Fantasy The Freebooter Chronicles

[Shannon Trevor]

"What do you think?" John asked, rubbing a hand on his lightly stubbled chin.

"It's an eclectic bunch, I'll say that much," Clay Donos offered in the slow drawl so common of people from the Auris's Western frontier. He held up the last of the single page dossiers holding some scant information about a prospective crew mate before setting it down on top of the meagre pile on the table. "You not have your own crew for this sort of thing?"

"What crew?" John's laugh held just a tinge of bitterness. "They all jumped ship back when we were in the Cantonspires. All I got left is a mechanic who spends more time drunk than not and a debt that's starting to weigh heavy on my shoulders."

Clay grunted. "And suddenly you're approached by a man who promises you riches beyond your dreams. Wake up and smell the bullshit, Colonel."

John slumped back into his chair. "I've already been paid a sum up front. Expenses. Bullshit or not, whoever is backing this expedition has the money."

Clay ran a hand through his short, thinning hair. He wasn't tall like John but was still stoutly built with broad shoulders and thick arms. A trimmed beard didn't quite hide the long scar that ran down his left cheek. Usually sarcastic and good-natured, the morose man sitting across from John wasn't how he remembered his former Corporal from their last meeting a year before. "Ok," Clay said finally. "I'm in."

John reached across and clasped his friend by his shoulder. "Damn glad to hear it. Not a moment too soon either," John said, tapping the face of a large gold watch clasped tightly to his left wrist. "I believe our first recruit has just walked through the door.

Pushing the door to their corner booth open ever so slightly, John waved over the person scanning the dimly lit tavern.

 

[Skylord Nexus]

Calbian was currently searching for the place he had been told to meet his new employer, though admittedly he was struggling a little, he had always found flying easier than walking, he could always see where he was going. Though as his thoughts wondered to the skies, he felt a stab of angry and sorrow as he remembered his dear ship and how those mutinous bastards stole it from him and left him for dead. The man was no stranger to these feelings, many things seemed to cause his thoughts to drift to his beloved ship and the crew who stole it, in all honestly it probably didn't help he had named it after himself, never the less, the though never failed to put him into a mental rut. This time however, he felt different. This time he was lifted from that rut by the feeling of satisfaction that soon he would be on the path to getting his ship back, if everything went to plan he would have his ship back by the end of the year. Fuelled by this new determination, Calbian made his way to his destination.

Bursting through the doors, Calbian scanned the room looking for his employer, his eyes scanned over various people, most of which were unsavoury, before seeing John beckon him over. As he entered the booth, the man went to shake Johns hand "Ah, Mr Lachlan. It's a pleasure to meet you in person. I must say, your reputation proceeds you, though the stories did leave out how dashing you look, i'd dare say you'd rival me for looks... well almost anyway." Giving John a somewhat cocky smile, Calbian took a seat, removing his large hat and laying it on his lap. The man then turned to Clay and held out his had to him "Calbian Amberstar. Pleasure to meet your acquaintance. Nice scar by the way, very roguish, i bet the ladies must be all over you." Calbian then lent forward in his seat, looking John in the eye "So then, can i have some more detail on this expedition of yours? or are we going to wait for the others, because i'm assuming it's not going to be just the three of us, not that i'm against spending a lovely time with two other men, but i think running a ship might be a bit hard with just us."

 

[jones573]

Lachlan had said he’d send one of his crew to pick Belmys up at the station- Tall woman, green scarf. He’d offer her a set of initials and she’d confirm the name that went with them, and they’d do it the other way as well. ‘Tall woman, green scarf’ had been a bit vague, but Bel’s concern about the description was completely unnecessary. There could have been a dozen taller woman on the platform wearing any number of emerald hued scarves, and he was pretty sure he could have picked out the one he was supposed to be meeting.



“Damn,” he swore, craning his neck to meet his warm brown eyes to her beady ones, already narrowed at him in dislike. “What are you, 2 meters? 14, 15 stone? You eat something strange to get this way, or were you always so massive?”



He was used to being the short one, the scrappy one, the runt of any group… But this? Belmys knew he had met taller and bigger people in his life, but not without some military rank pinned on their breast and certainly not in the context of knowing he’d be spending the foreseeable future on an airship with them.



“B.S,” the woman said, only the slightest inflection to signal it was a question.



“Belmys Schuner, at your service,” he agreed, reaching out to shake her hand. She didn’t oblige to meet him half way and he ended up just sort of grabbing at her palm ineffectively. “And you must be the incomparable Davita Pearson, I presume! A pleasure!”



Davita did not look as though she felt it might be a mutual pleasure. “Ya got luggage, then?”



The fellow was carrying a long tube case on his back and small satchel that hung at his side. But he’d come out near the front of the chain of rail cars, and Davy presumed that first class passengers weren’t expected to keep track of their own bags.



Sure enough, Belmys pulled a luggage ticket from within a coat pocket, and Davita marched them both over to the bag claim before he could begin talking again, though he did anyways, again pestering her about what she ate, and did the people in her hometown win awards for growing such impressive crop yields? He presented his claim ticket and his identification- issued within the last few years, she noted, which seemed odd- and Davy grabbed his pack once it was brought forward and slung it over her shoulder.



“You don’t have to carry that for me,” Belmys insisted, jogging slightly to catch up with her much longer stride. “Really-”



“Be a lot faster if I do,” she told him. She was actually relieved that the pack was an appropriate size, and he hadn’t brought… Extra hats or five sizes of binoculars, or something equally stupid that an ‘adventurer’ might find necessary. The brown-skinned man had clearly packed it expecting to carry it himself, but he was also not used to navigating crowded city streets and they had a ways still to go.



“All right, all right, I won’t argue,” Belmys relented once he was at her side, realizing that Davita had no intent to slow her pace down and knowing that his own pride was not so fragile that he’d be embarrassed to have a woman carrying his things for him.



“You know, some places I’ve been, they consider it bad luck for women to be on ships? Even as passengers, the superstitious lot! Mind you, they often think the ships themselves are also bad luck, a harbinger of doom if it arrives at a certain time of the moon cycle, or has an even number of crew, and they can’t do much about it as they’re so stuck in their mud it’ll be years before they can build their own ships, so-”



“Ya got an odd accent,” Davy observed. She couldn’t quite place it, and even if it was similar to some of the more far-off tongues she’d heard being shouted around at docking bays, it was still different. He didn’t clip his words on either end but he didn’t stretch them out either, and there was no occasional whistle to his lilting pattern the way there might have been if he was missing a tooth or two.



“Your man John may have mentioned- I’m not from around here, originally,” he deflected. “Been across half the continent, but I only settled in the next town over a few years ago, so I suppose I’ve picked up the local slang without the full pattern-”



“That’ll be ‘Lachlan,’ at the very least,” Davita corrected in a way that made it clear it was not up for discussion. “Til ya’off the payroll or he tells ya otherwise.”



“Sure, my mistake, apologies,” Belmys said goodnaturedly but without much sincerity, presumably eager to return to discussing himself. “I don’t know if Lachlan told you, but I’ve been on several expeditions to unknown regions and-



“Here’s what I know ‘bout ya,” Davy growled. “Ya don’t fly, ya don’t fix, and ya don’t fight. Your position on this mission is… Nonessential, as far as I care.”



“Oh, Miss Davita,” Belmys said with a worryingly large grin that was very much the opposite of how people usually reacted when she made a vague but obvious threat in their direction. “We are going to get along just splendidly.”



_______



It should have been a twenty minute walk to where they were meeting the others. Twenty five at most. Instead Davy had spent the last forty or so minutes trying to wrangle her new charge in the direction they were meant to be going while he chattered on, undeterred by her general lack of any response.



She should have made him carry his pack. The prospect of having to listen to his shortness of breath was far more appealing than his continued prattling.



He liked to meander between the market stalls in some indiscernible pattern, he wanted to examine the road paving and check if it was level, he needed to see some particular view if they could just take a quick detour- And on and on.



He had come up with a spectacular array of nicknames for her, all of which she hated, and seemed to think it was a good idea to wave at people when they caught him staring at them. They had spent nearly ten minutes with a shoe merchant, Belmys and the man and his family talking excitedly in a language Davita did not understand or even remotely recognize. And then there had been the business with the chicken kabobs. Or as Belmys had insisted, the kabobs that were definitely not chicken. Probably rat, he thought, but he couldn’t be sure unless he tasted some-



Only when Davita snapped that they were going to be late- and explained that just because they were meant to be meeting the others at a designated time, didn’t mean she didn’t want to be there earlier to scoop the place out, which she was definitely not going to be able to do at this rate- did they finally pick up the pace. He was clearly repressing his enthusiasm for continuing his earlier lecture on meat cultivation in the area in an attempt to appease her, so perhaps he did have some sense after all.



Which would be good, in close quarters. Davy had killed men before, and had once even killed a crew member, though she’d had little choice in that particular circumstance. It had been a personal challenge, to get her temper and her reactions under control and she didn’t want to waste those efforts just because she couldn’t tolerate the incessant ramblings of some shrimpy explorer whose neck would probably fit easy under just one hand-



At least they had made it ‘on time’, even if not by Davy’s definition, and she gave Lachlan a slight nod as they approached, just moments behind the other fellow. Who was already trying to flirt. Delightful. Where did Lachlan find these idiots, she wondered, and why had he been using ‘as annoying as possible’ as hiring criteria?



“Ya’assume correctly,” Davita told Amberstar blandly as she pushed Belmys into the booth and took her own seat. “If ya want ‘a lovely time,’ I reckon ya should-”



“Belmys Schuner, everyone calls me Bel,” Bel interrupted cheerfully, cutting off whatever crude retort Davita had been about to deliver. “And this delightful conversationalist masquerading as human mountain is-”



“Pearson,” Davita interjected with her last name, before Bel could introduce her as ‘Vita’ or ‘DeeDee’ or any other such absurdity. “Davita will do fine, too.”



She leveled a reproachful glare in Lachlan’s direction, hoping it adequately conveyed at least some semblance of the depths of her displeasure with the men he’d recruited.

 

[Sarah Bear]

As the medium-dark skinned woman approached the seedy bar, a scene that typically acted as both a meeting place for her employers and her 'associates', she began to wonder if the trip would be worth it. One of the crew could be an old debtor, that wouldn't be good at all, or, even worse, they could be an old employer. Thinking on this, however, she ultimately decided that even if they were, this... Lachlan could keep them from killing her during the trip. Lachlan, a name she didn't know... Or, at least, remember. "Good, maybe I could make a decent first impression for once." Tayanita said to herself before making it to the bar, opening it's doors to the rather shabby bar. Scanning the room for familiar faces, Tayanita was relieved to see none, but kept her right hand on her sidearm just in case. Made her way to the table with Lachlan, nearly full with other potential crew.

The small man next to the very tall woman reminded Tayanita of many of her employers, though he didn't seem as ruthless, and the tall woman reminded her of their guards, but a lot bigger than most of them. "Still, no need to judge them before knowing them," she thought to herself "They could be decent, don't look quite like they belong in this tavern so that's a start." Looking at the other one across from who she assumed was Lachlan, she couldn't get a decent read on them. Wasn't like her to not be able to. "I'll have to watch you for a bit" Tayanita's thoughts continued. Realizing she had been at the table for a bit and hadn't introduced herself, Tayanita turned towards Lachlan, and took her hand off of the weapon, judging she was probably safe with the crew here, but didn't offer a hand to shake. Wasn't used to that, usually far to personal for her employers to touch the help. "Name's Tayanita, did I get here last or did someone sleep in even later than I did?" She attempted to joke, but the real reason she was so late was that she had been debating with herself back and forth whether she should meet with Lachlan. She convinced herself that at the very least, she had a break from debt collecting, and this job would pay better anyway.