Leru entered the bridge through the man-door directly above the crew quarters. Stars dotted the segmented window that domed the ceiling as the station they sat on began to rotate away from the sun.
"I know what you're thinking," Jarett started before she'd come more than two steps into the room. "Why does the captain keep risking our lives committing petty, profitless crimes?" His voice was muffled behind the pilot's mask attached to the large, segmented pillar in the center of the room that was the pilot's seat.
Leru folded her arms and let out a breath, "go on, let it out. I'm sure you've been working on this since we landed." She began to circle the pillar, idly checking the emergency seats folded into the walls while Jarett vented. The bridge was nearly spherical, akin to the interior of a many sided die -- a something-hedron, though she couldn't remember the correct prefix.
"Sure, he's not very smart," Jarett continued, "or compassionate, but surely he must at least care about his own time and well being. But why, then, would he waste every last professional connection you have just to land us on a station owned by the largest corporation in the galaxy, when he -- and by extension, us -- are already wanted criminals?" The pilot's mask slid up, revealing his glistening, stubbled face. He would be roguishly handsome, if he could lose the doughy jowls that clung to his chin no matter how thin their rations got. His wispy, light-brown hair clung to his forehead as if he'd just left the shower. "The answer is actually quite simple: Nick just isn't very smart," he concluded as Leru came full circle to where she'd started.
"You already said he wasn't smart." Leru continued pacing back and forth rather than circling Jarett in the pillar.
"The more interesting question, I think, is why you haven't realized it. He'll get you killed just as surely as me or Hep."
"He wouldn't do that." She stopped, rattling the flat, grated floor that cut bisected the room about a third from the bottom, but couldn't bring herself to meet Jarett's gaze. She hated the pity emanating from him like a doting ghost, but dampened her empathy before she could turn her hate toward him. "He knows what he's doing, or at least there's logic to it." She met his gaze, his mouse quirked to one side with the opposite eyebrow raised. She looked away, "even if he doesn't always… explain it to me."
Jarett leaned his head back. "Have you asked him what exactly he's hoping to find in there? the place is 90% abandoned children, I know the estate itself is worth more units than the planet it orbits but we're hardly equipped to-"
"He found a lead that there would be dirt on Radiant Dawn Intergalactic. It checks out, the orphanage is owned personally by their CEO through a string of shell companies." She mirrored his raised eyebrow. "And it's primarily a boarding school, the orphanage is secondary."
"Same difference. Still…" Jarett sank into the pilot's seat until his shirtless torso began to disappear into the metal enclosure, folding his doughy chest into a pair of sad eyes atop the frowning curve of his belly. "Since when are we set up for corporate espionage?"
Leru leaned back against the cargo bay door, staring at the circuits and wires beneath the grating.
Jarett sighed, "I get it, really, but he's bad news. I just…" He shook his head. "He's shifty -- and I know, we all are, but he's...." He was silent til she looked up, then held her gaze. "I don't know what he's running from, but I think we'd best get away from him before it starts chasing us too."
Her eyebrows convened over wide eyes. "After all you went through to get an interface, you'd give up being a pilot just to get away from the Captain?"
Jarett's mouth formed a thin line, eyes darting to one side. "I'm suggesting I use my position as a pilot to get away from Nick." He smiled weakly, "Captain." His gaze went distant and he sat back up in the pilot's seat, mask sliding down over his thinning hairline. "We've gone from red flag to full on alarm -- they're trying to take over our engines."
Leru threw open the door to the catwalk. "Start preparing for takeoff, they're going to figure out sooner than later that we drive manual."
"Come at me, you pampered dandies," Jarett growled into the helmet as the ship began to thrum, pumping quantum-layered fuel to the four engines at its corners. "Combustion beats induction, every time."
Leru held her tongue, running along the catwalk and leaping over the railing. She landed deftly on her feet this time, tearing through the man-door she'd fallen in front of earlier and turning the heavy latch on the exterior door in the maintenance hall beyond. She slid it open just far enough to peek out at the tarmac, getting a clear view of the entrance to Estermere.
The building was what she'd grown to consider "old-earth-chique" as a child on the ohma flotilla: lots of red bricks and windows framed by synthwood beams. The whole was awkwardly melded with the repurposed green-grey metal of the fleet ship-turned-space-station that it sat on, making it what Leru considered a garish misunderstanding of aesthetics.
She punched the intercom button next to the door. "Combustion beats induction until you run out of fuel and need an induction ship to tow you home."
The intercom crackled with what she assumed to be a blown raspberry echoing behind Jarett's mask. "Induction engines are just fueled with labour, you classist."
"The entire crew share's equal parts of the work to charge the engine, and that way you don't set the place you were on fire just to get somewhere new. It's called a community, it's literally the opposite of classism." She scanned the windows on the front of the building, trying to get a glimpse through their privacy filters -- warbles and waves in the mirror-like glare hinted at commotion, but the details were impossible to make out.
"That's so reductive, Lary -- it's a process of conversion, the stuff you "set on fire" doesn't just go away."
Leru rolled her eyes. "So you convert quantum-layered propane into what, and then how do you turn that back into propane? I'll even spare you explaining how the energy required for the quantum layering process doesn't leave you at a net loss."
"What do I look like, a chemist?"
"You mean quantum physicist? And no, you look like a lump of darkwhite too big to fit in the fryer."
"Ouch… but fair. And also, delicious." There was a slap of skin on skin over the intercom. "Tell me you wouldn't take a bite out of this if you could."
Leru laughed through her nose as she continued scanning the front entrance: The two broad-shouldered ohma attendants at the front entrance's double-doors glanced at each other before quickly ducking inside. "How are the engines warming up?"
He paused before responding, joviality gone. "We're ready to leave on your order, Captain."
Her smile fell like wet meat off a tilted dinner plate.
"Hey…" Jarett's voice was timid in the silence that followed, "don't change the subject. Doesn't the extra physical labour required of the crew to charge an induction engine require a higher-calorie diet?"
Leru shook her head into the present. "Are you trying to argue that food isn't a renewable resource- Hold that thought." She smiled unconsciously as Nick burst through the double doors less than a hundred meters across the tarmac. "Get ready to light up."