Sector 6 - Geid
Argus Wade
Wade stood outside the little gray house belonging to Traq and his mother, letting his friend think in silence. It was painful for him. He was talkative by nature, willing to ramble on and on about anything and everything. Vivian, on the other hand, preferred lapses of solitude, and he did his best not to interrupt her thought process.
Wade wanted to get away from here, to leave Geid and return home to Axis. As much as he hated the Ministry, he loved the amenities afforded to him. He’d sold the last bits of his cargo, but not nearly at the profit margin he had hoped to achieve. The people on Geid were poor. They couldn’t afford to pay extravagant prices for commodities, let alone frivolities.
An eagle flashed by overhead, its enormous shadow trailing along the ground. Wade watched it disappear into the sky. It was quite a beautiful day, though a little warm and humid for his taste. It would be strange, he knew, to live somewhere like this. Somewhere so…quiet. None of the ambient city noises he’d grown up with to occupy him. Just the wind and the trees.
He would get bored with it, he knew. The thing about the fast-paced lifestyle was that once you had a taste of it, there was no going back.
A naked child suddenly came sprinting out of the communal bathhouse, laughing and wet and chased by his angry mother. He was maybe three years old. Vivian jumped from the excitement, caught off guard and lost in her thoughts.
“Wade,” she said, rubbing her temples. “I can’t do this.”
“You have to,” Wade said. “There is no alternative.”
“I don’t know anything about children.”
“I had some self-help books sent to the Cudgel. They are waiting in your cockpit. Motherhood and You seems pretty simple.”
She gave him a cross look.
“I’m only trying to help.”
She sighed. “I know.”
“Keep him busy. See what he likes. I sent a full curriculum for him from the Ministry archives.”
“For schooling?”
Wade nodded. “You won’t have to worry about his education.”
“It won’t be enough,” she said.
“It’s the best the Ministry has to offer. A better education couldn’t—”
“I’m going to teach him how to survive,” she interrupted.
Wade hesitated. “How to fight, you mean.”
“They are often the same thing,” she said. “His life won’t be easy.”
“No,” Wade said. “It won’t. But he has the best person in the world watching over him.”
“Flattery, Wade? Really?”
“I meant myself,” he said. “But I guess having you around isn’t bad either.”
She smiled the tiniest bit.
“Just keep yourself busy, and I’ll be in touch as often as I can. If you need anything, money, supplies, you let me know.”
“We’ll be fine,” she said. “I think I found a good cover, as well.”
“Oh?”
“Warships. They talk about enormous vessels twice the size of Capital Ships. At least.”
“I heard mention of that on Terminus, many years ago,” Wade said. “You don’t think they are truthful, do you?”
She shrugged. “They might have some technologies we don’t know about on them. From what I heard, they were lost centuries ago.”
“If they exist, I’m sure we would have heard about them.”
Vivian thought about that for a moment. “You might be right.”
“I always am.”
She ignored him. “Nevertheless, it still gives me something to do. An excuse for why I’m not returning alongside you.”
“Thank you, Vivian,” he said. “I mean it, from the bottom of my heart.”
She glanced at him and nodded. “Take care of yourself, Wade.”
Then she turned and headed into the small house.
