C15
Sharing is Caring
After my shower, I found Ember chilling on the bed. She was talking to Acclo and Calparr.
I was not expecting company after my beautiful, hour-long shower. My suit was on the bed. Ember was half lying on it. By the smirk she gave me, she knew it, too. I poked my head out the bathroom door, said hello to the two guests, then said to Ember, “Hi, dear. Would you pass me my clothes, please?”
With a wry grin, she threw my suit at me and continued talking. I quickly got dressed and went out to join them. “Ah! The hide and seek champion 2025 has finally joined us,” Ember declared. “While you’ve been hiding in there, all transport between the ships has been arranged. That crew that’ll be transferring has been finalized.”
“Cool, cool. So, when’s everyone moving?”
“We can do it straight away. We only need to anchor the ships together. If we do this, we can fire our outward-facing weapons, but otherwise we’ll be sitting ducks for an hour or so. For some weird fucking reason we decided to wait to run it by you.”
“Oh, right. What do you guys all think? Anchor, or wait until we can land?”
“Anchor. We’ll be more vulnerable on a planet,” Calparr said.
“Agreed,” Acclo added.
Ember looked up at me from the bed, “I’ll bow down to the man who had 5 out of 1000 Wisdom not so long ago for his answer. Because I know he’s got a hidden jammy-bastard stat somewhere that's at 1000.”
“Very funny, Ember. I'll bow down to the knowledge of my trusted advisors. Let's shake this shit up.”
Acclo spoke into a comm on their wrist. “Commence anchors!”
And that was it. Everything went like a well-oiled machine, and I had to do sweet fuck all, other than say, ‘Yes, we’ll do anchors’. I could get used to this kind of life. I then cursed myself for even thinking that thought: Sod’s law states everything is due to go horribly wrong any second now.
Calparr left to get his men ready, while we made our way to the bridge – more for appearances than anything else. We waited for the people to start flowing between ships before moving to the room next to the loading bay. It was going to be a bit of a fart on, in all honesty. The landing craft shuttles could only handle eight people at a time. It must have looked flippin’ mental to any ships driving by.
I didn’t actually know which humans were coming. But two things surprised me as they arrived. The first was that they were all wearing fancy green suits with black and gold detail. I had to admit that I liked them a lot, and they set us apart from the Fystr.
The second thing that surprised me was the arrival of Roger, formerly known as Thor, on the Uprising. My interest was insatiable, so I walked up to the big man. “I’ve just gotta know why?” I asked.
He shrugged. “Hey man. You may not realize this, but there are only so many times someone can kick your arse and prove you wrong before you have a choice to make. I could easily hate you for embarrassing me, repeatedly. Especially when you suddenly reappear from the fucking grave in an amazing ship full of OP aliens. Oh, and a ton of money. Or I could give in to the fact that you're actually an impressive guy. I could learn a lot from you.” He went red when he said it; nonetheless, he seemed sincere.
“Well, I'm glad to have you here if you want to be here. It's gonna be an intense undertaking building Uprising up.”
“We’ll do it. With you leading us, I'm sure we will. Ogun did a lot for us, but he really let us all down when he left, you know? Lucky for us, you came along when you did, 'cause we were dying on our asses out there.”
“Thanks, dude. I hope that’s what I’ve done. Get settled into your room and get yourself some food from the FSU. It's much better than the Thoth’s: everything tastes awesome,” I nodded.
“Really?” He beamed and wandered off.
Gus and Mick’s arrival was a real moment: we’d bonded a lot with these two in our short time together. A massive group hug ensued with Ember, me and the two men. No one else was invited to the hug; we had been through some shit together.
“Sorry we left you. We didn’t feel like we’d any choice at the time. Looking back on it, we were wrong. We should’ve stayed.”
“Hey, guys. You did what you could. If I blame anyone, it’s Ogun.”
“Don’t be too hard on him, Shaun. He took losing you both really hard. I genuinely think he may have left to go find you both, or at least confirm if you were dead,” Mick replied.
“Let's not get into it again. I'll take your word for it, and I do feel kinda bad for talking shit about him. Plus, you did lead the Fystr away, so we were able to escape. I suppose I'll have to lessen my annoyance at being left behind.”
“Well, you were certainly doing better than us when we met. So I think it may have been for the best that we split up for a bit, in a really fucked up kinda way,” Mick said.
“Yeah, we did okay, I suppose,” I replied, strangely accepting his logic.
“Shit and roses, Mick. Shit and roses! Cling on to this big, daft fucker and you’ll never go far wrong,” Ember chuckled.
“Yeah, I can see that.” He raised an eyebrow, looking around at our spanking new ship.
“Did I hear the FSU here tastes like real food? 'Cos that’s the only reason we came,” Gus said. They were essentially the first words he'd spoken.
The three of us started laughing our asses off at him. He may have had Asperger’s once, but that should’ve been healed. I was beginning to think that perhaps Asperger’s
