Fu Ju Min's Story

"Well I put the posters up. This better work..." Ju exhaled and slumped against one of the struts holding the Qi in place. She pulled out a sandalwood fan, unfurled it and began to fan herself, trying to escape the heavy heat. Every time she came here the heat always surprised her, dry heat or no, it was still far too hot for any normal human. Her face was dewed lightly with sweat, her black hair weighted, but not quite drenched with sweat. Her loose, white shirt was helping her avoid the heat, and she had it open to the air, exposing a simple black tank-top underneath. Her pants were similarly loose, the dark khaki fabric still airy and light. "Fuck this whole thing. I mean, at least we were close enough to limp into port, but fuck... this whole thing is just utter shit Xhava. This isn't just shit creek, I am adrift in an ocean of shit and I'm not even sure I have a raft, let alone a paddle."

"It's a port city miss Fu. If you can't find a crew here then you can't find one anywhere." Xhava stepped out of the shadows underneat the Qi, her small height clearly a boon in her business. Ju was never sure if Xhava had chosen to be a ship's mechanic because of her height, or if the universe had simply blessed the woman with her wide, short frame and a knack for engines. There was a smear of oil on Xhava's face, right above her dark blue eyes, where she had tried to brush away a lock of her red hair.

"Not that I'd blame them for avoiding you if you keep talking like that. I hope you didn't put 'Come join my pity party for a one-way ticket to mopesville' on them posters, miss Ju." Xhava's voice was gentle and joking, accented in a way that reminded Ju of rye whiskey and dust. "Look, I understand that you don't want to talk about what happened. Fair enough. But you're not gonna get out of whatever shit you're in by sitting on your ass and bitching about it."

"No, I'm gonna get out of it by paying you through the nose, right?" Ju smirked and followed Xhava without so much as an indication from the stout woman. She'd been here enough times to know the drill. The service wasn't cheap, but she needed it now more than ever. Xhava was hands-down the best at keeping the Qi's engine in order and no one could pick up tracking bugs like her. And right now, Ju needed that kind of skill.

Ju clasped Xhava's hand, her smile a little strained. They both knew this was going to be her last trip to the shipyard for a while.

"Gǎnxiè yīqiè..." Ju said, briefly contemplating hugging the woman before she thought better of it. She turned to see a man standing in the doorway. He was tall and foreboding, wearing a helmet that sent shivers down her spine. Alliance Intelligence. She knew that uniform well. Tai Hong had introduced her to a few Operatives. She couldn't tell what made her skin crawl more, remembering Tai, or this man showing up where she was unannounced. She swore quietly and turned to the man.

"Can I help you?" Xhava piped up, stepping between Ju and the Operative. "I was just about to close the shop for lunch, so if you have business you'd best hear it now."

The Operative tilted his head down slightly to peer at the somewhat short mechanic standing before him; it was unusual to see someone who wasn't showing any telltale signs of fear in his presence. When one put on the uniform of the Alliance Clandestine Operations Department, they had to shoulder the blame and fear that resulted from so many years of horrific acts.

This Operative, however, shouldered those no more.

"I wish to speak with Captain Ju. Pressing matters." The Operative's helmet had a vocoder built in to modify his voice to that of a flat, mechanical tone, both to hide the identity behind the soulless mask and to make him seem even more inhuman.

The mechanic nodded, and to the mild amusement of the Operative, the briefest paleness appeared on her face. This woman, who had been so fearless before, was now concerned for her friend. Alliance Operatives were trained to notice and understand these tiny signs; were this Operative still working for ACOD, this would be a tool for extortion. Luckily enough, he was not.

The Operative turned towards Captain Ju, who was eyeing him with concern, and indicated for her to follow him out of a nearby doorway; he noted that a ship was parked nearby. Most probably hers.

When they were out of earshot of any bystanders, most of which knew better than to interfere in Alliance business anyways, the Operative turned back to face the Captain.

"Captain Ju. I require your assistance."

"My assistance, huh?" Ju's hand was already resting on her pistol. She was on edge, clearly. Of all the days, it had to be today. Of course, that was just how it worked. Her eyes were sharp, darting across the scenery. She wanted to know where her escape options were in case this guy had been sent after her. She didn't want to use her gun in the shipyard, but she wasn't going to let this guy take her in.

"And what assistance can I offer you, Operative?" She asked, her voice tense and measured. This certainly wasn't how she planned to go down. She'd has visions of when the Alliance was going to come take her down. There was supposed to be more than one dude, at least ten. If she'd been honest she was hoping to have gone down in a space chase, maybe ram the Qi into one of the ships chasing her. But one dude in a dingy shipyard? That was so much less epic than she'd wanted.

The Operative noticed Captain Ju's hand slowly sliding towards a holster at her hip, but made little comment. He certainly hoped she wouldn't try anything less than sensible, but you never knew. Then again, if intelligence suggested she was the best blockade runner this side of known space, she would certainly have to be held to a higher standard.

"I require passage."

The words were simple enough, but it was the person delivering it which was sure to raise eyebrows. An Alliance Operative, asking to travel on the ship of some random captain in the middle of nowhere? Yet this Operative cared little for appearances; he simply needed an escape.

OOC: quick time-skip for Monolith's interview

"Oh right, the Space Spiders." Ju stepped back into Xhava's main shop, seeing Xhava relax significantly as she saw the Operative without his helmet on. Ju agreed, those things were disquieting. She turned to Charles. "The Qi has Space Spiders, a whole bunch of them, especially under the tiles of the upper Starboard cargo hold. You'll want to avoid that spot, space spiders are pretty creepy. In fact, might be best if you just avoided the cargo bays entirely." Ju's face was lit with a crooked little smirk.

"Now you two are the only ones here so far, so get introduced while we see if anyone who can actually help me pilot this rig is going to show up." Ju leaned against the doorway, looking outside to see if anyone was coming down the street for her. Passengers were fine, but she needed a crew. Tai had supplied the majority of her crew so now she needed a whole new crew. She'd barely been able to get the Qi here by herself, she was not a pilot, not an engineer and she was far from being both at the same time.

OOC: Trying to figure out how to format second picture correctly into profile


Charles raised an eyebrow at the mention of the spiders. He had, of course, encountered less-than-friendly animals in the course of his former work, but none on the ship he was going to be residing on. Only a mild concern, however; how bad could space spiders be? He had no idea.

Noticing the young man standing nearby, giving him a look as any rational-minded person seeing an unmasked Alliance Operative would, Charles strode over, the faintest hints of a smirk touching the corners of his mouth. Depositing his dismounted mask on a nearby table, he extended a hand for a handshake.

"To everyone else, I am Agent Monolith. To you and the Captain, just Charles." Fine, so the greeting was a bit cryptic; but even when unmasked, that was the appearance Charles preffered. Drawing the line between fear and trust was the best way to acquire information, for everyone would bend to one or the other. It was something that had been drilled in since day one; by now a natural thought process.

Ju watched as Xhava took Donny off for a quick run-down of the basics of engine tech. Not a thing she would normally do, but Xhava had a way of knowing when two people needed to be left alone for a bit. The woman's ability to pick up on undercurrents like that was uncanny.

"I've had the Qi swept for bugs by a few different people, including myself." She explained, her eyes still fixed out on the street. "But I have...reason to suspect that there might be highly sophisticated bugs, specifically Alliance Intelligence bugs." She looked at him, her face steely. "So I'll admit it's a little convenient that an Alliance Intelligence Officer shows up asking for nothing more than passage." Her grey eyes flashed as she looked Monolith up and down. She wasn't about to spill something like this to Donny, but she needed to be sure that Charles knew. He probably knew most of this already. Alliance intelligence was supposed to know about these things before they happened. And based on the number of soldiers that had been waiting for her, a lot of people had known about this.

"But if you're really Alliance Intel, I suspect you already know about that. I'd bet you've all heard about Wu Tai Hong, yeah? Niáng thought he'd secure a cushy position by bringing down a smuggling ring run by a powerful family's daughter." She stepped over to Monolith, each footfall kicking up a bit of dust as she closed the distance between them. She didn't stop until she was barely a foot away from him, her eyes still locked on him. "But he made a mistake. He didn't expect a delicate, spoiled little rich girl to bloody her hands to get away from him. He was wrong." For a brief second her eyes flickered away from his, the tiniest flicker of pain flashing on her face before returning to her cold, hard stare.

"So I want to be clear, Charles. I am not bluffing. I'm not boasting, and I'm not posturing." She took a step back, releasing the tension in the room. She turned on her heel and returned to the doorway without another word.

Charles frowned but said nothing. He knew very well how dangerous rich girls could be; he had had to shoot one himself but a few years ago when she tried to play rebel by sending out less-than-public information to her insurrectionist lover. It was a job done like any other: quickly and without fuss, made to look like a mugging gone wrong. Still, she had put up a significant fight and made sure to at least bloody Charles's boots before she finally went down, two MagSnub rounds in her chest.

"You can be assured that there are no bugs on your ship." Charles pulled out his PDA and pressed a few buttons once more, changing the display to that of lines and lines of text, and twisted it to be visible to Ju.

"You don't really think I would attempt to escape without first downloading as much of the data on the servers as possible? Contained within this PDA is a record of every single bugged ship this side of the galaxy. Your dear Qi is not on it. If your ship is bugged, it is not by ACOD."

Charles put his PDA back into his coat and crossed his arms, frowning.

Ju blinked at Charles. Her face went slack, her jaw hanging very slightly open. She had been so sure. But suddenly it all made sense. If she'd been tracked she'd have been arrested as soon as she hit port. And yet she'd been in port for two days without so much as a side look from even the custom's officers. Was it possible? Had Tai Hong really been that arrogant? Would he have really held the information back and relied on his own bugs?

"I don't know whether to be glad he's that stupid, or angry that I was fooled by someone that stupid." She sighed and relaxed against the doorframe. "He would do it too. He was so sure. He was so completely certain that I'd wilt." Her shoulders began to shake, then her whole torso started quivering. Then the soft sound of her laughter began to emerge from her lips.

"He was so sure, he--he hid one of the bugs in a little teddy-bear he gave me." She threw her head back, running a hand through her hair. "Shiiiit, is it really that simple?" She shook her head. She wasn't sure if she could believe all of it, but it felt good to let that tension off her chest for a bit. If he was going to kill her he'd have done it by now, if this was a con, it was going to be a long one, and she'd gotten out of one of those already. Maybe everything was going to be okay after all.

Carles listened to Ju's exposition and gave a curt nod at the end. "When we get to the...", he trailed off, making sure no one else was around, and then continued. "...station, it should have some rather powerful processing machinery aboard. If you give me any bugs you find, I can wire them up to the computers and trace them back to their receiever. We'll be able to find where your trackers are and even disable their bugs remotely."

Charles shifted slightly, a rare smile touching his face. "Is that adequate payment?"

Ju returned the smile, visibly relaxing. "That could be fun. Not sure I ever want to see his face, but maybe we could send a nice little dog-shit bouquet to him." She chuckled. "Would be peace of mind at least, I guess that's worth the flight to..." She paused and her brow furrowed.

"So is this just an 'off this rock' sort of trip; or am I taking you somewhere specific? " She'd had both types of fares, some people just needed to go anywhere with a long enough signal delay that they'd have a chance to escape. Neither would be a problem, really, she didn't have any new jobs lined up for the Qi, and any of her old contacts were suspect now, so it wasn't like she had any specific destination she was going to.

With business returning, the smile dropped off of Charles's face as quickly as it had appeared.

"I will report on that in orbit. Besides, it almost certainly is of little consequence until we've scavenged the station."

The reluctance caused a quick raising of Ju's eyebrow. That didn't bode well and she could feel a little twinge of doubt in the back of her mind. This could be regular caution, not wanting to be overheard in a busy and distrusted marketplace, but it could also be an easy way to avoid feeding her too much information until he was already on-board. Fine, she could work with that. The Qi was a military vessel after all. It had ways of dealing with mutiny. She'd made that part of the deal clear enough to Charles by now. If he was Alliance intelligence, he knew how situations like this would work. They were both going to sit with an undercurrent of distrust until he either crossed her, or they both owed each other enough that it was no longer worth it.

"Understood." She replied and glanced out into the shipyard. Xhava was busily ranting away to Donny, poor boy hadn't realized what he was getting into when he asked her for 'the basics'. The difference in atmo and vacuum performance for various forms of reaction drives was basic to Xhava.

"So did you still want that tour?"

Zasha Venediktov took a deep breath as she walked up to the ship, holding everything she owned in two packs. One, on her back, carried her personal items, and the second bigger bag she carried in her right hand held her tool box and all kinds of spare parts she'd picked up in her journeys. Even if they didn't fit the ship perfectly, most of them could be used to jerry-rig something until the proper part was found. Any time she had a bit of extra money and a good market, she picked up a thing or two, in faith that she would eventually have a place for it. Her brown leather pants and tall boots were good for resisting wear and tear, but in the heat she'd taken off the matching leather jacket to reveal a white tank top. She had overalls in her bag for when she actually had to get into the engine and get dirty, but otherwise she liked to present a tough front, and baggy overalls made her look even smaller and cuter than she was, not a good first impression for a new captain. Her guns were worn on her thighs, just to ensure that no one in this place thought that her size made her defenseless.

Her last job had lasted a record length for her, over a year, but as usual something had gone wrong. The Alliance hadn't broken up the crew, nothing so dangerous, but personality conflicts and the lack of paying jobs had driven everyone apart. She wasn't too worried about finding a job, usually someone wanted an engineer, but not everyone would hire a girl who looked like space could break her. Besides, she was getting uneasy about being planetbound, it'd been a week since she'd landed from her last job, and it wasn't as if she had a bunch of money in a bank somewhere to keep her going. No, she needed a job, and even if it didn't pay much beyond food and board it could keep her learning and moving around the 'Verse. She'd heard this ship was hiring, and hadn't heard much bad about its Captain--or much information at all, really--so it was worth a shot.

"Excuse me," she said in a faint Russian accent. "Is this ship looking for an engineer? I heard you might be hiring on a new crew."

"This'll be your first time out of Atmo?" Ju Min could see her expression, a mix of incredulity and surprise, in Monolith's helmet. She had taken a few people on their first time off-planet, and it was always an adventure. "Lucky me. I'll make sure to get you a bucket in case you get sick when we hit the Black." She flashed him a smirk as she began to lead him to the docked Qi.

Artificial gravity had made the transition much easier for new fliers, but there was always that one person whose body reacted badly to the artificial gravity. Apparently there was some sort of minor difference somewhere in the inner ear that could pick up on the artificial-ness and would send the body into a panic. The last medic she'd known explained that it was an attempt by the body to purge possible poisons or hallucinogens, which the dry-heaving passenger had found humorous, in between retches.

She chuckled to herself at the memory, stopping as a soft voice tinted with the weight and smoothness of a Russian accent. She turned to see a svelte girl with long, dark hair. Ju's eye quickly picked up the girl's guns strapped to her thighs. An interesting choice, to display arms so outwardly. Whoever this girl is, she had some steel to her, even if it was just the stuff on her legs. More interesting to Ju Min though, was what the girl was asking. An actual engineer. Someone who was qualified to work with the Qi's engines who would stay on the ship. The ship deserved such attention, but she'd never been able to give it that.

Just how desperate was this girl that she was willing to take on a job like this?

"We're hiring alright. And an engineer would be damn appreciated. You're interested?"

Having walked around the outside of the ship, Montgomery picked up his footlocker and made his way to the cargo ram were Ju was. "Ma'am, reporting..." He trailed off as he spotted the all to familiar look of an Alliance operative. He quickly throw his hood up, "Were can I throw my gear?" As he said that he took an other quick look at the operative, then looked back at Ju. "Then if you don't mind I would like to start to familiarize myself with the ship and her systems." He set his footlocker down and slowly clicked off the safety on one of his pistols then picked up his footlocker again. "That is if we're not expecting trouble ma'am." He said as he nodded in the direction of the operative.

"I would be," she replied, "assuming your ship is heading out of dock soon. I'm not good on land, and there are other ships that might be coming in if I'm not to your liking."

And, if she stayed planetbound too long, the odds went up that someone would find her that she'd rather not see. As well as the unfortunate fact that most ships would only hire girls her age for assistants, or worse, and very few would chance giving her the position as main engineer. If this Captain was willing to give her that power, she'd stick around. If not, it would just be another temporary stop as she worked her way up to the big ships with better money. Money wasn't everything, but it did come in handy, especially if you had to hide from the Alliance double quick.

"I'm a good engineer, and even though I look young I've been doing this for years," she said urgently as her blue-grey eyes looked into the Captain's. "I don't cause trouble as long as no one gives me any, and I'm good in a fight. If you're looking for someone to have main responsibility for your engines and mechanics, I'm the engineer for you."