Poco RP Family
Sunday, 29 Jul 2525
Trans U, Polaris class Delilah
Delilah crash site, Meridian
Blue Sun (Qing Long) system
Poco sat in the dark, listening to the sound of his engines being savaged, cradling the Baron in his hands. Slowly spinning the cylinder, he rubbed his thumb over each bullet. He still had a full count. That meant five shots for offense and one for insurance.
A particularly hideous squeal of metal made him jump slightly. He slammed the cylinder home with a practiced motion and leaned his head back against the piping in exhaustion. Cradled in Delilah’s womb, images floated before him.
“It seems like you’ve fallen in with some true believers,” Jazz had said. “I’m worried for you.” He wasn’t in the habit of taking advice from easy women with idiotic nicknames, but he had to admit that she was half right. This crew had the hair-brained idea that it was some sort of family. That led to all sorts of stupidity, which was even worse when the Boss decided that random passerby were suddenly and inexplicably bosom kin.
Family. These dà yǎnjīng de tàikōng yóukè didn’t know the first damn thing about family. Images of his mother floated before him, her gaze fixed hungrily on the vial in her hands as he was pulled away. He could still feel the roughness of the wall, hands pinning him to it, as he watched his sister walk down the alley. She never looked back. Not a glance. Not a hesitation in step. A calm forward march out of his life.
These were the greatest of life’s lessons. Focus on yourself. Never look back.
So why was he sitting here, twenty feet from the boogieman instead of working his way deeper and surrounding himself with booby-traps? Every time he thought of moving, another conversation floated through his mind.
“We can’t leave Tian,” Viki had said with exasperated righteousness. “We’ve never left you behind.” And they hadn’t. They’d damn near gotten him killed on several occasions, but they hadn’t left him. Of course, saving him hadn’t cost them much. Dragging his body onto the ship after a beating wasn’t exactly a heroic rescue.
Family. The very concept of it was laughable. Trusting in others was foolish and rushing to their rescue was insanity. How many times had a rescue almost gotten him killed? Someone’s son was being held captive by terrorists, likely because he was caught killing said terrorists, and somehow there was Poco, lying unconscious on a cavern floor. A gullible captain provides a much needed diversion for escape, and a mother’s instincts lead to Poco counting down the minutes to either being eaten by a Reaver or eating a bullet.
Mothers and sons. Even when it wasn’t his own mother, those ties were looking to get him killed.
Yet he was still no closer to the emergency power supply next to the reactor. Still no closer to rigging a deathtrap for the monsters from beyond. Something held him here, in the dark. In purgatory between safety and the unknown. The calm assurance from the Boss that Tink would get them out of a bind. Tink’s complete trust that the Doc could, and would, save a dying girl. A jaded pilot barreling her ship into a gorram nest of Reavers to save one of her own.
Another shriek of metal from the engine room reverberated up Delilah’s spine. The noise set fire to the familiar itch between his shoulder blades, almost as if someone were slowly painting a target on his back in blood. What would it feel like to be able to put his back up against another’s? What would it be like to sleep without his fingers cradling a gun?
Family. He pulled his multi-tool out of his coveralls and weighed it against the Baron. Cold certainty versus the chance of fixing something long broken. The small tool suddenly felt very heavy.
“I’m a gorram idiot,” he muttered to himself as he started working off the cover to the communications relay.
-- dà yǎnjīng de tàikōng yóukè - Wide-eyed space tourists
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