"Oh god, please don't ruin coffee for me. You won't like me if I can't drink coffee."
Beau blinked, taken aback, and then grinned even wider. "I wouldn't do that to you. That's just and cruel and inhumane."
Finley wasn't completely sold, but she let him slide the coffee cup across the table to her.
"If I was going to try, I'd pick something that actually had a chance of working on a ship." Something calculating flashed in his eyes. A suggestion of an intelligence hidden behind an attractive, friendly face.
"Well, that's a relief." Finley took a sip and sighed in pleasure. "There's got to be some rules."
"You don't seem very surprised."
"You don't seem that stupid."
This time his grin was a bit vicious. "It was a good offer. Lots of credits. Assignment wherever I wanted."
"Now where else would you pick over here?"
"I mean, there's the experimental test flight facility on Venus."
"You want to fly questionable aircraft on a planet that's always trying to kill you?"
"Hmm, fair point. But there's the Blue Run? I haven't tried to place in that race yet. And it's got a two million credits purse."
"Flying in a big circle's kind of boring, don't you think?"
"I mean I could always fly tours on Earth? Nothing more challenging than flying on a planet that's got its own mind."
"Nothing more dangerous either."
"The Corona Run."
"That's just suicidal."
"So picky."
"Excuse me for having plans and wanting to live long enough to finish them."
"Must be some plans."
"A few of them. I'd imagine most are pretty generic."
"There's such a thing as a generic dream?"
Finley's lips twitched into a smile. "I suppose that does defeat the purpose of a dream."
Beau shrugged. "To each their own. I grew up in the Hill Country. They started calling it that in the 19th century and they still call it that. There's even a good chunk of families that still ranch, to stubborn to give it up."
"But you wanted to fly?"
He nodded, sipped his own coffee. "Went up in a crop-duster when I was ten and there was no looking back."
"I thought they outlawed those?"
"Oh, sure back in the 31st century. Still the most fun I've ever had flying."
"You seem to enjoy things likely to kill you."
Beau smirked, but wisely kept his mouth shut as Finley realized exactly what he was going to say.
"Why'd you join the military?" Finley was always curious, though the answers were usually relatively simple.
"To fly." Beau's didn't disappoint, it was exactly what she expected and exactly what she heard for almost everyone other pilot she asked. "You?"
"To eat." It was more honest than she usually was, and Beau gave her a contemplative look. "Why the Republic?"
When the government had split, the biggest division had been in the military. They'd been a single force originally, but high-ranking members who were more politician than soldier had quickly chosen sides and over the course of a year the rest of the military followed suit.
When the first shot had been fired it had been at a place on Jupiter called the Red Spot. The largest storm in the universe had seemed to be shrinking in the mid to late 21st and 22nd centuries, but it had come back with a vengeance in the 24th and had become one the biggest tourist locations in the solar system. Adrenaline junkies flocked to the 400 mph winds to windsurf and ride the storm.
It had actually been an accident with a tourist group that had brought two different military ships running and ended with the first shots of the war fired when the first ship that arrived, the Constitution, and told the Terror to leave and claimed the entire planet of Jupiter for the Federation.
The Terror, her captain specifically, hadn't taken that well and the Constitution's captain hadn't taken his refusal well.
They'd turned what should have been a simple rescue into a shit show that had seen the Terror firing what they claimed was a warning shot that had actually hit the Constitution's left engine. Down an engine the Constitution hadn't been able to withstand the winds of the Red Dot and had been sucked into the storm.
Unable to recover, the Constitution had gone down with all seven hundred hands on board and the wreckage was still resting beneath the Red Dot.
The tourists had ended up rescuing themselves while the Terror fled the scene.
Video of the event, captured by the tourists had spread like wildfire with both sides of the government condemning the other and three days later when Federal aligned ships the Israel and Finley's own Firefly had cornered it just off Neptune and blown it to pieces.
The war had officially been on after that. With the Republican's calling for a complete disassembly of the government and a return to free state existence and the destruction of the light wall. The Federals had retaliated with calls for unification and trials for anyone siding with Republicans, as well as maintaining the light wall. Both sides made progressively more ridiculous claims as the war went on, but for most people it came down to staying beyond the light wall or venturing back out. Since most of the population were the children of the generation devastated by the Parasites, what should have been a small issue became a huge one.
Finley had made a calculated choice when she'd picked her side, though she'd always hated the idea of remaining behind the light wall for the rest of her life. It didn't matter how big the solar system was, that a single lifetime wasn't long enough to truly explore it, even in this day and age, but the mere fact that there was a wall, that it was there to keep her in one place…
It drove Finley mad.
No one got to put her in a cage.
~ tbc