The Warp journey from Helia to Nesre Secundus is far from uneventful: the turbulence from your previous transit is back with a vengeance, complete with the screech of over-stressed metal. At one point, the Aegis slows precipitously, and the dull crunch of crumpling deckplates can be heard. You quickly grab your microbead, "Jace, what just broke and how soon can we fix it?"

"Internal sensors are showing hull damage around Cargo Hold 13. Unable to survey damage at this time: will monitor and attempt repairs once we exit the Warp."

"Commander, Helm here. We bounced off a shoal of some sort. Came out of nowhere, but it’s behind us now. I've already reduced speed to give the Navigator a tad more time to spot any more of them. Hopkins, clear."

"Jace, you heard mr. Hopkins. Keep an eye on the Gellar Field in addition to the hull damage. If we lose that, the hull won't survive direct contact with the Warp for long."

"Affirmative Sir. Gellar Field is holding strong at the moment. I will advise you should that change. Jace, clear."

Slowing down cost you almost a full day, but it means that the Aegis made it through with no further damage. Jace sets about assessing the damage while the rest of the crew gets on with the survey work. With matters well in hand, and mr. Hopkins taking the bridge shift, you decide to stop by Simo's quarters to see if he can teach you how to play Spades. To your mild surprise, Simo is more than willing.

"More players makes for a more interesting game. Frank knows all of my gambits, and I his, so a head to head with him is more to kill time than anything else. Morrigan gave up trying to play long ago, but she'll drink us both under the table one after the other. Now, where'd that deck go?" He produces a slightly battered deck of cards from a drawer and gestures for you to take a seat across a small felt-topped table. You do so and he sits down and starts to count off the cards, making sure the deck is complete. "Surprised you don't know more about Spades. Guess your more of a poker type?" Hew cocks an eyebrow and begins to shuffle.

"Solitaire, actually. Spades is a bidding game though?"

Simo winces at the question, "Trick-taking. The deck gets dealt out, and everyone playing gets a look at their cards. Then everyone places a bid as to how many rounds, called tricks, they think they can win in that hand. Man to the dealer's left leads off by laying down a card, and everyone else follows on 'till everyone has played a card. Winner is whomever played the highest spade, or if no spades were played, the highest card in the suit the first guy lead off with. Guy who wins the trick leads off the next one. Big catch is that you can't play a spade unless you can't match the suit that was lead, and can't lead off with a spade unless a spade was played in the last trick or you’ve got nothing but in your hand."

"So what's with the bidding then? A way to keep score?"

"If you are playing for points. Make your bid and you score ten for every trick you bid and every extra trick is only worth one. If you don't make your bid, then you get nothing. Games are usually to five-hundred points, but if one is just killing time, then the cards are just something for your hands to do while talking. Speaking of, why in blazes would you play on your lonesome instead of with others?"

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"Too busy learning how to make money. Where did you first learn to play?"

Simo starts dealing out cards, "Between work shifts on Kannus, before I got my hand stuck in some gears. Got lucky though, could've ended up dead. Trade-off was the doc patching me up wasn't quite right in the head. He screwed up and had a defense gunner wind up dead on his table with a mangled leg and arm. So he decided to cover his own ass by taking my leg off and putting a machine-link in my head. Lucky for him, I turned out to be a damn good shot. Not so lucky for him, he fucked up the paperwork. Cogboys found out, took a look at my training scores, and stuck my ass on that Defense Monitor out in Dagda."

You pick up your cards and start sorting them out, "any idea what happened to him?"

Simo snorts and picks up his own cards, "nope. Probably got stuck on my shift down on the line. I'll walk you through the first few hands if you want."

A few hours and hands later…

You pitch in a junk card, forfeiting a trick you couldn't take anyway, "So what in the warp happened in the Eldarim Incident? Morrigan says you got jumped on and boarded, but not much more. Was it bad?"

Simo shakes his head, "Can't tell you much more than that myself. I was mind-linked into the guns, staring out the gun sights deaf, blind, and dumb to what was going on elsewise. Course that meant I got a good look at the launch-bays of the void pirates when they jumped in and started dumping out boarding craft. Didn't have enough firepower to do more than scratch the paint on their hull, but the boarding craft were another matter. Blew away a good number of them and got the launch bay too for good measure, but I guess I just pissed 'em off. 'Fore too long they were knocking on the bridge hatch and Frank yanked my link out and handed me a sidearm. From there, everything is a right mess. No idea what happened, aside from the fact that we had hoarfrost crawling up the bulkheads and Morrigan showed up at some point bleeding like mad and cursing them out something fierce."

You take the trick, and decide to change the subject, "so how did you end up on Viking, and why sign on with me?"

Simo grunts and takes another trick, "declared dead when the ship blew up, along with Frank and Morrigan. We were actually on an escape pod headed down to Dagda, I think. Most of that week is a mess in my head between the jump-in and the bad jack-out. By the time I got everything squared away, we were headed for Viking. Morrigan signed us up for your crew because the pay is good, and only looking to get better."

You nod and take a trick, "Looks to be that way. I assume you saw the scans we got of the Golden Butterfly? What do you think, could we take her in a fight?"

Simo tosses in a bad card and scratches his chin, "With Frank at the helm and myself on the guns? Yes. The Sunsears are good weapons and should chew that tramp right up."

"What about taking her intact? You think we could pull that off?"

"Possible, but risky. I'd have to get lucky and put her engines out early to be sure of it, or take her guns out completely. Else it'd come down to a boarding action, and that'd mean coming in close where her guns might get lucky. The Aegis is a smaller ship, but she has more crew for a boarding fight given that the Golden Butterfly is a cargo hauler."

You nod and take the last trick of the hand, "barring any complications like murder-servitors or combat robots. That would ruin our day rather quickly."