The long, dusty trail wound back and forth, back and forth, for a mile or more it seemed. Cheap landing bays were hard to come by but you get what you pay for. And what Jason paid for was a long walk whenever he went to town. He wouldn’t mind so much, he was just about as cheap as they come, but the cloud of anxious movement he found himself in on a constant basis made him see this walk an additional unnecessary barrier to progress. What progress actually was, he couldn’t be sure. He was neither mechanic nor coder – the former hadn’t pieced together the ship yet and the latter couldn’t find any of the company’s contacts on the web. Jason, for his part, hadn’t had any success accessing the company’s storage lockers either, which would have gone a long way to fixing their immediate need for cash.
Jason turned the final bend and noted, with his lip involuntarily curling, that his posted sentry was most certainly not sentry-ing. Jason kicked his pace up a notch, hunching over slightly to get lower to the ground, and skipped off the path to the left, allowing the slightly elevated path to further obscure his figure. His new trajectory ended in the wall of the landing bay and at what was almost the last minute he dodged right, pressing his back against the wall coming to a full stop. Controlled breathing brought his heart rate back under control and a few small steps brought him peering around the corner. In the distance was the goliath, melted and banged up heap of spacecraft he captained to this rock, and in front of him was Hambone, the 17 year old funkie who was supposed to be the crew’s first line of defense, awkwardly holding his rifle in arms folded across his chest, head slouched like a goober, face transfixed on the ongoing repairs. Maybe he was as amazed that they were still alive.
Jason walked nonchalantly around the corner. He took two fast steps without attempting to be quiet. The noise should have roused the non-sentry, but it didn’t. Frustrated, Jason lifted his left two fingers in the shape of a firearm and trained them on profile Hambone’s distracted torso. “Bang! Bang!” All 150 lbs of the rail thin meatscrap vibrated as Hambone dropped the rifle and shielded himself from the oncoming assault with an arm. A few crewmembers looked over to see the commotion and a few laughs could be heard, but the crew mostly went on with their labor, much as they had for the last 3 weeks. That’s good, they needed the work to keep their minds occupied, thought Jason. Besides, this was for Hambone. Slowing to his normal walking pace, which was still pretty crisp compared to most folks, Jason said “You’re dead, Hambone.” He came level with Hambone, who was considerably farther into the cavernous interior of the bay than he had any right to be. At this point, he looked over his left shoulder at Hambone’s still frazzled expression, “And so are they” nodding to the crew.
“Keep it understated. Don’t tell your crew what they already know, only what they need to hear” The old man was back in his head again, but Captain Harris rarely got his people wrong.
An awkward few seconds of silence followed and the youth didn’t move a muscle as if he was sure that the cat was about to pounce. Softly with way more edge than he intended, he said, “Go keep them safe.” The youth soared out the front of the hanger like the tightly wound spring he was.
“He forgot his rifle,” Jason thought, wiping his face with his hand and ran it through his cedar colored hair. Hand came to rest on the back of his neck, unconsciously taking a very un-captainly posture as he strolled towards what was left of the Thunderbird. “If its still there when I come back, he’s getting left behind.”
That is, of course, assuming they ever left.