<div>The pilots of Task Force 27 had gathered in <span class="italic">Wayfarer Station</span>'s decontamination room, awaiting the all-clear to properly come aboard. Modern science had gotten the process down to only a few minutes, but couldn't completely eliminate it; the need to screen for the Lucerta plague, whose spores could survive hard vacuum and even unshielded exposure to subspace, was very real, especially here in Luyten. That's not to say it wasn't without its upsides: the delay could be a welcome opportunity for pilots returning from flight ops to catch a breath.</div><br/>

<div>The operative word there was <span class="italic">could.</span> After today's sortie, standing around doing nothing in his underwear was the last thing on Ensign Martin "Martellato" Assis's mind. He wanted... He wasn't sure what he wanted: to yell at someone, perhaps, until anger died away and he could go back to feeling like a person. There was just the small matter of <span class="italic">who.</span> Glancing over the other people in the decontamination room was a fruitless endeavour. His squadron leader was more of the "strong silent" type; Martellato had long ago come to suspect there was some trauma there, although he couldn't fathom what. Rosemary was probably the right choice in a vacuum; the empathetic, spiritual ensign understood people the way Mart understood computers. The problem was that she'd try to understand <span class="italic">him</span> in that oh-so-patient way of hers; worse, she might offer him tea. Besides, she'd taken a dose of combat stims during the attack on the <span class="italic">Caerwent</span> (it had taken Mart some time to get used to the Navy's unconcerned attitude towards such things), and her lucidity would be questionable now that they'd started to wear off. That left Charon - the reason he wanted to scream in the first place. He could play host to some Syndicate thugs if he had to, but what Charon had said had come disturbingly close to <span class="italic">defending</span> them. On one hand, he knew she'd just been quoting regs; on the other was some <span class="italic">very</span> dark thoughts that he knew better than to think right now. What he <span class="italic">wanted</span>, actually, was to talk to Pholos. The eccentric support pilot had more in common with him than technical skills; unfortunately, she was off in the Oort cloud. Without any good options, he just seethed.</div><br/>

<div class="hr"></div>

<div>Neither Charon nor Martellato were quite sure how they ended up showing their new guests around the station. Their squadron leader had been called away to a strategic session, and Rosemary temporarily remanded to sickbay; that left the two of them with some downtime, and someone had to do it. Martellato carefully avoided getting to involved, so as to not say something he'd later regret; the distance let him observe them frankly. The core of the group seemed to be three men: Elias and Hamid Pendergast, who owned the ship, and Dmitri Makarov, the head of their security team, who talked like he'd known Elias for a long time.</div><br/>

<div>Martellato did not like Dmitri. He had all the bluster of a Syndicate boss, but he wasn't. Not even close. Martellato knew how they named their fighter wings, and Dmitri's designation meant he was just a rent-a-cop who liked to talk big. He was about to write him off as a wannabe, but one thing complicated that analysis: Isa Thorne, his rookie wingmate, who seemed to go by "they". There was a level of caring there that Martellato hadn't expected: the way he encouraged them to speak up and ask questions, the way he emphasized their role in the fight, and the way his bluster seemed to diminish to make room for them all suggested there was more to him. It was the same way with Elias himself. He spoke about the Regulan leadership with disdain, but it was the disdain of someone who'd been wronged, not someone trash-talking the competition.</div><br/>

<div>And so, when Charon approach him later to ask why he'd been so agitated on the sortie, he was able to give a calm answer.</div><br/>

<div class="hr"></div>

<div>The Syndicate-owned freighter <span class="italic">Obsidian Heart</span> was scheduled to make a delivery: perfectly ordinary, in and of itself. The trouble was that the Alliance had been moving investigators into the system, they'd been making patrols around the drop site, and the <span class="italic">Obsidian</span>'s cargo wasn't exactly legal. Her captain had a simple plan to deal with it. A Mustang-class fighter - the Charlie variant, with expanded EWAR capabilities - would jump in on the sly and set off a decoy beacon; once the Alliance moved to check it out, the <span class="italic">Obsidian</span> would jump ahead, make the dropoff, and switch to backup drives for a getaway. There was only one difficulty: the person responsible for the plan himself.</div><br/>

<div>"Yo, <span class="italic">Ass</span>-is!"</div><br/>

<div>Mart stood up a little too quickly, banging his head on the underside of his fighter. He and the <span class="italic">Obsidian</span>'s captain hadn't seen eye to eye about much of anything since he'd come aboard, and this delivery was the latest in a series of frustrations. Some days - okay, <span class="italic">most</span> days - he wondered why he hadn't quit. As Mart rubbed the back of his head, the captain approached.</div><br/>

<div>"You got your fighter ready yet?"</div><br/>

<div>Mart knew he couldn't say what he really thought, so he settled for groaning in the other man's direction. "What, you think I'm filing my taxes here?"</div><br/>

<div>The captain folded his arms, doing his best to loom over Mart in spite of the height difference going the other way. "You know how important this delivery is, and we just hit the 24 hour mark. About a minute less than a day to get ready. So. You planning on setting that fighter for silent running, or no?"</div><br/>

<div>"It's not... quite that simple," Mart said, and winced as the captain snarled. "Shutting the transponder down's just the first step. It's got all kinds of pingback functions <span class="italic">just</span> to make what we're doing hard. You can't just turn those off, not without powering down the whole sensor grid. I'm not saying I can't do it! It's just a bit of a process, that's all. Just lemme do my job, and -"</div><br/>

<div>"That's a lotta words to say <span class="italic">yes</span>," the captain said with a sneer. "I've got a lot riding on this. That package gets to our client, our employer's got an <span class="italic">in</span> with one of the big players, and I've got an <span class="italic">in</span> with our employer. And if this goes south, it's your ass in that cockpit. You fail me, the Alliance can have you."</div><br/>

<div>As the captain turned to leave, Mart struggled to hold back a snarky comeback. As he swaggered away, his last words echoed in Mart's head. <span class="italic">You fail me, the Alliance can have you.</span> The Alliance was known to waive prison time in exchange for military service for people with the right skill sets, and in his years of escorting smugglers, Mart had gotten very good at his job.</div><br/>

<div>What if he only <span class="italic">said</span> he'd made the modifications?</div><br/>

<div class="hr"></div>

<div>"Just some bad experiences when I was living up there," Mart said. "Ah, what the hell, it's alright. I got them back eventually."</div><br/>
