Triumph in the field,
Now seek solitude and peace,
Home calls, mission done.
Chapter Three: Home Calls
Salvador woke with a start as the shuttle from Tantalus to Pandora touched down on the Opportunity landing pad.
"Hey," he nudged his teammate Zer0, whose helmeted head was turned toward the window. "How long was I out for?"
Zer0's smooth, featureless mask with its ever present red projection eye caught the light as he turned toward Salvador. He shrugged and responded, "Your slumber so deep/Drool on your chin, snoring loud/Averted my gaze."
Salvador burst out into hearty laughter, and gave Zer0 the finger. "Well fuck you too," he laughed.
Zer0 smiled beneath his mask, his red eye projecting a :-)
Now that Salvador was awake and had Zer0's attention, he began to prattle on about their weeklong, reconnaissance mission on Tantalus.
Zer0 sighed as Salvador talked. He found most other Pandoran denizens to be tedious at best, intolerable at worst. But for some reason Zer0 found the blue-haired, short and stout Salvador, with his foul mouth, sense of humor, and passion for all things guns, combat and exploration, tolerable, maybe even likable. So he listened to Salvador's nonstop chatter, nodding and commenting when necessary.
Unbuckling his seat belt, Salvador stood up to stretch. "You wanna grab a beer and bite at the Holy Spirits?" he asked the still seated Zer0. "The food on Tantalus was shit. I need something good and greasy in my gut before I crash."
Keeping his head bent so as not to hit it against the shuttle's ceiling, Zer0 declined by emoting a thumbs down, then a sleeping emoji.
"Aight, that's cool," Salvador said good-naturedly as he moved into the exit aisle. "I'm sure there's at least one chick on Pandora willing to grab a bite with a dude that looks like a fist with hair stapled to it."
Emoting a heart, Zer0 responded, "Height and weight aside/Your goodness shines bright as sun/Heart filled with kindness."
"Heh," Salvador smiled sheepishly. "Yeah, yeah, my goodness shines, but more importantly, I'm funny. Chicks like funny guys," he said with a grin. As the two Crimson Raiders approached the shuttle's walkway, Salvador said more seriously, "It's cool man, I'll be fine on my own. After you've had some time to chill and recharge your batteries, don't be a stranger. Swing by my place. I've got some new guns coming in that I wanna show you. We can shoot cans, maybe hunt some skags."
Zer0 nodded, appreciating his teammate for respecting his need for time and space to himself. He put out his gloved hand for Salvador to fist bump, then the two went their separate ways.
Zer0 sighed happily as he traded the dry, oppressive desert heat for the artificially cooled environment of his spacious, one-story house. The moment his front door was closed and locked, he removed his boots, body armor, helmet, and underwear. Gathering the soiled items in his arms, he walked to the laundry room and placed everything carefully into the cleaning shute.
He then did a quick check of each room to make sure everything was as he'd left it.
Satisfied that nothing had been disturbed, he ended his check in the bathroom by stepping into the shower and letting the hottest water he could stand rinse off the sweat and grime from his mission. When he couldn't stand the heat anymore, he turned off the shower and toweled himself dry.
He looked at his comfortable bed longingly, but the hunger pangs in his belly pushed him to pull on a pair of boxers and head to the kitchen.
Flicking on the light, he opened the refrigerator door and frowned at the sparsely populated shelves.
Reminder: Order groceries, he typed into his Echo. He then searched the pantry until he found a can of black beans. After dumping them into a pot, he poured a can of tomato sauce over them. Once the pot was heating up, he absentmindedly stared out the window, replaying the mission on Tantalus in his head. He analyzed what went well, what didn't and the part that he played in everything.
Looking back at his pot on the stove, he had a moment of regret for not taking Salvador up on his offer to have dinner at the Holy Spirits. He felt even sadder when he remembered it was Saturday, which meant the pub would be serving fish and chips. With a sigh, he began to eat his beans and tomato sauce a few minutes later with one hand. With the other, he accessed a vending machine app, and put in an order for items to restock his fridge and pantry. After he submitted his payment, he groaned when he received an alert that his order would be sent to the heavily populated Overlook for pick up, rather than somewhere closer and less populated.
As he washed his dishes, he found himself thinking that his simple, high protein meal had satisfied his hunger but not his desire to follow it up with something sweet.
He did one more check of the refrigerator and cabinets hoping he'd somehow overlooked something that could satisfy his craving. Coming up empty handed, he groaned again, then typed a second reminder in his Echo. Go to HS, get pie.
Heading back to the laundry room, he retrieved his now freshly laundered body armor, and pulled it, along with his boots, gloves, and mask back on.
Taking one last, lingering look at the quiet comfort of his house, he reminded himself that the noise and people crowding the Holy Spirits would be worth something sweet and savory from the pub's kitchen.