Hard Luck Hermit

While Tooley was left to her own devices in the cockpit, to better speed their escape, the rest of the crew convened for a meeting. Now that they were a few jumps away from Centerpoint, they had the time -and level heads- necessary to discuss what the fuck had just happened.

“Corey. How’s the pig?”

“Absolutely nonsensical,” Corey said. “I think. She keeps going on and on about losing her job. I can’t tell if it’s a cultural thing or if she’s just having some kind of psychotic episode.”

All eyes turned to Farsus, who stared blankly right back.

“Am I expected to provide input here?”

“You’re usually the guy who knows about weird cultural stuff,” Kamak said.

“The universe is too vast for even the wisest scholar to have all things memorized,” Farsus said. “I am not even aware of her species, much less the intricacies of its culture.”

“Well, once we’re done running for our lives, maybe you can play a ‘get to know you’ game with her,” Kamak said. “If we’re ever done running for our lives.”

“On that note, I believe we are owed explanations, Kamak,” Farsus said. “It is apparent our plan went wrong, but how?”

“Whoever we’re dealing with is even further ahead of the game than we thought,” Kamak said. “In the time it took us to get in touch with that crying little shit, they had a whole plan set up to kill her and let us take the fall. Luckily for To Vo, her boss grew a conscience and decided to set herself up for an execution instead. Even managed to spit out half of a useful secret before her bosses blew a hole in her chest.”

“With us still taking the blame for her death, I assume,” Doprel sighed.

“Naturally, the universe wouldn’t miss that chance to fuck us over,” Kamak said. “Before she got blasted, the boss cop lady managed to squeak out that this is all some kind of smoke screen, though. Somebody wants people focused on us, to get focus off something else.”

“And so the question becomes who is trying to distract, and what they seek to distract from,” Farsus said.

“I look forward to finding out once we get back from our vacation,” Kamak said. “We’re going to an independent galaxy, and finding a nice quiet place to lie low until this all blows over. If it’s not about us, it can happen without us. We’re out of here.”

When the matter had possibly been personal, Kamak had been far more interested in finding the source. Now that he knew he was merely an accessory to some larger scheme, all that interest was gone. If he could find a place to hide and ride out the storm, he would.

“Seriously, Kamak?”

“Seriously, Doprel,” Kamak snapped. “This isn’t our problem. Somebody wants to get us involved against our will, fuck them.”

“Where the water runs, even unmoving stones change its flow,” Farsus scolded.

“Fuck does that mean?”

“Choosing to do nothing is still choosing a side,” Corey said, to an approving nod from Farsus.

“The only thing I’m choosing is not to dance for some mystery asshole,” Kamak said. “What do you have planned, huh? The only thing we’ve learned is that we knew even less than we thought. What do we do with that?”

“That’s not all we learned. Mokai said our crew was the perfect powder keg,” Corey said. He pointed to Doprel, then towards the cockpit. “She called out the people fighting the Doccan and the Structuralists. Whatever’s going on involves Doprel and Tooley’s species specifically.”

Kamak bit his lip. Corey had a point, as much as he hated to admit it. Before, he’d simply assumed that the anti-Doccan faction and the Structuralist obsession with purity were just convenient ways to get more attack dogs on their tail, but if the two factions were specifically being distracted, there had to be a connecting factor. That gave them part of a lead, at least. But just a part.

“Sounds like all the more reason to not get involved,” Kamak snapped. “I don’t want to be involved in a bunch of bullshit species politics.”

“We are already involved,” Farsus said. “The only question now is whether we take action or allow ourselves to be exploited.”

“The only ‘actions’ we’ve taken so far have nearly got us killed,” Kamak said. “And gotten a whole bunch of other people killed too. We’re not superheroes, we’re bounty hunters, we don’t do shit we aren’t getting paid to do.”

“I’d consider being able to get a good night’s sleep again some pretty good payment,” Corey said.

“Get drunk like your blue bitch of a girlfriend,” Kamak said.

“Kamak, that’s uncalled for.”

“Don’t you lecture me, Doprel,” Kamak snapped back. “You all want to go on some suicide mission to try and solve this thing, buy your own fucking ship and do it yourselves! This is my fucking ship, I’m the fucking captain, and we’re not going anywhere unless I say so!”

With his commanding outburst finished, Kamak cut off any attempts at counter-argument by storming off into his quarters and slamming the door shut behind him. Doprel attempted to follow, but Farsus cut him off and shook his head.

“The recent violence has put him on edge,” Farsus said. “Time will do a better job calming him than any words will.”

Tempers rarely flared aboard the Hermit, but when they did, Farsus usually saw that patience was key. Among numerous other personality flaws, Kamak could be very stubborn, and only dug his heels in deeper the more one tried to convince him to move on. Thankfully, that stubbornness was nicely paired with a short attention span. Kamak would mostly lose interest in the hill he’d decided to die on in short order, and it would be much easier to convince him later.

“Whatever our long-term bearing may be, a brief reprieve to hide and gather our thoughts benefits us,” Farsus said. “We can take our time and decide on the right course of action after we have assured our own safety.”

“He’s got a point,” Corey said. Doprel acquiesced, and lumbered off to his own quarters.

“I will see to our guest,” Farsus said, indicating towards the room To Vo had bunkered down in. “In spite of his sarcasm, Kamak had a point. We should get to know our new passenger.”

If the former officer was going to have any future aboard the ship, they needed to know if she had any skills the crew could make use of. Or, if she didn’t have a future aboard the ship, they needed to know where to drop her off. Farsus figured the latter was much more likely.

“Alright, sounds good. I’ll...wait around, I guess.”

A crisis was a bad time to be the new guy in the crew. Corey had yet to find his footing in the larger dynamic of the ship. The only person who seemed to really value his opinion so far was Tooley, and even that was to a very limited extent. Corey would take what he could get, so he headed for the cockpit.

“Hey, Tooley. Figure you heard the shouting?”

“Hard not to,” Tooley grumbled. She was done inputting coordinates and had lurched the ship into faster-than-light speeds, so she had nothing better to do than sit back and listen to Kamak yell. “He’s being an ass about it, as usual, but Kamak’s got a point. This is not our problem on several levels.”

“They’re making it our problem.”

“So then let’s not let them,” Tooley said. “We can go hide out somewhere. Maybe wherever you’re from, Borf, right? Take it over with our advanced tech, live like kings.”

“I’d sooner take the railgun shot than go back to Earth,” Corey said, emphasizing the word “Earth”.

“Heard and understood,” Tooley said. She’d take a bullet before a ticket back to Turitha too. “So where do you want to hide out, then? Place with a beach? Some kind of mountain? I know a few places. Low population, not much space traffic, we’d never be noticed.”

“I don’t think this is the kind of problem you can run from,” Corey said.

“That’s because you’re still thinking in planetary terms,” Tooley said. “Big universe, Corvash. There’s always more places to run to.”

“There’s never enough places to run.”

“Was that supposed to sound deep?”

“Not...really?”

“Good. Because it didn’t.”