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Into the Black [missedstations & Bathos]

"Maybe," Vince conceded without fuss, and before he said another word, he stepped forward, snapped a collar around Remarque's pretty, freshly washed neck. It beeped when it locked around his neck, and Vince stepped back quickly in case Remarque found it necessary to take a swing at him.

"But I've got leverage," he concluded and pushed the sleeve of his white tunic back from his wrist to reveal what appeared to be a communicator snapped around it. It was not, however, a communicator and anyone who had even minor familiarity with the medical field would know that it was a pulse monitor. "You're tied to me," Vince said, and he didn't sound smug about it, but he didn't sound apologetic, either. "So if Maria likes your head the way it is, connected to your shoulders via your neck, then I'm gonna come out the other side of this meet unharmed."

There was, indeed, an explosive device in the collar. There was a simple override to it, too, based upon a password Vince himself had programmed just hours previous, but he wasn't telling. He needed some kind of insurance and since Remarque had implied that he and Maria were friends, he knew two things: a) she probably wasn't going to be happy that Vince had her friend hostage and b) she also wouldn't want to see her friend blown to tiny bits in front of her.

"Anyway, we've about landed. Let's go."
 
'She's not going to appreciate that...' was Remarque's only reply. His smile faded a little, but he didn't feel the urge to fight.

While Stone was formally affiliated with the IPA, in practice none of the agreement had been implemented. It was only signed for the IPA to have some nominal control over the port, and one of the ships on the top wanted list arriving warranted only a higher docking fee, just so the records would go mysteriously missing.

It was only a short walk to the Black Orchid, and at this time of day the bar had only the occasional desultory customer. Remarque was familiar with the proceedings: he told the barman they had an appointment, and he summoned a pretty girl to show them the way downstairs, into Maria's private realm, where she did business.

The first room they passed by was white tiles, bolted furniture: a torture chamber. The room that they entered was entirely the opposite: a plush sitting room, with comfortable armchairs and a low table, with a deep red carpet. The first time Remarque entered that room he'd entirely failed to notice that, because against the flower patterned wall-paper and behind was the finest collection of antique torture implements in the universe. She had everything from simple whips to a collection of surgical tools, gleaming and clean.

This time, he just dropped into an armchair to wait, not caring what Vince did. It would be Maria's typical style to make them wait. The girl held out a tray at Vince for his weapons. 'Either give your weapons up, or explain why you won't,' Remarque instructed.
 
Vince eyed the woman suspiciously. He didn't like the idea of voluntarily giving up his guns. He was prepared for a struggle, to be manhandled and disarmed, but this civilized request left him a little unbalanced. He glanced over at Remarque, perfectly at ease in a plush armchair, and back at the girl.

"Like Hell," Vince told her. "You'll have to take them off of me by force before I walk naked into a meeting with someone I've never met before. That is why I won't."

Vince had made the mistake of underestimating Remarque one time and that was all it took for him to gain absolute power over the ship. He wasn't going to make the same mistake with Maria, at least not willingly.

"You can tell your boss I'm not lookin' for a fight, though," he added, as if it might help. "I just want to talk to her. The guns are here in case she turns hostile. I've no plans to even draw 'em."
 
Remarque's smirk made it clear that it would not help. The girl shrugged and left: she didn't need to say anything, the room was under surveillance. He examined his nails, because he realised that he was sitting straight across from as nice set of hammers, just like the ones that broke his fingers. 'I really don't like this room,' he told Vince idly.

Maria let them wait at least twenty minutes, at which point Remarque had run out of things to stare at, and had leaned back to look at the ceiling. A representation of hell, with fire and brimstone like in those ancient religions. It was a rather nice mural.

When she arrived, she did it in style: dressed in a crimson floor long gown, with expensive golden jewellery and a dark lipstick. She was not a tall woman, but she seemed to take the whole room. Her hair was coiled up and pinned again with gold. It went admirably with her dark skin and dark brown hair. Her bodyguard stopped at the door.

'Being the one who is accepting my hospitality, you are being rather rude, Vincent Knightley,' she said lightly, but with an edge to her voice. She didn't fancy negotiating at all, and was obviously displeased at Remarque's state.

She sat down opposite Remarque and crossed her legs.
 
Vince remained standing, knees casually bent as if he were just a natural sloucher, but Maria would know, he suspected, that he was keeping his weight deliberately balanced, ready to spring if it should become necessary.

He couldn't say he was entirely surprised that Maria had learned his name. His ship was plastered all over the IPA network as Remarque's current vessel and it wouldn't take much additional research to find his name, his records, his registration within the IPA, clear back to his birth records from the tiny space colony, Lustra.

And that was only if she was decent.

Vince spread his hands wide, palms out, in a gesture of deference. "Sorry, princess," he said, repeating the same nickname he'd used with Remarque a few days prior when he'd been fucking him into the computer console, and if it was intentional then Vince gave no visible indication of it. "But I'm sure you can appreciate the fact that I've got to assume that any friend of Remarque's is a slick son of a bitch. Nothin' personal."

He glanced sideways at Remarque, smirked, and looked back at Maria. She was a sight to behold, pure woman, and classy in a way Vince hadn't seen in a long time. In a different world at a different time, he'd gladly have handed over his guns to her, and probably anything else she asked.

"I just got a few questions for you, and then your buddy and I will be on our way. Do you know the current whereabouts of Zachary Lang?"
 
She stared at him flatly. He just... made demands? Of her? In her house? On her planet? Remarque shrugged at her as if to say that this was all normal, nothing surprising, and she raised her eyebrows at Vince. The situation, Maria decided, needed clarification.

She had done her research, of course, as soon as she had received the message from the Dioscuri. She had checked the owner, crew, Vince's records, the crew records, ship specifications, histories. There was always a good reason why Remarque was involved with anyone. She wasn't entirely sure what the current situation was about, but she was feeling a little offended.

'Mr. Knightley,' she said, ignoring his demands. 'That is not how a civilised person does business. If you are not a civilised person, we can do things that way... But I would really prefer not to. So please, surrender your weapons and remove that thing from Remarque.' While her tone was polite, the tools on her walls showed the true nature of her request. 'I dislike rudeness, Mr. Knightley.'

To Remarque, she tossed a pack of cigarettes and said, 'The anniversary's coming up, you might want those.' Remarque pocketed them with a muttered thanks.
 
Vince quirked an eyebrow right back at Maria, but didn't make a single move, for his guns or for Remarque's collar. "Uh," he said, rather intelligently, and then, "no."

Clearly, Maria was used to getting her way. And there was a chance, however slim, that she was going to get her way this time, too. But Vince wasn't going to just roll over like a dog, no matter how many sharp and pointy things she had lining her walls or how prettily she cleaned up. She was still a friend of Remarque's and therefore not to be trusted.

"Dollface, you ain't seen rude. Now I understand that you're hot shit around here and when you say jump your minions ask you how high. I get that, and it's swell. But I'm in kind of a hurry and all I need is the last known whereabouts of one Zachary Lang and then I'm out of your perfectly coiffed hair."
 
Maria looked thoughtful. So he wasn't a civilised man. Damn.

'Okay,' she said. 'I think you will understand this better. Surrender your weapons and remove that thing from Remarque, or I torture your family to death. Oh! Wait, someone already did that! I guess I would have to do your crew, then. I think I would have you watch for good measure...'

She was not at all joking. 'Consider that a command, James,' she told the ceiling and her right hand man. He watched every one of her meetings with clients, just in case things went wrong. They rarely did. Few people wanted commit suicide in such a spectacular way.

Remarque, for his part, despaired.

'I can play both ways, darling,' Maria told Vince.
 
Vince's fingers twitched like they wanted to go for his gun, but they didn't. By the skin of his teeth, God help him, Vince did not go for his gun. An angry rush of blood flooded his face and he turned red clear to the tips of his ears, but he did not go for his gun, and he considered that a major victory for Team Vince.

Not only did this woman threaten his crew, but she tossed Victor in his face, knowing full well that was what he had come to discuss. Vince looked at Remarque, then Maria, then the bodyguard. Finally, he pulled back his shirt sleeve and punched the code into his wristband, deactivating Remarque's collar in the process.

"You can take it off, kid," Vince muttered, and then drew his guns carefully, slowly. He pointed them skyward. "Your girl is gone. Who wants these?"
 
Remarque did so, tossing it on the table. Thank everything that is holy for that. No chances of sudden death! He hadn't realised how tense he was until that moment.

'Well, this is much more pleasant, isn't it,' Maria said, motioning the guard to take Vince's guns. 'You, by the way, are becoming a liability,' she told Remarque. 'If you ever do something this stupid again, I will shoot you myself, whatever our past was.'

'Thanks,' Remarque muttered at her.

'So now, to business! What was it you wanted?' Maria said, as if none of their previous conversation happened at all. That was amusement, this was business. Remarque being alive was a nice hefty payment too.
 
Vince was largely occupied with his own seething rage, but he did manage a break from it long enough to take note of the threat Maria shot at Remarque. So perhaps they weren't as fond of one another as he had first suspected. That would make negotiations all the more difficult, as Vince didn't actually carry enough spare credits to buy the kind of information he was looking for.

He could sell the Dioscuri for a quick fee, he mused. And he wasn't necessarily above it. Rosemary and Lyle could see after themselves, but there was something about deserting Pablo on a pirate planet that sat ill with him. He was adequately self-aware to know that it wouldn't give him pause for long, if it meant he'd get his hands on Zachary at last.

"Zachary Lang," Vince repeated again, dragging his eyes away from Remarque and back to Maria, his tone impatient. "I want to know how to find him and, in exchange, you can have this one's freedom." He jerked his head in Remarque's direction. He almost added, 'A little worse for wear, but mostly undamaged.' He thought better of it, however. No telling what Maria might make of that.
 
'Ah, Zachary...' she mused, as if she had not heard the name at all until now. 'Funny man, Zachary. We used to be in the same business, but he didn't make the grade. He enjoyed it too much, he always got carried away. Interrogation wasn't work for him, it was fun.'

'I cannot really tell you where he is...' She said, musing. 'But there's a strange thing. The man who cleared the kill on the Dioscuri and Rem was Jonathan Clay, who works for the War Crimes Tribunal. What I find odd is how would a man like that know who Remarque really is? I mean, he is listed merely as the usual murderous type. So I made a few inquiries.'

She was being deliberately mysterious, Remarque knew, and was annoyed despite his personal interest. He had been curious who wanted him dead.

'And then I find out, very inexplicably, that the man has exactly the same DNA codes as Zachary used to, and that Zachary's old records were modified. Zachary always was a competent man, so I suppose that he cut a very sweet deal with the IPA. I suppose they found him useful. His particular lack of conscience makes him an excellent soldier of any government. That's all fair, but we've always had this agreement...' Maria was staring at Remarque.

He stared straight back at her, feeling a little guilty that he had brought Vince here. It was stupid of him, both to tell Vince her real past and to show him where she worked. 'Don't betray old comrades,' he said quietly.

'So I wonder. If he wants to get rid of Rem, am I next? Interesting problem. I think we actually have a convergence of interests.'
 
"Jonathan Clay," Vince said, the syllables falling off his lips like a benediction. He was showing his hand, he realized, revealing to Maria--and Remarque, for that matter--the depths to which he longed to find the man. Maria knew the circumstances of their original acquaintance, and therefore shouldn't have been surprised about his conviction. Remarque, on the other hand ...

Vince straightened up, cleared his throat, smoothed down his shirt as if the sheer power of his emotion had managed to knock it askew. "All right," he said. "That should be more than enough to go on, so the kid's yours." Which actually worked out pretty well for Vince, since he'd be able to report his captive escaped and, hopefully, take the Dioscuri off the radar.

He cast a sidelong glance at Remarque. "But before I let him go, he's got unfinished business with me and my ship." He turned fully on Remarque then, hands on his hips. "You need to put her back the way she was, that was the deal."
 
'Please sit down, Mr. Knightley. I have a proposition,' she said, refolding her hands in her lap. 'I think my interests are too closely aligned to yours to miss this possibility. You see, I have no fondness for my ex-comrade. I do not trust him with my life any longer. I would guess that your business is revenge... And I am interested in his death.'

She wasn't going to do it, was she?

'The Dioscuri is, in my opinion, too obvious for an assassination task. You are are a military man, so take my advice. To get close enough, you need something... Subtler. I know only one ship of that type.'

She was. Remarque stared at her in horror. 'I am not letting that filth on the Requiem.'

She gave him a cold look. Once upon a time, he let any filth on his ship. Really, if one considered the precedent, Remarque did not have a leg to stand on. 'Oh, shut up. Zachary wants you dead! It is only rational to kill him before he can kill you. Now that he knows you are alive, he will want to ensure your silence. He will look for you. He might come looking for me.'

'I suppose...' She was right, he knew.

'And I know how you feel about her...' Maria said, trailing off suggestively. 'You want to see her again. She must be so lonely.'

'Yes...' He was letting himself be manipulated and he knew it.

'Good,' she cut him off before Remarque could raise all the other possible objections. Maria knew that in the end, he would choose the most logical path. 'I propose you let me help you, Mr. Knightley.'
 
Mr. Knightley was in no mood to sit down, so he didn't, but he did broadcast his interest in Maria's proposal by giving her his full attention, arms crossed and hip cocked out to one side. If he was reading the situation correctly, and he had to assume based on Remarque's reaction that he most certainly was, Maria was offering him the use of a state-of-the-art stealth starship.

"What's the catch?" Vince asked, because there was always a catch. "My people come with me, no matter what, and I don't want them manhandled or harassed. And I want full run of the ship. I don't need to be the end all, be all, but I won't be your subordinate, either." He angled a sharp look at Remarque. "Either of you."

He paused before going on, "And if the Dioscuri can dock in the hold, then. Well. You've got yourself a deal with one more condition: I'm the one who gets to put that bastard down."
 
Maria smiled at him. 'No catch. We just have a point of agreement. You don't kill Rem, I tell you about Zachary: that was our piece of business. This would be... Us working towards a mutually desirable goal. At the end we part ways, no questions about what we do next.'

'The hold is just big enough. It would be a tight fit, but it's possible,' Remarque said thoughtfully.

Vince could have his revenge. Remarque could see his Requiem again. He could see the Requiem live again... Maybe if Vince hadn't hurt him as far as he did, he wouldn't be longing to go home again so much. 'The minimal crew needed on her is six. So, we have that.'

He stopped himself. 'We need to talk, Maria.'

'No. You have always been the most rational of us, Remarque. Think.' As if Vince did not exist, she continued. 'You have worked with plenty people you hate. You want to survive: this is necessary. Surely you can accept that. You cannot keep going as you have done. You are killing yourself step by step. The man I used to know would- Ah, never mind.' She had looked back at Vincent and realised that she might not want to finish that sentence in public.

He gritted his teeth. 'Fine. But only because you want this,' he told Maria. To Vince, 'I will not be your subordinate either. You will not give me orders on my ship. I need your crew to run it, you need me to make it habitable. You will ask me nicely.'

He wasn't sure that he wanted to rely on Vincent and his crew, but he was starting to get another idea entirely... If someone wanted him dead for his secrets, then why not simply dump the most damning ones into the public domain? One of the major servers around the IPA centre would do.
 
Vince chose not to respond to Remarque, on account of the fact that he had absolutely no intention of asking for anything nicely. If push came to shove and he absolutely needed something from Remarque, he could always relay a message through his crew. Remarque, in his mind, was still a war criminal. They may have been thrown into a situation where their goals were temporarily aligned, but that didn't mean they were suddenly old pals and he'd be damned if he was going to pretend otherwise.

"All right. I'm getting back to my ship," Vince said finally. "Meet back in three standard hours?" He felt like the announcement should be accompanied by some decisive action, like perhaps standing up, but as he'd never taken a seat, despite many offers for him to do so, he was instead was forced to stand awkwardly in the center of the room.

After a beat, he added, "So, uhh ... can I get my guns back now?"

- - - - -

Rosemary was a hard sell and no mistake. It wasn't until he'd outlined their precarious situation to her many times over, at various volumes and levels of patience, that she finally relented and agreed to the mission at hand. Pablo and Lyle were easier, as they had long ago foregone any notion that they had influence over the important decisions.

"It's like this," Vince had told her as his fingers flew over the main console in the cockpit. "We're a target of the IPA, which just happens to be our only source of income at present. You can desert if you like, leave me to clean up this mess on my own, and I'll understand. Or you can shut up and follow my lead."

It wasn't the first time Vince had delivered the 'my way or the highway' speech, and he'd found, over time, that it was his ace in the hole. Rosemary wasn't a coward. In fact, she was loyal to a fault. Vince was never quite clear on how, exactly, he had earned that loyalty, but he was more than willing to use it to his advantage when Rosemary dug in her heels.

The Dioscuri was ready re-fueled and re-stocked with water and supplies. Her boarding ramp was down, ready to scoop up her new passengers and be on her way to the Requiem. Vince sat in the cockpit, at the ready and largely unwilling to greet Maria and Remarque like guests. So he'd assigned Pablo to the job of giving them the ship's tour. He stood anxiously on the ramp, fidgeting with his datapad.
 
Maria had her guards give Vince his weaponry back, and waited until he left to spring into action. While Remarque was clever, he did sometimes take a while to think things through, and she didn't really want to give him the time to do that. She foisted him on James while she packed with the instructions 'dress and arm him, be ready in an hour'. James would follow her to the ends of the universe, so she didn't really even ask his opinion on the matter. She just packed for them both.

Maria first packed the tools of her trade – never knew when they would become necessary – then clothes and weapons. Sure, there would be shitloads of weaponry left on the Requiem, but both she and James preferred guns they knew. She changed into semi-militaristic clothes: boots, pants with plenty of pockets, a fitted shirt. She tied up her hair more securely, just like the way she used to keep it when she was in the army. A strange feeling of deja vu. This was like a mission of the good old times. She still kept her army coat in the wardrobe, and for some unknown reason she just had to take it and drape it over her shoulders. Was she feeling nostalgic? Did she long for a kill?

Never mind. She dragged her two suitcases over to James, informed him that men exist to carry things for women, and re-found Remarque, looking entirely indifferent to the fact he had acquired new clothes and a new gun. (James complained at her for bringing tramps into the house, but what else she could do, when it was her classmate?)

She still had a couple of hours to burn, so she decreed that Remarque needed a haircut, and to look civilised. When she was done, she had got the metal out of his hair, trimmed his hair, and plaited it into a single braid. The only reason Remarque let her do it was because he knew it would be harder and more painful to argue with her than just let her do what she wanted.

By the time they turned up at the Dioscuri's ramp, Remarque was looking distinctly better groomed. James was carrying her suitcases, unsure why she wanted to go follow some idiot around, but unwilling to argue. She always got her way. It was the foundation of their marriage. Once he'd been a pirate, but this crazy woman grounded him for so long his crew ran off with his ship. What else was he going to do but marry her?

Remarque left James and Maria in Pablo's care, and went straight to the cockpit. It was a slight strain to be polite. 'Can I program the course?'
 
Vince glanced up when Remarque wandered into the cockpit. Rosemary tensed, hand going automatically for the pistol at her hip. She rested it there lightly, thumb grazing lightly against the safety mechanism, and Vince pretended he was oblivious to it.

"Uh," Vince said, then looked back at the console. His knuckles went white around the controls and he flipped a switch. The ship buzzed minutely as the loading ramp retracted. Vince had no idea where they were going, so it wasn't as if he had any options here. He might have even said yes without a second thought, if he did have the freedom to refuse. It was the trapped feeling that sat ill with him.

"Sure," Vince said at last, and Rosemary gave an explosive sigh and pushed herself up out of the co-pilot's chair.

As she shouldered past Remarque, she muttered under her breath, "This is fucking unbelievable."

Vince quirked a smile at that. While he had been expressly forbidden from rudeness, Rosemary had not. "That's my girl,"he said fondly, and then sobered up and cast a glance at Remarque. "Just let me get this bird past the atmosphere and then you can do your thing."

From down the hall, Rosemary's voice echoed, angry and incredulous, "They brought luggage?!" Vince snickered and flipped on the repulsors for take-off before Rosemary could change her mind and leap out the cargo hold.
 
Remarque took her chair without expression. It has been a while since he sat in this part of a ship. There was absolutely no reason why any of Vince's crew should like him, but being in a room just with Vince was uncomfortable. He would have rather liked Rosemary had stayed, whether or not she was holding onto her gun.

'The Requiem is in orbit around SN-7963, medium sized star. It should only be a couple of days away from here,' he told Vince, with the tiniest hint of nervousness in his voice. Damnit. How could he show weakness in front of this man? 'This ship will not be able to find her in a dormant state, or ever, to be honest, but I can predict which part of the asteroid belt she is in.'

He couldn't quite bring himself to tell Vince that the way to find the Requiem was to look for the remains of the ship she had destroyed: she was wrapped in ice and debris. He had made sure the ship's maintenance systems would end up covering the hull with ice. It won't even look like a ship, he knew.

At Rosemary's reaction to luggage, he could not suppress at least a little snort of laughter, however. Maria just could never resist bring more sharp and dangerous objects than necessary. 'A woman needs her make-up,' he said down the corridor, only partly joking.
 
Vince tensed when he heard, through the sound of his own quiet chuckle, the sound of Remarque's laughter. The mirth fell instantly from his face, replaced by a cold seriousness. He was a murderer and a pain in the ass and one did not giggle like a school girl with a pain-in-the-ass murderer.

He was silent through take-off, expressionless as the city below them faded beneath the clouds and the broad darkness of space opened up before them. He concentrated instead on the controls, on getting them far enough from the planet's gravitational pull that they could sit idle without being tugged back into orbit, and then he leaned back, crossed his arms behind him and pillowed his head in his hands, and shrugged.

"Do your thing," he said gruffly. It wasn't asking nicely, but then Remarque had been the one who had made the request, so he felt he was justified. "Two days, huh?" he repeated now, and then twitched his mouth into something that was neither smile nor frown.

"Hn. In that case you should probably get back to the engine room, boost our thruster power up high as she'll go. No need to keep as all packed in here for any longer than necessary." He paused then, swished the thought around a little before going on, "That is. Ahem. If you don't mind."
 
'Fine, fine,' he muttered. Glancing at Vince, he made his expression as neutral as possible. Navigation was not what he was the best at, but he was at least competent, and had spent far too many days dreaming of typing this particular course. He was finished in no time. He had run the same coordinates through his head so many times.

It was strange, now that he knew where he was going, he felt as if he had purpose. As if the Requiem was the reason for his living! He was truly an idiot, to dream only of his ship or of his dead lover. Maria was right. He was worthless while he lived in this limbo. He had not thought of the future in so many years, had never wondered that his life might change and what way things could go. He was thinking now, on the way to the site of his only mass murder. The irony. He knew that normal men would be feeling guilt and despair, but he was... Eager.

'That is the time accounting for what I am going to do there. If I lower the living space temperature, we could get there in a day and a half.' Purely technical questions were easy to answer: decreasing the life support capacities of the ship would allow extra power to the engines, but it would make life uncomfortable for all of them. That could lead to short tempers... He wasn't so sure it was a good idea.
 
Vince raised his eyebrows at Remarque in an expression that read clearly, 'No fucking way,' but he said nothing. He'd come to the same conclusion as Remarque, in the same amount of time. Rosemary was going to be Hell to live with already, and he could just see Pablo's breath freezing in the engine room, his teeth chattering as he muttered awkward insults at the console.

"Two days is fine," Vince finally said, and settled back in his chair. Rosemary had gone, leaving only Vince and Remarque in the cockpit and Vince had no desire to put Remarque on first watch. So he'd take the shift, which put him in the chair for the next twelve hours, as there was no one else he was going to trust at the helm.

In a gesture so automatic he hadn't even realized he was doing it, Vince swung his feet up onto the console, the heels of his boots landing solidly on a plane of metal that held no switches for him to accidentally activate. He kept his eyes forward, on the star field. Once Remarque was finished entering the coordinates, Vince unfolded on arm from behind his head, toggled some controls without sparing them a glance, and the Dioscuri set off on their destination.

With a wolfish grin, he grabbed pressed a button on the communicator panel. "This is your captain speaking, ladies and gentlemen. We've just embarked on a two-day course for SN-7963. If you have any questions about this journey, please direct them to one Erich Remarque who, by the way, is classified as a civilian while on board the Dioscuri and should be treated thusly. Same goes for our other new passengers. First of my crew to instigate an incident can spend the remainder of the journey strapped to the hull. Vince out."

Rosemary was going to love that.

"All right, kid, you can beat it. Ain't nothin' interesting gonna happen up here for the next forty-eight."
 
'Stop calling me 'kid'. I'm probably older than you.' Remarque knew that they were probably the same age if they both lived through the war... But the condescension was starting to get on his nerves.

Remarque supposed that Maria and James would spend the whole time in a bed, but he was feeling restless now that they were on the way. As if his heart was skipping every other beat. Longing? No, it was more demanding than that. Desire? Too strong a word, maybe. He wanted to return to his long abandoned home, and stared into the stars as if he could see it, far off in the distance.

Rationally, he knew that the Requiem as she stood was probably barely habitable. He did not relish the moment when he would have to tell Vince and his crew that the ship would need a few days to adjust to having living passengers again and for the engines to recalibrate. But when that was done, he could not wait for that thrill of power under his hands.

'You don't want to know anything about the Requiem?' he asked Vince, almost incredulously. He had been unable to stop himself: the clever thing to do would be to just leave. It was hard for him to imagine someone who didn't care at all about the specifications of a ship they might end up spending at least a week. 'Do you want to be surprised when we get there, or what?'
 
Vince's relaxed sprawl seemed to go abruptly tight around the edges. Did he want to know about the Requiem? Well, he'd be seeing it soon enough. It wasn't out of any desire for suspense that he hadn't asked, but he'd been coasting along with speaking to Remarque only as much as was absolutely necessary and it had been working for him. Mostly.

There was that whole debacle with Maria that could have been avoided, but other than that, he was meeting with roaring success.

"Well," he said slowly, "I understand it's a stealth ship. Medium sized, if this girl's gonna be a tight fit in the hold." He paused. He wasn't even sure how much Remarque remembered, about the things that he'd said when he was under the influence of Vince's drugs. "Gotta be something pretty special, if Lang's willing to go to such lengths to kill you over it. Otherwise?"

Vince shrugged. Ships weren't his passion. Space wasn't even his passion. He was only here because of Victor, who did love ships, and space, and had never hinted at any sort of fondness for the dusty plains of Winston, for the rainstorms that would roll in out of nowhere, or the twilight shadows of mountains visible in the distance from their home. It had always been his plan to return, after he'd dealt with Zachary. Vince didn't care for any of this, not really, and the Dioscuri had been the sole exception, and even that affection was borrowed from the memory of Victor.

"I mean, is there something I ought to know?"
 
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