Cardamine

Cardamine

WARNING: Liberty Law requires immediate incarceration, without trial, of anyone who is seen with Cardamine in their possession. Rehabilitation is used in conjunction with incarceration until the drug is purged from the system. Genetic Damage will not be Corrected (See Entry)
--Surgeon Generals Warning (C.O. Everett Koop IIV)

LIBERTY NARCOTICS SUPRESSION SQUAD GALACTIC DATABASE ENTRY No. 122
CARDAMINE:
(Carr-duh-meen)
A deisgner drug whose origins came about from somewhere in the vicinity of the Omicron-Theta System. It causes a sense of intense euphoria and doubles the users' reflexive capabilities (Some light-fighter pilots ingest Cardamine before intense firefights requiring quick, on-the-spot action and thinking), but is highly addictive due to users' bodies never gaining a complete tolerance of the drug. Even short term use causes genetic damage, and its anti-aging capabilities aren't worth the damage. A group of smugglers and pirates who call themselves 'Outcasts' are made of of such people who have formed a family-like community due to being 'shunned' by their fellows for such damage.
What is also incredibly dangerous about this drug is its adaptablity: It can be ingested by consumption of pills of any shape, size, and coating; or inhaled as an aerosol. It cannot be injected or absorbed through the skin: Contact must come through inhalation through the mouth and nose or ingestion.
Exceprt copied from a LIBERTY SECURITY FORCE Narcotics Control Manual.
Liberty Security reminds you to not be a mutant and just say 'NO' to Cardamine.

Cardamine
Pricing Estimate:
Planet Manhattahan: $1,500 per unit--illegal to sell, illegal to buy
Planet Pittsburgh: $1,002 per unit--illeagl to sell more than a specific weight, legal to buy.
Planet Kyushu: $150 per unit-law still pending, when in effect will jump to $4,200 per unit
Cali Base (Outcast owned): $450 per unit--Base Sells, doesn't buy.
Any Outcast Settlement sells this stuff cheaply. A good way to get rich quick is to haul this stuff to liberty. Dangerous though, and only useful if you really have nothing left to lose.
--Excerpt taken from the 'Spacefaring Anarchists' Cookbook'.

He sat at a greasy table in a greasier resturant in the greasiest port of a fairly-greasy base concealed in a hollowed out asteroid floating in the asteroid field of the Magellan Solar system. Oddly, the galaxy in itself wasn't greasy yet one would assume such due to the general greasiness of this grease-attracting place. His long, well-groomed and most certainly NOT greasy brown hair fell into his neon-green cybereyes, and with a swift movement of his left hand smoothed the errant bangs back over his head; light catching and moving over the bit of plastic that was surgically implanted to the back of his left hand. His cybereyes had all the look and charm of Nuclear waste, as they were a lighter shade of puke green with glowing, darker green that lit the pupils like centimeter-sized christmas ligths. They were well situated in his eyelids and face, and the geen glow seemed to blink out of existence a moment as he, in turn, blunk to moisten them every few moments. They were blinking a bit frequently due to the fact that the act of smoothing his hair had caused an errant bit to fall into his eye. Sensing that sting one gets from over-shampooed hair in contact with the eyes, he rubbed at his eye with the palm of his other hand to rub away the sting. He sighed and recollected his wits as he slouched at the table, looking at the back of his other hand at the odd little pump that was grafted there. It was small, around the size and shape of a plump D-cell battery, and was in turn connected to a small digital gauge which was connected to a small, black-coloured plastic hose that travelled to a certain spot at his wrist; finally jutting out to slip into the sleeve of the Grey Nikeverse-DurafabricSmartshirtTM he wore. He had just enough Cardamine in the reservoir to last him the rest of his little 'business-trip', give or take a few quick emergency shots to flee or win a spat with the local Police.

For a smuggler, pirate, and all around-fun guy, Alva was actually fairly handsome. He never had to shave often due to Cardamine nearly halting much of his aging process, a side effect of being a Cardamine induced-and-dependant mutant he enjoyed all-too-well. He currently was doing a run of not Cardamine but Hydrogen Fuel to the Rochester Base up near the Pittsburgh Area of the Liberty system: A hidden cadre of people who like nothing better than combing areas of starship combat and debris-fields and selling scrap or spare parts for cash. Junkers, Alva had decided upon visiting such a base, were his kind of people. They were the only faction who were just hippie-like to have a neutral face to anyone despite their background: Criminal, terrorist, drug smuggler or otherwise, and were just hard working enough to not be credited as total hippie as the Zoners were.
Alva was thiry years of age, but one could almost mistake him for being aged 26. This was due to his dependance on the drug Cardamine, the very thing that would seperate him fom the rest of the human race that had colonized the Sirius Sector.

Alva wasn't Human. Although Bretonian by birth, and human by birth, exposure to the drug Cardamine at a goth-antigrav Rave (A Rave held in a spaceport whose gravity field is switched off. He still remembered the sex he had at Zero-G with this cute boy whose cybereyes looked sunken enough to appear skeletal. How everything just seemed to feel lighter...) had made him exactly what the Colonial Newscasts had to say about Cardamine users.

A freak. A genetic nigthmare. A meta-human. A Gene-joke Deviant. Mutant. An Outcast. Something he had lots of time to think about, then to realize that there was really no big deal and just enjoy being what he was.
After all: Like many Outcasts he wasn't hideously mutated. In fact, he had a rather elvish quality to his lean, athetic build and pale skin, wispy hair.
His genetic damage was more internal: Sometimes his organs would pulse weirdly, or his heart would stop working spontaneously then start up again. Perhaps maybe one lung would slow up, then start again normally. Perhaps even his digestion would halt. His very biochemistry was twisted, something inhuman. He sometimes wished he could have some sort of mutant superpower like some of the luckier Outcasts: Some of them were fairly adept telepaths, whilst some were telekinetics who could perform ship repairs without even leaving the vessel.

All he could do was emit pheremones that made people more agreeable with his presence. It wasn't powerful, and it certainly wasn't useful in terms of mind control. It just made people less likely to bash his head in if they were in a pissy mood and he said something smarmy.

He sighed, and with that heave of oxyen the larger, 12-gauge shell-sized canister strapped below his throat piped a small concentration of Cardamine into the intake that snaked into his left nostril; mixing live-giving oxygen with life-thwarting Cardamine with every thirtieth breath. He stood up, letting the small glass of lager go half un-finished; his back and vertebrae popping as he stretched to ease and shake the tiredness from his bones. With the intake of Cardamine he felt livlier, vitality flooding his body the way the drink, the stretching, or anything less than feral sex couldn't give. His whole suit was a single piece meant for spacers: A jumpsuit that was gray at the sleeves, chest, and much of the torso but as it came to a 'vee' the rest of the suit was coloured black down to the pant cuffs. The material was a cross between soft-cloth and the durability of synth-leather; and had a great many sensors that allowed it self-cleaning capabilities. The faded look of the black colour suggested that the self-cleaning feature was already past its prime and the garment itself had to be handwashed. His laceless-sneaker clad feet made almost no noise as he sauntered over to the bar, grunted that he was ready to take off unintelligibly, and walked out the bar area. In walking out, his neural net had already logged $2 credits from his account just by vocalizing that he paid. The wonders of technology, now if only it would fill itself with money so he wouldn't have to work.

He stopped before leaving...then smiled gently, staring out at the huge observation window in the bar's side. The entire Mactan Base port was one of his favourite stopping points before hitting the Liberty System during business, and it was views like these that kept him in his lifestyle, his career. Space was big, but it was far from empty. With wonders like ice fields, asteroid fields, and particle clouds, the universe had lots of areas to keep tourists in company. Many people went through their entire lives mucking it out on planets, and sometimes even in stations, never going out in a ship of their own to see what the galaxy had to offer.

"Those poor sods." He always said. "They fear losing contact with the soft, pitiful dirt." He actually thought of things like this during his higher Cardamine-binges and would actaully talk lively to himself about why normal humans just couldn't handle exploration and excitement. Currently by looking out the window of Mactans' Bar and Cafe', he could see the Asteroid Field in allits wonder.

Due to much of its water-content and ice crystalliation, all he could see out the window was an endless light blue hue. Not the light blue one gets from a sun-lit sky, but it was a light-blue that wasn't luminous. Many rocks and astroids flew by his vision at slow speeds: tumbling about end over micro-meteorite scarred end before smacking into the force-field around the station, causing a cascade of neon-electric yellow to billow a bit as the meteorite was sent to richochet away by its own-redirected kinetic energy. He could sit for hours in places like these, watching the asteroids come and go, and the ships dock with the station. At times he could even see the defenses come into place: Lane Hacker or Outcast or Junker ships heading out to take out enemies who discovered the station and decided to open fire. In mere minutes, he once witnessed a small squad of Twenty Bounty-Hunters Guild ships be reduced to smoking scrap. He grinned a moment in nostalgia: his buddy Rinaldo Ginzo, an expatriated Rheinlander and Junker by trade and loyalty, had managed to find a good array of their Gunslinger tachyon-based weaponries intact and was able to sell them to this very base for a good fee.

He smoothed the Synth-Bacon and Toast crumbs out of his flightsuit; remnantsof the delicious sandwhich he had along with his drink. His sense of Nostalgia began to ebb as he walked out of the bar, slinging from a coatrack his favourite leather coat: A brown coloured affair with armored-shoulderpads and the Outcast insignia over its lapel. He sighed as the scent of leather, jasmine-scented perfumes, and his lover filled his nostrils, the coat once belonging to him.

The Outcasts were his family now. And Gren Vespucci was his lover. He sighed as he fondly remebered the cute guy: How he loved the boys' fascination with the brown locks on his own head, and the lovely elfin black locks on his; his lovely almond-shaped eyes and the sparkle of life and intelligience filled them, how they glowed all the more brighter when Alva said something funny. How he remembered his love commented on the sound of his own voice and how it had a sexy, catlike allure; how he loved the whitish look of his own skin, the way his gilded tones contrasted to Alva's corpselike pallor. He was at the height of ultimate flattery when he discovered that he had written a series of poems regarding himself, and how wonderful certain aspects about him were. He loved how he could talk for hours on end about space and its colonization, its wonders. He loved how the two made a pact to only rest on solid ground for a short while, that the stars themselves was their home. The Kusarian was always on his mind.

It made it all the more painful when he was told by a fellow Outcast that, in an effort to raise money for their new home in the New-Tokyo system so that they could have a nice, clean place to stay where little work was needed, his lover was fatally gunned down by the Liberty police when they discovered he was smuggling 'contraban art' across the police line. Contraban Art. Fragging Contraban Art. Just because President Jacobi decided certain Four-Dee Video Games regarding zombified politicos weren't appropiate for chidren, that the border patol has the right to be that agressive?

He wasn't outraged at something so stupid perpetrated by the so-called 'protectors of peace' of Liberty. Gren and he knew the dangers of doing business and living together in the outskirts of liberty. They knew the border patrols were authorized to use deadly force if anything illegal was found at all, and knew that sometimes the border patrols would even use deadly force when a simple arrest would be feasible and save lives/money. Sometimes Political movements cost lives. Innocent lives. Sure it wasn't fair, but its not like Alva could just waltz into Manhtthan dependant on Cardamine as he was, a mutant with no human rights, and demand justice....Maybe after he would perform sucha feat and manage to keep his life intact he could punch out every single god in every single religion for being so callous towards humanity. THAT would have been a neat trick.

He frowned at the memory, wishing he had enough of the drink to banish the pain as he stabbed at the 'call' elevator button. He hated the pain. He loved Gren more than his own sodding life, and felt everything good in life get sucked into an event horizon at his fiery death. He needed something more than the Cardamine now in his life, he wanted Gren back. At the moment, Booze would be a far better excess than the alternative. He would never drink on the job or while flying, as flying was its own natural high, but drink was the only thing that kept him from going too far: Wishing that Gren was never born, just so his own pain would be eased. He sometimes would get so fed up with the pain he would get little daydreams of just ending it all: taking his ship and filling it with radioactive waste and plough into the atmosphere of Liberty's Home planet, Manhatthan, cackling wildly over the intercom that he wouldn't be so insane as to die alone, someone had to go with him. He never wanted to catch himself thinking that, or worse, feeling that.

Within moments he was settled into his small, and highly durable Light-Fighter: A customized Version of a refurbished Fringe-territory designed Ship model called the Dagger. He sighed and shook his head to clear his thoughts, then flicked the comm switch. "This is Outcast Dagger Ship: The Heartbroken, unit one-dash-one. I am ready to take off, and will be heading out to the Buffaloe Base, Libery Capitol system, as a layover till I can regroup and head to my final destination, Rochester Base in Pensylvania Sector 5-dash-D. I am carrying four hundred units of Hydrogen Fuel that I will transport to Rochester. Will Clear final intinerary before returning. " He sighed gently, another dash of gaseous Cardamine filling his lungs. He had to state all the remaining stops at every base he went to prior to the last stop, so that his itinierary can be cleared with his employers. Even though it seemed futile as the itinerary was already programmed and calculated on both his computers and the ones in all of his Employers' systems, it was something to pass the time as his ship warmed up. As fast and owerful as all single-pilot ships were, they still needed to power up for a moment before blasting off everywhere. He felt a reverence enter his voice as he spoke the ships' name "The Heartbroken". He and this particular ship had gone back a longways, a gift his grandfather gave him as a coming-of-age present (the old coot was an expert in refurbishing and repairing old ships. Back then he named the ship 'Birthday Suit'. It suited hiim well, since space travel was Alva's second nature, a space-ship was his second birth-skin.), he re-named it after the first month of grief that hit him when Gren was killed, wrongly.

"We show your status as clear." A feminine voice spoke cheerfully over the comm. "Knock em dead over there kiddo, buzz us when you want in again. Happy Smuggling!" He grinned and did his best to roll his cybereyes to heaven. Due to his orientation and bodily constitution, he wasn't in any way attracted to Gretchen, the 20-year-old dispatcher for the Lane-Hacker run Mactan base. However the base grew on him over the years, and he frequented the area between taking a hidden jump hole from the Cortez' system and taking the actual, legally-enforced protection Route to Liberty. Sometimes one had to mix and match travelling on the straight-and-narrow and the wide path of vices. As it grew on him, so did he in turn grow on its people, and it was one of his 'contributions' in which he saved Gretchens' life, and in return felt an odd friendship form between them. She knew full out he was gay, and even was amongst the few that consoled him and went to Grens' funeral. Sometimes, however, just to poke fun she would attempt to hit on him.

He sighed, hoping he wouldn't feel obligated to fulfil a 'contribution' on the way out. Last thing he needed was a firefight while nearly stuffing the ship with enough Hydrogen Fuel Cargo to qualify it as a mobile Spa-Cruiser-Destroyer. "Contra-butions'' are something that crops up whenever one hears about honour among theives. Doesn't matter what criminal fraternity you belong to: Helping other factions out, particulary allied factions, gains you some benefits. Occasioanlly he would help out in defense of the station: A small or large squadron of ships from various legal groups would stumble upon the station trying to get a juicy reward from the Bounties Office or perhaps some fame amongst the ranks; so anyone who cared at all about a given base will defend it, sometimes even merchant freighters would be involved in the sparring. He helped out a couple of times, sometimes even while laden with loot or cargo if he felt like helping at all. Other times he couldn't be bothered, and would just buzz about his way. One perk, he noticed, after helping to defend the station for the fifth time in his coming and going there, was that all drinks and meals he paid for were just $2 credits. Even the really expensive ones, like Contraban chocolate cake and icecream.

Whoever said there wasn't any honour among theives didn't take into account that if there were rewards and benefits involved, any theif could be made honorable to another. All it took was the wonderful works of loss, and gain.

Space greeted him, the chilly cool blue misty hue of the massive ice crystal-rock asteroid belt of the Magellan system filled his view of vision; smaller micro-meterorites of ice and shale pelted his ships' energy shields, careening harmlessly away until the unbalanced forces of outer space would slow them down from tumbling into the void. Flicking a switch or two started the cruise engines, pushing the ship to just one Kilometer shy of Three hundred kilometers per hour. He let the computers do the work after he set the coordinates: kicking back a moment and trying to let the Cardamine soak synthesized energy into his system, trying to forget his true love... It wasn't too long at all before his neural net ticked at his head, indicating the jump hole was close. Alerted to attention, he engaged the thrusters, pushing the small lever slowly foward, his small, dagger-shaped ship approaching the immense alamgmation of crystal and metal before him.

The jumpgate was enormous, and required hte use of interspatial energies which demanded far more care then the mere trade lane systems. Trade lanes used magnetic fields to hurl ships from point to point in a given galaxy in speeds negiligible to concieve, and are quite useful.

Only useful, however, if you are a simple merchant with no criminal background, which wasn't at all one iota useful to him.

The immense structure began to glow, nevertheless. The Lane Hackers of all systems insured what were called 'equal opportunity' algorithyms to ensure that anyone regardless of digital background could pass through the gates. This of course, made the Systemary-Governments very pissy in regards to the reprogramming process: Rather than tell peopleits a glitch caused by hackers, they tell them its a mere asteroid snagged in its joints. Alva's ship began to pass inside, and then the universe and its physical laws began to vomit around him. Certainly the way chaos mathematics and wormholes worked, that is how one can explain it when passing through a jumpgate: Colours of indescribable magnetiudes would flood your field of vision, your speedometer would literally twist and bend trying to gauge such dizzying speeds, and you can swear you yourself are radically changed by the experience physically.

AS suddenly as it happened, the universe put a gag on its vomitting mouth and managed to right itself when he entered the LIberty system. The colours of the surrounding area where a glowing, blueish-black, dotted by scores of jagged, vertically rising rocks.

This area he was familiar with: He actually has an apartment rented here at his stopover in Buffaloe Base, the Liberty Rogues homeworld. He flicked a few switches, trying to determine if any radio frequency feeds were around him, any signals at all. Through the toggle of a few switches, he was able to determine (through the appropiate digital filter) which signals were hostile (depends on one's point of view. In his particular case, the LIberty Navy are to terminate any Outcast vessels on sight. However, this particular segment is rarely patrolled by The Navy due to the insipid placement of Magellan's Jumpgate: No idiot wants to have to go through a dense particle cloud to head to another, less popular trading system.), and which were friendly.

"Ideals." He cursed to himself. "Two Friendlies, five Bogies." His slender fingers rapped over the console, already trying to send encrypted messages to the friendlies. Many space-smart pilots carry at least five pre-written messages for each situation. He didn't want to attract the attention to himself by sending any of his 'Im a trader heading to ____, Request directions.' signals to the Liberty Navy, so he directed his feeds to the two Liberty Rogues ships that were broadcasting amongst themselves. He swore to himself again: The friendlies were further away, at least 11.2 KiloParsecs away, somewhere in the impossible-to-navigate particle cloud.

The Five bogies, the Liberty Navy partolling the sector for Contraban smugglers were closing in at 1.7 Kilometers.

PLITZZSH! He gritted his teeth, trying to calm down his racing heart as he felt lazerfire pelt the shields around his craft, his hands moving from the communications panel to the controls. He figured this would happen, and wondered if the particular vessel itself, popular to criminal elements, would be targetted for destruction not so much as the individual inside. He had heard of numerous stories where entire patrols were to seek specific ship models and terminate them on sight, due to their widespread use amongst fringers or nastier customers, even if someone truly innocent were driving them for their sheer durability in the rigours of space.

Better to destroy the percieved threat and kill the innocent, than to let the unpercieved threat corrupt the innocent, was the idiom during the period of time between Liberty President Saunders' Election into office, and his abrupt resignation from power to flee his impeachment proceedings. Last anyone heard from Saunders was a garbled transmission of his armoured ship begging forgiveness before being blasted by a score of Bounty Hunters' Guildships. Sometimes Intergalactic Politicians do more of their dirtywork out of the Office than in it.

His hands on the controls, he gunned the engines, feeling a boost of speed as he brought the gyroscopic stabilizers to full life, eyes narrowed as he veered a sharp left to avoid one of the many vertically-challenged, dagger-like asteroids that filled most of the spaces in the particle cloud. Feeling his ship vibrate a bit, he smiled to himself: One of his pursuers wasn't so quick to turn and ended up scraping himself across the asteroids' face, destroying himself. "Four, I can evade four..." he mumbled to himself, a calm mantra spoken by thousands in this line of work as he pulled sharply upward, feeling his shields crackle as the asteroid entered its airpace. He blinked, his panel glowing a brilliant purple as it warned him in a ghoulishly cheerful tone that his shield efficiency was now reduced by a staggering 98 Percentile, and that any further breach would cause hull damage as well. His sweaty palm grasped the throttle as he bore himself level, trying to bring up his proximity to the Buffaloe Base on his display window. "Hey There Feller! Im Happy to report that the Buffaloe Base is a mere 9.1 KiloParsecs away and your level of survival could increase through dropping your cargo and ligthening your lo-" Alva quickly flicked the Logic Protocols in the AI of his ship to off, cursing now his grandfather for not getting him a ship with no logic calculation program at all. His Comm flared to life as one of the Liberty Navy's radios' locked onto his transfer signal. "This is Liberty Navy to Starship Heartbroken. You are in violation of Liberty Airspace and are under arrest for the smuggle and manufacture of Cardamine as under warrant, and have just added the murder of a Liberty Naval officer and Destruction of LIberty Navy property to your list. Prepare to die, scuzzbucket!" He grimaced inwardly, wanting to tell the idiot that it was his comrades' own fault for acting so gung-ho when he really just needed to slow up a bit and turn left like a sane person before becoming Asteroid Pizza. He could feel the boredom and tedium of reading aloud the warrant list and procedure in the Pilots' comm, then the rise and glee of the slaughter come up in the threat to his demise. He scoffed to himself as he diverted 20% power efficency from his own ships' reactor core to his weapons'-system, wondering why they decided to tack 'the manufacture of Cardamine' to his warrant roster when he himself didn't know the anything about its manufacture at all. He sighed as he began to turn to defend himself, crosshairs filling his field of vision as ships were marked by his visual connection to his neural-net and his ships' computers, remembering that it involved the process of the Planet Malta's own air and soil, its grinding of the finest of its freon-orange blades of grass. Sometimes people have the odd notion that those who peddle drugs also have a hand in their manufacture. Not always the case, as shown here. He cut the engines and threw his gyroscopics to the other side of his ship, flipping it around 180 degrees and unleashed a small-yet-shield-withering assault on the third of the four vessels that attempted to scatter as he twisted about in the particle cloud. The first few shots pulverized his shields, smoke coming from the hull as it began to pelt its titanium-niobium alloy. The ship exploded outwards, one shot manging to hit a lucky mark and at the pilots' window, its cockpit. Alva gunned the engines at the same time he saw smoke, the perfect timing having the ship billow outward in its explosion as he flew past, the small bits of hyper-speedy debris flaking off his shield. He flew past the other three, still reeling at the suddeness of seeing the pursued-turned-pursuer firing at its fellow before they realized he again attempted fleeing. Alva wasn't in the mood to fight, and this wasn't something that could benefit him. He will have to get his guns looked at now that he actually used them, hoping none were damaged when he made the flyby or overheated them. The worries were pushed aside as he swore, knowing he would have to kill them all before he got a moments' peace. Three possibilities loomed in his mind like a crouching demon as he once more attempted the 180 degree flip and bore foward, his left wing barely being wrenched from the craft by a piked asteroid. Option one was to surrender to the authorities, hope they wouldn't give him the Termination Punishment, and become a model citizen with few genetic abnormalities, a dead end job, and his feet firmly planted on teh ground. Option one was stupid because of its unrealism, and the fact he hated living on-world more than he hated Lettuce. Option two was to stand and fight: If the first two were this easy, the rest would be cake and he could have somethign to brag about to Buffaloe Base, maybe even get a Contrabutional if he lied and told them they were spies with the intent to destroy said base. Option Three seemed the most attractive: Try to not make Liberty and its Naval units' Top Shoot-on-Site list, head to Buffaloe Base, and wait out the Navy for three days before attempting to try heading to Rochester, just shy of the Topmostpart of this system map.

Grimacing as the computer warned him that a stray asteroid knocked out one of the four Zauriel Mk. III foward-facing guns on his ship, he decided on the Third Option and started to divert power from the weapons, and suicidally the shields, to his cruise engines. The sudden jump from 199 Kilometers per hour to just shy of of Three-hundred sent his head pushing into its headrest; his helmet thankfully fitting snugly. His left eye twitched as he veered a sharp down, his engines fuelled by such speed smouldering some of the asteroid he had just barely missed. Some of these things were easy to see in this field: tall, column like dagger protrusions formed by some cosmological imbalance of dust and light, the wrong neutrinos at the wrong time causing pikelike shapes to form. The sharp down would take a moment to compsensate, but would take a longer moment for those to follow any sort of signal trail. It then hit him a moment...the way his ship was shaped...and a few of the more livlier protrusions...Logic began to hit his own head: normally Infrared was used to comb fields for ships, pilots, or even pirates in wait. If three people were in an intensive firefight, or in a firefight-cat-and-mouse affair, they wouldn't be likely to use their infra-red unless they calmed down a bit and realized they couldn't spot him after a while....What if...

He grinned inwardly. It was crazy enough to work, and even crazier to even try it. He cut his engines, moving to one of the other asteroids by tweaking his gyroscopics to toss his ship about through the exagerrated inertia that space seemed to have thanks to that law of physics that one tended to keep going unless certain forces stopped it from going any further. He felt the remainder of his shields fizzle and grunted as his ship whacked into the large column of rock and metal. Thankfully his shields were deactivated just ashe knocked about into the asteroid, and his ship in a pure stroke of luck had its wing lodged into a crevasse formed in its side. He began to cut everything off save the most mediocre of life support: the ship would be dead and it would take a moment for the heat to dissipate, perhaps even diffuse into the asteroid around him. He then braced himself, hoping the worse wouldn't occur and that the Pursuing Navy Patrol wouldn't see through this scam. He turned his transponder to 'recieve only' status, calming his beating heart, the Cardamine seeming to relax him some as it piped in with his hyperventelated thirtieth breath.

"Starkweather, what happened, did you see him? He just plunged down and VANISHED!" He heard Gamma-57 Say. "We all saw him Carl, Just keep your feed down and keep looking! He was just ahead, I knocked out one of his guns by pocking a nearby rock for the Ideals' Sake!" Alva grinned. So that was what happened to his gun. At first he thought he just had a bad turn in a smaller collection of rocky debris. Smart move he tried himself once: hit a smaller asteroid with lazerfire to send it careening into the craft at an angle. Or, if one wanted to use the game of Low-Grav-Three-Dimensional Pool as an Euphemism, hit one rock, send it careening into another collection of rocks to in turn hit a ship with enough debris to throw off its shields and send it smashing. He used that very trick himself when he and Gren were on the run from rival smugglers who wanted to steal their cargo of fourty-kilos of water, and just 2 kilos of Industrial solvents to throw off any police scanners their true cargo. He felt a momentary sting....remembering how Gren laughed at their radio transmissions that claimed they had the Deltavoid field riddled with traps and were Bounty Hunters pretending to be smugglers. He remembered the way Gren's eyes crinkled with humour as he watched him on the visual....He bit into his gloved hand, whimpering a moment, high in his throat, tears forming in his eyes. This was not the time to get emotional, but he could feel it wash over him. He wanted to cry, to rip at his control panel and just let it end. He loved Gren. He loved Gren He loved Gren and DAMMIT they stole him away, took him as easily as Alva could take a stick of gum from a toddler or the pride from a guttersnipe. He cringed in his seat, trying to keep quiet and hearing the Liberty Patrols eventually give up, claiming he found a jump hole or a base and was taking refuge there and would relay in West Point Acadamy Base shortly before heading home. He cried, sniffing as his tears spattered on the lens that was connected to his helmet...Tears that stung his cybernetic eyes and ran down his cheeks after collecting on the goggles. His hands gripped the controls, causing the metal to groan with the strength of his sorrow bearing upon them. He let the sobs go when the patrollers began to leave, tearing off his goggles and helmet and just sat there, bawling. "Its not fair...we were so close to our happiness...so close...too close. We would have made the stars our home, the ground not worthy of our steps. We would have loved forevermore amongst the stars...we would have loved as long as we lived amongst the stars..."

The back of his mind was moved how he could cry with fake eyes, the other part remembering reading somewhere that tear ducts were actaully near the sinuses and not in the ocular cavities at all. He brushed that away, sorrow wracking and flooding his heart and body. He toyed with the item at his throat, the canister of Cardamine. He could even end it quietly: Just try to deprive himself of Cardamine till his heart would burst in its chest from a sudden Arythma, or perhaps stop altogether during a set of murmurs. All he would have to do is rip the canister from his throat. The bleeding wouldn't kill him, nor would the wound it made, but it would be a very painful thing to do...

His tears began to tap the panel a couple of times, one stray tear managed to trickle around the Call Cancel key, and began to wet the edges of the worn plastic of the holographic picture of himself and Gren at the New Tokyo Otakon. He was dressed as he was: The Outcast look was actually a hot item and had the vague look of cyborgism. Gren was dressed as one of the female leads from Naruto, some obscure Japanimation from the latter half of the Twentieth Century about a ninja school where little kids get killed rather than fail classes. Gren's hair was pink that day, the uniform he fit actaully fit it well considering he was a waifish male. It fit in all the right curves, and all the right lines. Grens' arms were around him, his cheek to his own lazer-shaved one. The holographic photograph actaully had at least a full minutes' worth of a moment captured in time, and the still-frame began to activate when the tear struck it.

Grens' voice came up as he nuzzled Alva in the photograph. His asian-accent was honeyed poetry in liquid motion, and bore little trace of the odd useage of 'r's' and 'l's, but he always did that for Alva's name because in one discussion of language he thought it cute. "Arva, dearest...What shall we tell ourselves if we look on this Holo-Foil years from now?" He grinned and tickled Alva's sides in the holofoil, Alva yelping, giggling, and doing his best to counter-tickle but was so ticklish that he was rendered unable to tickle back. "Gah! Gah! Rape! Rape!" He cackled, trying to fend him off by appearing victimized.

Gren chuckled, relenting in his assault but still smiling happily. "Oh you pretty pilot boys. The moment the going gets tough you call out Rape and immediately hope someone takes pity on you and helps you out. Not everyone wants to rape pretty guys all the time...though they do want to ravish them." With that, Gren leant foward, his lips about Alvas'. Alva, in the photograph, tensed at the passion electric. The people around them in the holofoil giving looks of either astonishment, disgust, grinning knowing, and jealousy. He relaxed as Grens' tongue mingled with his, his cheeks distending as the prehensile muscle toyed with the lining of his cheek.

Alva sighed in the Holo-foil and pulled away, and smiled at the photographer lightly. "I would have to tell myself....that this moment...is one of the best in my entire life...and I would treasure this for every moment I live. Your lips on mine only made it sweeter, my brains' pleasure center should be blown to bits by now." Gren smiled beside Alva sweetly...a blush coming to his gilded cheeks. "Im not that great..." Alva hugged him close...kissing his forehead before nibbling his pink hair and putting a finger to his lips. "Stop...What do you have to say to your future self?"

Gren sighed...and smiled at the Holofoil. "Gren....If you have left this wonderful guy for any reason at all, I will step through this Holo-foil through time immemorial and beat your brains out with my Con Badge." Gren brandished his credstick-badge: A small electronic tube with the digital readout that he attended the Otacon during those days, and that he was allowed acess. The wordFFICIAL CON BADGE was inscribed on its sides in Japanese and English. "Apart from that....should I be taken by some other means...don't fret or panic...Im sure we can meet again sometime." Alva blinked and Held Gren closer in the Holofoil. "Don't say that...don't think about that...please?" Gren Shook his head as he was held closer. "Honey...anything can happen in this universe of possibility...but you know I wouldn't care...because Im truly happy..right? You will know and believe you made me happy?" He looked Alva in the eyes across time. "I....I swear....Ill move on...for you." And again they kissed. The holofoil ended, and resetted back to the image of Gren hugging onto Alva's neck in a stationary pose.

Thousands of days and a few years across time and sitting hunched over the console and staring with tear-stained eyes at the movement of the photograph. No wailing came from his mouth. No sob. Even now the sorrow began to die down. Gren knew the dangers of their job, their profession. He knew...but he still felt such endearing love....He sniffed, rubbing the last of the tears from his eyes...and placed his hand on his beating, thrumming, sickly heart. "Gren...Im sorry...Im sorry I forgot...and Im sorry I doubted...I believe...and I will try to no longer greive." He sighed, courage, unimaginable courage flooded his being. It wasn't the courage to win a fight. It wasn't the courage to fight unimaginable evil at insurmountable odds. It wasn't the courage to go where the man hadn't trod or the brave dare not tread, for he always had that. It was the courage to live, despite having lost one's meaning or purpose or love. It was the greatest kind of courage: the courage to look life and death in the face and kiss both, rather than let either become tainted in one's eyes. Alva smiled, cackling gently. "The Hydrogen Fuel isn't going to deliver itself. And on the plus side, I can brag about having taken out two Navy Patrollers without even using firepower on the one!" Life and humour and vitality flooded him, and the pleasure of being also flooded him. It was a love and a pleasure that not even Cardamine can induce, a high that Cardamine can never provide.

It was Love. It was the Love of a man, despite it being wrong in many eyes, that was his own high. His own Cardamine. His Anti-Cardamine. His pro-cardamine. His Being and Vitality. And goddamn it, He should be able to have such passion as if he were still around.

He finally arrived at Buffaloe Base, grinning ear to ear underneath his Pilots' Visor and dried-tear encrusted pilots' goggles. "Buffaloe, this is the Outcast Dagger Ship, the HeartHealed. Formerly The Trading ship, Heartbroken. I am landing to make ship repairs and rest before setting out to trade Hydrogen Fuel to the Junkers Base Rochester near the Planet Pittsburgh...."


END OF LINE 1.