Fifteen Minutes Alone

Posted on Sun Oct 11th, 2020 @ 10:36am by Alden Loxley

Mission: Just A Short Hop to Priam
Location: Priam Docks/Fortune's Echo
Timeline: Day 17 Late Morning

Chloe's repairs had held together just fine with only a minor tweak here and there, and his secret paranoia about running to a desolate stop somewhere out in the black had once again been squashed by the skills of his crew. A newly restructured and recently 'hired' crew at that. If by hired, he actually meant stolen from the darker recesses of the Verse and accidentally brought on board for longer than was good or right by most folks' standards.

They'd left Noah behind, and a piece of Alden's heart along with a chunk of his past slammed closed with more pain than he'd been able to face at the time. Sibyl was the right place for Noah-Jade to be, though it was still a raw wound in the Echo Captain's mind, a head-wound that ached and cried out for attention far louder than anything physical might. The engineer had known more than most, and even with the addition of an old friend from way back, Noah's ghost would haunt Alden for a while to come yet.

Then he had the two young uns to consider. Tristan with his utter lack of any real useful skillset for a ship's crew to consider - Alden had to admit that Ali was right on that score. Well, he had to admit it in the privacy of his own mind. Something told him that thief skills and whatever the hell else the kid was capable of might come in handy one of these days, but he'd be lying if he said the boy was currently worth any real paycheque. He'd learn, right?

And Daiyu. An emotional mess of a mystery headed for somewhere between insanity and potential botanist/farmer, which was a head-fuck all on its own merit. They should probably detour via Ariel and hand her off to the Alliance medical teams, for her own good and for the crew's sanity. He hadn't plotted that course though. Why? It was both easy and impossible to entirely explain. He cared too much, Alden told himself, for all the right reasons at the wrong time.

Now? Now at least as he lay on his bunk and stared at the ceiling in a moment of calm before everyone else made it back to the Echo, he could rest temporarily easy. They had a cargo hold full of Twin Worlds Brewery's Ithaca/Priam Ale - IPA to the rest of the Verse - and an easy win as far as money went. A dead cert, a fine payday and a jaunt out to Santo in this case to deliver it.

And with the Firefly they all trusted running just fine after the Heran Nightmare, he could try real hard to push those secondhand demons to the back of his mind. Six days away, the morally bankrupt Santo waited, and the run from Georgia to White Sun was a well-travelled route as safe as any could be.

Perhaps in White Sun, Alison and Karen would be able to talk him into delivering Daiyu to the safe hands of Ariel, but Alden doubted it. Perhaps in White Sun, Tristan would talk a little more about himself and fess up to his own reality, but Alden highly doubted that too.

He exhaled, dragged his butt off his bunk and walked to the ladder. Time to check if they were all safely accounted for and back on board. They had time, company, fuel and a ship. They had each other right now and that was more than he wanted or deserved.

One trip across the black, one venture in trade, one world at a time.