New Mexico / June, 1958 / 02:24

[bingo_faced]

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

Comments

[anekanta]

Kara felt almost unbearably light, joyous even. She'd just given over at last, putting a sudden end to all of her struggles. She closed her eyes, told Lee not to follow, and let go just like that

[bingo_faced]

"Like to win," he replied, only just popping back out the other side of his reply of some lustful night. "Like to waste my money 'cause I sure as hell ain't spending it on anything else. She's paid off, I haven't kept a place of my own in years." It was a decent use of cold, hard cash, wasn't it? No? No, probably not. Calavicci smirked and tilted his head to look at her. "Can always make more."

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.

[anekanta]

Kara leaned back, enjoying the open-air and the view. She felt a little more at ease instantly, and she couldn't help a small, weary smile as she watched smoke curl up into the night sky. "Yes, I play," she responded to his non-question. There were plenty of peculiar things about her day thus-far, but the easiest one to field was not being known by reputation from the first moment.

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.

[bingo_faced]

It was interesting to have someone in the passenger's seat again. Even without the Corvette ripping across the desert, the car felt more balanced with a second person there. And as he sat and smoked and listened, Al found himself wanting to ask more and more questions. However, she effectively stemmed the questions with some brilliant moves around the beginning of this whole ordeal.

"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

[anekanta]

She didn't really want him backtracking to a town he'd already blown through, this time with some injured woman in tow. The situation would raise a few too many questions for her sake, and Kara thoroughly doubted Calavicci wanted to answer any either.

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-

[bingo_faced]

At first, Al had to really think about why Kara was saying. He immediately assumed her to mean he wasn't good with protocol, but realized after a thoughtful sip of the fermented hops and barley that she had just been seeing him for who he was. Nodding, he alternated between the beer and the cigarette. "'Spose you're right, sure. I mean, there isn't exactly protocol for these sorts of situations, are there? I can't just pull out the pilot's handbook and pop into the section talking about downed UFOs." Or, well, he didn't think he could. He'd never really read into the manuals to know for sure

[anekanta]

Kara smiled easily, trying to look unconcerned by the approaching headlights. It was wholly true she didn't put much faith in protocol, and it only worked in her favor that it showed. It had certainly earned her enough of Calavicci's trust for him to let her into his car, and for the moment, she was glad to appreciate the small victory

[bingo_faced]

"No, I'm not expecting anyone. I especially didn't expect you," he said. Calavicci was impressed by the transition Thrace made, marveling at the wonder of womankind. He'd never met one he didn't like. Her expression changed. His demeanor changed. Feeling a bit like a teenager about to be caught with his pants down (not for the first time,) the young pilot sat up and adjusted his posture in the seat. "I doubt it's anyone worth troubling ourselves with." Al may have missed her point

[anekanta]

Kara sat up and peered out through the windshield, only just able to make out the gleam of a fender in the distance. It was no longer approaching, that was certain, and as she listened intently, she heard the creak of a door opening followed by the report of one being slammed. The driver, presumably, had gotten out.

"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

[bingo_faced]

"You folks need any help?" The voice traveled. It was a man's voice, quiet but commanding like a seasoned father

[anekanta]

Kara was still teetering on the edge of that whole 'miss' thing - she certainly didn't feel like a miss. Of course, that was just the last vestiges of complacency and the desire to learn more about her surroundings clinging to her brain, and as she looked round to see Calavicci stunned, the mental fog lifted.

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.

[bingo_faced]

The desert didn't rematerialize in front of the Lieutenant after the bright flashes. The darkness did come back, but in a different manner than Calavicci would have expected. He felt his knees buckling and everything slowed. On his way down, he counted the feet but checked out somewhere around five.

\\\

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

[anekanta]

Kara roused on the tail end of the last. Instantly, she was stricken with the screaming pain in her knee followed immediately by a dull throb at her temples. She felt like the worst possible combination of hung over and worn out after eighteen hours on CAP rotation. Of course, the view from the narrow cot was far more cheerless than the one she was greeted with upon awakening in her 'rack, and the vertical stripes impeding her vision meant one thing - prison. The absence of the mutterings and rantings of other prisoners made her take another mental leap, and Kara assumed she was in a military brig

[bingo_faced]

He turned back to look over his shoulder at her, glad to see she wasn't seriously injured or lacking in her faculties. "Naw, not long, but if you give me a couple, I'll start the coffee." He didn't think it was the appropriate time for joking, but chuckled anyway. "You all right?" She didn't seem hurt, and he knew it wasn't really his place to ask, but he was feeling a bit like he needed an ally and hadn't discounted her yet.

Instead of trying to take a seat on the floor, he opted to take the other other place: the head. Sitting on the exposed fixture (lid down,) Calavicci ran a hand through his hair and hoped this would be something that might clear up quickly.

[anekanta]

As Al sat, Kara sprang to her feet. Well, perhaps she didn't spring so much as stand, ginger and hyper-aware of her torn knee. Hopefully, that'd get sorted before she had to do much actual running. She'd never wanted to wind up hospitalized and accountable, but as she'd landed herself in a military facility, she was hardly going to turn aid away. Kara limped to the cell door, looking left and right.

Of course nothing visible to her did any help. There was an insignia of some sort - bright white stripes on navy and red caught her eye - that told her nothing she didn't already know. She was on a settled, civilized planet that was not affiliated with the Colonies, but what did that mean? More importantly, what did it mean for her - if she'd landed someplace where her body chemistry was just one or two molecules shy of something they recognized as human, she was frakked - and hardTurning back to Calavicci, she frowned a bit. By the new light of morning pouring through the high window and supplemented by a flickering fluorescent overhead

[bingo_faced]

The way she was favoring the one leg make Al wince. Whatever pain was there had been held over from the crash. Shaking his head, the young man leaned toward the door to see what he could see. "Dunno how long we've been here, but I don't think it's long. I imagine they'll be sending someone along for debriefing, though I can't quite figure for the life of me what you're doing in here."

From the john, he rubbed his hands at his head. He had a lot of theories as to why Thrace would end up with him, most of which were wild enough to not make it to his mouth. Whatever the reasoning was, he would find out soon enough. "I think they'll bring us a drink, at least. We're not dangerous criminals looking to make trouble, right?" He paused, head leaning in her direction. "Then again, that look you've got might be sayin' something different." If he didn't know better, he'd guess she was giving him a once-over. Did he change his posture and sit a little straighter? You betcha.