"The Maru's completely empty. Apart from Beka of course. She's saying goodbye."
"Beka, are you there?" Rommie called out, her voice echoing around the Maru's bare interior. She walked quietly, deeper into the ship and sat down next to Beka, who was leaning against a metal grate, hugging her knees.
"Hi." She said without looking up.
"Do you want to talk?"
Rommie turned to her friend and put her hand on Beka's shoulder. She didn't know what else to do.
Minutes of silence passed the two but eventually Beka sighed and began to speak.
"Why am I not fighting this Rommie? This is my ship, my home and I am sat here waiting for it to be blown up."
"Perhaps you know it's time to let go? Or, you know that what Dean plans to do is a lot worse than sacrificing this ship. If it makes you feel any better- I'll miss the Maru too." Rommie said as she looked around at the little, broken shell of a ship and remembered the memories on board her.
Beka's lack of humility when flying the Maru, Harper's stash of dirty holos and Sparky cola, Trance's plants and 'girl talk'. She was going to miss this ship, it had lived inside her for most of five years, to Rommie it had become an extension of herself.
"Or maybe Dean took my last shred of stubbornness, my will to fight, my Valentine-ness when he cut me up." Beka replied savagely.
"Beka, you're stronger than that." Rommie replied with conviction.
"Right."
Beka stood up and looked around at her ship, the dull lights flickering around the room. Beka wandered into the cockpit, trailing her hand along the cool metal, letting her nails catch on a bolt every so often just to hear a faint 'ping'. A sound that to her meant her ship was alive.
As she settled in the pilot chair for one last time, Beka let her head fall back as she clasped tightly at the controls. She remembered the first time she had flown her precious Maru alone- without being on the knee of Ignatius Valentine.
"Relax dad, I'm perfectly capable of flying this thing." Beka had said with a laugh, as she flicked her currently blue hair behind her ear and grinned like a maniac.
"Yes well Rocket, don't break her." Her cautious father warned her.
"I won't."
She felt free in space, free to fly where she wanted, free to enter slipstream and be at one with her universe. Tapping at the controls, she giggled and felt the ship shudder as it went to enter the strings of the universe. She could see the blue ropes stretching out forever and she felt compelled to ride them. To see distant stars. Then suddenly the ship groaned and the Maru went tumbling back into the blackness of space. Authorisation Code: Don't let my daughter do something stupid.
"What did I say about Slipstream, Rebecca?" Her father shouted as he bounded down the steps towards her. He tried to keep the laughter from his voice; it ruined the effect if he laughed when trying to be stern.
"Err, slipstream is great?" Beka replied cheekily, smiling up at her dad.
"No! Well yes. Slipstream is great but that's beside the point. The point is that: no slipstreaming, not until you get a licence allowing you to or we'll lose the Maru."
"Come on! If we get caught just say you were flying." Beka pouted, as she began pressing the buttons again. She was about to restart the slipstream drive when her father caught her arm and attempted to glare at her. As he did, the lines on his face became more pronounced and Beka noticed how sunken his features had become. His mouth was a stubborn line nestled in between a greying, messy attempt at a beard, his nose was crooked from one too many fights over a scam gone wrong and although his eyes were bloodshot and ringed with dark circles they still held that Valentine spirit. He hadn't lost that quite yet but it was fading fast.
"I can't afford to pay any more fines than the ones I owe already, so please Rocket, try to be sensible. Also..." His eyes glinted mischievously at her as he continued. "If I was flying we wouldn't be caught."
Beka couldn't help but laugh at his cockiness,
"Fine. So I can fly in normal space, but no slipstream?" She queried.
"No slipstream." He replied firmly. "Now, fly me to the moon, Cap'n Valentine."
"Beka?"
"Hmm?" Beka turned around and looked at Rommie, she attempted a smile but it did not even reach her eyes. "Let's go, let Harper fit my baby with bombs."
"You don't have to do this you know? We could find another way."
"By that time Dean will be long gone. I can do this Rommie, I have to."
A few hours later, the crew had reconvened on command deck and were waiting impatiently for Beka so their plan could commence. The air was thick with anticipation and a sense of loss, as if they were about to kill a dear, old friend. Which in a sense they were.
"So if Dean had nice shiny shields, why don't you we?" Doyle asked Rommie, desperately trying to put some life back into the party. Rommie frowned at Doyle's choice of word- it had been plural.
We.
"Because three hundred years ago there was not a good enough shield system for the Highguard to adopt- and I believe the system still has some major flaws. And." She said with a pause and a smug grin. "I am flawless."
Singular.
Ha.
"It seems to be fine for Dean- no disaster there." Doyle pointed out stubbornly- choosing to ignore Rommie's last comment.
"Well Doyle, that'd be because Dean is the enemy and sod's law means it will work great for the enemy but for us it'd mess up every chance it got." Harper added with a shrug of his shoulders. It wasn't news to him that techonology failed, he just had to think about a machine he had made to synthesise pineapples to remember that
"Alright people, are we ready to blow this bastard up?" Dylan asked, striding heroically onto command with a wide grin plastered on his face.
He looked around at his 'rag-tag' crew, Harper was busy welding metal sheets to a control panel spilling its wire guts. Doyle standing there fiddling with her ridiculously, pink top. Rommie blinking rapidly as she processed world's worth of information in, if you will excuse the pun, the blink of an eye. Trance staring out ahead into the great blackness of space and Beka was... Where was Beka?
He was about to voice his question when she walked onto the deck.
"Harper, if you make any jokes about what we're about to do- then I swear I'll... I'll err; I'll set Dylan on you."
Dylan did a double take at this but was secretly rather glad that she wasn't ignoring him completely. They still had yet to discuss his comment and Dylan did not think it was the time or the place to discuss it now. Beka trudged down to the slipstream podium and folded her arms across her chest. She was shivering and nervously biting at her lower lip.
"Beka, the Maru is like a home to me too, so no jokes, I promise." Harper received a grateful smile from Beka. He hoped that she wouldn't stay mad at him for too long after the Maru was nothing more than carefree atoms given back to the stars.
Dylan nervously stepped up next to Beka, onto the slipstream podium and glanced over at her.
"You ready for stage one?" He said quietly, the expression on his face unreadable.
"Yeah." Beka replied, staring straight ahead. "Andromeda put me through to Dean's ship."
Thanks to Squid109 for the help with the shield business. It was greatly appreciated.
