Dear diary, even the wonders of space can’t make me stop missing my home
I tell you what, waking up on a fancy couch is not half as bad as I thought it would be. But that might be because of the string of truly terrible sleeping spots I went through recently. Compared to that, a cold leather couch does not even feel bad in the slightest.
I stretch myself before I get out looking for the others. I find Kuro sleeping in the liquor cabinet with an empty bottle of what I think is whisky while Lucy is behind the wheel playing with her tablet. I go back to our small fridge and get some space fruit out of it before I join her in the cockpit.
“So, anything happened while I was out,” I ask as I bite into the fruit, both sweet and tangy. I am confused.
“Not much. We have been out of any major signal range for a while, so I have not been able to learn if we are being followed or not.” She says.
“We probably are, but I am hoping it is a small force that is following us and not the entire warship.”
“And you think that to be likely?”
“Not sure. I kind of hope that the good old captain bought and installed this ship illegally and because of that, he can’t send much because that would expose his secrets.”
“I guess that would indeed be the best-case scenario.”
“No best-case scenario would be that they have not noticed that we are gone yet.”
“And how likely is that?”
“Not that likely, but a girl can dream, right? So how long until we reach the planet.”
“Not that long, only a few hours till we make contact. Do you have any plan what to do once you get there?”
“Same as how I got on the other ship, barely anything and let their imagination fill in the rest.”
“And that works?”
“I have been questioned fairly rarely why I was somewhere; just act like you are supposed to be there and everything is fine.”
“I see, and then what, how are we going to find the Traveller?”
“Yeah, that part is going to be a lot harder. Follow the roomers, I guess, and see what we can find.”
We continue conversing for a while, trying to think of different ways to track the so-called Traveller down, but nothing that we can come up with sounds directly actionable. But we at least pass the time, and soon, we spot the green planet in the distance.
The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.
We pick up speed until we are nearly there, and then we slowly descend further until we have reached the atmosphere. Once we do that, we set it to plane flight mode, and the ride becomes a whole lot more bumpy.
We find some kind of outpost that has a dock big enough for our ship to park. Also, thank whoever put the auto park feature in. This would have been a lot more complicated otherwise. I slowly unclasp myself from my seat and head out to the sweet old ground. Not that I did not enjoy flying, but I could do without the stressful shaking and all that. This is a fact that is not helped by ships not being built to enter and exit the atmosphere. Sure, you could do it, but you usually use a bigger ship to carry this ship into space.
I open the door and walk out, trying my best to exude confidence and purpose, which is made a lot harder because as soon as I exit the ship, there are about a dozen guns pointed at me.
“Hello there, we come in peace,” I say as I raise my hands in the air.
“Why have you come here, outlander?” one of the gun wielders asks.
“We are looking for someone with red skin, black hair, and horns. Can spew fire and uhm some other stuff.” I say not all that confident
“Who do you work for?” the same guy asks
“No one I work for myself if anyone at all,” I say
“And how can we trust you on that.”
“Well, for starters, the most dangerous weapon we brought was this sword I say, pointing to my back. If we came to fight, we would have brought laser rivals, at least, right?”
The man shrugs. “Come with us. We take you to see the boss.”
I slowly walk forward, following the man further inside as the guns keep trailing on me. The building is nice in a way. It is very fancy probably, holding a bunch of techs that my world could only dream of, but some of the beauty is lost by how militaristic everything looks. The man who has been talking with me so far takes us to a closed room; inside is a small frog-like creature.
“Unlag, who have you brought before me?” the frog man asks.
“These people are looking for the traveller,” Unlag answered.
“Ah yes, the demon of the western front. And why do you want to meet her so bad?” he asks, staring at me intensely.
“I am not up to date on her nicknames, but we are just here to give her a message.”
“Give me the message, and I will make sure it reaches her,” he says with a smile.
“Can’t do that. It is a private message we are only allowed to give it her personally.”
The frog man frowns. “That might make things more difficult. Let me send her a message in the meantime. You can stay here and relax.”
“Thank you so much,” I say with a small bow.
“Unlag show them to a room”, he says.
“Right away, sir,” Unlag says before turning to us. “Follow me.”
I nod and start following “Kuro, if you here track the toad king, see if he really knows her?” I whisper as softly as possible.
“On it,” the cat somehow whispers in my ear.
Unlag takes us further into the building into the lower levels. There he showed us a small room that had some small beds and a table.
“So what now?” Lucy asks as soon as Unlag leaves.
“We wait for Kuro to come back with more information,” I say with a shrug before sitting down.
“And you think he will come back?” Lucy asks, shocked.
“I know that he wants to meet this Traveller and that the plate gives him a great way in, so as long as we have it, he will not betray us.”
“Really, and what if he tells the people here about it?”
“He won’t.”
“How do you know?”
“Simple. If he wants it for his own selfish reasons, stealing it from us is going to be a lot easier than stealing it from whatever militia this is.”
“So he won’t steal from us because we are an easier target?” Lucy asks, confused.
“Sounds like you get it.”
“So we just wait in this room doing nothing?”
“I mean, I was going to study my fire magic, but yeah, that sounds about right.