oasis of alcoholic beverages and lowlifes, the law wasn’t always absent.

His hand terminal appeared in his hand, the screen set to some kind of privacy setting that prevented those around him reading the imagery upon it. But beneath Soto’s waved arm, that table display responded to Wulf’s hands-off touch.

At first their table presented a short run of obviously drone-taken footage - could have been anywhere judging by the rock walls its camera picked up. Then the screen shifted to swiftly show a bunch of code, blurred lines of names, numbers and random digits. A shout went up from the tables around them as the premium sports channel (normally way outside this place’s price range and clientele's reach) started playing on every screen but Wulf’s. Some drunken louts over in the corner cheered and stood to their feet in a gesture of pure happiness.

The young man allowed Soto and Serendipity to view his own terminal then and the string of text on its clear screen - a long list of micro transactions disguised and reworded to disappear showed as being quietly hidden in multiple different bank accounts - then Wulf looked somewhat guiltily at Soto.

“Your ship’s hooked up to the station network…” He said, and broadcast a video from the on board Albatross security feed. It showed that the ship was indeed being worked on in the dockyard and Wulf flicked every single light off and on for a few seconds, then flickered them in time to some unheard tune that played in his head. “Needs some extra firewall measures added I reckon,” he quietly declared. Now, it remained to be seen if he was busted, or if these two were genuine.

"That would indeed seem to be the case," Soto said dryly as he looked over the cam feed. Some of the befuddled dock workers on-screen were looking over open instrument panels, trying to figure out what had caused the lights to flicker. "It would appear you have the requisite skills we are looking for. That point aside, however, I would want to point out that the nature of our business. We are a courier ship, we take secure data and cargo from one place to another. Our clientele pay for our discretion."

"They also pay for privacy," Mickey pointed out, tapping the tabletop screen pointedly over the head of a still confused looking dock worker.

"What my Executive Officer means to say is that our clients operate within the bounds of the law but on occasion require extra-legal means to conduct their business. IP Patents, secure account routing, the sort of thing best not broadcast across the solar system. The sort of thing a nimble-fingered computer tech might want a look at, to sate his curiosity if nothing else," Soto said gravely, and then smiled. "I would point out that would be a clause in your contract concerning your termination from our employment should that occur."

As he looked from one man to the other, as he paid his full attention to their words once again, Wulf nodded. Any thought of entrapment had washed away from his mind now, his focus entirely on this new chance that the universe presented. An escape from this shithole, with potentially good people and a full functioning beast of a ship with some pretty decent specs, if their computer was telling him the truth. It definitely looked good from where he was currently sitting.

They were serious, direct (always a good trait in the young man’s mind) and intelligent. They clearly had gravitas, strength and a close working relationship, he’d watched them long enough to recognise that. It had been part of the reason he’d initially wondered if they were law enforcement - that partnership bond they carried on their sleeves.

“Privacy,” Wulf agreed by the way his tone wrapped about that one word. “I understand. They get the platinum package huh?” A nod. Rhetorical question. “Duly noted.” That wasn’t exactly a promise, but he had seen the look in Soto’s gaze when he mentioned contracts and Wulf wasn’t stupid. Well, not all that often.

“If I take your job,” he said, with no sign of arrogance whatsoever. “If I’m under contract with you, then I’ll respect that boundary and your clientele’s privileges.” Respect, yes. Totally ignore? Probably not. “But for the record, sometimes a curious tech saves lives.” Wulf shrugged amicably. “Totally your call, though, obviously.”

Soto looked at Mickey who gave a fractional turn of his hand from side to side. This seemed to carry weight with the Captain, who looked at Wulf with a smile.

"Then I will lay out what I propose. We will take on with a trial contract on our next run, let you get to know the other members of the crew and work. Your pay scale will be apprentice level for this. 1.5% of our contracted payment. If at the end of the run we as the ship's company or yourself deem our relationship unsatisfactory, we part ways. If things work, we renegotiate the contract to full crew shares. 70% goes to the Albatross and ship expenses. The rest is divvied among the crew according to contract," Soto paused a moment as his terminal began to buzz.

"Zisis's a smidge early," Mickey pointed out as Soto looked down at the screen.

"Renegotiations again," Soto said with the sort of voice one uses when they've discovered weevils in their yeast cakes. "I will have to leave you two to discuss finer details whilst I cover this. Mr Serendipity has my full authority to commit the Charon Courier Corporation to hire you on. I'll see you back at the dock."

Soto gave a bare-bones nod, got up, and left the bar. It was then that the jacket he was wearing, had a stylised blue bird motif across the back along with some kanji characters. 'Swift Wings', an old Earth good luck phrase perhaps? Who knew.

"So, kid," Mickey said as he took another sip from his bulb. "You got questions you ask them now."

Apprentice level?? Wulf stewed over that perceived insult while the two men spoke, one after the other. 1.5% was no doubt survivable on, but it depended on the rest of the T&Cs. Those already stated conditions sounded fair… and then the Captain made his polite, efficient exit and left just the two of them. Wulf watched the older man leave and frowned. Swift Wings? Had he seen that somewhere before? Hmm… Nah.

“That happen a lot?” He asked the XO, no denigration of their skills evident in this curiosity-fuelled question. “Renegotiations I mean?” Wulf looked down to the table and the third drink then, suddenly silent for a moment. “Probably none of my business.”

"Everyones out to make a dollar over a dime kid. That means you pay as little as you can afford. But what you pay for, you get. Now we're a class outfit, we deliver on time and we deliver without interference. Sometimes that means we pretend to be someone else for a bit. And last I checked the going rate for spoofing the UN and MCRN licenced transponder beacon of a fusion drive ship is...hefty. Prison barge hefty. Didn't check the seal on his pressure suit hefty," Mickey sips his drink. "So some of the people who hire us want to throw their weight around, play the part. It's all fan dances kid, just tinsel on your radar. Happens every job, even the legit ones."

It made sense. In all honesty, Wulf couldn’t deny that the guy made a fair point. He’d seen the arguments on the long runs where he’d worked for a living (which was most of them) and he’d also been the one fabricating the transponder beacon too. Sometimes for less than he was worth, though those had been emergency situations. He didn’t intend to be doing time on a prison barge, that was for sure. He stared at the table as he answered Mickey quietly. “Read you loud and clear.” Damn it, he was gonna go for it regardless though.

As he glanced back up from under his brow he spoke again. “2.5% please,” Wulf suggested amicably. “With a bonus when I upgrade your security program specs and properly protect your software assets.” That sounded reasonable in his head, but honestly, he didn’t expect to get away with it.

“Couple more questions - how long’s your next run planned to take? And any other terms and conditions I need to know about?”

"1.75%. Believe it not any more on a trial run and we have to file paperwork to entitle you for crew benefits. Dental, health care, procreation protection," Mickey put down his bulb. "And our next run is to Armstrong City, Luna. We cruise at .75G, saves on the tanked reaction mass and wear on the drive cones. From Rhea...must be a month-long haul down the well? Might be we step it up to a solid G, cut a week off the flight path. Might be we run at 2G, but the Captain doesn't like doing that on account folks tripping over a door hatch and breaking their jaw gets old."

Y’know what, he didn’t know that for sure. And while he could look it up, Wulf decided to take Mickey Serendipity’s word for it. In his head those two words had their own little tune. Mic-key Sen-en-dip-ity. He told himself not to ask.

“Okay, deal,” Wulf agreed. “1.75% until the trial’s over, then we revisit.” Dental, healthcare… be nice to have those things covered again. It had been a while, stuck here on this rock. Good times to start with until the sweet deal turned sour. A month to Luna sounded pretty damn fine so long as it was taking him away from this damn station. He didn’t owe anyone in Armstrong City any money, favours or time so much as he could remember either.

“Count me in,” he said, and Wulf offered his right hand across the table to the XO of the Albatross. “Thanks. Promise not to trip over the door hatches.”

There was a lengthy pause as Wulf finished his own beer and looked to the spare. Internally he kicked himself as he heard himself say, despite the voice of his subscious strongly advising otherwise. “Seriously, Mickey Serendipity - that's your real name?”

"You don't like it, you can use Ex-Oh. Old family name, very respectful," Mickey squeezed the bulb, and finished his drink. Scotch should not come out of a plastic bulb. "And look, kid one last thing before we head out to the 'Tross. Everyone and everything on the ship has a story, it has history. Some of that is what people walked away from, others they are still walking away from it. That includes me, that includes the Captain."

He turned on his stool and reached up to scratch the stubble on his chin.

"What you bring onto the ship is your business. If that business interferes with the crew, or the ship, it becomes my problem as Executive Officer. And I want to be clear, I have a variety of means of helping you out of a tight spot," his hand slipped down his jacket, parting the zipper to reveal the butt of the holstered mag pistol. "That includes a number of things a smart kid like you can figure outright? I look after the crew as a whole, and as an individual."

With that, he hopped off the stool.

"Docking berth 34 Alpha, Crater Side Dock. We dust off tomorrow at 1900," he held up his terminal. "You want me to link you the addy, or you got a good memory?"

Wulf tapped the tip of his right index finger to his skull and exhaled as he held the XO’s gaze. “Received, understood and retained, sir,” he said with zero sign of humour in the straightforward response. “And with respect, I like it,” he added. “The name I mean.”
He hadn’t flinched at the sight of the pistol, but Wulf did straighten his shoulders some as he stood up to face his new boss, answer the final question and make a promise in relation to Serendipity’s pep talk. “My memory works just fine, sir.”

OOC

(1)Mickey: Thai - 'The kid is clearly wasting our time.' and second is Russian - 'But go on kid, impress us.'

(2)Wulf: Thai - 'If I wanted to waste my time I'd go order a pot of tea at Mama's'. Russian - 'Your inflexion is good, but I'm betting you can't ask for a secondhand fuel injector with all the correct nozzles while negotiating for a case of top-shelf vodka?'

(3)Soto: Japanese -'Enough.'

(4)Wulf: Spanish - ‘I spent six months with a girl on a station out near Mercury, permanent darkness, tapas and sangria and...well I'm sure you don't want details on the rest…’