Over dinner Roark asked “How’d you learn to drive a team, Doc?”
“Oh” the Doc waved her hand vaguely, “in the course of my research I lived in some very remote areas. There is even a place in the Georgia system where grav carts don’t work. In a place like that, you learn to rely on the old methods.”
“I like animals.” Lu smiled broadly. “And this is fine vittles, too.”
I caught Miss V’s eye. “I’d like a word later, Miss V. If you don’t mind.”
She smiled and stood up. “Swei, you can help me with the dishes.”
“We could use a hand and that Lu, well she is a strapping thing. She can lift a turbine by herself! She’s quiet and does as she’s told. I could use a helper, and –”
“Swei. It’s fine. We could use a little more help around here. She seems very nice. And Imago checked her on the Coretx. She’s a bit um, preachy, but I think she’ll fit in well.”

The next morning Bailey Sackett was at the port with the chitty.
“Here it is, all made out official.” He handed it to Prudence, who handed it to Miss V. Miss V promptly handed it to Roark. “I am sure it is all in order, my dear Mr. Sackett.”
Roark held the paper to the light. “Looks right enough. Take her to the bank right now.”
Sackett held up his hand. Well now, that’s the thing. We got this here parade and all. And the bank….” He stopped when he saw the look on Roark’s face. He grabbed his hat and motioned to Prudence. “Come on, missy. You & me are going to the bank. Blair knows me and we’ll just get him to open up long enough to deposit this!” He stopped short when he saw the Doc come down the ramp. “Oh, er, the horses are right over here, um ma’am. We’ll be back lickety split.”

Imago and Roark went out to the wagon and introduced themselves to Mr. McKlaren.

I turned to Lu. “I’m going to finish with the left stabilizer, but you should have some fun. We’ll be off this rock soon and you might have some goodbyes to make. You take the mornin off, you hear?”
She shrugged. “No one to say goodbye to, not as such. But I do like a parade. And there’s an ice cream social later. You’ll come for the ice cream?”
“Oh course she will, Lu.” Miss V’s voice carried over all other conversations. “I expect all of the crew to attend the social. We are guests of Frisco and we should act like it.” Well, I know that tone of voice and there ain’t no way around it. I hitched up my coveralls. “I ain’t paintin my face or nothin.”

All that happened later, I heard about it at the social. I was elbows up inside D-VAs main drive shaft. Sackett had been nice enough to loan me a man for the day. Quiet kid named Ben who knew his way around a torque wrench, fer sure.

All the folk in the town lined up for the parade. The ladies had their prize rose bushes on display.

The band was lined up and poised to strike the marching tune. Lu was on the far side, watching the festivities.

And it was a good thing. Someone in the band struck a sour note and the horses shied away and then all hell broke loose. The Doc couldn’t get the team under control and them horses ran right through the parade folk. No one was killed, luckily.

Takin a leaf from Lu, the Doc climbed down on to one of the horses. She had a big old needle filled with who knows and she tried to stick the horse’s ass. It was amazing that she didn’t jab herself or Lu.

When it was over, Mr. McKlaren declared it was fun, but that the time Roark said he was a bit green around the gills.

While that was happening at the other end of town, Miss V came out a few minutes after the commotion and helped restore order. She talked with Blair, the banker and vowed to get to the bottom of the mischief.

Per Sackett’s request, we got McKlaren to the saloon so he could “prepare” for his speech. Roark stayed and made sure that things went fine.

Miss V got the parade under way. Lordy that woman is somethin else!

When the parade got to the saloon, McKlaren declared himself ready to join in the procession. Not that he could say the word procession.

My folk had moved off to the right, keeping low and out of the way. I saw a man step out from a shed on the right, with his hands in the air. “I’m Hawks” he said. “Who wants to know?”
I just couldn’t help it. I saw red all over again and grabbed a ‘stick and punched a button. One of the mules began to move. I suppressed a giggle. I aimed it right at Hawks.

When he saw it coming, he let out a yell. The man behind him looked around wildly. “Teach you to leave me! Huh, Hawks? Not so tough now, are you Sarge?” I stopped the mule about a foot from him. All eyes swung towards me.
The man in the top hat squinted. “Who the hell are you?” His voice was bewildered.

“Swei, for goodness sake! Stop playing and come here!” Miss V’s voice cut through the tension. I hopped down from the control pad and walked slowly to where Miss V and the Doc were standing. She put her hands on her hips and said loudly, “Now. Who is going to explain this?” She looked at Hawks and at the man with the top hat. “Hmm? I’m waiting.”

The two men looked at each other. The man in the top hat smiled real big. “Well, Missy, I am the mayor of Regina and this here man is wanted fer, fer questioning.”
“Now you want a gorram minute. This is my mine and I want to know who the hell all y’all are.” Hawks swept his arm around and I realized he had a black glove on his left hand.
“Aw, did you hurt your paw when you left me on Hera?”
One of the men with the mayor moved towards me. “You need to step off, alright?”
“Where were you when I was fighting for your freedoms? Huh, you sonuvabitch!”

Hawks’ head snapped around. “What’s yer name, soldier?”
“Why don’t we talk and work, OK?” Brigid walked over the the mayor. She held out her hand. “Brigid Von Schindler at your service.”
Josiah Fox, mayor-elect, at yours little lady.”  Miss V took his arm and pulled him away a little bit. “It seems that our interests intersect. Would you agree? We’re here to get ice for Regina and you, being the mayor-elect, would wish us success in this, yes?”

In a few minutes we were working like bees in a hive. Prudence was operating one of the rigs and Roark was driving the tag-along like he was born to it.

I was, as they say, In my element. Anytime a machine threatened to conk out, I was there fixin’ her up.

I was bent over one of the compressors, checking for leaks when I heard a voice behind me. “I remember you. You were the mechanic. You hung around the fat guy. What was his name?”
I put my hammer down. “His name was Rich and he died waiting for the Amnesty release paperwork to come through. Ever been in prison, Hawks? It can get a might damp and a feller can get croupy in there.”

He was silent a moment. “We were gonna come back. We were. It’s just…..” His voice trailed off.
“Forget it,” I said. “Pfft. Just forget it. Old news and no one cares any more. Lest of all me.” And I walked away.
LEGO fans, shop the most complete LEGO collection anywhere!

We stepped in real slow. Because you don’t expect a mining facility to be all quiet. Roark had a submachine gun at the ready. The Doc took one look at his gun and pointed up. “This is an enclosed dome. So careful where you shoot that thing.”

“Where do you think everybody is?” Prudence voice was barely a whisper. I walked a little ahead of everyone and spotted the main control panel. “Miss V. I got this covered.” And I shrugged off my pack and walked across the room to the control panel. When I was about halfway across, I thought I heard something, but I didn’t let that stop me. It was only later over dinner that I heard I’d almost been shot. At that moment what mattered to me was getting to the control panel, figuring out how to run everything, how to mine the comet and get us the hell out of here.

I was just getting everything booted up, when outta the corner my eye I saw movements of the left. Four men came striding into the room. My friends were right across from me and I saw them crouch for cover. Imagine my surprise when off to my right there were suddenly two men armed to the teeth and ready to fire on the first men. I just sat there with my fingers on the keyboard as I didn’t know what else to do. The two groups seemed intent on each other and I don’t think they’d noticed us yet.

You could’ve knocked me over with a feather and left me laid out for a day when I heard one of the men on the left call out “Sgt. Hawks?” When he answered, it was the voice I remembered all too well……

Everybody has war stories. I was at the Battle of Serenity Valley, but that don’t make me special. A lot of good people died that day, on both sides. Mine was a small war. I swear I spent most of it in the engine room of one ship or another. It all seems so glamorous at the beginning. Being a freedom fighter and all. But being a Brown Coat well, can you admit it? It was a little disappointing. We never had the supplies, the men, the leadership, the equipment or the heart to win. And in the end what have you got? You got your own actions; you got your own morality as you have to live with those choices every day. Every. Day.

I ain’t talkin about my choices. I sleep just fine at night. But that Sgt. Hawks, I just wonder how well he sleeps?

You ever wondered why I’m so hard of hearing? He might not know it, but Sgt. Hawks is to blame. It was late in the war, well hell, it was Serenity Valley. That’s how late it was. I’d been assigned to Lucius Newberry. She was a fine ship, if a little old. But by then I was almost as good a mechanic as I am now. So I kept her in the air and we kept fighting. So one day this Hawks comes to me and my buddies and he says the Major’s got a job for us. We’re just going drop down to Hera, he says, “and get a little something.” The pilot dropped is right where we needed to be and a couple of squads hopped out with two mules. I was in the second team and by the time we got to the site, the bombs started dropping. It was just a little shack, felt like it was the middle of nowhere. But inside stacked to the ceiling were metal crates. When I got closer I could see that somebody tried to rub out the serial numbers. And they hadn’t done a good job. Probably officers….. That’s a joke.

Me and my buddy Rich lifted one of the crates and it was a heavy son of a bitch. There were mortars comin’ in and one of them hit our mule. So we overloaded the other mule and that squad took off. While we waited for them to come back, we moved the crates from the shack to outside. It was heavy work and I was scared. But we had orders and so we followed them. The empty mule came back and as quick as we could, we loaded those gorram crates. The mortar fire became heavier with every passing moment. One went off right behind me. I must’ve lost consciousness at least for a few seconds because suddenly Rich was shaking my shoulder and his lips are moving and I knew he was saying my name, but I couldn’t hear him.

We scrambled up on that mule and high tailed it to the ship. The roar of the firefly’s engines competed with the bombs. The hatch was up and I saw Sgt. Hawks and even the Major doing their part to load the crates into the ship. Me and Rich took the thankless job of being at the end of the line. It was like a bucket brigade, moving those crates from the mule. There were still a couple left in the mule when Rich took my arm. “We got to go darlin’. That there ship is going to leave us.” I dropped my end and scrambled around. The Lucius Newberry was about a foot off the ground and rising rapidly when we got to the hatch. Sgt. Hawks was holding on and yelling. Later Rich told me that he said they’d come back for us.
But they didn’t. They never came back.

But one day, I think it was day 4 of our 2 weeks of R&R, I woke to the sound of gun fire. Hot damn! I thought. We got us a situation! But it was just Roark taking potshots at the crows. I went out to cheer him on. Those damned crows were cawwing to beat the band. It was like a, like a gorram crow convention! When we came in about 20 minutes later there was talk of a comet.

“I know about comets!” I said. “Are we going to one? Going soon? I hate to say it, but I’m a mite bored.”
Maggie swiveled the screen my way. “There’s a job we could do. Fetchin ice from a comet and takin it to Regina. Gotta go soon though. What ya call time sensitive.” I slapped my thighs as I stood up. “I’ll get my gear.”

Roark rubbed his chin. “Seems fittin somehow.” Prudence looked at him. “How you figure?” He smiled. “Ice to ice, pretty lady! Get it? Ice — diamonds– to ice.”
“Maggie, how far is this Regeena?” The Doc walked in just then. “Oh, are you talking about Regina? Are we going there? It’s pronounced Ra-jai-na, Swei.”
“What? What? Like vagina? That’s just wrong. Who’d live there knowing that?”
“Regina is named after an Earth That Was city in the north. It means queen in Latin. You know Elizabeth Regina…?” The Doc looked at me expectantly.
I shook my head. “I ain’t smart like that, Doc.”

We were out of the lake house in less than an hour. I guess I wasn’t the only one going crazy with the quiet. I heard Miss V talking to the Doc. “It’s not that I don’t enjoy relaxing, Imago. For goodness sake! But think of the people of Regina. They need that ice or things will get grim. We can help our fellow men and shore up our accounts. I won’t deny that this little windfall from the wine delivery is nice, but I’m always putting by for a rainy day.”

With that Maggie at the wheel, we made great time out towards the comet. It’s the Angel Hair comet for the way the tail streams out. It looks lovely and still out the window. I was in the engine room gettin the old girl a cool drink a coolant and I heard Maggie on the comm. “We got company!”

Turns out that a little gal named Mary Celestia was in our little patch of the Black. Well, ain’t that interestin, I muttered. “You need juice, you just say the word there, Maggie.” Next thing I knew, we were zoomin and D-VA was chugging like a race horse smelling victory. I could feel the hull shift beneath my feet as Maggie performed some whatcha call aerobatics. I hit the comm. “Maggie, are you gonna keep this up much longer? I can do some things to ease off the heat build up in the lift mechs, but you got maybe 10 minutes of –” My voice was cut off by Prudence. “Score! Hoo-hoo! They hit an asteroid!” Sure enough out the window I saw the ship.  And the comet hove into view. Miss V’s voice rang through the ship: “We’re landing in a minute, crew. Let’s suit up.”

…..to be continued.

The guards barely glanced at our invites and we were inside. The great hall was huge. We coulda parked D-VA in here. Off to the left was a riot of green. I grabbed Roark’s arm. “Let’s go this way!”

The atrium was lovely. The hub-bub of the party died away as we entered the space. I lifted my face and smiled. “Smells like home.” Roark snorted. “Smells like money. When we get our share, I just might set myself up with something like this. Little piece a dirt to call my own. Strawberries, maybe. Girls like strawberries.”
“You gonna do all this in yer bunk? How much money are you plannin’ on? That little lakeside cabin would cost all the diam–” Roark cut me off. “Not here! Gol bless it, Swei! Not here. Not now. Not the D-word. Alright?”

We turned a corner and saw Miss V in the distance. She was mingling as best she could with the Doc hugging at her elbow like a Great Dane or somethin’. They hadn’t seen us. I wanted to explore the house more. When would I ever be in a place like this again? “Roark, buddy?” Silence. “Roark?” I turned around and he was off a distance chatting with an older lady all in green. Green from her hair down to her feet, with green jewels to match. Hmmm, I can guess why he’s over there insteada over here. As I got closer, I heard him say, “Oh, I’m with the band. I’m head of security for Charlie and the Riders.” I rolled my eyes and turned away.

I saw Maggie in a room with all these contraptions. More my style, these were like some kinds parts off a ship they ain’t invented yet.

She was idly touching one of the pieces as I walked up. “Is this like the Baron’s workshop? Kinda fancy and where are the tools?”
She turned, startled. “Oh, hey Swei. Tools? No, this here is sculpture.” At my blank look she continued. “Art. Right? Like, like make believe but with real stuff.”
I looked around. “Any money in this? I could whip out a few of these in an afternoon. That there is nothing but a capacitor half melted on to a barge cable liner. It looks real nice the way the oils drips and all. Real pretty.” I paused. “I could do that. Hell, anyone could.”

Through the archway I could see the Baron. Had to be him. Who else would be all fancied up with those shoulder frills? And there was a camera crew following around in his wake. Had to be him. He was smiling vaguely watching the people watch the monkey that had escaped from the atrium.

Suddenly Miss V hove into view. She strode right up to the Baron and pumped his hand. That woman ain’t afraid of nothin! I bet if I was close enough to hear, she’d be bending his ear with talk about the children. Blah blah blah blah, children. Don’t get me wrong. I’m all for children. Once was one myself, but Lordy can that woman go on about the children.

I sidled up to listen. The Baron roared with laughter. “Yes, I haven’t seen Gordon in a few years, but indeed he does owe me a bottle of scotch! Does your father still get on the links? I’m not quite as active as I once was…” Miss V answered him; I couldn’t quite make it out. The Baron’s big booming voice came through loud and clear. “Oh! The wine! You brought it? You are a fascinating creature, to be sure. A socialite ship captain. Delightful! You know, I own a few production companies. Perhaps a reality show about your travels. Think of the publicity for your worthy cause. You are… quite photogenic. Don’t you think, Dante?” He turned to the camera man. “Don’t you think the camera just loves Brigid?” He grabbed her hand. “Are you on planet long? We should lunch and discuss this. Now. Where’s my wine?”

Miss V smiled. “It’s in the kitchen. It made the trip just fine and I’m sure it is good as gold.” That was the code phrase for the old Alliance to move in. They were right by the kitchen and Miss V motioned for the Baron to come look at the wine. It was a perfect set up.

As the Baron stepped into the kitchen, all hell broke loose. Several of the waitstaff squared off. They all looked alike to me, but Maggie laid a hand on my arm. “Tong.” She whispered. “And Alliance. We don’t have to do nothin’. This ain’t our fight.”
“But Miss V….” About then, Prudence stumbled into sight. She had a woman in a headlock. “All right! Now we got us a brawl!” I ran over to help Prudence. The Doc jumped in front of Miss V with her arms out. “We can leave now, Brigid!”

Miss V nodded. She called over to the Baron. “I’ll be sending you that scotch, Julius!”
And that’s just what she did. We wrapped up a fine bottle of 30-year old McCutheon’s with the diamonds down in the bottom. I sent it to a friend, who sent it to a friend, who sent it to a friend, who sent it to the Baron.

Miss V heard back from the Baron just yesterday. His note said “The scotch was worth the wait. Give your Dad my best and we shall keep in touch, my dear.”

Now we got us friends all over the place. High, low and everywhere in between!