New Mexico / June, 1958 / 02:24
Nighttime.
The desert cooled greatly at night, especially nights as clear as this one. Lieutenant (J.G.) Al "Bingo" Calavicci wouldn't know the difference. Half the bottles lay strewn in the dirt while the other half were placed precisely, a practical lineup on the white edge line of the road. Off the road, in the dirt, Al's candy apple red ( Read more... )
The desert cooled greatly at night, especially nights as clear as this one. Lieutenant (J.G.) Al "Bingo" Calavicci wouldn't know the difference. Half the bottles lay strewn in the dirt while the other half were placed precisely, a practical lineup on the white edge line of the road. Off the road, in the dirt, Al's candy apple red ( Read more... )
Surveying the unfamiliar stars through the windscreen leant her some perspective - she was really, really lost. She had no idea if there was even a morning forthcoming; for all she knew, it'd be nighttime in the desert for another six hours or another six months.
Heaving a sigh, she took another drink before going to work on her knee. She could feel that it was tender, but it was't swollen - a good sign that it at least wasn't torn. Still it ached and probing it with her fingers revealed more and more pain. She'd need another dozen bottles just to dull it, she thought (though Kara was known for her ability to overestimate, especially when it came to liquor).
Leaning up, she sought to distract herself from the pain. She studied the steering column, the familiat gear shift, the dangling key ring. Compulsion made her reach for it as she might a familiar's dogtags; soldiers were often known for wearing the tags bearing names of friends and lovers in the service. She guessed it meant nothing it at all the man only had a pair of bottle openers depending from a handfull of keys, but it somehow made her feel a little sorry for him.
She glanced up and caught his eye. "Where's home?" she asked, hoping to do a bit more information-gathering disguised as friendly interest.
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"Anyway, if I were the type to choose a place -- and trust me, ma'am, I am not -- I would get myself a little plot of land around here. Somewhere quiet but not too far from the casinos." The young pilot shook his head and fiddled at his keys as they hung from the ignition.
He was curious. Bingo wanted to ask back, but their arrangement didn't much allow for that. Besides, he thought it was at least a little sportsman like to give it a try. Learning without questioning took more than a little thought and concentration. Instead of asking, he guessed, "If I had to guess, I'd say you were from the West Coast." She looked a bit like the blondes he'd seen on the boardwalk in Santa Barbara.
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Unsure of how to negotiate Calavicci's 'guess,' she simply nodded. "Yes - the west coast." She was frakked if he wanted any more details, so she hoped he could just keep agreeing with him. At least that denoted some sort of body of water - Kara liked the water well enough, so she supposed that was fine.
She leaned back into the seat and slumped against the door, studying him in profile. Kara knew squirelly when she saw it. He was almost as evasive as she was, and that was fine by her - the more he didn't want to give up about himself, the less he'd wonder about her.
Still, the silent desert night was oppressive and the need to know more about the place, be it fantasy or not, was overwhelming. "You'd live here, though? Other than a casino, what else is there?"
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He didn't bother asking, just handed her a cigarette and his lighter coupled in one hand. "Oh, well, I suppose I should mention there are probably some cowboys and Indians. And some rattlesnakes. But, other than that, not much else." Suited him just fine. Retrieving a pack of matched from the console, Calavicci lit his cigarette and gestures with it, waving his smoke at the windscreen. "But not everywhere in New Mexico is like this."
And here he was, jawing away like they'd known each other for ages. "Though, if you're looking for more than just casinos, Vegas is the place to be." He whistled, apparently agreeing with himself. "Reno's not bad either, but you can't beat a handful of singles in a place like Vegas." Pardon him, he's thinking back to the last time he'd gone about shoving money at scantily clad women. Maybe he had time for a detour...
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"You like to gamble?" she asked, willfully ignorant of the bent of his thoughts. She lit the cigarette and looked at him with the benefit of the light with genuine interest. So long as she could figure out the rules to some basic card game, perhaps she could also win a little scratch; cash would be a necessity soon enough as it was.
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This was where he decided he could finally relax a little. Taking up his keys and a bottle of beer, the pilot was forced to work the top off without burning himself or the car with the lit cigarette. Top popped, he took two quick sips of beer and then placed the bottle down on the pavement next to the car. "You play." It was hard to keep his statement from sounding like a question.
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She took a pull from her bottle and settled it against her sore knee. Kara was without a plan as to how she was going to take care of herself here, and she doubted hustling triad would get her very far, and she could hardly just wander onto an air force base and pretend she belonged there.
She turned and looked at him once more. "The next town - is there somewhere I can make a call? I'll need to make a report as to my whereabouts." That sounded plausible enough, and though any air force worth a damn would be able to track a major investment like a secret plane, Kara knew all about blinking off radar. She was pretty much GalacticaGalactica.
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"Yeah, oh yeah." Calavicci nodded. "There's a place about twenty, twenty-five miles back. That's where I got the beer," he revealed, his voice full of some strange brand of mystery. "Probably a place you can go for the night-- day-- ni--whatever." Semantics. "If you just give me an hour or two, I can sober up a bit and drive you in." Or, they could drink what was left, sleep like fool until afternoon, and stumble into whatever looks the friendliest from the other side of the shades. But, really, he thought she could do with a doctor and didn't think it would take much convincing on her part, especially the way she was nursing that knee.
[OOC:ILU! And by the time you read this, there'll be ONE DAY LEFT!]
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Giving voice to such concerns would start another conversation she didn't want to have, so she just took another drink and settled in, expecting him to follow suit. In two hours, Kara fully expected him to have passed out, and perhaps by then, she could make some decisions. If the sun was coming up, she could swipe the water and slip away before he woke - that was the best course of action for both of them, she thought. If it looked like night would stretch on, though... well, she'd make that call when the time came.
Silently contemplating the stars, she tried to process what it could mean she'd turned up on Earth (if this truly was Earth). Could this be the destiny Leoben was so keen on? Some lonely, shiftless man in the middle of a bleak desert? Gods, she hoped not - he wasn't bad-looking, but she really didn't need anyone else's problems on top of her own, nor did she want to hitch her own problems to another.
Kara exhaled a perfect ring of cigarette smoke and attempted to look untroubled. "It's fine - they can wait a few hours." She even managed some kind of a grin and turned to survey him in the light cast by the moon. "I hate to be presumptuous - " (and that was a lie) "-but you don't seem like someone who cares too much about protocol, Lieutenant."
((ooc: And ILU! <3 <3 <3 We're down to hours!))
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Off in the distance -- perhaps on another road, perhaps on bare desert -- a car lights broke through the darkness. They were barely pins of light moving in tandem across the horizon, but it got Calavicci's attention and he noted them with a flick of his wrist in case Thrace hasn't seen. "Not as big a place as we're led to believe," he commented idly. It had been some time since he'd seen another car, so he wasn't so surprised to find more civilization now.
And, really, wasn't this just the way of things? Al had come out to the desert to be alone, and here he almost instantly found himself a companion -- a just-as-elusive companion, at that. If he didn't already know better, he'd've guessed she was there to check up on him. However, the sheer fact that she came out of the sky was enough that he could call himself silly. No one crashes a plane to keep an eye on a lowly Lieutenant, Junior Grade (even one with a high security clearance level.) As an afterthought, he said matter-of-factly, "Besides, whatever protocol I'm lacking is lacking on your end, too. I'll willing to forgive and forget, though, if you're willing to do the same." He chuckled, took one last hit, and tossed down what was left of the smoke.
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She gestured to the approaching lights with the end of her cigarette. "Not expecting anyone, were you?" Doubtful, but it never hurt to ask - and if he had any guesses as to who might be bearing down upon them, she hoped he'd be bright enough to offer them up.
As she tossed the cigarette into the gravel, her gaze went to her reflection in the side mirror - she was smudged in all the wrong ways, and Kara realized she looked like the pot of gold at the end of the Viper-colored rainbow she'd left streaked all over the scrub brush. Hastily swiping errant soot marks and rubbing her cheeks rosy, she tried to make herself look... well, 'presentable' wasn't exactly her aim, was it? Running her fingers through her damp hair completed her not completely unappealing transition from dirty downed ace to desert-warm superior officer taking in the sights.
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Feeling the need, Al grabbed up the stray empties at his feet and placed them neatly back in their cardboard dividers. Ahead, the lights to the car disappeared. When he noticed, Calavicci did a double-take. Was a little strange, wasn't it? "Where d'you think they went?" He didn't see any tail lights, so either they parked, or they were driving in utter and complete darkness. In any case, it was suspicious enough considering how close the vehicle had been to them.
He had the urge to investigate, but he wasn't going to tell her that, especially since he had the feeling that she might not be able to resist knowing either.
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"Frak," Kara growled, opening her own door. She slid out of the car and immediately started in the direction of their company, cursing herself all the way for thinking no one else could have seen her entry into the atmosphere and subsequent descent. For all she knew, the person up ahead was only the first emissary of waves of onlookers yet to come, and Kara had to intercept before anyone got an actual look at the Viper.
She hastily reviewed the history of her bird (at least as she remembered it) in her mind as she walked, trying to come up with some reasonable cover if anyone had tougher questions than Calavicci had. The Viper, in its original form, had been used for high-altitude flight before it had been modified for space flight, so she'd just go from there, she guessed. She held the hope tightly she'd be able to get away with the 'top secret' line for awhile, but she knew it couldn't last forever before she'd have to come up with some really clever lies.
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The moment the sound hit Al, the relief was apparent. His shoulders dropped and he picked a hand up, pushing it deftly through his already misbehaved hair. "Naw, we're just out here blowin' off a little steam," he revealed, hoping his uniform would speak over their disheveled appearances.
As the man lessened the distance between them, his darkened expression became suspicious. The spots of light in his eyes shifted awkwardly between the two figures. He was holding something at his chest, but it was dark and oddly shaped -- practically unidentifiable in the low light. He addressed Kara: "You okay, miss?"
Calavicci had a hard time not rolling his eyes. He turned on his heel and moved back toward his seat in the car. There was no use in doing it, but he still muttered unkind words to himself about getting into situations where his actions could be questioned. He re-heard the lectures in the back of his mind, but knew it didn't pay to listen to those sorts of people, those preaching types. "Yeah, she's all right," he called back over his shoulder with a dismissive wave. "Don't you think she'd be screamin' if she wasn't?" At the door, he turned and smiled: Cheese!
If his eyes hadn't been closed, the flash would have probably blinded him for a ridiculously frustrating amount of time. Thankfully, his rather mocking expression came with closed eyes. He wasn't completely blind, but the dark had encroached in a manner that was unexpected. "What the hell did you do that--"
And another flash. This time he was blind. Plunged into darkness, the void was epic. Calavicci thought it almost was enough to eat the sound around them. He wondered, oddly enough, what Thrace was doing about all of this unsolicited attention.
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Her hand went immediately to her hip, sliding sure fingers along the butt of the pistol. "Hold it," she spat. Straightening up and squaring her shoulders, she withdrew the gun from the holster and aimed it just south of the man's left hip.
"Step back," she urged, eyes glinting like steel. Even as completely shaken and maligned as she was, she was comfortable where she was. Of course, she was also tired and her edges were entirely frayed, so she didn't realize until too late she'd made herself too vulnerable. She felt insistent fingers against her neck, and even as she started to put up a fight, she felt the blackness descend.
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\\\
Bingo awoke in the light, head throbbing in a way that told him it hadn't been another fun night. Lifting onto an elbow, he forced himself to focus in on his surroundings. Almost immediately: "Wonderful."
Jail. At least it looked military. He pivoted on the cot and rubbed the sleep from his face. It was daytime, but he couldn't tell the hour. The fact that he was alone stuck a note in Calavicci. He felt disheveled and in need of a shower and a change of clothes, but didn't see that happening.
He wondered what happened to Thrace just in time to see her carried in. The men were uniformed as well. Air Force. Al stood close to the bars as a third airman unlocked the doors. "Hey, I need to call in," he lied, hoping to get himself a phone call.
"Not a chance,pal," one of the transporters replied.
Bingo muttered obscenities. "Well, can you at least tell me where the hell we are?"
"No, sir."
They set Thrace on the solitary now unoccupied bunk and turned back toward the door. The pilot had questions, but he decided to hold his tongue at least until he had the attention of someone higher on the food chain. "Can I at least get a couple of glasses of water and a smoke or two?" He stood entreating, hands clasping the bars as the two were locked in together.
As they left, the third replied as he left through the door, "We'll see what we can do, Lieutenant."
At least it was something.
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