Empire's Legacy

Chapter 2: Welcome to the Sophia

Amy stood outside the airlock and repositioned the strap over her shoulder, peering through the viewport. She could see the ship—not a particularly reassuring sight—but irritatingly she'd forgotten to ask de Sara for the ship's boarding codes. She could open the lock herself...but that would be illegal. And she did try to be legal. At least when she was in full view of security cameras.

The hiss of the airlock cycling open cut short nascent thoughts of pissing off. Ramina de Sara stood on the other side of the door, her face unreadable.

"Welcome to the Sophia Zero-Five-Niner," de Sara said.

"Permission to come aboard?"

"Come."

Amy followed de Sara along a narrow corridor and down a ladder, nearly whacking de Sara in the head with her bag in the process. She knew from the outside that the ship was roughly rectangular in shape and was not large, by the Commission's standards or anyone else's, but she hadn't anticipated that the corridors on such a small ship would twist and turn and loop about as much as they did. The ship's blueprints had indicated a much more straightforward layout. Five minutes from the airlock, she was already lost.

"This place is like a rabbit warren," Amy muttered as they climbed up what felt like the fifth or sixth ladder in a row. As her head emerged into open space, level with several pairs of boots, her mouth shut abruptly in surprise, and she flushed.

"Oh, good, someone shares my opinion," said a man perched on a console across the room. He leant back on his hands and grinned at her as she hoisted herself up onto the flight deck, his eyes sparkling with laughter. Amy returned the smile and glanced around at the others.

"Doctor Jones, welcome aboard the Sophia." The speaker was lounging against the chair in the middle of the flight deck, unabashedly studying her from head to toe. "Have to tell you, we've all been mighty curious as to what you look like. Awful hard these days to have a photoless ident." Amy raised her eyebrows. "I'm Morgan . You can call me Grey. I'm the Sophia's captain, which on any given day means trying to keep this rickety old barge—lovely as she is—from falling to bits mid-flight."

Amy shifted her bag to her other shoulder. "Interesting strategy for reassuring your employer," she said. "But then, I did my research. I doubt there's much you can say that'll surprise me."

"You'll grow to love her as much of the rest of us," Grey said. "Speaking of which—" He motioned to the rest of the crew. "As you already knew, not a lot of us. Your research was thorough?"

"Quite," Amy said, "but there's a difference between reading bios and a man introducing his crew. Please."

"You've already met Ramina, my first officer and resident medic," Grey said. "The lady with the lavender hair is Kate Killigrew, our pilot." Kate waved shyly at Amy. "The short man on her control panel is Benji Harris, salvage and cargo."

"You know, just because you and Taz are freakishly tall—" Benji grumbled.

Ignoring him, Grey nodded at the third man in the room and continued, "And that is Theodore Dekker, our engineer, resident god with machines."

"And the one who actually keeps this rickety barge from falling to pieces," Kate put in, laughing.

Dekker was taller than Grey, who wasn't particularly short himself, and his captain's words seemed to embarrass him; a faint blush spread across his cheeks, and he gave Grey an annoyed look. "Taz," he said. Despite his powerful appearance, his voice was soft when he spoke. "Please. No one calls me Theodore except my mother."

Amy met his eyes briefly and looked away, turning to Kate with a smile. She'd noticed Taz almost immediately, almost the same moment he'd noticed her, and the twist in her stomach told her she'd been much less prepared to see him again than she'd thought. His surprise had almost instantly been quelled by the plea in her eyes, asking him to pretend he had no idea who she was. She'd at least had the advantage of knowing he was on the ship she was boarding. He'd had no warning. He'd never met her before as Amy Jones.