MILA
I'm standing in an empty car park, south-end of Ar'Siqia, and surrounded by four or so dead Loreqi. Correction: three. Turns out one of the poor buggers are still breathing, despite having his entire abdomen melting in chemicals. He shouldn't have long, obviously, at least a minute the acid will finish up here.
I pull myself up on the car door, before scrounging for some regen in the glovebox. I stick it in my arm, and my bullet wound starts to heal up. It aches, but I've taken at least fifty of those since waking up that at this point it's just a way of life. I pick out my mobile, clicking down the contacts list and start to call someone.
A couple seconds pass, and the tar-infected voice of a woman, Doctor Williams, speaks through, "How'd the deal go down?"
I glance back at the bodies. "You know, honestly, I think it could've gone better. There could have been less... dead people."
"Have you still got the stuff?"
"Most of the dealers are covered in a crate of it, I'm afraid."
"Oh for fuck's sake, Abdi."
"I've got two more loaded in the boot, calm yourself. What do you even need these things for anyway?"
"That's none of your business."
"Come on, I'm putting my life on the line here, I at least want to know what you're doing with all these weird little runs you make me do."
A sigh comes from her end. "Just get back to the Centaurus, Abdi." And they hang up. Honestly, I don't know why I put up with these people. My best guess is she's brewing drugs, either for her or to sell. Maybe it's weaponry, and she is trying to bring back the art of chemical warfare.
Eventually, the Loreqi still alive groaned, "K-kala... Kala."
I check the rounds left my handgun, and tread over to him. "Sorry about this, mate."
----------------------------------------
Back in the car now, on the road again. Quite a bit got damaged in that whole fiasco back there: cracked windows, a blown off rear mirror, even a stray bullet managed to make a massive hole in my carseat. I try not to think about what just happened, using the wet wipes for all the blood on my face. I honestly don't know why I've stuck with all of this, I can go anywhere in space if I want to, find better work, but instead I'm settling with delivering chemicals for a lady that smells like cannabis.
I switch the radio on, dialling through multiple radio stations streaming in this sector, from Earth Classical to Arvan opera, eventually, I leave it on a random station. It's Oasis. Again. Thankfully nearing its end. An advert, in English, comes on.
"—Christmas has come to an end, but here at HarvestHub, our Winter Sale continues on. From food to kitchenware, our prices are a bargain in the Frontier—"
Once more, I switch, settling in on old J-Pop, likely bouncing in from an Allied Systems outpost a couple light-years over. It crackles in areas, but I don't mind, it beats staying in traffic with a dozen or so beeping vehicles around you. My car remains at a halt for a few more minutes, the ones ahead just refuse to move. There's likely a gunfight up ahead, or perhaps one of these old buildings decided their time had come.
The traffic finally moves, and I take a route off the main road, heading into a somewhat peaceful area. There aren't as many cars, and the buildings seem quite maintained.
A marimba tune comes from my phone, and I pick it out. "Go for Abdi."
"Abdi, what's your ETA?" DAVE, the AI for the ship I work for, asks me.
"Ten-fifteen minutes. Sorry, I just got caught in some traffic."
"You might want to keep up the pace, the starport managers just ramped up their docking fees."
"Why would they do that?"
"Oh, reasons. Something about smuggling or some gang war. You never know what the news is out here."
"Tell me about it."
"Hey, listen. I'm just wondering, you haven't heard from AT-6 have you?"
"AT-6? Is that—"
"Eyha's little errand group, yeah. All away teams are back and accounted for, it's just you and them we're still waiting for. They haven't responded to a few calls lately, we're worried something has happened."
"Their phone must have died, it doesn't always have to be doom and gloom."
"The last call, Eyha told me they were allegedly transporting a bounty Ryan supposedly captured. He thinks he'd caught the Feral."
"Mhm, okay." That moment, it hits me. "Sorry, say that again?"
"Yeah, the Feral. Ryan found him running from the locals in Ta'Shiala. From what I've heard over the phone, he just sounds like some lost English guy. Apparently his name is Nolan Kumar."
"Shit."
"Exactly! Honestly, the trouble that boy brings, he's not even twelve yet. Apparently Bryce already has a security team in the main bay."
I notice a figure, wearing a halloween mask, suddenly have the bright idea to run into the middle of the road. Almost immediately, I hit the brakes, stopping a metre in front of him. I open the window, sticking my head out.
"Are you mental?! Get off the road!" I shout at them.
"You understand the horn is a thing, right?"
Suddenly, the figure takes their mask off. It's a boy, around t— "What the hell? Ryan?!"
"Sorry, did you just say Ryan?" DAVE asks.
"I'll talk to you later," I say, before hanging up.
Then another voice, this one English, quite Brummie, appears out of nowhere. "Mila?!"
I stare out the other window. A man, likely with the boy, takes his halloween mask off, I roll down the stained window to get a proper look: scruffy beard, messed up hair. Oh God.
"Nolan?! Holy shit!" They're running from something, the mix of shouting voices nearby gives it away. I unlock the car. "Get inside!"
Nolan gets into the passenger seat, Ryan rushes into the back. The second I get a glimpse of their pursuers, my foot is on the accelerator, and I drive off.
Now, quite a bit is running through my mind at this point. Most importantly, what the hell is Nolan doing here?! This was meant to be a shopping run and all of a sudden, I almost drive over a member of one of the Centauri's away teams and run into Nolan of all people?! He should be with Eyha, shouldn't he? What happened to her?!
Nolan's laughing, like it's his first hit of dopamine in years. "Oh my God, it's great to see you!"
I give him a nervous smile. "Yep, yeah. You too."
It's safe to say he's not drunk anymore. Truthfully, I was worried the time we would run into each other, he would be wearing my kidneys as a necklace within an instant. Okay, perhaps that was just an exaggeration from all the bounty adverts, but still.
His face and beard are all covered in grime and sand, maybe a bit of blood, less than a couple hours old. Maybe sobriety just came for him, maybe he went through a couple scraps. I don't know. Looking in the rear-view mirror, Eyha's kid looks similar, although he's a lot more silent, the depressing kind of silent. I'm doubting he is in the mood to talk with anybody.
"What err... what's up?" I say.
He hesitates for a couple seconds. "A lot, actually."
"Mhm, I can tell." Hopefully, he's up for some questions. I ask him, "So... you're with Ryan?"
"Funny story. He was after my bounty." Judging by all the grime on him, I assume that Ryan met some competition. He then questions, "Wait, how d'you know his name?"
"Okay, so I've been working with his ship."
His eyes widen a bit. "You've been working on the Centaurus?"
"No, not working working, I've had a contract with them for a few months now."
"But you're still working for them."
"Mmm, yeah."
"And you didn't think to mention me. Put me on a whitelist or something."
"What would I have said? 'Oh, hey, see this guy worth half a million on the poster? Yeah, I went to school with him. He's just drunk, please don't hunt him down'." I say. "Besides, the Centaurus docked here for supplies, how was I supposed to know someone would be coming after you? Or that you were even on this planet in the first place?" I look over at Ryan. "The ship knows about this, right?"
He nods, and I say, "Well that's fantastic. Absolutely fantastic. Okay, Nolan, run me through everything that's happened since you woke up. I mean everything, in detail too."
"Umm, okay. Why?"
"The ship is going to be expecting the Feral, I'm going to bring them Nolan."
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NOLAN
I told her everything, not whitewashing any bits, nothing was left out. She wasn't exactly baffled by the shenanigans that went on with me today, it was clear she tried balancing analysing and dealing with the traffic on the road. I was still overjoyed to see her, first familiar face in this ocean of weirdos. I guessed she was at the party in London, would explain how she ended up in this place. Though her drunk self seemed to have fared a lot better than my psychopathic alter ego. I was hoping to catch up with her, honestly. Didn't expect her to stress over my bounty.
Midway through, she told me to get a shaver, supposed to slowly disintegrate your hairs, and wet wipes out from her glovebox. Make myself unrecognisable. I didn't think going through a rushed makeover would've been enough, but according to her, the scruffy beard was signature. There weren't any main
Second I finished explaining, she said, "Okay. That was... complicated. I've still got a bunch of questions about that, mainly where Ryan got a fake gun from. But yeah, that's good, we can work with this. Sorry for your loss, Ryan. I'm sure Eyha was a good person."
"Thanks,” he said weakly.
"So, you don't know who attacked you?"
"Uh, no. Not really," I replied.
"Okay, we'll say it's road bandits."
"Road bandits?" I said, cringing at the name.
"Quite common out here, Nolan. Okay, I'm going to figure out an alibi, how's your beard coming along, by the way?"
It wasn't my best work, unfortunately. I could only do so much in a moving car using a cracked side-view mirror. Plus, the shaver seemed third-hand, it was as functional as an aeroplane running on human waste. The grime was largely gone too, but I didn't think wet wipes could hide all the scars on my face.
She glanced at me. "You look unrecognisable."
"I look like if Doris Langston tried swimming in a pool of crocodiles."
"Nobody will recognise you, calm down. Wait, who's Doris Langston?"
"That old PM, couldn't get a word out?"
"Do you mean Boris Johnson?"
"I'm pretty sure it was Doris."
"Doesn't matter. Right, your alibis. Ryan, again, I'm sorry for your loss, but would you be willing to... you know, lie to everyone?"
Ryan stared at both of us. His mother figure was killed by God-knows-who, to which he thought I was somehow involved. And he was being asked to lie about all of it for one of the most wanted people this side of the galaxy and someone who's just in a contract with his employers. There was no way in a million years he'd've agreed on that.
The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.
"Sure," he said.
He agreed, he actually just agreed on it. Or maybe he was lying, would've gladly ratted us out to the rest of the people on his ship the first chance he got. Even so, I had virtually no faith in Mila's alibi.
"Brilliant," she said. "Okay so, Nolan, drop your bender story. We'll errr..." She kept snapping her fingers, "sort out what's happened during then another time. In fact, take some InstaSober, okay? Again, in the glovebox, you'll be feeling better soon enough. Ryan, I want you to follow on with the idea you got the wrong guy. About your ambush, you already know about the road bandits thing. We'll get rid of the searchers that came in after that. Your car broke down, you followed the map, you ran into me. Do the both of you understand?"
"Umm, sure. Okay, I can work with that," I said, popping a bottle of InstaSober pills.
"Fine," Ryan said.
"Good."
Before I even brought up any questions outside my whole bounty, we had already arrived at the spaceport. It was a large facility, with dozens of starships consistently docking and leaving a series of complexes, all overseen by a tower near the edge of the place.
Mila showed her papers at the security booth, and eventually drove inside one of the docking complexes. One ship took up about half the place, four decks high and over a hundred metres long. Along the side of its hull painted 'CENTAURI - 2', all scratched and vandalised by the forces of space and nature. Mila drove into one of the open cargo bays, packed with crates, machinery, tools and weaponry. After a bit, she parked in a vehicle bay.
"Remember what I spoke about," she ordered, before we all exited the jeep.
Several of the personnel, a mixture of races, gave glares at us. Some just smiled, and waved at Mila, others were baffled by the strange man and child that were in her car. The latter of which had decided to go off somewhere.
Mila opened the boot, revealing multiple crates inside. "Help me with these things."
She passed one over to me, by God they were heavy, to the point they almost dislocated my shoulders. "What's in these?! Bricks?!"
"Calm yourself, they're not that heavy."
"But you couldn't've bothered to pack a trolley or anything? Shit!" I dropped the crate on the floor, and along came a series of cracks and shatters.
A man with an Australian accent called from one of the balconies. "Mila!" We looked above, it was a middle-aged guy, possibly one of the ship's higher-ups, gesturing her to come over to him.
"Look, just stay here. Don't touch anything else in the boot please." She headed off, leaving me to the mercy of the awkwardness that was to come.
----------------------------------------
MILA
What does Bryce want? Is it the fact Nolan dropped a whole crate filled with expensive chemicals? I brought spares for a reason, there's no point in acting up about it. Or did he manage to recognise Nolan?
I meet up with him by the pile of junk at the end of the bay, praying it's the first. His arms are folded, he is clearly not happy. "What do you think you're doing?" he orders quietly.
Maybe it's the fact I'm 'late'. "Sorry, the traffic's an absolute nightm—"
"I don't care about your timing, Abdi. I care about the fact you've just waltzed in here with the Feral in your car."
Yeah, it's about Nolan. "That's not the Feral, he's just a friend of mine, Nolan. I ran into him on the way back."
"What were you doing with Ryan, then?"
"Funny thing—" I give a nervous smile, much worse than what I gave Nolan, "—apparently Ryan thought he was this 'Feral' fellow."
He raises his scarred eyebrow. "I'm not an idiot, Abdi. The boy should've been with the rest of his away team with a bounty."
"I'm afraid they ran into road bandits along the way. Eyha has unfortunately... passed."
He's convinced on this part, and pinches the bridge of his nose. "I'll worry about this later. Just explain yourself please."
"Again: Nolan is a friend of mine. Ryan thought he was the 'Feral'. What more do you want?"
"So he's actually your friend then?"
"Yes. I've known him since Sixth Form. If he is the man you think he is, neither Ryan or I would still be alive. Hell, he saved Ryan when Eyha kicked the bucket."
"Please don't refer to her death like that."
"Sorry. The point is, Nolan here can't even get near a bee without pissing himself, he's harmless! I mean, look at him!"
He stares over, noticing him having some awkward chats with a few crew members. "When was the last time you saw him?"
"Two... well, nearly three years ago."
He speaks over his watch, "DAVE, does his face line up?"
"On the most part, outside the lack of a beard," the AI spoke through. "However, the reports don't match up from the behaviour I'm hearing over there. He's likely just a lookalike."
"All right, order extra sec—"
Oh shit, we're screwed. Out of desperation, I tell him, "Bryce, I'm calling in that favour."
He glared at me, "What favour?"
"Baganuur Station, that favour. Don't throw him in the brig, please. I'll deal with him. I promise he won't be a burden."
Bryce stares to the floor in thought. "Who's with him down there?"
"Fakushi Nakamura and Koha Jenvi."
"All right, tell one of them to escort him to my office. I want to speak to him. Abdi, I'm sure the Doctor wants those crates as soon as possible."
Bryce then leaves before I can respond. Goddammit
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NOLAN
Within seconds of Mila leaving, a couple of the crew members, one of them armed, were chatting with me. Originally, it started about where the hell I came from, but somehow I managed to waffle it into a discussion about fast food fries.
"I don't know," Fakushi, this Japanese guy, said to me, "I've always felt Jantar Fries were quite bland. Don't get me wrong, their Ha'si burgers I would sell both kidneys for, but somehow, their fries fall quite short for me."
"Give them credit," I reply, pretending I knew what the hell I was on about. "Considering the fact they have to compete with at least five other chains, their fries fare pretty nicely."
"Well, maybe if you're Loreqi," a male Arvan, Koha, remarked. "Those people have no taste at all when it comes to foreign culture. Have you listened to their radio?
I had no idea what the hell kind of brands they were talking about. I assumed they were quite new, but then again, places like StockBeef, Big Meat, or even KFC weren't even mentioned. My faffed strategy just made me bring up made up restaurants that apparently were actually real.
Fakushi suddenly gets a beep from his watch, probably an alert. "What was your name again?"
"Nolan," I said.
"Nolan, follow me please. The captain wants to see you."
"Hmm?"
"Come on."
Mila passed by, as I was following Falushi. But she had a worried look.
'What's happening?' I mouthed at her.
'Sorry', she replied. Yeah, here it was, the fuckening.
I followed him up to the same balcony Mila was on, and arrived to one of the lifts. He pressed one of the buttons, and the doors closed in front of us.
"Any idea why the captain wants to see you?" Fakushi asked looking at me.
I shook my head. At the same time the doors opened. He led me further down a corridor, and right outside a door. They slid open, and I entered inside. The Australian man from earlier sat at a desk facing me, I guessed he was the captain. Age hadn't done him well, and it was clear from all the scars that I really didn't want to mess with him.
"That'll be all Fakushi, dismissed," he said, right before the doors closed. "Take a seat," he said to me, and I did so.
It was a well-decorated room, much nicer than all the doom and gloom of the outside world. The walls were covered in framed pictures and shelved memorabilia, even the flags of Australia and the UN were hung up alongside each other. Hell, there was even a mini-bar right behind him, designed against all the rubbish of spacefaring.
"Nolan Kumar, isn't it?" He asked me.
"Yeah."
"Captain Bryce McMullen. Drink?"
"I uh... no thanks."
He grabs a bottle from behind him, brandy I think, and pours it in a glass. "Tell me, where are you from?"
"Birmingham, in the UK."
"Yes, Mila told me you two went to school together?"
"George Stanley College, yeah. Is uhh, is everything okay here?" Oh God, this was it. Any second now, he'll decide to either throw me in the brig or out the airlock.
"What were you doing in Ta'Shiala?"
"Ta'Shiala?"
"Where Ryan had found you. What were you doing there?"
"Business reasons," I lied. Could I not get a break from faffing today?
"What do you work as?"
"I'm a journalist. I work for the Beorma Magazine." That was true by the way. Don't expect us to be respected reporters, about two-thirds of us were professional clickbaiters.
"I haven't heard of it."
"It's tiny, we don't have many readers."
"What exactly would a magazine journalist be doing here?"
"Sad stories get us clicks. I've heard charities in the..." Oh fuck, what did Eyha call them? "The Allied Sovereign Systems need some promoting."
He stared at me for about half a minute, more than enough time to make the whole conversation awkward. Bryce then turned the computer monitor on his desk around, showing me a news article from the Citadel Report (ENG).
Writer: Jen Lang - 27/4/2301
FERAL'S BOUNTY RAISES TO $300,000 AMIDST DEATH OF RAM'KA GANG LEADER
And right underneath that was a picture of me with the beard, surrounded by bodies and staring up at the shattered camera, eyes desperate for the next kill.
"About a hundred of these are posted each year. This is you isn't it?" He pointed. "The whole scruffy look might be signature, Dave thought you were a lookalike. But army training has its benefits." He turned the monitor back around. "So, tell me the truth, Nolan."
I sighed. This was it. I might as well have told the truth now, no point in delaying the inevitable. "I don't remember anything. I woke up in the middle of the desert, with a credit card and a dead body right next to me."
"A dead body?"
"There was a fight, I think. Obviously I won. After all of that, I just wandered around, came across Ta'Shiala, and the rest is obvious."
"What's the last thing you remember?"
"A New Years party. I got drunk. Really drunk."
Bryce seemingly pieced it all together, and proceeded to chuckle, evolving into a full-on laugh. "You bloody fucking with me?!"
I gave him an awkward chuckle. "I'm not. I'm really not."
What did this mean? Did he believe me? Did he just need a laugh?
"Are you going to throw me into the brig now, or?"
"Honestly," Bryce said, finally getting his laughs out, "at this point, I don't actually know. As far as I'm aware, this is like having an amnesiac Hitler standing right in front of me." Wow, brutal. "You're mostly harmless on one hand, and according to Mila, Ryan's alive because of you. But on the other..."
"Look, just let me go and I'll be out of your hair. All right? I'll hitchhike somewhere."
"Dave," he looked to the ceiling, "How long does Mila have left on her contract?"
"Seventh of January," a voice, the same one that called Eyha earlier, popped in from above.
"What's this got to do with Mila?" I asked. Oh God, was he considering having her join me in the brig?
"I could just let her have you, over a week, you'll be out of our hair, as you said. Nobody else has noticed who you are so far..."
A beep came from the door.
"Enter," Bryce said.
It swished open, and Mila came through. "Okay, Bryce, if you give me another chance to expl—"
"He's your's, Mila."
"Sorry, say that again?"
"Take him under your wing or something."
She was confused. "Seriously?"
"Only on one condition," his stern tone returned. "If he shows to be a threat to anyone serving aboard this ship, don't expect me to be so lenient again."
"Oh my God, thank you," she said.
"Wait, I can go then?" I said.
"Before I change my mind, please. I'd recommend not telling anyone about your... past," Bryce remarked.
I got up off the chair, and both Mila and I left.
"Well, that was bloody convenient wasn't it?" I said.
"What happened in there?"
"Tried lying to him at first, he wasn't having it, and after that I told him the truth. Not the whole truth but yeah. After a bit, he just decided to let me go with you."
"How anticlimactic."
"So, I guess I'm working for you now,” I said. “What exactly is it you do?”
"Well, I'm a pilot."
My eyes widened, trying process what she just zaid. "Sorry, you're a what now?"
"I'm a starship pilot. I take contracts involving that sort of stuff.”
"Wh— I— You work in tech support!"
"And you're a shitty internet journalist, but you didn't expect to become a highly hunted psychopath now, did you?"
"Okay, I was drunk then. You don't learn how to become a starship pilot when drunk, that takes years of training and discipline, doesn't it?"
"Definitely. I don't even understand it myself."
"Do you still know how to fly?"
"Of course I still know how to fly. I might have been drunk, but it's like riding a bike. Outside the ridiculous amount of buttons and switches. Come on, let me show you it."
She showed me to a tiny hangar area back down on the bottom deck. There were quite a few ships, mostly shuttles. Her's was at the end of the hangar, the largest of them all. Okay, not that large. It was pod-shaped, thrusters on the side, and about a story and a half tall, enough to house four, five people inside. On its navy-coloured hull painted the white words... 'McSpaceyFace'.
"You seriously named your ship that?" I said.
"What's wrong with it?"
"McSpaceyFace. That doesn't exactly have a nice ring to it."
"You realise the first ship sent to Alpha Centauri was called Steve, right?"
"I'm aware. But imagine the rubbish around this name, 'These are the voyages of the starship McSpaceyFace. Its mission: to...', what actually is it you do, Mills?"
"Whatever pays the bills; mostly shipping or smuggling."
"And how's that going for you then?"
"To be perfectly honest, I miss tech support."
The side entrance opened on the ship, revealing a weird blend between a tiny kitchen lounge and a storage area. Mila pointed around. "Over there is my room, bathroom over there, take that ladder up you'll find yourself in the cockpit and behind that the engine room." She then opened one of the doors, revealing a small, but stuffed room. "This can be your room, we'll sort out all the rubbish later. Do you want a drink - lager?"
"No, I've already gotten out of a hangover, I don't want to end up killing everyone here."
"Right."
"You got coke?"
"The drink or the powder?"
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MILA
I end up getting him a bottle of water from the fridge. Of course he didn't want the lager, this sort of thing was what had us end up here. Plus, hours in the desert wouldn't have done much good for him, his mouth must be drier than the surface of Mars. The lager I still take, it isn't as if I'm going to go on another bender again.
"So, you've been awake for a few months?" Nolan says.
"Yeah, I've mostly been running with this crew since then."
"Have you come across anyone else from the party? Marek, Ashley or something?"
"No, you're the first person from home I'd seen since then. I honestly thought I'd never find anyone in this hot mess of space."
"Where exactly are we, anyway?"
I pause for a few seconds, knowing he wouldn't be prepared for the news. "Are you sure you don't want the lager?"
"I'm not in the mood for alcohol right now," he states again.
"Okay, well, you know Serenev's Wormhole?"
"Is that where we are, then?"
"Basically. All the people call this part of space the Frontier."
"This ship's subspace capable, yeah?"
I nod, sipping the can.
"Why haven't you bothered to go back home?"
Sighing, I try to figure out a way to expose it to him easily. "So, you know that wormhole? It's errr..."
An eyebrow is raised. "Go on?"
"It's a bit gone."
"Sorry, what?"
"The wormhole has been gone for quite a while, I'm afraid. At this point there's no known subspace route back to Earth."
There's some silence for a short while, all he does is stare at his drink. Eventually, he cries out, "WHY?! FUCKING... why?!"
"Let it all out, come on." At least he's taking it better than I did. It took me a week to process it all the second I found out. I wouldn't be surprised if he starts crying, but his day has been an utter nightmare for him, and he's somehow kept himself together this long.
"I can't go back home. No pub. No telly..."
"We still have those," I tell him, "I mean the shows are rubbish and the drinks are horrendous."
"How long's it been?" He asks.
"Two years," I tell him. "Well, nearly three now. New year's just around the corner."
He covers his face, processing the added dread. "Fuuuuuuck."
"Do you want the lager now?"
His hands come off. "No, I can't risk this happening again."
"Fair enough, I guess."
"Has anyone tried getting back to Earth?"
"None that I know of," I tell him. "We are on the other side of the galaxy, as far as I know. Any journey back home would probably take about a century with current technology."
"How long's the wormhole been gone for then?"
"Much longer than we've been here. Fifteen, sixteen years, I think."
"So how did we get here?"
"Subspace malfunction. At least, that was what I theorised. It's a common accident, unfortunately. Most of the time you'll end up ten, twenty light-years from your destination. Rare cases, I think that's pretty self explanatory," I say, gesturing my arms around the place. "When I woke up, the doctors diagnosed me with amnesia after I told them the whole story."
"People'll think the same of me, won't they?"
"Most likely."
Nolan downs some of his drink, probably accepting his situation at last. "Seriously, though," he decides to change the direction of the topic, "How do you learn to be a pilot whilst intoxicated?"
"To this point, I still haven't got a clue. Maybe it was programmed into my head somehow, maybe it's just one of the absurdities that come with the joys of alcohol."
Nolan leans on his arm. "Do you have a shower or something on board?"
I point my thumb behind. "Over there. Don't use it for too long, I haven't sorted the water rations yet."
He heads off without a word. I lean back on the chair, and take out a cigarette.