On the High Frontier

3. Unavoidable Business (part 4/6)

Kimiko enters the workshop, but there is no immediate sign of James. He has to be here as she knows from experience that no one can get in if he's actually out. Something which admittedly doesn't happen very often. There are a few tricks that can be used to flush him out. She starts to creep round behind the bench he normally uses as a desk, craning her head as though trying to look at any interesting items on display. "Step away from the desk." The voice comes from the floor. A hatch cover slides to one side and James emerges from a crawl space.

"Aren't you getting a little old for hide and seek?"

"Ha ha. There was a problem with the power so I was splicing in an additional tap." He straightens up and stretches his back. "I though you were having a few days rest after the recent excitement."

"Yeah , but you know how it is, I just can't stay away from you." She can already feel her stomach tightening as the smell of the workshop reminds her of the ringset. "Fee needs help intercepting some dead freight, and you're updating Ryo-Ohki. So is she ready?"

"Ah, time for another game of smash the antennae?" James smiles at the chance to tease her.

"Why does everyone keep bringing that up? I dent one antennae ..."

"The dent was in the largest piece of scrap."

She knows that James can keep this up forever, and she is on the clock. "The suit?"

"Okay." He looks disappointed, but he'll live. "I've upgraded the nav positioning and it tries to scan optically for the any obstructions ahead. But it still can't match a pilot with their eyes open." Everyone's a critic. "Also the core has been recharged."

"You do that every time, I thought they were good for over a year even under heavy use."

"True, but the constrained sub-dimensional rift is always decaying, if the deviation is minimal then the correction and realignment is significantly less complex." She gives him a withering look. It seems whenever James is trying to justify himself he reaches for all the long words. "You don't let void craft tankage go empty before you fill up. Ullage is much easier to deal with when it's small." Okay maybe long words are preferable to his engineering similes. "It's good to go again. And by the way, it's way too long since I last saw Sayoko."

She dreads him asking this. "I know, but I'm wearing her, and I like feeling safe."

"That's probably the attunement neural buttressing. Okay, but I do need it soon." He's never mentioned there is feedback from attuning to the suit. Does it have any other side effects? "You're not still wound up about Trevor are you?" Every so often he catches her off guard with his insights.

"I watched him die."

"Kimiko." James looks at her over his glasses. "You couldn't have saved him. Cal and Gar had orders to kill him, and one thing they are good at is following orders." He frowns as he thinks back. "You were too far away, and even if you had got closer and managed to interfere it would have gone badly. Their weapons might not have hurt you, but the Void Enforcement would have arrived before you could get away. And they had weapons heavy enough to kill you through any sheath other than Noriko. They might even have taken you down in that one."

Not her favourite sheath. "You know how much I love guns." She tries to ignore the points he's making, but he's right. The only way she might have saved Trevor would have been to sacrifice herself, and she hadn't even been fast enough to do that. Great, now it's survivor guilt; doesn't make it any easier. "Anyway," She tosses a jointed ring to James. "I know how you hate me having more than two tokens, so here's Chloe." He is about to say something. "Yeah, I know, resonance."