The Gambler's Karma

[Crash Calestorm 0]

Note: This log for the ISS ‘Creek plot line takes place after our 10.18.10 chat and just prior to/during our current two hour time between Sims

 

Anubis Station

The Fightin’ Irish Vulcan Bar and Grill

 

Despite a rough start at an earlier card game, the night that she spent station-side on Anubis had proven to be quite profitable for Captain Crash Calestorm.

 

After speaking briefly with two of her crewmembers -- TAral and Mrkath -- earlier in the evening, Cale had continued on her nightly rounds and ended up at the tavern known as The Fightin’ Irish Vulcan. She had never met a full blooded Vulcan who was Irish, but…that was beside the point.

 

Settled in at a table with four other patrons, Cale glanced about the tavern area and noted that even at this late hour, the establishment had quite a few customers present. Like her, they all wore some sort of energy weapon strapped to their person, though most had the weapon settings on stun per the rules. As always, the weight of her holstered EM 33 phaser pistol sat comfortably against her leg.

 

Anubis station catered to a motley assortment of traders, pirates, mercenaries and all sorts of folks in between. Weapons were permitted as long as they remained visible; the standing rule was that any energy weapon was required to be set at a stun setting at all times. If you fired a weapon set on anything besides the safety setting, the grid sensors wired throughout the station in key areas would pick up on the discharge. At that point, you could expect a visit from Mister Shade’s Anubis Security Force, his privately funded mercenary police force who maintained order on the space station. The ASFers were not gentle with lawbreakers.

 

“Alright boys and girls and…other--,” Calestorm nodded to an alien of indeterminate sex, who nodded back amiably…at least she thought it did; it was hard to tell since the creature was a Xindi insectoid, “—I’m done for the evening. The morning. Whatever.” The captain began to gather her poker winnings, placing a one hundred credit pay chit in an interior pocket of her leather bomber jacket as she did so.

 

The Hard Six usually made port at Anubis every six months or so for resupply. The opportunity afforded Cale to play some cards and fleece the local poker sheep while she made extra cash for the ship and crew (and herself) in the process. Was she a cheater? Well, that depended on the company. For this game, unlike the earlier one at the Blue LeMatya bar, she’d behaved and still managed to clean all the players out.

 

Chris kept harping on her to lay off the late night station excursions, the drinking, and the gambling. But, it was still easy money and she’d keep carousing as long as it was profitable. And there was nothin’ wrong with blowing off some steam either; you try riding herd on a crew of forty energetic reprobates, see if you’re all sunny and cheerful and such.

 

A young Denobulan boy who Cale had procured services from suddenly appeared at her side; she placed the bulk of her chit winnings -- five hundred credits worth -- in a worn leather pouch and drew the drawstring closed, dropping the small package in the boys hands.

 

“Docking berth 47, look for a watch officer by the name of Wilson. Give the bag to him and only him, ‘kay?”

 

It wasn’t unusual for station kids to find work as couriers, running packages and messages back and forth between paying patrons; her own son had made spending money working as a courier a few years back when Chris and Crash had lived on K-7 Station.

 

The kid nodded a silent yes and Cale smiled, “Good boy, now get,” and sent him on his way with a gentle swat.

 

That portion of her business concluded, Calestorm walked over to the bar in order to make good on the tab that she’d run up buying a couple rounds for the bar. She’d just finished the transaction with Vokal -- the Vulcan owner of the establishment, and no, he wasn’t Irish -- when a bellowed “CALESTORM” shattered the relative peace of the bar and grill tavern.

 

She whirled in the direction of the interruption and laid eyes on the same female Klingon from the earlier evenings card game; Cale had completely cleaned her out thanks to some well placed cheatin’ cards. TAral had stepped in and gone all Vulcan neck pinch on the combative Klingon in order to extricate the captain from the situation.

 

Oh dear…

 

The captain wasn’t a coward, exactly. But, she sure as shootin’ wasn’t going to go one on one with an angry Klingon that outweighed her by about thirty pounds with the muscle to back it up.

 

The middle aged Human turned and bolted for the secondary entry way door, set parallel to the doorway that the Klingon loomed in and on the other side of a big plasti-glass picture window that proclaimed the name of the bar. The mounted neon sign was a blur as she ran out the batwing doors.

 

A force suddenly slammed into her, and the captain went airborne; she’d forgotten about the Tellarite partner. The pig-like male timed the attack for when she cleared the entry way door, barreling into her with his full body weight and a good amount of running speed. At five foot nine inches and one hundred fifty pounds, Cale was pretty sturdy, but she was no match for the fat and stout Tellar as he caught her off guard and set her flying; she slammed into the decking, landing hard on her rump, the jolt sending pain up her tailbone and spine, and skidded back a few paces before coming to a complete stop flat on her back.

 

The female Klingon by now had left the interior of the tavern and caught up to the commotion and her partner, and spoke in angry, guttural tones. “Where’s our money, you scruffy nimfh herder?” She roughly picked Cale up off the decking by way of her jacket collar and shook her like a scruffed puppy.

 

Crash took exception to the scruffy, and she was most certainly not a herder. She had done a few stints as a top ranked shepherd for a nimfh roundup job on Sang’Li, but that was beside the point…Whoa. Mind wandering. Focus.

 

She focused her gaze on her two adversaries and started to go into her typical ‘It’s not my fault’ rogue diplomacy spiel, “Hey, you two gambled and you lost, I won. That’s all here is t—“

 

The Klingon punched Crash twice in the right eye socket; her vision exploded in stars and her knees buckled and then the big alien dropped the Human down again on her butt.

 

The Tellarite was not amused and watched the event dispassionately, glowering at Calestorm. “Took us a while to locate you Captain. Don’t seem to have your little Vulcan around to help you out this time. You cheated, now where’s our cash?”

 

The little voice in her self preservation section of her mind was screaming ix-nay on the upid-say!, but her temper overrode any semblance of common sense. She stood shakily, jabbing a finger at the Tellar to punctuate her words, her tone hot. “You can’t prove that though, can you? Yeah, you sure stepped in to help your partner here when my girl intervened, didn’t you? You disappeared so fast I’m surprised you didn’t leave a vapor trail.”

 

The Klingon obviously didn’t care that her partner had bolted, or she just enjoyed the chance to use someone as a punching bag; with a snarl, she leapt at Cale. The Human saw the hit coming, tried to block, succeeded in deflecting the first punch but a left cross connected square on with her jaw area and she dropped like a pole axed steer. Again.

 

Staying down on the decking, Cale managed to half raise her arms in a placation gesture. “Hey! I already used it! The money’s gone.” Which, was in part true…

 

“All of it?” The male Tellar snorted through his snout, his tone disbelieving.

 

“Hell yes all of it. It was only two hundred credits in the first place.” The skin around her eye was already beginning to purple and bruise and she could taste copper in her mouth and feel the warm blood oozing down her skin from a damaged lip.

 

The Tellarite had taken over the conversation, and seemed to be the de facto leader with the female cohort the muscle. He glared at Calestorm. “You will pay us what you owe us or we will take it out of your pink skin.”

 

The master of the Hard Six didn’t even get the chance to refute, finagle, or try and talk her way out of that last statement. With a roar, the female Klingon lunged at Calestorm and hauled her upright again by her jacket collar. Calestorm attempted to steel herself for what was to come. Reap what you Sow…

 

The sound of an energy weapon being cocked managed to break through the noise. Everyone turned towards the sound and there stood Vokal in the second entry way to his establishment, a plasma shotgun held in his grip. His expression was carefully controlled, that studied way that his species seemed to excel at.

 

He spoke to the Tellar and the Klingon. “This scattergun will not kill you, but it will cause discomfort and it is not set to stun; a resulting visit from the local station goons would most likely be imminent were I to discharge the device. Now, I suggest you both move on and leave her alone.”

 

A multidirectional look passed between the two pirates, and the Tellar gave a subtle head nod to his companion. The female Klingon reluctantly let go of Calestorm, who sagged back against storage crates set up against a nearby airlock bulkhead. The Tellar began rummaging roughly through the Humans jacket, eventually removing the one hundred dollar chit from the interior pocket. Cale wasn’t inclined to stop the pig-like male from absconding with the funds, and Vokal seemed content to let the captain lose a bit of her funds, and withheld his fire. The two then moved out of the immediate area and went on their way.

 

Vokal looked at one of his few long term customers, a bit of reproach on his serene features. “Crash, your company is always welcome here, but I suggest you call it a night. Morning. Whatever.”

 

She managed a smile and gave him a two fingered salute touch to her forehead. “I will, and thanks Vokal.”

 

= = = =

SS Hard Six

Captains Quarters

 

Calestorm had made it back to the ‘Six, gotten cleaned up, and grabbed some food. What she needed was aspirin and sleep, but she had one thing to take care of that was more important -- a conference call with her two field operatives at Xanar.

 

Shrugging into a dark blue cowboy styled work shirt and gingerly setting her lanky frame down into the desk chair, Cale accessed the console on her desk and implemented a secure line that would link to Cody and Jackie’s position at the mining colony.

 

She waited patiently, perusing a manifest of the new supplies that had been transferred into their cargo hold. She tried to ignore the throbbing in her eye and lip and various other body parts that shall remain nameless. Soon, the wireless connection located an open communications node that serviced the galactic intra-net, and the image of her son appeared on the two way view screen.

 

Cody Pike was a pretty good kid. He was built like his father, the spitting image of his mother. From both of them, he’d inherited life skills, such as Crash’s roguish ‘leap before looking’ instincts, and Chris’s ‘lets discuss this first from all angles’ tactical mindset. The personality combo ensured that the kid would do well career-wise. He adamantly refused to enlist in the Imperial Starfleet, which was music to Calestorm’s ears; she hadn’t even had to discourage him much. The boy had come to his own conclusions based on Crash’s and Chris’s stories from when they had been enlisted that military service to the Empire was just not for him.

 

Cale smiled, the gesture pulling at her sore lip. “Hey Son.”

 

“Mom! What happened to your face?”

 

As her boy had grown older, Cale had always been honest with Cody, not sugarcoating anything. She saw no good reason to start that stuff now.

 

‘I got into a card game, made a couple bad decisions, and got a good walloping.”

 

The younger Pike absorbed this information for a moment, his intelligent blue eyes fixated on his mother, and then broke the silence. “Seriously Mom, you need to stick with something safe in your free time like mystery novels or darts or--“

 

Her eye – her good eye – squinted at him.

 

“…but we’re totally not discussing that right now!”

 

“C’mon, let’s get to business. Give me the sitrep and relay the evacuation plan we agreed on back to me.”

 

The captain jotted a few notes with a stylus pen on a well used electronic data slate -- like most of the out of date though well cared for equipment on the 'Six, the slate bleeped and blooped at random intervals but still worked pretty good considering it had been in use when Empress Hoshi Sato the 1st had served in the Earth Starfleet -- so she could forward a preliminary update report onto the first mate and section chiefs.

 

Cody nodded. “Okay. The final passenger count is forty plus a couple families. Jackie and I placed the EMP charges at key locations throughout the colony compound and the mining facility; once the charges go active from the ‘Six’s transmitted signal, the colony goes dark. The passengers’ll be prepped for the full EVAC as soon as it all bugs out.”

 

“Good work Son. We use the blackout to our advantage so the second planetary colony doesn’t get suspicious…I know I told you that we have no way of knowing who is sympathetic to the Empire’s cause. So you and Jacks continue to be careful, you hear me now? The Hard Six should be in system in the next few days. We still got some time, but I’d like to be long gone before anything remotely resembling an Imperial ship arrives in system to take over the facility.”

 

The younger Pike picked up the conversation from there. “Has Halkan been bombarded?”

 

“Yep. Xanar and Micong were also slated to get glassed, but you know that. We got some Intel here at Anubis that Fleet Command is back pedalin’, and tentative plans are in the works to simply take over the mining colonies instead of the bombardments. Still doesn’t change our contract job though…”

 

“She-tanor chikor bastaviches.”

 

‘Watch yer language, but yeah, I agree. Put Jackie on, lemme speak to her real quick.”

 

Within a couple seconds, the face of the ship’s top deck hand appeared on the console screen; like Cody, the young woman looked tired.

 

The first statement out of her mouth was, “Captain! What happened to your face?!

 

It was going to be a long day…