Captain Jameela Khalil - Aboard Freyja
The monitor blinked twice and a low-rising hum began to emanate within the cockpit. Outside the windows showed nothing. Not a speck of anything else in the entire Verse, just the black. Overhead the cockpit lights twitched ever so slightly, as they always did whenever the display monitors were fired up, stupid gorram wiring in Frejya never had worked just as it should.
Jammer leaned back confidently in her chair, tapping her fingers on the panel beside to screen as she waited for the picture to load. Seconds later a crisp 3-D rendering of a building etched itself into existence. “Now we’re in business,” she said sitting up from her relaxed position, slapping her pilot Taffrey on the arm as she did. “Get everyone up here. Time’s come to bleed the Alliance a lil’ more, but this time it’s going to require some actual skill, not that any of you go tsao de idiots has any. Dunno what Mal was thinkin’ givin’ this mission to us.”
“I think he’s under the impression that your charming personality will drive those alliance bastards to take that last long step out into the black rather sit through any more of your tyen shiao duh monologues,” the sweet, sultry voice of her electronics engineer cooed from below her as she fiddled with a pair of blue wires.
“Bizui Tweety Bird,” she countered. Tweety Bird was the nickname Jameela had giving Bree Shillings after only 10 minutes with the girl who couldn’t resist inserting a sarcastic remark into any conversation she could. Taffrey just smiled, having seen this particular act on more than one occasion. He reached above him and grabbed the Com which was located ever so conveniently at arm’s length.
A whiny moan echoed throughout the entire ship as he pressed the switch, but rather than speak he merely held it out for her. Oh, how he knew how she liked to hear her own voice, “Ahem. Attention valued guests. This is your Captain speaking. We’re cruising at an altitude of approximately 320 million feet from, uh, somewhere. Today’s in-flight movie will be The Academy of Evil, starring, directed, and produced by your friendly neighborhood huh choo-shung tza-jiao duh tzang-huo Alliance. So, I hope you’ve enjoyed your trip up to this point, because one or two of you numbskulls are bound to make my dreams come true and get yourselves good and dead. Thank you and have a wonderful evening.”
“You speak like a poet Capn’” Jammer glared at Bree, kicked her in the side, and practically shuddered as she felt a wave of sexual electricity surge through her body at the sensation of touching the sassy red head. Bree flashed her a look, one that said she was thinking the same thing as her. Once, in what felt like a different life, they had been an item, but now she was Captain of her own ship, a much more delicate position to be in. She had her crew to think about after all.
She muttered under her breathe before finally commanding Bree, “Just fix the damn wiring already.”
-o0o-
Taffrey had put the ship on auto-pilot and joined the rest of the group once the last crew member had arrived. Freyja was a piece of flotsam out in the infinite black of space. The old firefly class ship had served them well though, and Jameela couldn’t imagine having any other ship.
“Got the word from Mal, we’re to launch a raid on an Alliance facility on Londinium,” she waited for the communal groans to dissipate before proceeding, “That’s right, this isn’t no cake walk, lounging round the pool sipping mai tais on Bellorphon, this is going to be state of the art security, and make no mistake about it, we decide now’s a good time to trip over our feet we won’t be getting back up if ya’ll catch my meaning.”
With a finger touch on the display screen the image zoomed in and began panning around one building, the exterior disappearing, replaced with the architectural blueprints. “Now then, we’re fortunate to have these so let’s try not to foul it up. Our target is Yoora Ri, being held here on the seventeenth floor. She’s a psychic, just like Tan.” That got a few reactions.
“Security is pretty standard. Because they’re moving these Academies of theirs every few months now they can’t set up anything too elaborate, nothing that’ll draw attention, but we do know there are always three guards occupying the main lobby that we’ll have to deal with. Now then,” this time her hand clicked on a smaller box that had sat idly in the corner, which took the opportunity to expand into a much larger frame overtop the schematics, “This is the card scanner the facility uses. Pretty standard ‘cept the fact that they plant every chip with a small micro-thermal heat source that is reprogrammed every week to radiate a different amount of energy, and only the scanner is programmed with the code, so there’s no way to fake the cards, we’ll need to get our hands on the real deal which could get tricky.”
“I’m going to open up the floor to you geniuses to see if you have any bright ideas, though, I think we stand a better chance of getting hit by lightning.”
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