Coffee

<snip>
It wasn’t going to be his ‘last drunken night’ though - however clever Cass might be, however protective he felt of her when she was upset, it was no business of a little girl’s whether he drank or not.
Maybe he wouldn’t drink alcohol when he went to meet Jade, anyway. It might be sensible to make sure he was fully aware of his actions.
<end snip>
Later that day, Alex sat, hunched over a coffee at “Starbugs” on the promenade. He took a sip, and lowering his cup again his eyes caught sight of a dark haired woman, and a young child taking a seat next to him.
“’Sup Slugger” Katrina said chirpily.
“I’m…”
“Waiting for Jade, I know, she said…don’t worry, I’m not stopping, just passing through, promised Max here I’d treat him to an ice cream….though smeg only knows where the Vermin get the milk from…”
“Waddya want?”
“Nothing…just a latte…thought you might like some company while you wait for Jade..nice to see you on something other than whiskey for a change…”
“Don’t start…”
“I wasn’t. We all like a drink sometimes. Jay and Phil once got so wasted, that they woke up three days before they started drinking, to this day they don’t know what happened.”
“Hrm…”
“It wasn’t your fault y’know. You taking a swing at Jade. You weren’t yourself, she knows that. She was the doctor treating you…”
“Phi…”
“Phi’s nuts. You know that. She knows you weren’t yourself too, but….well, this is a doctor who’s germphobic…”
“But Cass…”
“Cass is…under a lot of stress now, she’ll come round, and I’ll talk to her….theres not enough of us around to go locking out personnel from parts of the ship, and we need all the help we can get if we’re gonna save Jay…you’re a good guy Solvay. You might not realise it, but you’ve got a conscience. You just have to listen to it BEFORE you do dumb shit...”
Katrina’s palm-puter bleeped, an incoming call from Cass.
“Kat, you might wanna come to the drive room.”
“On my way..”
She glanced around at Max.
“Alex…I don’t suppose you could…watch him for me for a while could you?”
“Me?” Alex said, surprised.
“You’ll be fine…and Jade will be here soon….”
“But…”
“THANKS!”
And she was gone…

Drive room.
<snip>
“Well, that’s bloody stupid, isn’t it?” Cass sneered “Why the smeg would the Roo, go to all the trouble of hiding this outpost, only to go and announce its presence with a bloody planetary defence system? How are we going to get down there?”
“Well, there might be a back door somewhere...” White Wolf began
<end snip>
“Theres bound to be a blind spot” Katrina said. “Look..theres a network of satellites surrounding the planet. My guess is that they’re what are running the security field. After 3 million years, some of their orbits are bound to have deteriorated, some have probably even crashed and opened a hole in the net…”
“Not likely.” White Wolf said “Roo technology…it’s superior to anything else”
“But it can’t be infallible.”
“No, but how do we find a gap in the network…”
“We keep chucking probes at it til one finds it way through”
“We don’t have that many probes to spare” Cass said.
“Then, we remote pilot some of the old bugs and midgets in too…theres a ton on the landing bay that will fly once me, Jamie, Pancake and Solvay patch ‘em up a bit…., maybe throw in a few escape pods too…it’s not like we have a full crew, we can spare them…”
“I dunno Kat…” Cass said “We could use the shuttles…”
“Come on, we have scores of the things, for a handful of us. Most, will never be able to take people again anyway…why not put ‘em to good use huh?...And what use could be better than saving Jay?”
<tag…whaddya think guys, will it work?...>