Many, many thanks to squid109 for the beta-reading.
(And also thanks for the feedback, people...)
Chapter 43
To say that Rebekkah Valentine adjusted to her new life with natural ease would have been an understatement – and an awkward one at that, for there was nothing really 'natural' about it: she seemed to literally throw herself into her new task, the new challenges, the way of life dictated by Sam Profit and his business. Granted, she had not exactly been born a High Guard officer, and had run a business on her own before. And the Eureka Maru was a freighter ship, involved in... logistics, but that was really where all similarities to Transgalactica ended. No one knew this better than Sid Barry. It therefore surprised the old man considerably to see the determination with which Beka took to her new career.
Within two weeks of accepting her new position, Beka had settled into an established routine. She rose almost at the crack of dawn, hurried to the office, established the day's time table, looked up the business plans and checked the ships' flight schedules as well as the pilots' training and schooling sessions. She then plunged into reading the latest reports from Transgalactica's various departments as well as the newest business news available as she waited for Sid to arrive. As soon as he was in, they both went to the docks to get a brief look at the ships that had come in, that ones supposed to be going out, the freight that had been delivered... The afternoon was spent with business meetings, conferences, deals – or on long hours together, during which Sid explained Transgalactica's intricate structure, its various branches, affiliates, unconsolidated subsidiaries and associated companies.
Beka was absorbing all of it like a sponge, with amazing speed and utmost nonchalance. Every now and then she joined the pilots' training – and by the end of the third week she scheduled herself and the Maru, that had been brought back to tip top shape, for a job. From then on there were two or three flights a week she insisted on making herself; afterwards, she used the evenings at the docks, hanging around with some of the other pilots in the bars in the area, chatting about manoeuvres, spare parts, business deals... She bonded well – and quickly – with the other men and women, who after a slight hesitation accepted her in their midst without much fuss. The marginal reluctance she had felt at the very beginning: had she thought about it, she would have put it down to the usual uneasiness with which every new kid on the block is met with at first. But it wasn't quite that.
In fact, most people involved with Transgalactica, collaborators and business partners alike, were simply awed to have Captain Rebekkah Valentine of the Eureka Maru, First Officer to Captain Dylan Hunt of the Andromeda Ascendant, Matriarch of the Nietzscheans, victor over the Magog Worldship and founding... yes, well – founding mother of the Restored Systems' Commonwealth walking, talking, sitting in their midst. The news spread like wildfire, causing the company's share value to reach new peaks, flooding Transgalactica with co-operation and business proposals, and even changing most people's views on Mr. Sam Profit.
Had Beka stopped to think a bit about it, had she listened to what was going on the other side of the fence of work she had built around herself, had she allowed for more private conversation and relationships to emerge between herself and her co-workers or people she encountered, had she not effectively blocked out every hint, insinuation and question about her past, she even might have noticed. As things were, however, she didn't stop to think The only thing she did, in terms of reflection about her current situation, involved – if at all – her being on the look-out for 'the other shoe to drop' courtesy of 'dear, old Uncle' Sid. The fact that it hadn't puzzled her. Still: she kept on running on max power, her days spent in one hurricane of activity after another, her short nights, to which she withdrew after the seemingly interminable hours of frenzied exertion, after occasional brief encounters with men she met along the way, never to see them again after she was done with them, spent literally knocked-out.
Yes, the nights were spent in some sort of exhausted oblivion. There was no flash. The cravings, the needs, they were there every day, along with the knowledge that she could satisfy those cravings with very little effort, really. And yet, she didn't do it, for just as briefly there was also the cold, contemptuous voice ringing through her head:
I'd rather take my chances with Musseveni and all the Dragans he can come up with than go on like this with a pathetic flash addict at my side masquerading as my first officer.
And whenever it happened, she pushed it all aside, the cravings and the voice and everything else associated with them, quieting all of it, almost crushing it as instantaneously as it came up. Giving in to the needs would have validated the voice, would have given it satisfaction, something she was determined to not let happen. Ever.
And so she marched blindly ahead through her crazy days, that left her in a state of almost prostrate fatigue, that she washed down with a sleeping pill and some strong, stiff drink, thanking the Divine she didn't believe in for having allowed modern medical science to come such a long way. It sank her into oblivion for a few, blissfully unaware hours, from which she emerged refreshed, energetic... and opaque to everyone, including herself. Yes, things were definitely on their way to routine.
-
On the other side of the 'fence' stood Sid Barry, like his 'niece' overwhelmed by the sheer amount of activity she would pack into both her days and his, like her dazzled by the frenzy, like her waiting for 'the other shoe to drop' – on Beka.
As far as her doubts about him were concerned: she needn't have worried. Sam Profit knew exactly what he expected of her – and the impact the news of Rebekkah Valentine's joining ofTransgalactica had throughout the business world in general and within the Commonwealth space and the Nietzschean prides in particular proved him more than right. As far as he could see, it was more than worth any kind of problems that he felt might be expected to arise from Beka's troubled state of mind. That none of those problems emerged made him anxious, put him on the edge. In fact, it almost scared him.
When he had first received the visit of Harper and Rafe, the latest adventures of captains Hunt and Valentine with the Dragans were already old news; at least the official version the Commonwealth had released was. It was thus with some surprise that Sam Profit encountered Beka's brother and friend, attentively listening to their more detailed story of the events. That there was more to that quickly became apparent when the two younger men began cautiously beating around the bush, asking for detailed information about Sid's experiences with the Valentine couple and their infamous first business companion.
As far as Paul Montrose was concerned, Sam Profit delivered all he knew, quite freely as it wasn't much to begin with anyway. A talented bio-engineer and scientist with promise, Montrose had been one of the few humans to be accepted as a member of the Sinti Academy of Science. A mere two years later his employment there ended on a rather sour note, after the Perseids found out that he had pushed forward with unauthorized and highly dubious experiments, testing new genetic technologies on different humanoid, Than, and even Pyrian subjects. He became a free-lancer; the Valentines and Sid met him some years later and he joined up with them, at first a medical assistant on the Maru's crew, then later providing them with all sorts of jobs and assignments in the pharmaceutical department, where he still seemed to have a lot of connections. And then, after a particularly lucrative assignment, he ran off with the money. Sid had never heard of him again. Nor had he cared about it, especially not with Thalia Valentine herself taking off only six months later. They had never made a connection between the two disappearances. And that was all Sid Barry had to offer them on Paul Montrose.
On Thalia Valentine, he was far less open. She had left, disappeared for a number of years, only to emerge as a very powerful, very wealthy senator of the Than Hegemony, leader of the department of Humanoid Resources in the Than Ministry of Economics, operating both in her official function as well as for her private enterprises – of which the nature seemed somewhat obscure – from a vast estate on the beautiful planet Raia, that had been terraformed and temperately climatised by the Than to provide luxurious properties for the very rich and very powerful in the Hegemony. When the Than had joined the Commonwealth, Thalia Valentine had resigned her official functions. All of this was however more or less common knowledge, but it was all that Sid Barry shared with them on her.
That they had inquired at all, left him thinking, though. And so he waited, patiently, to find out what was in store – from Beka, preferably. Who seemed unaware of anything related to any of this. Who seemed reluctant to dwell on anything concerning her recent, or for that matter, more distant past,. For the moment Sid wrote it off as a repercussion of the latest trauma and waited for it to subside. However, there was no sign of that – as there was no visible sign of some major break-down threatening to surface when it came to Beka. At first it puzzled him, later on it alarmed him, but as day after day passed without incident he began to calm down. And routine settled in, with him too.
And then, after more than three months of calmness, the routine finally ended.
A/N: I know I said I'll take it more slowly, but the thing is: this chap is actually the first part of a chapter I had - due to excessive length even for my standard - to break up into halves. And since I'm not really comfortable with breaking chaps up, I'm sort of anxious to move past it.
