The Stars Await - Mists of Europa

[Alexis Voltaire]

"For you, stay out of trouble until we're ready to take off." Mariah replied, the slightest hint of a threat in her tone. "After that, it'll take us a few days just to fly out to the asteroid belt, that's where this ship has been seen most often. What we do after that depends on what my friend has to say about the area, but I've got a few ideas."

[Stella Gaslight]

Lou was annoyed with herself the bites on her arms were nearly gone but she still tired easily and her eyes had a lingering light sensitivity and both of those were keeping her from working on her latest design as much as she would like to.  Dark lenses on she came to breakfast smiling.  "I got it to work." She announced putting a small brass figure on the table and turned the key on it's back.  Its limbs unfolded like a flower and it skittered across the table seeking the heat of the table lamp.  "It still falls off the table nine times out of ten but at least it isn't braiding everything anymore."  Lou still had waves in her hair from it braiding her hair in to a large mass on her head and then trying to braid it in to her pillow.  There were still braided wires all over the ship from it's first rampage.

[steamcowboy92]

Narrowing his eyes at Mariah, he scowled darkly and said "yah yah i wont start nothin..." then muttering under his breath added "dont mean ah cant let them start it first"
Glaring at the little figure, Talon said "Bout damn time, little monster tried tah braid meh when ah were in tha head, you wanna talk bout ahkard try taking a piss and faleing little cold metal hands grabbing yuh from underneath.  thought ah was like to piss mahself if ah hadnt already"

Looking up at Lou he playfully asked "watch done gone and built that thar thang fer anyhow? yah plannin on startin  yer own line of toys?"

[Stella Gaslight]

"I keep thinking about the squid things and how we might have been able to clear them out quicker if we could have had a bushel full of automatons go after them instead of us.  I want to make some that find monsters then explode but that is going to have to wait until they are smarter than a box of rocks."  Lou said as it continually bumped in to the lamp.

[MWBailey]

well, actually, " Bailey said, gears turning in his head, "if you can keep it seekin' heat , and make it go to it without bangin' into everything, a vial o' nitro'd be 'bout all it'd take to get it done. makin' em like they are now 'd be fine, too, just turn 'em loose when somebody tries ta follow us..."

[Stella Gaslight]

Lou pulled a notebook from her back pocket and started sketching things out and making a parts list. "Oooh wicked thought that is. I need to go get a few parts and see what I can come up with.  Are you going in to town?  I figure we could go together and I could buy you that drink."

[MWBailey]

"Sounds like a plan,"  Bailey answered, "We kin rent another two seater. "There's a gunsmith over in Old Town, what sells gun parts as well 's fixes 'em, maybe they'd have somethin' you kin use..."

[The Corsair]

"Hold that thought." Roger interrupted, having eavesdropped for a while now, "I've been up and down the ship and if I'm not mistaken we've the parts to cobble together another of those things. It won't be quite as clean-cut as the other but if I have a week and no interruptions I can get it moving better than the military ones. I've seen walkers on Venus far better than that thing that were only for trade."

[Stella Gaslight]

"If we get the little ones working right we could build a big one like a sedan chair with legs that could climb up walls.  It would make offloading cargo A hell of a lot easier.  Probably don't want to make that seek heat tho it could get messy.  But then again a bigger one could hold a bigger gear brain I am cramming all I can in to this little thing."  Lou picked up the hand sized automaton and it folded back in to a palm sized disk.  "Boyo do you want to come out with us? You would have to ride on the cargo pegs but it isnt too bad."

[steamcowboy92]

Looking back and forth between Lou and Bailey, Talon said "Ah got some things tah take care of here abouts, if'n ya dont mind a waitin', ah kinda wanna see this gunsmith ah yorn mahself."  

Leaving the table, Talon disappeared into the hold of the ship where his stolen bike sat. The rumble of the big motorcycle turning over reverberated throughout the entire ship like the awakening yawns of some long dormant beast, roused from his long slumber.

Letting the cycle warm up, Talon returned to his bunk. He re-emerged 30 minutes later, clean shaven and bedecked in heavily starched blue jeans, a well pressed, custom fitted red button down shirt with mother of pearl snaps, a turquoise inlaid bolo tie, fringed black leather chaps, black vest, black calfskin gloves. Cocked rakishly to one side, his formerly gore splattered bolero was free of blood and sported a shiny barb wire hatband that gleamed in the sunlight. The hole in his vest from a possessed miner's bullet had been hidden by jamming the stem of a yellow rose into it, and running a fine brass chain from his inner pocket, through the hole, out from behind the rose, and crossing his vest to disappear into the opposite outer pocket of his vest..

One of his few passions besides killing, Talon was a voracious reader and an amateur gardener. His pride and glory was the miniature rose bush he'd grown in a box of loam he kept in the corner of his roomnext to several piles of books he'd picked up at the last few stops, he fed the roses every day with sugar water mixed with a small amount of his own blood, and kept it warm and lit with a growing lamp he'd stolen.
 
  Looking every inch the respectable western gentleman, Talon seemed to glow with a natural authority and confidence that, for a moment, made it hard to believe that he was the same psychotic killer everyone had come to know and hate. Normally the double holster gun rig he wore would have spoiled the effect but he wore them so naturally that they just seemed to be an extension of his very being. The tomahawk was gone, stashed in his bunk, but the blood stained scalping knife was sheathed in a horizontal carry at the small of his back.

Dusting the back seat of his cycle off with his red bandanna which he kept neatly folded in his front pocket, Talon tipped his hat to Bailey and Lou and gestured to the cycle with a broad sweeping gesture of his hand. Gone was the thick accent, replaced with impeccable grammar and pronunciation as he asked "Miss Lou, would you care to share a saddle with me? Willie may ride in the side car."

[Stella Gaslight]

"Sure as long as the ride is smooth.  My arms are still fussing so I can't hang on like I used to."  Lou tried to smooth her hair but it poofed right back out.  Her shirt and vest were clean for oncw because she hadn't been crawling about in engines for almost a week.  Lou rather missed that but the doctor said bedrest and after the secound time she almost passed out trying to work she was forced to comply.  It felt like she slept most of the last week away. At least she was getting better now being stuck in bed even with small progects to work on drove her up the walls.

[MWBailey]

"Might be better to let Lou ride in th' sidecar; it'd be a shame to have her fall off n' get hurt worse, wouldn't it?" Bailey said. He saw Lou's disappointed look, and rolled his eyes, and said, "Well, whatever she wants, I suppose. No, you're not sittin' in my lap, Roger boy," Bailey added. "You ain't pretty, or female, so no dice. Get on the cargo rack back there, an' hang on to the headache bar, if you're bound to go along."

Bailey needed to talk to Talon and get some things straightened out, but it could wait for a short while -- as long as he didn't try anything. Lou could take care of herself, he knew, but Talon was a whole other shipload of trouble from anything she'd seen, at least during the time he'd known her. If he hurt her, Bailey'd skin him alive -- literally.

[Stella Gaslight]

"Sorry Bailey boy but I look even more like a kid in the side car.  I swear if I get one more barfly that gives me a pat on the head and buys me a soda and tells me to head on home I am going to have to come to blows about it."  Lou grumbled.  She was never not taking seriously at home and it rubbed her the wrong way.

[MWBailey]

"Well, be sure you hold on tight, and Talon, be sure you don't throw Roger off on the turns, we need 'im to help Lou keep the ship together." A devilish side of himself joked and laughed in the back of his mind, at the fact that he hadn't said not to throw the boy off on the straightaways, but Bailey didn't voice that. No need to scare the kid unduly.

"Let's go, we're burnin' lookin' time..."

[steamcowboy92]

turning his head to hide the sarcastic smile, Talon tried to hold in a laugh as the temptation of patting her on the head became hard to resist. Feeling small hands slip around his waist, Talon surpressed a smile and gunned the engine, sending them flying out of the hold of the ship.

[Stella Gaslight]

"Wooohooo." Lou called out as they took a sharp turn out of the docks.  "This is just like that time I rode the roof on the friday comuter special.  Easyest 10 credits I ever made."

[MWBailey]

Bailey barely had time to loop the shemagh back up around his head and veil-like across his mouth and nose, and pull the goggles down ove rhis eyes. Tranquility was not as dirty as London on Earth, or as dusty as Port Gundoowee on Mars, but some grit did get kicked up by motor vehicles, and not breathing it or getting it in one's eyes was usually a good idea."Left here!" he yelled out, "then cut in at the curb down there across from the fountain! He's up on th' mezzanine of the Hotel Mall!" Bailey roared against the wind and engine noise, referring to the gunsmith's emporium.

[Alexis Voltaire]

Mariah caught one of the small three-seater open passenger cabs at the edge of the port, and told the driver to head out to the craftsman's district on the other side of the city. Tranquility was much less crowded than it had been over the past week and vehicles could navigate the city center at faster than a walk, since the coming of the chilly lunar night discouraged many of the visitors from earth.

She stopped off at a small shop that made leather and metal goods to pick up a couple of things she'd come in to have made a few days before, a fitted holster for the disintigrator and a scabbard for the saber she'd picked up in the fight at Aquilis. She'd had both made simple and sturdy for heavy use, though the scabbard had a single stone set into the brass for decoration, an oval of the native deep blue azurite.

She quickly paid for the items and left, heading back to the cab where it was waiting by the curb and giving the driver the address of her next stop. She thought about stopping by James Alister's place again also, he'd probably know a few things about the routes in the asteroid belt, but she thought better of it. She'd already visited him once since they'd returned from Aquilis, and for whatever reason James had never liked being visited that often after his accident had stuck him here in Tranquility, even by the dozen or so people that knew him but his first name.

[MWBailey]

Similarly to the Captain, Heinrich hired a cab and rode through teh city center to a suburb on the far side, where specially-adapted cherry trees dropped their petals and added their perfume to the chill twilight. Heinrich was ushered graciously into Yuu's parents' home, led through a heartbreakingly-beautiful Japanese-style courtyard garden, adn admonished to leave his katana outside the house proper. He retained his Wakizashi as per tradition, and was ushed to an audience with yuu's father and mother.

"We welcome you to our home," the father said, "and apologize for what we have to say to you. We both feel that you would be a truly good match for our daughter, but unfortunately, she has decided to turn her earnestness in a different direction..."

[steamcowboy92]

Tearing down the streets of tranquility, his bandanna pulled up tight over his nose and mouth, Talon ripped and roared around every turn, occasionally putting the bike on two wheels, taking turns so sharply that the side car left the road for a few seconds. Yelling above the roar of the bike and the screams of outraged people trying to get out of the way, Talon quipped "FASTER! FASTER! UNTIL THE THRILL OF SPEED OVERCOMES THE FEAR OF DEATH!!"

[MWBailey]

Bailey shook his head slightly (anymore and it would've ripped loose amid Talon's roadway acrobatics), and muttered, "Boy's got gelignite fer brains." Luckily, he knew how bikes like this were put together, and there, right within reach lay the fuel feed valve, secured in-line by two pressure fittings, one on each end of the ball-type valve. Bailey reached over and loosened one of the pressure nuts, causing air to enter the line, making an unworkable fuel-to-air mixture, and thus causing the bike to slowly grind to a halt, fortuitously just outside the gunsmith's location. Bailey stood up, stepped out of the sidecar, and grabbed Talon's collar, hauling him off of the seat, hanging at eye level.

"Boy," he said, "If yo' daddy saw you now, he'd do just what I'm doin'. The ride was fun, but you damn near killed about fifty people just now, and that clangin' sound is the constables. You done did just exactly what th' Cap'n said not to do. Now, let's git inside afore th' constables catch up." The clanging of the pursuit lorry sounded in the distance, getting louder by the second.

[steamcowboy92]

Despite the fact that they were the same height, and Bailey was twice his age, Talon was still amazed by the sheer amount of raw strength in the old veterans frame. Strength that came from a lifetime of hard work.

looking sheepishly at the ground Talon muttered "Sorry Willie. fergot how good it felt tah ride again after so many years, reckon ah got a might carried away." a dangerous light started gleaming in Talon's eye and his voice changed to gravel. "Yeh wanna let meh down old timer?"  

dropping to his feet with a thud, Talon wheeled the bike out of site, muttering darkly to himself, having a full blown arguement between the two halves of his personality.

[Stella Gaslight]

Men were odd Lou decided holding open the door as light spilled out from the shop. "Might I suggest we get along inside before we attract more of a circus?"

[MWBailey]

When the constables arrived, there ensued a veritable comedy of errors in which nearly everyone on the street was collared, questioned, threatened with charges, and then released. Finally, the constables left with a description that was nearly useless, without a perpetrator to pin anything on, and with a great deal of disgruntlement.

Inside teh shop, Bailey handed over the derringer to the proprietor. "I need ta know how to charge this thing, and what is it?" he asked.

The wiry-yet-pretty lady proprietor turned it over and around several times, and pulled around a counter-mounted magnifier, a big 12-inch monstrosity of a thing on a cantilever-boom mounting, around tobear on the tiny gun. "Looks like an Ingram," she said. "German make, not the smallest I've seen, they make hideouts you can fit in a coin purse, and hunt slashcats with. Best damn raygun makers in the 'verse, wish they made full-size weapons..." she turned up the lamp over the counter, and looked at a projection on the butt. "Yeah. Push this thingy here, see?" She held it so Bailey could see, and pushed the projection in a ways until it clicked. A panel popped open on the butt, and two copper-plated leads poked out. "Attach these to any dipole ship current leader and it'll charge up in about ten minutes. It'll also charge off of an aether whip, but that can take a day or if there's a sunspot or a storm, it'll fry the circuits in nothin' flat -- so don't try it unless you're sure of what the sun's doing. You can also use dry cells, it'll take about ten of 'em in series, and about three hours. You need any more cylinders for your Walker rig, there?"

[Alexis Voltaire]

Mariah waved the cab off when she reached the place she was looking for, a large brick house that had belonged to a city official, and way back when Tranquility had fist been founded had sat a fair distance away from the city. It had been overrun by the city's expansion over the years however, and it had been sold long ago and divided into apartments. Her knock was answered by the housekeeper, who told her the man she was looking for wasn't there, and said if she really needed to speak with him, she'd find him at the pub down the street. "looking for better work, he says, but all Nathan does there on his days off is gamble his pay away, and he's always late with the rent." She added with a disapproving glare, as if Mariah was somehow partly responsible.

Mariah thanked her for the directions and left, soon finding the right place at the end of the long avenue. The place was mostly empty, aside from a few people sitting by themselves and eating breakfast, and a group of men sitting around a table near the back playing cards, Nathaniel among them.

Mariah took a seat at one of the tables, intending to wait for Nathan to finish his game. But as she watched she could see that while they were doing thier best to keep thier emotions hidden, two of them kept glancing darkly at Nathaniel. When he won the next hand, there were unhappy mutters, and a man that had his back turned to her started to reach slowly for a blackjack in his back pocket.

Mariah got up and moved up to the table, catching Nathan's attention. He had just opened his mouth to say that he'd talk when he finished the game, but before he could say anything Mariah interrupted him. "Gentlemen, I'd like a word with my friend Nathaniel here, would you mind terribly excusing him?"

No one at the table seemed to mind the idea, but Nathaniel started to protest. "Now." She added in a tone of finality. She wasn't all that surprised to see Nathaniel in this situation, he'd been thrown off the ship last ship he worked as a navigator on because he'd been caught cheating at cards one too many times by the rest of the crew.

Nathaniel collected his winnings and got up to join her. "Until next time lads." The man who had been reaching for the blackjack gave her a dark glance as they left, his expression for the most part unreadable, but he looked slightly perturbed at losing his chance to teach Nathaniel a lesson.

"Sorry to interrupt your game, looked like they were starting to get upset with you."

He shrugged, giving her an indifferent smile. "It's happens, just trying to make a little money on the side while I'm stuck here running shuttles. I heard you were looking for me?"

"Yes, I'm aiming to track down that rogue German ship that's been hunting out in the asteroid belt." Mariah said. "No one's been able to catch her so far, not even the military. I though you'd have some idea about what she's been doing to hide so well."

"Well, I might know a little about that..." Nathaniel replied with a sly smile, calling for a plate of sausages from the cook and some hot coffee before he began to talk...