goddamngrenades | RP Open Post

"There were... incidents," Wash replies. "It leaves a guy a bit paranoid."

The route is circuitous, avoiding the worst rock falls and places where the road has become impassable. Apparently planet-wide civil war doesn't do great things for infrastructure.

"You've always had lousy luck." Says the Freelancer that could, in some light, have the best. Then again living this long- seeing everything that came after? Surviving the mess and dealing with what it made of him? Not all that lucky.

Maybe he should've just been good.

"Hope you got a pitstop or something up here soon, we're runn'n low on fuel." He'd topped off with what he'd had left at the site but someone put a bullet through his other jerrycan.

"Worst luck ever. Of all time," Wash replies, not bothering to hide his amusement. It almost feels like old times. Back when they'd been friends, or at least colleagues. The banter, the jokes. It's nice.

He bites his lip for a moment, thinking. "Sure. Next left. Got a cache set up for emergencies. There's fuel."

"Can't be that bad, you found me." When he wasn't really trying all that hard to be found. Opposite in fact. Why the hell else catch a ride to the rim of the galaxy? Sure he wasn't implicated in any of the legal mess that surrounded the dismantling of PFL but he couldn't exactly go home either.

It's not even the UNSC he was worried about making trouble for him.

There's a moment, like there's always going to be moments, where he starts to ask D what he thinks- it passes. York goes quiet and still as he reminds himself he's alone in his head while he pulls in at the cache Wash mentioned earlier.

"And we're both stuck on this pit of a planet. At least I'm getting paid for this." All the alien tech that he could ever want and that was just the above board stuff. "Maybe the bad luck rubbed off on you."

Ending up here without a clue what was really going on. That really was bad luck.

The cache is set back into the mountainside, a narrow cave that was almost impossible to see until you were right up to it. Wash hops out of the car and goes to disarm the traps that he'd set. There's fuel in there, enough to get them back to the rebel base.

"Yeah, by who exactly? And how. Cuz that seems like something I should know, seeing as I'm signing on to be a dirty rebel." Idle. Offhand. Completely and totally nonchalant because getting a straight answer from anyone, ever? Not exactly something that happens all that often in these situations.

Wash glances back at him. "I told you. The rebels hired me. They pay me in alien tech we recover. There's a fair amount of it around. God knows why this place was so popular but it works out for me." He pauses, grabs the jerrycan. "Why, you want to cut a deal with them too?"

"Alien tech. Not a ride out of here? Seriously, Wash, none of this shit lying around is good news. Didn't we get enough of playing with this back during the Project?" Some kind of alien is how the fragments happened. How they got half of their untested tech in the first place.

Utah's desperate, frantic gurgling never really goes away when it's too quiet.

"I'll get out of here when the job's done. And the tech sells for a fortune if you have the right buyer." And he knows exactly who to sell to.

He heads back over, closes the traps after him, reactivates them and holds out the jerrycan. "Different priorities these days. I'm getting paid to do what I'm good at. Not a lot of work like that around anymore." He inclines his head. "And I'm not good at a whole lot else."

"And those tend to always have the right kinda priorities, don't they? Just wanna slap it on a shelf and call it good." He's done things he's not all that proud of in the interest of staying off the radar and alive. But there are some things he never touched, never would touch, and would rather just pass right on by.

He takes the can and fills up the tank, keeping Wash on his good side. Habit.

"I'm not the guy to bang on the legitimate employment drum, but of all of us you had the cleanest record. Just say'n. You got options."

"We worked for a black ops program involved in illegal experimentation. I had a fragment of that tear my brain apart twice. What makes you think I care about whether someone has the right priorities. It doesn't matter. Even the good guys are awful."

He leans back against the car, watching York carefully.

"I don't know how to do anything else. Tried when they finally let me go. Didn't work."

"Back then it was fucked up but necessary. There was a war against alien race going on and we were facing down the very real barrel of extinction. Different time for different sins, but now? We're not exactly at war anymore." They shouldn't be. The fight's over, they should get to just- go home.

All he wants is to get enough time underground to go home. That's it.

"See- I'll buy that it didn't work. I don't buy that they let you go."

"It never ends. Not really. We just find someone else to fight against." That was the way it seemed. If that wasn't true, they wouldn't need mercenaries like him around. They'd all be out of business. "And you know as well as I do, winning the war was just an excuse for the Director. It was never the real reason."

He doesn't reply for a moment when York says that, and he can feel the words that remain unsaid beneath it.

"It took a while. But I wasn't as useful as they'd hoped. Why keep around someone who's half crazy and refuses to try another AI?"

"People are always gonna fight. But we don't need to be giving dynamite out to toddlers throwing a fit." There are lines you cross when you're protecting your planet. Red that drenches a ledger. But against your fellow man? Just use a damn bullet. Anything more is just- worse.

"Never gave a damn for his reasons. It was mine for signing on, and why I bailed." Part of it, even. But there's the rest, there. Investments that don't just walk off.

"...This before or after Maine went crazy and killed North?"

"It doesn't matter. I just do the job, and then go my own way. I don't care. I stopped caring a long time ago York."

He couldn't afford it anymore. It caused too much damage. Made him ache and lie awake at night, too fucked up even for nightmares.

The question about Maine and North hurts like that. He's tried forgetting them. Failed. Like he's failed with forgetting everything else where it's all burned into his brain.

"Does it matter? They're both gone."

"When you might be on the line for people that I've faked my death twice to avoid- yeah, kid, it kinda matters." Wash doesn't do intuitive- he's a number two. Well. The kid he knew was a number two, a type B in a group of type As. Yessir, no sir, three bags full sir and a lot of shit can change a guy. That empty space is one he's trying to be aware of.

But.

Most of them did better with direction. And someone is holding the chain here, Wash mentioned calling in. Aside from safety and paranoia, there's reporting in.

"Project Freelancer is gone. Only reason I had to go after you was personal. And here we are." Carolina might have words to say to him too. They'll see when it comes down to it he supposes. "I've got nothing on the Meta either. Seems I missed a whole load of crap there."

He's not sure how he would have taken seeing Maine like that, more than the glimpses he'd had. Those had been enough.

"Unless you've somehow managed to piss off the rebels in the time you've been here, which I would have heard about, then we're clear."

"All I've done is crash." not like that stopped anyone from shooting at him anyway- and the fact that Wash took a potshot at him over something 'personal'? This was probably not his best idea. Not his worst just yet, but not a good one. Whoever he's reporting back to better have a good line on hand or he's just gonna take the first rocket off this damn place, old friend or no.

Car full and ready to go he sets the jerry can in the back with the rest of the crates and swings back into the driver's seat. "Waiting on you."

"Then there shouldn't be a problem," Wash replies, and he's pretty proud that he manages to sound like it really is that simple, when it isn't simple at all.They are so far past simple right now that simple might as well be on the dark side of the moon. The moon back on Earth, not on Chorus.

"I"m coming." He double checks the security, just in case, and then climbs back up into the car. "Shouldn't be too long before we get to base."

"Gimme a navpoint and an ETA. I'd rather not surprise someone." Surprises meant getting shot and he really, really doesn't like getting shot. he's had his fill, please and thank you.

Really, York was giving the rebels too much credit. Probably giving most of the Feds too much credit honestly by what he'd seen of them. Backwater planet, most of the people just weren't ready for the kind of life they were living now.

He gives York the navpoint. "And it should be... twelve minutes. There's an entrance to a cavern we're using as a base. Pretty extensive tunnel system around here. It's useful."

"Convenient." He follows the directions as offered, frowning a little at their surroundings. For a planet in the middle of a civil war it's- quiet.

disturbingly so.

"It makes our lives easier. Don't look a gift horse in the mouth and all that crap."

As they get nearer, the spot signs of life. Buildings cobbled together, bunkers built into the rock. People. With weapons.

"Hey, pull over."

"We don't get gift horses, Wash. We get Trojans." But sure, driving to the cave system. till he hears people.

"...they yours?"

"And here I thought I was the pessimistic one."

It's the rebels. It wouldn't be anyone else, not down here. They've not arranged for any combat to happen until this is sorted out so... "Yeah, they're mine."

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