Welcome to Gaia! ::

Captain Jas Sturm

Jas' glower deepened at the looks that the men were giving Aria and continued until they were off of her ship with the door closing behind them. The tall blonde contemplated the shrinking sliver of the planet showing through the space between the inner cargo bay doors for a moment before nodding.

"We probably should. But that sort of depends on whether or not Jin-Li has the engines back online. Do you want to find her or get us in the queue?"

Captain Jas Sturm

Jas watched Aria leave as the doors thudded closed and the outer door started closing. Once the Companion was gone, she sighed and passed a hand over her face before heading up to the bridge. There were times when life seemed unnecessarily complicated. And then when she thought about it, things were just as complicated as they had to be to work.

Up in the bridge, the tall blonde settled into her worn and comfortable chair and contemplated the list of things to do. First was putting them in the queue to get out of the port since those requests often took a while in a place as busy and popular as Sihnon. Then, once she had a general idea of when they were leaving to start running the numbers on their course. Their next stop was a general location in the Black. After arriving they'd have to find the salvage itself and pull the items they were being paid to retrieve off of the dead ship before cutting across to Hera. The path was slightly complicated, but Jas opted to simply work out the path to salvage and do the rest later.

Just before she was done with the math, their number popped up in the queue with a ten minute warning. Jas shuffled the equations she had been working on aside and picked up the comm.

"We have a ten minute warning, folks. Mei-mei, are my engines online yet?" she said into the handset.








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By the time Aria came looking for Jin-Li, she had moved again and had left the blanket that had been draped over her on the table. The little mechanic had apparently figured out on her own that it was time to go because she was in the engine room finishing what she had started with the wires. She had just started on putting the pieces of the engine back together at about the time that Jas had walked up into the bridge.

Jaden, on the other hand was still crashed out on the couch, but had at least started some signs of stirring.

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≎ ≎ ≎ ≎ ≎ ≎ ≎ ≎ ≎ ≎ Jin-Li Wu ≎ ≎ ≎ ≎ ≎ ≎ ≎ ≎ ≎ ≎

The mechanic's head popped out from the narrow space under the engine followed by her shoulders and a hand clutching a wrench. She grinned and dropped the wrench in favor of wrapping her arms around Aria's leg as a greeting hug.

"Aria-jei-jei! Nihao!" Jin-Li blurted before letting go and scrambling out from under the engine, which quickly turned to scrambling onto the engine so she could sit on one of the end-braces. "Thank you for putting a blanket on me. Is it time to go? Who is the new person? Did something happen to Jaden-guh-guh? I heard Jaden-guh-guh and the doctor-lady arguing, and then I found Jaden-guh-guh napping on the couch."

As she spoke rapidly, her words practically tripping over eachother, Jin-Li's foot bounced up and down and she fiddled with the hem of her pant leg.

≎ ≎ ≎ ≎ ≎ ≎ ≎ ≎ ≎ ≎ Jin-Li Wu ≎ ≎ ≎ ≎ ≎ ≎ ≎ ≎ ≎ ≎

"Mnhmn. Almost done!" she nodded in a sing-song. "See? Just hafta put those back in."

Jin-Li gestured at a small pile of scattered parts that had clearly been painstakingly cleaned from the way they gleamed. They almost could have been new parts or even slightly used ones, but Jin-Li hated replacing parts unless it was absolutely necessary. She preferred making things work with what was already there. The mechanic hopped down from her perch, skittered over to her toolbox and pulled out a screwdriver before grabbing a part from the pile and disappearing back under the engine with a rattle and a wiggle.

"Be done soon!" she called from under it.

Captain Jas Sturm

Jas turned her chair to face Aria at the sound of her approaching footsteps. The tall blonde nodded slightly at Aria's announcement, having already anticipated Jin-Li's answer. It was always that the mechanic's little projects would be done soon. The question was whose definition of soon it was.

"Hopefully sooner rather than--" She said before being cut off by the ship's internal communications system.

"Jas-jei-jei! Don~e!" Jin-Li chimed in a sing-song. "Go go go!"

"Well, I guess that answers the question." Jas chuckled and turned back to face the controls.

The tall blonde went through the sequences to start and warm up the engines before reaching for the comm handset. "Alright, folks. Time to strap in."

Captain Jas Sturm

With one hand carefully guiding the ship up into the air, Jas reached out and sent Aria the numbers before putting both hands on the control stick. Most of the blonde's attention was getting the ship up into the air then out of atmo without any problems and so her response to Aria's question came almost a full minute after it was asked.

"Salvage." Jas said slowly. "Then Hera. Coordinates for the salvage site should be in the numbers. From Hera we go to Jiangyin. It's a good thing we didn't pick up passengers, I think. Salvage is a bit of a dark grey matter."

Captain Jas Sturm

"Thanks." The captain said dryly as she leveled off and put the ship into orbit.

Once the ship was settling into orbit so they could take advantage of Sihnon's gravity and slingshot themselves toward their next destination, Jas let go of the control stick and turned to face Aria with a faint smile.

"The doctor should appreciate this next trip. No one to fight with on our next stop and we're just overnighting on Hera. Jaden shouldn't be able to get into trouble there." she noted. "Although, if the doctor wants to go visit the memorial there could be trouble."