Cally's War

On the shuttle for the freighter, Jay and the others generally wore liners of the same material as military silks under their heavy cotton jumpsuits. They had to. Landing control wouldn’t have tolerated the heat leakage that would have resulted if they’d kept the inside at a comfortable temperature.

Besides, they weren’t supposed to be sleeping on it in the first place. Covering that had meant renting a transient’s room and having someone in it enough of the time to make it look well used. Jay liked this arrangement because it gave him excellent cover for his independent ventures when it was his time to use the room.

And his turn was supposed to be today, but Papa O’Neal had asked to swap, and he hadn’t had a graceful excuse to say no.

So here he was stuck on the shuttle freezing his buns off with Sunday. Well, okay, the silk longjohns helped a lot. He’d still rather be alone and warm and ready to go. Not that Sunday was a bad guy, it was just that he had so much money he couldn’t possibly understand what it was like to grow up in the lousy BS. Oh, most of the kids had just accepted it. They never knew any better. But him being a doctor’s kid, he’d seen the difference between himself and the other doctors’ kids. He knew full well what his life would have been like with a lot less fucking BS. Sunday could have never understood, but he was just getting back the life that always should have been his in the first place. And if the BS suffered, well, it just balanced the scales, didn’t it?

He surreptitiously checked the outbound passenger shuttle schedules. Fuck! Two hour mechanical launch delay. This totally sucks. Okay, not a real problem. It was still well within the effective span of his diversion, it was just that the other launch time was so sweet.

His change of clothes and ID was in a locker with the money and minimal luggage, all ready to go. He had another couple of hours to kill, that’s all.

“Hey, Sunday, wanna play me a battle or two of Warlord?” He wiggled his PDA.