Eagle X, Mission 21: CTRL

Part 13: Liam

Liam took a long pull from his Uncle P cigar, savoring the flavor of the tobacco as it rolled across his tongue to fill his lungs. He exhaled through his nose, letting the smoke eddy out from his nostrils and circle his little section of balcony overlooking the strike shuttle and the Song Brother's freighter loading bay. The spot had become his favorite place to relax as privacy became scarce on the raiel vessel. With the smugglers and the rogue scientists using up every available room, lobby, hallway, and lounge, the loading bay was the best he could hope for.

The space doubled as a repair yard for the ship's landing vehicles and other heavy machinery. On the other side of the bay, members of the crew worked on repairs to the large skiff Liam and his team had used to ferry the scientist aboard. He marveled at the beating the transport had taken. The scorch marks and various holes told the story of how bad the situation had actually been. Without his team's intervention, those Corgis Adar Tech people would have had no chance of escaping... many didn't make it. In the heat of the moment, none of this had registered to Liam.

"Am I becoming too jaded?" He took another pull of his cigar. "Those were people we left back there with their own stories cut short by cannibal pirates. Are the casualties just numbers now?"

He made a mental note to see Dr. Ho once they returned home. Best to be proactive, preemptive measures before things start to break down. That's how Eagle X has stayed together so far.

"You talking to yourself, bossman?"

He turned at the sound of Nubia's voice.

"I do that from time to time. It helps." He smirked, remembering something his grandfather used to say. "It's when you start answering back that you might have a problem."

She scoffed and joined him at the railing, her nearly seven foot tall shadow nodding and leaning against the wall. She breathed in a bit of his cigar smoke and gestured toward the burning roll of tobacco. Surprised, Liam offered and she took an exploratory pull. Not wanting to be rude, Liam waved the cigar towards the big man, but he wasn't interested. Nubia produced a pack of thinner, pre-rolled cigarillos. The box had a stylized felarnian brand name Liam wasn't familiar with.

Lighting one of the thin little cigars, she took a few puffs and breathed a sigh of contentment.

"Nothing quite like a good stogie," she said, smoke wafting out of her mouth in a lazy cloud.

Liam laughed. "I haven't heard anyone say stogie in a long while."

"That's what my mother used to call them."

"For me, it was my grandfather."

"Grandfather? Where'd you grow up?."

"Earth Prime, a little corner of the world called The Carolinas, though it was much larger than the old place of the same name."

"Nice. I was born on Earth 2, but my mom was career security force. We bounced from space station to space station and grid port to grid port. I haven't spent more than a year planetside my whole life."

"A spacer, through and through."

"Yup. Not sure I'd know what to do if I woke up every day with true gravity pulling at my bones."

She turned and leaned against the railing facing him. The luminous neon pink and blue lights surging through nearby fixtures and conduits created art on her beautifully dark skin. She may have been a spacer, but her lineage was definitely that of an earther, a direct contrast to Ivory whose roots were sown deeply in the old colonists bloodlines. She noticed Liam admiring her complexion and smiled, tossing a few braids out of her eyes.

"Bossman, I think this is the first time we've ever spoken about my past," she said.

"This is your first official operation, with us anyway." He looked out towards the skiff as the welders took a break from their torchwork.