Chapter Three (C): Jake & Thorchan

[Akirapryde]

Kimiko held up a finger before her lips and motioned him to follow her away from the lounge. She made a point to keep her hood up in such a way to conceal the details of her face. It was strange behavior, but her inviting hand motioned Jake to follow.

She walked up to a maintenance hatch and unlocked with a card. "I took this from one of the crew quarters down the corridor" she said opening the door. "You are a pilot, right?" she added as they walked through. "I want to hire your services" she added. There was a sense of desperation in her voice as she spoke. Her face bore the mark of a bruise that was not there a few hours ago.

[CarcerKango]

"Holy..." breathed Jake when he saw the bruise. "What happened--" He cut himself off, realizing that if she wanted him to know, she'd've told him.
"Yeah, I'm a pilot. Graduated top marks, thrashed a Mk. VII around for a while. You want to hire me? Like, right now? Do you need to go somewhere?" he asked rapid-fire. I can't leave my friends, he thought to himself. But she clearly needed him, he argued mentally. He settled on waiting to see how the situation played out.

[Akirapryde]

She touched the side of her face, "my aunt has her ways of getting a point across. She doesn't trust you and your friends. She feels that I should feel the same way."

Kimiko nodded, "yes right now!" she pulled the maintenance hatch closed and Jake saw the lights indicating that it was sealed and locked. "I want to go anywhere but here. This is a prison ship taking me back to my mother and a life I don't want."

"I have a craft ready" she said picking up a shoulder bag and started to lead the way through the shaft. "Working with my mother since I could hold a tool, one learns her way around a hanger bay." She started to head down a set of stairs.

[CarcerKango]

Jake froze. "I can't leave my friends, ma'am...How far are we going?" He ran to catch up. "I can't just abandon the Captain and everyone else...We have to do /something/ for them!" He got an idea. "Is there any way we can take them with us?" he called as he ran down the stairs.

[Akirapryde]

As they reached the next lower level, Kimiko turned as terror came over her face, “no, there isn’t time” she protested. “My bodyguards don’t know that I have left my room yet. We have enough time to get to the craft I have selected and make my escape.” She trembled as she spoke, her voice was filled with both anger and hurt feelings.

She reached in to her shoulder bag and pulled out small bag. She opened it showing Jake the contents. There were a small number of jewelry. The contents of the bag were clearly hastily gathered together and were the sum of a minor fortune. It could easily make Jake a happy pilot for a short trip. The desperation was very real as she looked in to his eyes, “you don’t know my mother. She is such a tyrant!”

Despite the words that Jake was hearing in this moment, he knew that Kimiko till loved her mother. What he was seeing was nothing more than a child unwilling to face a parent after a long period of being away. Jake could sense that there was something was under the surface within her relationship with her parents. It could be something left unsaid. Or something that Kimiko had done that she was ashamed of. She turned and opened the nearby hatch, “Please, we have to go!” she said showing the way on to the flight deck of the dropship.

[CarcerKango]

"Whoa, whoa, whoa," Jake said, holding up his hands in a gesture telling Kimiko to wait. "We need to get a few things on the table first. Why are you fleeing?" My friends are depending on me, he added silently. I need to figure out which is more important.

[Akirapryde]

Kimiko closed her little bag of jewelry and walked in to the empty bay. Her shoulder's slumped in defeat as she found a place to sit on a nearby cart, "you don't understand. Everyone hears my name and they think how wonderful life must be for me. The wealth and the fame."

She reached over and stuffed her small bag in to her shoulder bag. "When I was four, my picture was global news" she said as she pulled out a small digital picture frame. She selected the image she wanted to show and handed it to him. It was a news media image of a group of military officers standing around a large holotable. While the military officers were going over an image on the table, the image was centered on a little girl. She was sitting on the edge of a table, next to a large muscular man. She was wearing a military helmet that was many times too large for her that nearly covered her face. She was holding up the helmet so that her face could be seen my the photographer. She held up a single thumbs up and wore a bright smile. The headline of the image read, 'Kimiko approves New Earth's new Strategic Defense System'

She let out a slight bit of laughter, "how crazy is it that at four I had my own fan club. As a teenager, I went to a school named after my father" but her tone turned darker as she continued, "But it was my older bothers." she said as a tear slowly slipped from her eye, "they were groomed to lead. While I wanted to follow my mother in to business, they were getting the very best military and leadership training my family could provide for them. It was my father's path that they were following. But to me, they were everything I inspired to be. To me, they were my world."

She fell silent for a moment before continuing. "When their deaths reported after the battle of Tukayyid, it was assumed, even by me, that this is what happens in war. I had thought that they died for the Inner Sphere, doing what they loved."

"But then the truth came out. And when it rained it poured. I also learned my father's dirty secret. My bothers were murdered by Lyrans assassins. My brothers had to die because my father couldn't let a thirty year grudge go. The night I found out the truth, I yelled at my father. I said such hateful things to him. I wished that it was him who had been killed and not my brothers." she paused looking down at the deck. Her tears were flowing freely now, "My father's death was seen as a global tragedy. But for me, it ended any hope of taking back those horrible things I said."

She turned back to Jake, "my wish for my father came true and now I am returning home for the first time since that fight. The last thing I told him was how much I hated him. How much I wanted him to die and how much I wanted my brothers back. How do I look my mother in the eyes. How do I tell her I am sorry for what I said."

She looked down and whipped her tears away, "I know you must be thinking how stupid I must me. How petty I must be."

[CarcerKango]

Jake considered his words carefully before saying, "I wasn't thinking anything like that at all, ma'am. I honestly can't imagine what it was like to be in your situation."

Then he saw a fighter.

Not just any fighter. A heavy-class Aerospace dogfighter.

It was yellow, with thick, angular yellow stripes, jagged and thorny. Thick armor, with two forward wings bearing what Jake recognized as upgraded Medium Lasers, possibly extended-range versions. It had four splayed-out, forward-swept rear wings, each bearing a Large Pulse Laser, and four rear thrusters that seemed to be equipped with boosters or something similar.

It was like no Aerofighter he'd ever seen before, and as a pilot, all he could say was, "She's beautiful."

[Akirapryde]

She shrugged her shoulders, “Sometimes I really don’t know who else to be, but at the same time I want so desperately to be someone…..anyone else…”

She fell silent as Jake’s attention was drawn to the yellow blacked striped fighter on the far side of the hanger bay. When she heard Jake utter, “she’s beautiful.”

She rolled her eyes and shifted her eyes elsewhere. There was a soft sound uttered from her lips. Jake either couldn’t make out the sound or understand the language. Cleary it was a moment of naked emotion for her and Jake’s statement seemed to offend her.

In the back of Jake’s mind, he heard that all too familiar voice ‘warning, warning’. He didn’t need to be Erik realize that he was losing her. He had to do or say something to show her that his attention was on her and not the remarkable fighter in the background.

[CarcerKango]

Jake closed his eyes, realizing how insensitive he must seem. "Sorry, just my inner pilot coming out," he said halfheartedly. "I was listening, I swear." He turned to her and locked eyes with her now, opening his own slowly. "I'm listening," he said again, sincerely this time. "And I'm sorry that you had to go through so much."