Chapter Three

Chapter Three:

What kind of introduction is that?

*`*`*`*`*`*`*`*

Hours later

"Did you know that there are exactly 3,195 bolts in the ceiling?" Kate asked the pilot, as she lay reclined in her chair. The sudden noise of the bridge door opening caused her to sit up. Noticing that it was just Kain she reclined again while still keeping an eye on the young man.

"So our wonderful hero has returned. What can we do for you?"

"Here for another beating?" Beth slammed her fist into the palm of her other hand.

"No, the other seven you gave me were quite enough." The young man winced while rubbing his shoulder. "Actually I wanted to ask Kate a question...."

He looked over at Beth, who acted rather offended and could swear that he had heard her in his head saying that she would get him the next time. He gave a weak laugh and turned back to Kate who now had an inquiring look on her face.

"Um... I was going to ask you something but I can see that youre verybusy." He slowly turned to the door and started to walk out, hoping that just maybe someone would ask him to stay.

"For heavens sake!" Beth yelled to the mans retreating back. "You must be some kind of moron! If you want me to leave why don't you just..." Just then there was a crash and a large explosion could be felt vibrating throughout the whole ship. Beth got up and ran for the door.

'I'll check it out. Most likely Jamie's involved."

"When I was with her she was just making a little juice." Kain shrugged nonchalantly.

"What!" She ran up to the brunette and grabbed the front of the shirt and glared hard at him. "And you didn't tell us?" Beth growled dangerously, but then got very stiff as her wings popped out at the sound of a second explosion.

"You were pretty busy when I came here an hour ago." Kain stated simply.

Beth groaned and pushed the young man away as she yelled at him some more. "The last time she made juice she blew up the entire kitchen!" As she left she grabbed one of the gas masks and grumbled various words.

"Wow, the entire kitchen. Must have been some juice." Kain got up from the floor and dusted himself off, but noticed Kate still reclining in the captains chair.

"Aren't you going to go help her?" He looked at Kate with astonishment.

"Oh no, its her turn to clean it up. I did it the last three times." She calmly explained as she twisted a piece of her red hair between her fingers.

"Hey, I was wandering" he stopped and looked around the room while he searched for the right words. "How did you and Jamie hook up with Beth? Jamie said that she didn't remember."

"Not a surprise. Jamie tries to forget unpleasant experiences." Kate put her chair in the normal sitting position and stretched her arms. "Meeting Beth was not a very pleasant experience"

`*`*`*`*`*`*`*`*`*`*`*`*`*`*`*`

Seven years ago

"I think I've got a handle on this pilot thing." A large smile of satisfaction spread across Jamie's face as she turned around to look at her partner in crime.

"Good for you." Kate responded with a yawn. "I think I'm going to go take a nap. When I get up we're going to make a stop at Gypson 9 to get a system over haul."

"Ok, then I think I'll go and make some juice." Jamie got up from the pilot's chair and headed straight for the door.

At the mention of juice, Kate's eyes went wide with fright. "Maybe I'll skip the nap and help you with the juice."

"Please Kate! Can't we have someone else to come on board? Its so lonely!"

Jamie pleaded as they walked out of the bridge. "How about a dog? I'll feed him and play with him and clean up after him"

"You can't even clean up after yourself, why would I let you have a dog?" Kate snapped back. "By the way, did you set the coordinates for Gypson 9 before we
left the bridge?"

"Yes ma'am. We should be there in about ten minutes. So what kind of juice do you want to make? We had grape last time."

"TEN MINUTES? Okay, how long till we LAND on the planet?"

"Nine, why?"

"And are you going to land the ship while making juice? Shouldn't we probably be working on slowing down the ship about now? Are you so eager that you want us to crash?"

"Oh, I never thought about that. I guess we'd better get back to the bridge then." Jamie turned around and in a blur, was gone.

"Sometimes I worry about that girl." Kate shook her head sadly.

Minutes later

"Go over there to 'Joes Ship Repair', and remember my name's not Kate it's..." Kate motioned to her partner to continue the thought.

"'Akai', and I'm 'Fukai', but I have one question, why do we have fake names?"

"Because, we killed at least 100 people, stole a very important ship, lied to a senior official...I'm to depressed to go on. " The captain sighed.

The ship swayed back and forth as the inexperienced pilot tried to land the massive object. Finally after cruashing into some trees and causeing nemures cars to run off the road, the white ship came to a stop right in front of their destination.

The two crew members opened the hatch at the bottom and climbed out to find thirty or forty people standing staring at the rigid pair.

Jamie gave a big smile and waved to them. Kate laughed nervously and quickly grabbed her companions arm and pulled her out of the embarrassing situation.

The redheaded captain made sure to quickly dispense of her single crew member at the ship repair shop. In the mean time, she decided that she would spend her time alone gathering any useful information at the local tavern.

Kate walked into the small establishment only to be greeted by unfriendly faces and a large smoke cloud accompanied by the stale smell of alcohol. She glanced around only to be greatly disappointed. She saw nothing but drunks occupying each stool and table. None of which looked to be of any use to her.

"Maybe this wasn't such a good idea." She thought to herself.

"You seem to be lost."

"Huh? Who said that?"

"Meeeee, Im in the corner to you left."

Kate sweat dropped after noticing the distinct slur I the person's speech. "Sounds interesting." Kate decided to take her chances and looked to her left at
the table in the corner to find a lone woman occupying it. As she got closer to the drunken woman she noticed her hand clasped around an empty glass with a white residue at the bottom.

"Hi. Want some?" The woman shoved the glass in Kate's face. Kate pushed it away, but not before noticing its distinct odor.

Kate eyed the depressed looking woman trying to decide whether or not she really wanted to associate with her. "None for me thanks."

"Youu suure? They have sommme GREAT milk."

"Milk?" Kate could hardly believe her ears. So what she smelled had been milk.

"Yep. I have a lowww tolerance for the lactose."

"Uh-huh." Kate just nodded her head, unsure if she should just make a hasty retreat or not.

"Anyway, what brings you to thisss dump if your not going to drink?" The woman tried to set herself up, but was relying on the table far too much to make such an effort.

"I'm just passing through to kill time till my shipmate fixes the ship that she damaged."

The blue haired woman eyed the redhead. "You have a ship?"

"Yeah, it's a long story. All I can say is that I hope I can survive with the pilot I have."

"Bad huh?"

"The worst. But there's no one else on board that has the skill."

"I could fly it for you."

Kate found it rather strange that the woman was somehow acting more sober, but dismissed that observation when she noticed the woman was starting to nod off.

Though the woman was drunk, the offer was rather tempting. It was someone else to talk to, someone, maybe when they were sober, who had more common sense. She raised a skeptic eyebrow and eyed the woman carefully. "You're not just saying that cause your drunk are you?"

"No, I'm serious"

"Are you any good?"

"Ohhhhh, I'm the best darn pilot you'll ever find. All you have to do as a fee is get me off this cursed planet as fast as you can."

"Why?"

The green-eyed woman's question was answered with a shot grazed her head and hit the wall right beside the other woman's head. "Is that a good enough reason for you?" She shouted as she ducked under the table.

Kate followed her down, noticing that the intoxicated woman now had two guns, one in each hand. "What'd you do? Have too many drinks that you couldn't pay?" Kate shouted at the calm woman while pulling out her own gun.

"No, I only had one."

"One drink and she's like this? I'd hate to see what she's like after one jug!"

"I heard that" The woman glared, but was soon distracted by a few more shots landing in the wall behind her.

"Then what?"

"I can't tell you that. They could even be after you, I don't know why they're shooting. Why don't you go over and ask him? I'm sure he'd be glad to give you an
explanation."

Kate gave a slight glare.

Beth noticed her comment wasn't at all welcome and continued her thought. "Lets just get on that ship of your's and get out of here."

"Right. Jamie should be done about now, just follow me."

"Wait a minute." Beth pulled at Kate's shirtsleeve before she could stand up. "Could you help me? I can't quite see straight." Kate fell over in complete surprise.

Ten minutes later

Kate dived and rolled as a shot just barely missed her. Unfortunately this sent Beth sprawling in the dirt. Kate sighed as she made a dash back for her newest recruit.

"This guy's persistent isn't he?"

"You have no idea." Beth replied with a slurred exasperated tone.

Kate turned around and aimed carefully with her gun to return some fire but missed her target by millimeters. She did manage a small scratch on the cloaked man's leg, but aside from that he was too fast. "Darn it! I thought I was dead on that time."

"He's too quick for you! Get down NOW!" Kate ducked as Beth pulled out her two guns from two holsters, one at each side and began shooting. Each bullet hit its mark. The hooded mans large weapon flew from his hands and each shoulder arm and leg were hit, causing the man to fall backwards and groan in agony of the pain.

"Let's save the bloodshed for another day." Beth put her guns away, turned on her heel, and fell flat on her face.

"Wow, that's amazing, you're dead drunk yet you managed to do all that." Kate went over to her friend and picked her up and hurried in the direction of the ship.

Five minutes later

"WOW! Who's this?" Jamie ran up to Kate hugging the unconscious woman on her back.

"Just someone I met at the bar. She helped me out and I'm repaying her" Kate paused when she looked at the ship before her. "Is that our? How much did it cost?"

"Oh I just used your charge card." Holding up a plastic credit card, Jamie handed it to a very surprised Kate.

"Idiot, they'll trace it!" Kate slapped her forehead.

"Who?" Jamie stared up at her with a blank look.

"My father you dolt!"

"Is that bad?" Jamie stared to rub her arm and turned her gaze to the ground. Kate was not the kind of person that you wanted to get mad.

"My dad is in charge of the universal police, or don't you remember!" As she stared at the sad green-haired girl, Kate began to wonder how she was even able to make it this far with her.

"Oh that is bad isn't it?" Kate nodded. "Well don't you like it?"

"Yes, but that's not the point!" A small smile etched its way across the green-haired woman's face.

"Satan?" A weak voice asked from Kate's back.

"Yes she is Satan, but again that is not the point!"

"No, Satan's the name of your ship." The blue haired woman blinked at the big bold letters on the hull of the ship as she slowly came back to reality.

"What? The ship's name is Athena."

"That's not what the ship says." Kate noticed for the first time that her mechanic was covered in red paint.

Kate looked at the hull as well to see big, bold, bright red letters on the side of the white ship spelling out "Satan".

"You've got to be kidding? Of all the names to pick, Satan?"

"Well, I was trying to spell Santa, I just found out too late that the 'N' comes before the 'A'."

"Well whatever, lets just gets out of here." Beth added with slurred speech.

"She sounds fun." Jamie clapped her hands in excitement.

*`*`*`*`*`*`*`*`*`*`*`*

"That didn't sound much like a bad experience."

Kate shook her head. "That wasn't the bad part."

"What was the bad part?"

Kate got up, ran to the door, looked around a few times to make sure no one was coming, then ran back to her chair. "Let's just say that Beth had somewhat of an hang over from the milk and Jamie decided while Beth was in the kitchen looking for water that she would make some juice for her"

Kain slapped his forehead. "I can see where this is going."

Kate lowered her voice to a whisper. "Let's just say Beth with a hang over and Jamie causing loud explosions do not mix."

Kain could picture the whole incident in his head. It was probably about the funniest thing that he had ever heard. It wasn't long at all till he was rolling on the floor in laughter.