[b]Captain John Lockman[/b]

The group around him never responded to his question; so John turned back to "his" drink. A sip this time instead of his earlier attempts at draining the whiskey. 

How had it come to this?

In some rundown space station bar, slugging whiskey straight from the bottle, still covered in the blood of......of his crew. 

That last thought drew a shuddering breath. 

[i]' Amanda's words cutting out with a pained gasp. Dmitri's pleas before he toppled over. The ramp closing as the blasterfire and screeches of Metacer's drew closer.  [/i] 


[quote=@Dyelli Beybi]


She drained the rest of her whiskey setting the glass down on the counter before turning to the pilot, "bring the bottle with us," she said as she stood up, not wanting to waste the alcohol.  She turned to address the rag-tag group of hangers on she and Fihlyn had acquired, keeping her tone calk and conversational, "Okay, I am going to need help to set up in preparation for launch, including, but definitely not restricted to crowd control."

"At this point, unless you have some loved one you can't not tell, let's keep what we're doing between ourselves.  We don't want an angry mob trying to storm the ship."

[/quote]

Call it adrenaline dump. The pleasant buzz of alcohol. The lingering warmth of where she had touched him. Or maybe the general lack of care he had at this present time. 

He nodded without question. Closing the bottle and tucking it into the vacuum proof survival pouch dangling from his left web gear. His helmet tucked into under his shoulder. 

"Man...." He took a shuddering breath through his nerves and the alcohol. "Manual." 

He held out his left wrist towards the dark haired woman; the flight crew TacPad chiming awake with a dull blue glow. Awaiting the information transfer. 

******

Last minute cram sessions had been far and few between in John's upbringing. Relegated to a few times in flight school for the most part. 

But even John could admit that glossing over a colony ship's six thousand page manual while walking through a colony station in the tow of an ensemble of characters was a first. His TacPad scrolling through diagrams and procedures as he followed vaguely in the cluster en-route to the ship.