Interstellar Flight (Mr. M & missedstations)

“Thank you,” she replied, cutting off a part for herself, being briefly confused at the lack of further cutlery, then eating it with her fingers. “Ah, not bad!” Not her favourite, but it was pretty edible. Most likely the best foodstuff on this rock, but she wasn’t really qualified to comment. She’d only been there a few hours, and she wasn’t really planning to stay for dinner either.

Ilena nibbled at the melon while she watched him work. She could probably work out how to put it together having seen him do it this once… It looked as if it was fairly obvious where all the pieces went, but then again, most weapons were designed so the average soldier could use them, and she was quite sure that the intelligence of an average soldier was lower than the overall population average… Not that she had much against the military, just that there were more lucrative careers available if you wanted to blow things up.

Really, sometimes she loved planets like this. They could probably spend Taggart’s entire armoury and no one would notice. (Or, if one considered her hobby, you could run experiments whose hazards ranked too high to be permitted on standard more civilised planets. She tried quite hard not to kill any colonists. Collateral damage was evidence of own incompetence more than anything else.)

She scrambled up onto the car rather… girlishly. She was having fun, and that was rarer than she let on. “Ooooh.” She could probably have hours of fun just with the scope… She shifted up a bit, making sure to follow the instructions he had given, and squeezed off a shot. The recoil was stronger than she expected, and little ‘ow’ escaped her. Well, that was her badass image ruined!

He reached around her, leaning over her back, so close she could feel the heat of his body through both their clothing, and tugged the rifle more solidly against her shoulder. "Secure like that. So when it kicks, it doesn't smack you, just, like, shoves you. Pick another target and center it up."

He moved to the side, staying next to her on the hood of the car, gazing out across the target range. "You know, my first long-arm like that was a shotgun. Totally held it wrong. Kicked back at me so hard, I had a bruise from my bicep to my collar. Had a hell of a time with my friends punching me in the shoulder all week." He chuckled. "Boys love to torture each other. Okay, so, what's your target? Center it up, and when you're ready, exhale so you don't have a tremor, and then squeeze the trigger."

He was liking this side of her; he could tell the difference in how she moved, all excited-like. It made him smile to be giving her an enjoyable new experience.

“You made it look so easy,” she said with a little laugh, changing her grip on the rifle a little by his guidance. “I think my bruises won't be quite that impressive, but I'll have some!” They'd also heal much quicker than his did, with her modified biology. (Faster healing did have its little price though – extra pain. The body's own little warning that nanotechnology took an extra toll. Never mind though, she had extra tech to take care of that. But dulling any pain response made people... Dull.)

“I think children are just evil in general.” She wasn't going to admit here that she fed a hamster to an Valryan pitcher plant, and watched it dissolve in the acid. The hamster had been killed before in unspecified circumstances, but still. “Most grow out of it.”

She shut up at that point, to better concentrate on what she was doing. Zoomed back into the dragon melon, shifted a little to get into a better position, exhaled – a much better shot this time. “Well, I hit the thing this time...!”

"Well, it's only fair," he said as she readjusted her grip. "You make being brilliant and looking fabulous seem easy, so I suppose we're even." He grinned at her, even though she was hunkered over the weapon and couldn't see.

He just made a half-grunt, half "mmm" noise as agreement to her comment on children. He'd thought about maybe one day having some of his own, but such considerations were always in some distant "someday" category. Still, he hadn't given up hope; there was still time, so he put it out of his mind for now. It wasn't good to get distracted when heavy caliber weapons were being used nearby.

After her shot, he squinted at the melon in the distance. "Yeah, looks like you took the top clean off! Nice shot! Okay, focus in on the next one..." He gave her some tips on how she might hit a dead-center shot, and let her go. "If you hit it, we'll take a little break, and I'll go out and get it so you can see how the back is blown out..."

She was getting good with the sniper rifle, but he wanted her to get some time in handling the assaut rifles, the machine pistols, and so forth. She could always come back to anything she liked later.

Ilena snorted at the 'brilliant and looking fabulous' part. The latter wasn't that hard: if only he'd let her dress him! But then again, in Taggart's line of work, fire-power was far more important than just looking good. No wonder he wasn't too concerned.

While she was aiming at the next fruit – this must be so much harder if the target was moving – she said, “I used to think James and I would have children. Now I am glad that we did not.” It meant that those plans were shelved again. In her extensive family, having a good few children was almost expected, and well, she had always wanted to have some. It would be a shame if she ended up having no one to leave all her property to.

It was a good shot on the next one – not quite centre, but close enough. “Good enough?” she asked, sitting up and stretching. In her concentration she had tensed her muscles unnecessarily. Her slow and careful shots had nothing on Taggart's years of practice, but if things came to the worst she would probably be able to do something.

Off her comment about children, Taggart responded softly, "I suppose not. But you'll have your chance." He sighed softly. "I hope I do, too."

~~~

After she fired, he squinted at her target. "Quite good enough, far as I can tell. That's good for the sniper rifle for now; if you want, we can do a little more later." He took the large rifle, unloaded it, and folded down the bipod so he could more easily set it to the side. "Tell you what, look over these other weapons, see what strikes your fancy; I'll go freshen the targets.

When he came back, he had Ilena's last sniper shot target with him. "Thought you should see this!" he said, smiling. He held up the gourd so she could see her bullet hole, surprisingly large due to the size of the sniper bullet. "This is your entry wound. And this..." He rotated the fruit in his hands, bringing into view the other side. The entire back of the turtlemelon had been blown out, looking like a crescent moon from the profile, and, given the specific qualities of the fruit, showing how devastating such a shot would be to a human target. "This is your exit wound." He smiled at her and shrugged. He knew she wouldn't be expecting that, the way the melon barely rocked when she'd shot it, but the bullets were efficient and there wasn't any hard resistance to slow them down. Well, nothing harder than bone, at least, and to that ammo, that was barely noticeable. "This is why soldiers consider snipers such a large problem."

He put the ruined melon down on the hood, a testament to her accuracy. "So, did you make a selection for your next implement of destruction?"

“Fascinating!” Was it slightly wrong that she was thinking about what she had learned in physics so long ago? Newton's basic laws of motions took people ever so far... They had allowed them to escape Earth's gravity field for the first time, and helped in making ever better weapons of destruction. But that was just a little cynical!

“I think I had the fun thing,” Ilena said, referring to the sniper rifle, “So I might as well go for anything!” She dropped off the vehicle and picked up the assault rifle, and if her family could see her they would probably have died of horror. Hilarious was still how she found the idea of brandishing lethal weapons, but she was getting the hang of it.

They ended up working through the armoury, and through the rest of the melons. It was almost a waste, of food or ammo, she wasn't quite sure. “I think I've run out of things to shoot that...” Ilena said vaguely, brandishing a machine pistol in a slightly too casual way.

“What now?” she asked, grinning.

Taggart politely deflected her waving firearm to the side and down toward the dirt, smiling. He knew the gun was dry, but it was a habit.

"Good shooting! I think those melons gave their lives for a good cause; I feel rather more confident now if, Heavens forbid, we have some trouble. If it's the Melonhead Brothers, you'll be unstoppable!"

He chuckled and turned to the armory. "To answer your question, now we break down and store all of these weapons, and I'll clean 'em soon as I can. But the next conventionally fun thing we do is, we get that drink I promised you." He hesitated to call it celebratory, given the circumstances, but then again, she'd had a good day of weapons practice, and if she wanted to celebrate that instead of the dissolution of her marriage, that was all the better.

"If you want to tap the local net, you can look up a half-way acceptable place in town while I'm packing up, or we could just tap the rest of my private stash. I leave the option to you," he said, bowing with exaggerated gentility and grinning widely. He wouldn't mind either option, but he wondered if she could find someplace she'd feel was comfortable for her -- they did have some high-end restaurants and lounges in the city, for visiting executives and important travelers. He was just as happy to try and finish off what he had back on the Tears, but he had to admit, he was a little curious as to what counted as a quality watering hole in her world.

“I'll see what I can find...” Ilena sighed and put the gun down, spreading open a fan.

She did not quite tap the local net, but one of the addresses aristos used to keep track of what places they found suitable. They left notes for each other on strange worlds, like any other separate social group. They liked to know where they could expect the standards they were used to, or where those standards were closer.

There were a couple of places she could consider on this little rock. “Interesting, this place offers both strippers and prostitutes and perfect confidentiality. All tastes catered for with enough advance notice, apparently.”

She asked playfully - “Would you like a prostitute?”

It wasn't an entirely serious question, but she would probably pay for one or two if either or both of them felt the inclination. There was nothing wrong with such a transaction in her eyes. It was a job, like any other. Some people sold their minds, some their bodies, it was all the same overall.

“If not, there is always this restaurant...” A meal and a few drinks would not be a badly spent night.

He was busily working while she looked things up, expertly disassembling the various weapons for storage, packing them away in their foam-lined cases, each component in its separate place, and his fingers seeming to know where all the places were without his eyes really paying much attention.

"A generous offer," he said with a smirk in response to her offer of a prostitute, "but I'm afraid I don't believe in random emotionless hook-ups," he said, echoing his sentiments from their first real conversation. It hadn't come up in the time since, and frankly, he was experiencing a bit of pent-up sexual frustration after being in such close quarters with Ilena these past weeks, even married as she had been. But even if he'd been the type to indulge, he wouldn't do it in front of her. Not with the way he'd been thinking of her for much of the afternoon.

"However, I'm not opposed to eye-candy, by any means, and you're free to indulge if you wish; you certainly deserve it," he added. "But the restaurant sounds like a good idea, too. You've been threatening to take me to a real restaurant for several planets, now." He started loading cases into the back. "You know, we could go to the one, and if the night seems young when we leave, we could always visit the other later." He grinned. "Bar-hopping is not normally in my contract, but I suppose a bodyguard goes where his client wants to go." He winked at her with great exaggeration, as if they were sharing a "secret." He refrained from actually adding the "nudge, nudge, knowwhatImean, eh?" on the end, but he was sorely tempted.

“And they always say that men had less self control than women when it comes to sex...!” Ilena sighed exaggeratedly. It was, admittedly, part of the reputation of her class that most sex was casual, purely about the physical pleasure. That Ilena chose to be generally monogamous was more an exception rather than the rule. The well known inverse relationship between morals and money, perhaps. Or perhaps is was just that Taggart spent more time alone, or being shot at, while Ilena was generally surrounded by some sort of entourage.

“Fine, fine, restaurant it is.” She put in a request for a private room. She had no desire to mingle with the local scene. Someone might recognise her, for one. Her business strategy had been discussed extensively in the papers, and she was not the type to change her looks every year.

She laughed at his wink, moving to attempt to him, probably being little better than useless. A quiet night would probably be the best, as she did not have the full security considerations in place. Running around the galaxy with admittedly one of the best mercenaries was probably not entirely safe in the first place, and taking unnecessary pointless risks would be silly.

They had to stop by the Tears to drop off the guns and to change. Taggart felt compelled to dress up, but the only thing he had outside of his ancient service formalwear was the outfit Ilena had bought him. I am severely unprepared for this sort of thing, he thought to himself as he put on the sleek black outfit and buckled on a shoulder rig for his weapons. They might be checked at the door, but he wasn't going to go around entirely unprotected until then.

He met her outside at the hovercar, where he was looking at the gun cases just inside the airlock and fighting the urge to just clean a few right there while he was waiting. For all that he'd seen her in her working clothes and in her casual wear, she still managed to take his breath away. But he recovered, and held the door open for her. "Allow me," he intoned smoothly. He fairly pranced around to the driver's seat, but once settled in, he realized he wasn't sure where to go. "Um... where to, ma'am?" he asked while he unfolded his HALO and wrapped it around the back of his head. Once he had an address, it would be a snap... he just hated looking unprepared and flustered in front of her, all of a sudden. And it seemed like he was more vulnerable to it, as well. Hmmm...

Normally, she probably wouldn't have bothered to change, but there was dust all over her boots and on the hem of her skirt. How good that she had packed for every occasion. She put her dark hair down for once, letting it fall in loose waves around her shoulders. A dark green dress with long sleeves – Ilena had an irrational dislike of her elbows – and a loose skirt down to below her knee. It was with a more open neckline for once, so a necklace of fine white pearls went perfectly well. An Earth antique, so rare these days. The earrings were not the same period, but they were chosen to match.

She dug out the only pair of high heels that she had packed – a black suede pair that went with everything, and regretted the lack of a mirror in her tiny little cabin. It was so hard to be vain when the only mirror she had was no bigger than the palm of her hand, and going to the bathroom to use the slightly bigger one was just too vain to be considered. She looked good when she rolled out of bed, so there was no reason she wouldn't when she was dressed up. She put her gun in the bag that matched her shoes – no concealed weaponry in such a dress! - and then considered herself ready. It was so strange to dress up in a place like the Fox's Tears, it felt far too impractical and pointless.

Never mind, she thought as she closed the cabin door behind herself and joined Taggart at the hovercar. “Thank you,” she replied as she sat down, gathering her skirt a little so it would not be caught in the door.

She opened her fan to show him the address. “That is it. I booked a private room with a view under your name. We should be expected.” Whatever they considered to be a view here.

He glanced at the address, and his heads-up display gave him a directional map immediately. "All right, we'll be there in ten minutes."

The destination was deep in what was considered the local downtown, near the major data merchants and info-storehouses and secure financial processors. The local skyline wasn't impressive by Central Worlds standards, but considering the population of the planet was so small, it was amazingly developed. It had its private entrance with an awning and computerized valet parking, and an old-style private elevator -- no undignified grav tube for such patrons as these.

Taggart gave his name to the panel in the foyer, and one of the sets of elevator doors opened for them. "It's so twenty-first century!" he muttered under his breath, impressed, as he escorted Ilena into the chamber. There was barely any sensation of lifting as the elevator began to rise to the penthouse level, where the restaurant would have a commanding view of the city. He shifted his jacket reflexively; he wasn't worried that his weaponry was noticeable, she'd paid the tailors quite well to have the jacket cut properly, but he had nervous energy and no good way to expend it.

When the doors opened, an actual live host was waiting to take them to their room. In a technological planet, live help was only found in places where they couldn't afford automation, or in places where it was a mark of ostentation to have a breathing individual to do everyday work. The host was a sculpted young man with a brilliant smile. "Mr. Taggart, ma'am, please come this way. Your dining room is prepared."

She smiled at Taggart, and was ever so tempted to do what she and her friends had used to do and send him a private message keeping a running commentary. The restaurant didn't match the standards of the Central Worlds, but for here, it was unprecedented luxury. The prices were a little lower than Central Worlds though – what else could you expect? There was simply not enough demand for highly overpriced food in a backwater like this. Not nearly enough rich gits wanting to show off their money.

They followed their host to the room where a table for two was already laid out. “Oh, not bad...” she said, looking at the window: almost half of the room was translucent, giving a fantastic panoramic view. Of the city, yes, but also the distant mountains, and the lights of ships coming and going against the sunset. Sunsets on different worlds were what made travelling worth it. It was almost like dining in the open air, with perfect weather, without the winds and the cold.

Ilena let the waiter pull out the chair for her as she sat down, admiring the view. Her words were the most enthusiasm she would ever show in front of a person she was not familiar with. On that note, she was rather surprised that both the chairs and the table seemed to be carved from some sort of stone – a natural material rather than a manufactured one. And the chairs had comfortable pillows – what Fox's Tears was definitely lacking! She was quite sure that Taggart would not be tolerant to her redecorating the ship, however.

“What do you think?” she asked Taggart, as the waiter called up the menu for them in mid air. A few dishes, probably made by an actual chef. Cooking was starting to be a lost art.

Taggart waited until the waiter left them to look over the menu holo, and then leaned in conspiratorially to Ilena. "I know this is pretty much normal for you, but I haven't seen this sort of thing outside the movies." He glanced around. "I feel like Jared Moto in 'Venusian Vengeance,' to be honest."

He had a smile, though. It wasn't something he ever thought he'd do, being in a place like this, but he had to admit, he was having fun. He was completely out of his depth, but Ilena was there if he made any mis-steps. In a way, it was recon into foreign territory with a native guide on hand. When he considered it like that, he had an easier time of it.

He glanced at the menu, and then glanced again. "Oh, of course. No prices on the menu. I suppose if you can afford to know about this place, you can afford to pay whatever the bill is." He sighed. "I'm afraid I don't read... is this French or Italian? Something classical." He began to chuckle softly. He was tempted to pull his HALO back out and use the auto-translate function, but he had the feeling that would spoil the ambiance of the experience. So he went for the next best thing. "I'm afraid I need a bit of assistance figuring out what to eat. What's the usual technique for that, if you don't have the language?"

Ilena laughed at his words. She had watched the movie with him too, so she appreciated the little joke. “In places like this, the more entitled you look, the more important they think you are,” she told Taggart with a grin. “So pretend you hate everything and look down your nose at that poor boy. There's also the pretending that he doesn't exist... Everyone will think that you were born aristo.”

She rarely used the colloquial word for her class – it was a tiny bit derogatory. But she really could not deny that her peers who ended up in the public eye were actually like that: there may have been plenty of those who wore their wealth discreetly, but it was always the annoying ones that were the loudest.

“French, I think,” Ilena replied. “You can always summon the waiter and ask what are the chef's recommendations for today...” Places like this tended to make small orders, using the freshest ingredients whose supply was occasionally erratic, and so the menu tended to be both variable, and not very long.

"Ahhh!" he said, realization dawning. "I always thought that was just being dissatisfied with the standard menu. It makes more sense now." He gazed out the window a little, and then glanced around the room. "I'm sure this doesn't compare to what you grew up with, but for a planet like this, I'm surprised they have this kind of outfit."

~~

When they summoned the waiter back, Taggart tried a little bit of the aloofness, but couldn't bring himself to hate everything. He settled for what he hoped was an air of mild disinterest and vague boredom. He selected an entree that sounded pretty good, some form of imported animal, and he knew what "braised" meant, and the rest of the dish sounded edible, although he didn't really know what it was they were going to do to the vegetables. Still, even if he didn't like it, he could eat it; after survival training under Sergeant Ito "The Terror" Takoi, he could stand to eat anything.

He marveled at Ilena's casual grace when she was ordering, though. Like she'd been doing this her entire life, which he knew she had, but he hadn't really seen her comfortable in her element before, surrounded by something approaching the trappings of her regular life. It was fascinating to him, and she seemed more relaxed than he could recall, outside of the Tears. (And the Tears didn't count, because they lived there, and you kind of had to relax at home.)

“Why are you surprised?” she asked. “We like to spend our money. It is not a closed society. There is plenty of money to be made in catering to these tastes. A trade hub like this, it is a matter of time.” Only real problem was the initial investment, the costs of advertising to the right clientèle. She could guess that this was built in the last few years: most of the down town area seemed to be.

Ilena was amused at Taggart's attempts, knowing his personality far better than the waiter – who took everything perfectly seriously. The poor boy. She ordered some sort of shellfish for the starter, and fish for the main: she had missed those, funnily enough. Edible seafood was surprisingly rare. The water planets with the right habitats were hard to find, and most alien species tended to either be poisonous or unpalatable.

While they waited for their food, she considered the skyline. “I rather like it. Most of the places I lived in are industrialised and densely populated. You can never see a horizon like this.” Bare rock in the distance was magnificent in its own way. It was a strange juxtaposition of luxury and the unhabited, unchanged alien world. Humans were ever so destructive. Terraforming suitable worlds tended to destroy their original beauty, and few atmospheres were initially suitable for breathing.

“Edge of civilisation. The Wild West.”

"I'm not sure why I'm surprised," he mused. "I guess I realize a lot of money goes through here, but I didn't think a whole lot of it stayed beyond what was necessary for the transit infrastructure. But now that I think of it, there's executives, there's the occasional stop-over, investors checking up on what their money is going into..." He shrugged. "I just never had occasion to consider it before."

~~~

He gazed out with her, nodding. They could barely see each other in the reflection of the dining room lights off the window; the world outside was darkening, but the setting sun (behind the building) was starting to cast a ruddy glow across the mountains, making them stand out like fiery pillars more and more as the rest of the sky behind them grew deeper blue. "That's one thing the Rim has in abundance; natural beauty. Often goes along with natural dangers, but one thing at a time, eh?"

"Ah, yes, the Wild West. Amazing how those tropes and concepts have stuck with us, as a people, through the years. We've seen a bunch of frontier towns just on this trip. It's one reason I was surprised by this restaurant; the edge of civilization is just a bit farther out, now. My career hasn't been so much about the settling of territory, though, as it has been the border skirmishes and territory battles, but it's nice to not have to armor up on every new planet. It's good being able to enjoy the sunset," he gestured to the window, "without having to view it through a helmet visor." He chuckled. "The targeting optics tend to clash with the natural colors."

"Still, I suppose it's a matter of variety. I haven't ever seen the vista of an urbanized world, either; one of these days I ought to visit such a place, just for the experience."

He glanced back at the door the waiter had left through. "So, I just had the thought; does the exclusivity of the service also suggest speediness? I'm kind of curious as to how long the food will take." He was reasonably hungry, but he also wanted to have some gauge of how much time he'd have alone with Ilena. He was enjoying himself, and wanted it to continue as much as he could.

No doubt the window was bulletproof, just in case, so it wasn't quite that different from viewing the vista behind armour. Most who arrived here probably came with armoured vehicles, trusting the restaurant security to be high enough. A limited number of entrances, bulletproof windows, and your own bodyguards... Tended to be good enough. Of course such places did their best to be 'neutral', as far as that was possible.

“I'm willing to pay for beauty by living with danger,” she replied casually. “Maybe one day, I should get a comfortable ship and a crew and go exploring myself.” It would be easy to pay for that, for her. Family connections would get her a good crew, and a ship could be built to the specifications that she liked. One of those insanely expensive crosses between a yacht and a battleship, perhaps. Not that she was insulting the Fox's Tears, it was just not a ship she wanted to live on in the long term.

As for the relationship between speed and exclusivity... It was probably inverse. “Not at all! They usually take a while. Proper cooking, apparently. Hardly anyone does that these days.” That was probably why they offered options for entertainment, but neither she nor Taggart were quite so shallow to be unable to entertain themselves. Sometimes, when she was feeling impatient, she used to joke that obviously they were growing the vegetables and breeding the animals. Today, she did not mind waiting at all.

“I bet you could get used to this in no time at all.”

"Used to it? Perhaps. Comfortable with it? That's another story." He chuckled slightly. "Not that it's not awesome to feel like a movie star for an evening, but if I get to a point where this kind of stuff seems normal and everyday? I don't know; part of me would wonder what I had to look forward to."

He kind of knew the answer to that already, though; there was always more, more exclusive, more expensive, more rare. Always something to spend money on, in an effort to find the new, find that thrill of discovery, fresh sensation. He knew that already; had seen it in the smaller scale. It was a never-ending slope, and there were different paths.

"One of my strengths, I like to think, is I know my self and my capabilities. I know what I can do, what I need to improve, what I can accomplish. I can enjoy this, yes, although... really, it's the company that makes the experience." He smiled at her, a genuine, almost shy smile, before he almost literally shook it off and continued. "But too much of it and I'd start to worry about getting soft. Not that I'm too hard-edged, but I mean I'd lose my capability. Lose the capacity to exist without all of this." He gestured generally to take in the room, the window, the city outside, just everything. "And I know that's not a big deal to everyone; there's trillions of people who live their whole lives never going out of reach of a webnet, and they're perfectly happy. But I know myself, and I enjoy being able to go anywhere and operate independently if I have to. A steady diet of this, as wonderful as it is, and yes, it's wonderful... but it could lull me away from that."

He smiled again, and took up his glass of water. "Though I tell you, if you get that exploration mission together, let me know if you need a tactical chief. Or a scout craft and pilot. Or both! I've got you covered, whichever."

“You can take up new hobbies. Like gardening!” Ilena was being a little self-mocking – rare for her. She could not deny that her life got dull. That was part of the reason she went traipsing off with a random mercenary. He came highly recommended, sure, but throwing everything over, even so thoughtfully as to arrange her financial affairs beforehand, was still a sign of boredom. She could have funded a third party investigation just as easily, but for once she wanted to go and see for herself.

Talking about exactly how much money she had was a little crass, so she was going to attempt generalities: “When someone can do whatever they want, when they do not need to work at all to have the same standard of living until the end of their lives... It is easy to lose one's way. When you can buy literally anything you want, make yourself into anything you want... It is easy to be shallow and cruel.” Not that she would ever admit it if asked, but she was speaking from experience. “Not intentionally cruel, you see... Only because you do not know how else to deal with other people, because you have always been the centre of your own universe. The reputation of my class is built on truth.”

“But, on the other hand... If one day, one very rich and very bored man did not decide to fund the first colony outside the Earth system... Perhaps we would not be here at all?” Sending probes to far away planets was cheap, but first technologies to make alien worlds habitable had been so expensive that it was thought an impossibility to ever expand far. Until someone wanted to see alien sunsets from a garden chair, because he just could. “Or you could get into that delightful sport of jumping into gas giants and seeing how far down you dare flying. I tried that once, to see what it was about. Not my thing at all...”

"Ah! Food!" she exclaimed, as the waiter arrived with their starters.

He chuckled at her gardening comment. She was indeed relaxing, particularly when talking about her people, for a change. Usually she seemed a little bit defensive, and he could understand why; the popular perception of her social class was dictated by the worst exemplars of it. On the other hand, that was generally true throughout all species and classes throughout the universe, as far as he'd seen. He nodded when she spoke of how one's upbringing could breed cruelty; that also was not unique to the aristos, but the reasons behind it were somewhat reserved for that level of wealth, yes.

He raised an eyebrow and smiled again at her admission of jupiter-jumping, the practice banned on the old planet Jupiter itself (too much chance of hitting a hab or a transport, what with unpredictable crosswinds and heavy settlement) but which had taken its name from the first planet where the sport had been tried. He was lost in thought as the appetizer was served, unintentionally reacting as was appropriate for the present environment by ignoring his server. Finally, after the waiter had left, he glanced at Ilena again.

"I just realized, it's a truism that exploration is done by those prone to fanaticism: missionaries, military, and merchants. I think that's been true throughout human history, actually." He chuckled as he speared one of the dumplings or whatever it was he'd been given; he'd focused on his entree, he hadn't paid too much attention to the appetizers. "I suppose all you and I need now is a clergyman and we'll be set to go!"

He took a bite and then blinked. It wasn't awful, not at all. It wasn't particularly flavorful, either, at least not with the kind of brashness and simplicity he tended to go for. No, it was good, but it was subtle, a mixing of sensations in his mouth. If he had been just a little less sensitive to the minor differences, he might have judged it bland, but as it was, he looked more closely at the rest of the plate. "Interesting."

She raised an eyebrow straight back at his surprise that she did absolutely idiotic things every so often. It was easily attributable to shiftless youth... She had lost a couple of cousins to the sport. No one quite knew how they died – recovering the bodies was tricky. Probably crushed by the pressure after going too far down. In neither case was there reports of damage to mining equipment... It never felt quite right to mourn someone who died through sheer supidity, so all Ilena had done was send flowers to the token funeral.

“I am sure we could find a clergyman,” she said lightly, taking a sip of her drink. “Maybe we could find one of those who worship AIs, they're not too annoying.” The basic belief was that sufficient amount of computing power would create a God, since a non-fabricated one had been too difficult to find. As humanity had changed, so had religion. Mostly new religions were born, but every so often an old one died.

As for the food, subtle instead of obviously expensive. She approved, but didn't really think that it merited any deep comment. “Not bad. Have any complaints?” She said that with a tiny grin, implying that she would actually quite enjoy watching if he decided to summon back the waiter and whine about it.