Cameron shot up in his chair, gasping for breath, roaming his hands over his chest. Sure, he knew that it was just a virtual environment, but it still didn’t stop him from confirming that his body was intact.
“Man!” Aurora exclaimed, giggling with an enthusiasm Cameron had never seen before, “That was cathartic as hell…”
“If you wanna keep talking shit me and you can go in there next,” Cameron said, growling his response. As he did, he winced in pain, running up to his face, “Gah! I think he hit me so hard, it bypassed my consciousness and went straight to my body.”
“Oh, don’t give a girl hope like that Cam,” Aurora said, patting his shoulder as she started to unplug the wires running into his helmet, “You may make me want to be a pilot, just to do this whenever you piss me off.”
“Are you ever going to be nice to me?”
“That depends,” She said, giving a hard yank at a handful of cables, “Are you ever not going to be a cocky jackass?”
“I think he’s been humbled enough for now, Aurora,” Logan’s voice entered the conversation from behind Cameron, “Go a little easy on him will ya?”
“Fine,” She said with a sigh, plucking the helmet off his head and tossing it on a nearby table.
Cameron look up at Logan, who was doing his hardest to keep a smug grin off his face.
“Not. One. Word.” He said, pointing at the older pilot.
Logan held his hands up in surrender, “Lips are sealed kid. Just came over to see if were ready to dust off.”
“Dust off?” Cameron asked, eyebrow raised in curiosity.
“We got a job,” Aurora said, answering his question, “Well, technically you got a job. Which means I have a job when you inevitably beat this limited edition mech to shit, and I have to buff out the dents.”
Cameron blinked, looking between his mentor and his mechanic, “Well… that was quick”
Logan shrugged, “Nature of the beast, bud. Shit’s expensive. Gotta keep the lights on somehow. Now come on,” He said, motioning for Cameron to join him as he turned to make his way outside of the facility, “We got an appointment to keep,”
***
A quick shower and change of clothes later, Cameron was following behind Logan as he was led into one of the many cafes that dotted the landscape of Arsius Station. The bitter smell of Coffee mixed with the sharp sting of tobacco filled his nose as they stepped inside, closing the heavy wooden door behind him, and flooding the small space with the choking combination of darkness and smoke.
“Back here,” Logan said, meeting Cameron’s eyes and nodding in the direction of a doorway, draped in beads and nestled into the back corner of the shop.
Nodding, Cameron followed, squeezing past the swath of wide bodied, muscular mountains that made up the A.R.M.S. pilot population. It was something he was still getting used to, the vast majority of people possessing the same warrior aesthetic as him. Hell, a vast majority of them could probably snap in half if they wanted to. He pushed those trivial thoughts aside however, as he parted the beaded door and stepped into a small room, playing host to a small, circular, wooden table and a fidgety bespectacled man that looked as if he’d rather be anywhere than here.
“Mr. Bennett, I presume?” Logan said, flashing a salesman’s smile as he extended a hand towards the man.
The man nodded, quickly shooting to his feet and reached out to shake Logan’s hand, his tiny, trembling fingers getting completely engulfed by Logan’s massive paws.
“Y-Yes sir,” the man said, speaking barely above a nervous whisper, “Preston Bennett, COO of Celephis Oil.”
“Celephis Oil?” Cameron said, speaking up as he looked over Logan’s shoulder, staring at Bennett, “Never heard of it.”
“W-We’re a small operation. Only a two continent coverage on my home planet of Celephis.”
“Explains why he’s talking to us…” Cameron said under his breath.
“I beg your pardon?” Bennett asked, genuinely unsure of what Cameron had said.
“Don’t mind him,” Logan, motioning a hand towards Cameron, before point to the chair behind Bennett, “Please have a seat.”
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“Okay…” Bennett said, tentatively sitting down. Logan followed his lead, sitting across from him, and leaning his elbows on the table. Cameron looked around to find a chair of his own, but failing to find one, leaned against a wall, watching the exchange between the two men as Logan got down to business.
“So,” Logan said, his voice sounding cheerful and polite, “What can we do for you today Mr. Bennett?”
“Bennett looked around the room, meeting the eyes of Logan and Cameron in turn, even looking past them to the bustling sounds of commerce coming from the cafe proper. After a minute, he cleared his throat and pushed his glasses up higher on his nose, fidgeting slightly before finally deciding to illuminate the situation.”
“Celephis’s continents are different than how you’d classify them. Instead of water separating our landmasses, we have live on massive plateaus while a massive ocean of chlorine gas covers a dried up seabed, thousands of feet below our habitable zone, and covering a vast majority of the planet.”
“Sounds lovely,” Cameron scoffed, with Bennett offering a nervous chuckle in return.
“Indeed,” He said, looking up at Cameron this time, “We call it ‘The Caustic Sea’ and suffice to say it’s the defining feature of Celephis itself. On our plateaus, everything is fine and we can live fairly comfortably, but down below it is a no-mans-land, leaving the only ways of traversal between landmasses as low orbit flight, or pressure sealed rail transport. We at Celephis Oil specialize in the latter. Thanks to our lines, we can reach anywhere on a continent in a matter of hours. It’s really an impressive feat that I’d be quite happy to go into-”
“Why are we here Mr. Bennett?” Logan said, cutting the man off, and refocusing the conversation back to the topic at hand.
Bennett, who had been daring to form a genuine smile as he talked about his company stopped cold in his tracks. The smile dropped and he gulped, nodding in understanding, “We have been having some… cargo issues lately,” He said, looking away and not meeting their gazes, “Our Convoys have been getting ambushed by a group of pirates as the make their way through the Caustic Sea.”
“How do you know they’re pirates?” Logan asked.
“Because of the survivors they leave behind,” Bennett said, “Only one of our fifty man security details are left behind… to send a message.”
“And what’s the message?”
“More…” Bennett said, “The Red Wraiths want more.”
“The Red Wraiths huh?” Logan asked, raising an eyebrow as stifled a chuckle, “Sounds… menacing.”
“Indeed,” Bennett said, nodding in the affirmative.
“Why us?” Cameron asked, crossing his arms as he studied Bennett. He could see how the question made him uncomfortable, the way he shifted his eyes between himself and Logan, a soft red tint appearing on his pale cheeks as he cleared his throat”
“W-Well you see… Celephis Oil isn’t as… Lucrative as business as of late. If I could afford the funding to go one of the bigger GACs I would have, b-but because silver is tight now-”
“You decided to go to two lowly freelancers not worth a shit eh?” Logan asked, crossing his arms and sounding dangerous.
Bennett's eyes went wide, shaking his eye rapidly from side to side as he held his hands up in surrender, sputtering like a a bad engine.
“N-N-No! I-I-I would never insinuate S-Such a thing!”
Logan’s laughter rang out throughout the room as reached and patted the oil executive on the shoulder.
“Just messing with you Mr. Bennett. Trying to get you to loosen up is all. Didn’t mean to scare ya.”
Cameron watched the man breathe a sigh of relief, a soft smile playing across his face as he chuckled nervously, “W-Well played Mr. Rake… You had me going there for a moment.”
“Well,” Logan said, turning back to look at Cameron over his shoulder, “What you think kid?”
Cameron shrugged, looking at him, “I think wide open spaces is the perfect place to open up let loose.”
“I-I feel like I should tell you,” Bennett spoke up again, fidgeting nervously with his glasses as he spoke, “There’s at least eight units that we’ve identified on our surveillance logs from the trains, potentially more. I know at least half of them are Squire units but even still. I-If it’s just the two of you, you’re going in outnumbered.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t worry about that,” Logan said, flashing a smile, “That’s just a target rich environment.”