First Impressions [2430-1-1-Sun-9pm]

[Grace Forjacks]

Grace's plans to arrive at her ship early had gotten waylayed when she did. But there was very little that got her distracted than a new business opportunity, even if she already had one. The man's name and info ('Richard Rand', Grace was pretty sure it was a fake, but the info was good) were in her eInkr and once she was back on the Queen of Spades, she could start looking him up to find out what sort of fellow he was.

She spotted Castle waiting by the saucer. A few other people were nearby, looking at it. That was the way it always was. The saucer models were old and almost completely out of service. They'd never worked the way anybody wanted them to and they'd fallen to the wayside for more conventional ships. The saucer had been a piece of crap when she'd first gotten it, an engine that limped along and an inside that smelt like burnt wiring. But she'd fixed it up over the past decade, and improved it thanks to Holo. The Queen moved the way her original builders had always dreamed it would, like a shark in the big black ocean above.

"Hey." She greeted Castle, "Sorry about the wait."

[Jared Castle]

Castle turned and returned the greeting with a nod. "That's fine. I just got here myself." He replied. He was observing the old ship that is the Queen of Spades. He wondered how she'd gotten her hands on such an old model. Saucer type ships were hard to find nowadays. The only explanation he could think of was that she has owned it for a while.

"How long have you had her?" Jared asked. He was curious to explore on board.

[Grace Forjacks]

"Just over a decade. I got her when I was twenty." She grinned, thinking about that day. The man had been all too happy to sell it to her. He thought he was getting a bargain just getting it off his hands. Grace had known better. "She's been through a lot of changes and upgrades."

Grace dug out her eInkr and sent her ship the open-sequence. The ramp slowly lowered and settled on the ground between two of the three legs holding it upright. "Come on inside. I'll give you a tour of the place." Grace headed up into the mostly-empty storage bay.

[Jared Castle]

Castle had always thought eInkr's were just a big waste of money. Then he saw Grace use it to lower the boarding ramp of her ship and he began to abandon that opinion. As she walked forward he couldn't help but take a look. She definitely was not ugly and Jared knew that.

He followed Grace into the Queen. He looked around the interior of the storage bay. not a lot of luggage around. He noticed stairs to the upper level through a door off to the left side of the wall parallel to the ramp.

[Grace Forjacks]

"This is the storage bay. We won't be carrying too much cargo this time. Only what we can fit in the refrigeration unit." She nodded to the large silver square taking up most of the left wall. As they headed into the hall, she pointed to the stairs, "That's up to the cockpit and my room."

She went in the other direction, opening the doors as she passed them, "Here are the bunks. There's only you and Klove so far, and maybe another fellow, so it shouldn't be too crowded. Pick any bunk you like. Klove is over on the right wall." She pointed to the bunk beside the dart board. "If you have anything too big to store in your bunk, we can find a place for it elsewhere on the ship."

Grace walked inside, tapping her foot on the chest under the dart board, "There's a couple of decks of cards and some other stuff in here. And a few old Padds if you want to do some private reading"

[Jared Castle]

He followed Grace through the hallway into the crew quarters. He studied the room.

Castle laughed in his head at the thought of reading. He'd always thought of it as a waste of time. As a kid Jared would be the one making fun of the nerds who read books all day instead of having real fun. He looked around at the bunks. "That's fine I've only got a bag that's still outside the ship. That's all."

[Grace Forjacks]

"Travel light? Good man." She gave his shoulder a pat as she passed by him and headed back into the curving hallway, heading to the mess. The door slid open easily enough and she stepped in, "Mess hall is here. It's open all the time, cook yourself whatever you want whenever. I'll try to make sure we've all got one meal together, but it depends on how things are going. I don't like to leave the autopilot on for too long."

She pointed to the key hanging on the wall, "This opens up the padlocks on everything in here. Whenever you're finished, just make sure to lock up. The gravity stabilizer is decent, but it can't fix sharp, sudden stops. Better to have everything locked away than risk getting a steak knife to the throat."

Grace powered on the viewscreen, "The Network should always be accessible from here. The Padds sometimes are hooked up, but if they're on the fritz, you can download whatever you need onto them from here." She pointed to the large chest by the door, "And med supplies are in there in case of emergencies."

[Jared Castle]

Castle paused after Grace patted him on the shoulder. He didn't like people touching him but he thought it's better to let this one pass. They moved into the mess hall. Jared thought about cooking. It wasn't that big of a deal for him to occasionally cook for himself but it had been a while since he had made food himself. Now that he was a well paid merc he always went to restaurants or had other cooks make him food when he was a passenger on ships. He observed the kitchen and then the first aid supplies.

"I'll just go get my bag from outside the ship." He did so. He entered the Queen again and then into the quarters. He plunked his pack down on a bunk and returned to the mess hall.

[Grace Forjacks]

"If you've got any questions, just come ask me." Grace turned the viewscreen off again and leant against the wall, "I'll be doing a full briefing once we get underway so you know what to expect. In theory, it should be easy work, but you never know what's going to happen when vamps are involved. If everything goes well, you'll get a share of the profits on top of your regular wage."

She heard Klove call her name, "There's my first mate. You can settle in or come down and meet him." Grace headed back out and out the storage bay. Klove was standing there. And there was something with him. A faun. She raised an eyebrow.

[Klove Makem]

They'd spent the last half hour looking around for Olive's ship, but she didn't reconize any of them. The docks were all the same, and if you didn't make note of which stall you were in, it was easy to get lost. So, faced with a lost faun, Klove had decided to bring her back to his ship. Grace would know how to track down someone based on only a name.

The ramp was open, which mean Grace was back. He set the cooler down on the ground and then called into the ship, "Grace?"

Grace came out. He saw a look flick over her face. Klove subtly shook his head. There had been times he'd brought marks back to the ship, or mercs, but Olive wasn't either of those. "Grace, this is Olive. I'm trying to get her back to her ship, but we can't find it."

[Olive]

"Hiii!" Olive waved at the lady, not really paying attention to the fact that she was looking at her questioningly. People were always more friendly once they were greeted, anyway. I think...

She glanced around a little. "Um, we came on a little shuttle thingy... but I didn't really pay attention to what it looked like on the outside all that well. I just hopped in and out. So... I don't know if I'm on the right dock or if it was moved or if he left without me cause he was mad and I wasn't supposed to come along anyway. I hope not, that would suck, and he's far too nice for that but still!"

[Jared Castle]

Once Castle returned to the mess hall, he noticed that Grace was walking out of the ship. He decided to go see what was up. He walked into the storage bay and to his surprise he saw a boy standing beside a female faun. She looked very happy. Grace was talking to them.

That must be Klove, her first mate, Castle thought. But who's the faun? Jared had never seen too many fauns because he had never been to Antheia, where they originated. Castle decided to not interfere and just waited inside the storage bay.

[Grace Forjacks]

Grace smiled. The girl's enthusiasm was catching. While she could imagine someone ditching the faun, she doubted they would have made it all the way to Terra with the faun if they didn't like her on some level. Airlocks got very, very tempting when you had to spend days together in a shuttle. She dug out her eInkr and brought up the dock listing for this dock and the surrounding ones, "I doubt you could have gotten that far. What's your fellow's name?"

She glanced at the cooler, "Klove, go put that in storage. The man aboard is Jared Castle, he'll be traveling with us."

[Klove Makem]

Klove did as he was told, picking the cooler back up and headed up the ramp. He glanced again at Olive, and then hurried inside. On some level, he hoped Grace didn't find Sol, or that Sol had left her. It would be nice to have another girl on the ship, espeically one who wasn't his mother. Of couse, the part where she smelled like the best parts of prey and girl all wrapped up into one just made her more appealing.

Klove nodded to the big fellow standing in the storage, heading past him and opening up the fridge. He opened the cooler and quickly began hanging the blood bags up on the hooks, going through it as fast as he could without being sloppy.

[Olive]

"He's a human named Solomon!" Olive replied, really hoping they could help her. "We came on this shuttle thingy from Antheia. I shouldn't have run off but I was so excited to see everything, and then I got lost! I told him I'd meet him back here but I'm not even sure if here is here."

She glanced around a bit. The docks were scattered with shuttles of various kinds and she still couldn't figure out which one was possibly theirs. She cursed herself for not paying better attention earlier.