Chapter 66: Front 33.5 – Volcanic Felsite – Part 2/2

In pursuit of a drink, Kolme and Scarlet had ended up retreating to the older man's quarters, Kolme having forgotten his wallet. As acting XO aboard the Fluchtig he apparently had a code that allowed him free access to every electronic door and machine aboard the vessel but supposedly didn't like using this system and would rather have the same credit everyone else on the ship was subjected to.
 Having returned to his room Scarlet suggested they simply drink the tea there instead and she was briskly welcomed in.

There was running commentary about Kolme's room around the Fluchtig and it seemed apparent to Scarlet as she entered, that almost all of it was true. The door had been left unlocked, the furniture inside was indeed eclectic and the legendary hole in the wall between this room and Sabban's stood proud.
 A quick glance into the younger man's room as she entered indicted a very different story - Sabban's room was almost barren and what was there, disordered - Backing up what she'd heard about him training near constantly the last few days.
Admittingly though, Kolme's room interested her more - The Fluchtig had a shortage of senior officers, so with the exception of Una, all the pilots had the same size room along the same corridor but Kolme had taken far more libraries with his than the others.
 A tall bookshelves lined most of one wall, the standard cot had been replaced with a more 'homely' bed - A tea caddy with mini-fridge was to one corner where the man himself now stood, a big fluffy rug covered most of the floor and on top of that two old armchairs with a small circular coffee table between them.

The bookshelves packed with random volumes of this and that was the only familiar site as Scarlet had something similar in her own room but aside from that it was alot of furniture that felt out of place on a spaceship - Moreover the furniture was old, well kept sure, but definitely second hand in her opinion - The room had an almost nostalgic feeling, even with the metallic walls of the ship peaking out from behind the array of fittings, the space had a sort of old-lady's parlour aesthetic.

"Kolme, you were on the Tradech before here right? And that other ship before that, the ah--"

"Monte Blanc" He finished for her, setting the kettle to boil.

"Ya, back then you were just a rank and file pilot? Did you get all this furniture in just the last couple months?"

Kolme blushed lightly at the comment, turning to start searching for teabags, "Well I am an officer here right? I asked them to get me some things."

Scarlet smirked, "But its all second hand, you could of asked for way better stuff than this."

"Well, I suppose, but no need to go overboard right Lass?"

She chuckled, he was a strange man - Every time she had crossed him lately he'd been a picture of dread, tired, clearly blaming every little decision the ship made on himself, clearly guilty for the deaths of the two pilots from the Valliere.
 He was the Fluchtig's self-appointed 'Dad-Figure', he knew the names of the whole bridge staff, was a familiar face to the mechanical teams, made frequent trips out to the further edges of the Fluchtig to check in on the grenadiers - And just today she had listened to him argue, shout and then beg HQ for reinforcements.
 And what reward did he consider appropriate compensation for all that? Some cheap second hand furniture.

He fiddled with a tin of cheap army issue teabags as the kettle reached boiling point - She wasn't sure where he even got them, they'd stop producing that brand a decade ago atleast.
 Still Scarlet couldn't help but find this whole 'image' to be remarkably cosy, hidden away on the Tristian Flotilla's flagship, behind an unsuspecting plain door, she had entered another world, the lair of an elderly male spinster with no sense of interior design - Standing there hobbled, pouring kettle water into the battered old metal teapot, shuffling around the tea-caddy to find a second clean cup.

'I ain't slept with anyone in a whole year' - The thought crossed her mind all by itself as she watched the laborious teamaking of Kolme Nilas. Before coming to the Fluchtig she had been in a detention centre for a few months, it had been a while and to her bemusement she suddenly found the man before her to be attractive.
 'He looks like someone who just needs a partner, someone to tell 'em to stand up straight, to give him a reason to want to look after his skin and facial hair. He'd be a reliable partner with the right...'

Kolme wasn't really that old after all, right? Sure he himself and everyone around him labelled him the 'old man' but that was only by comparison to the rest of the ship's young crew. Others like Chief Pel, Doctor Hasain or even Commander Nate, were all probably pretty close in age.
 In fact the more she looked him over, the more Scarlet wondered if Kolme was much past 50 - And after all she was hardly much younger, certainly the wrong side of 40.
  
By Abhailen standards, on a planet with a thin atmosphere and weak gravity, where water is buried miles beneath the surface - Getting to age 70 was considerably 'ancient' but on Bhaile (Where she reminded herself Kolme came from), 50 was positively middle aged.
 With such advances in food and medical science people there often lived to a hundred. And what of the Elves to the East, capable of getting to 200, or the Dwarfs in their ancient underground city, rumoured to live all the way to 300 - What was 50 compared to any of them?

She eyed him as he crossed the room, handing her the steaming cup of tea before sitting himself down in the seat across from her - She sipped at it while staring into his borderline vacant, sleepless eyes.
 It had crossed her mind before, but Kolme really had pretty eyes. They weren't a sky blue, nor a deep ocean shade that you could lose yourself in - Rather they were a more subtle shade, almost grey like his hair.
 She liked looking at them.

Scarlet hated her own eye, it was mess that added to the image of a mad beast people had of her.
 It had a sort of permanent bloodshot effect to it, her brown Iris had long since been invaded by a scratchy crimson red rim, that weaved and clawed at her iris as though trying to consume it.
 Magi gained red eyes over time but Scarlet was no Magi, her eye was simply damaged from years of mistreatment, from side effects of the Enhancer - It was an ugly eye, or so she felt.

"Did ya hear Scarlet-lass? That pilot from the Rinie pulled through, the operation was a success." Kolme piqued up, breaking the silence.

Scarlet blinked, brought out of her own musings before nodding. Kolme smiled before going on;
 "Ah, how about Una, she doing alright?"

She nodded dumbly again, before kicking herself internally, "Oh right, ya. Well she's kinda depressed, keeps going on about having let the whole team down. She's in alot of physical pain too, broken ribs, lacerations, poor girly is kind of a reck." Scarlet finished getting back on track.

Kolme frowned, "But that's not true, sure she got hurt back at the Clover but she saved Hoki by doing so and at Station 9 she kept fighting despite her emotions. And even this time!
 Ya it sucks we lost one of the Neo-Cs but she fought well, kept up with everyone else - Heck the two who died from the Valliere both had way more combat experience than Una, yet she kept up with them!"

Scarlet shrugged, "Ya I keep telling her all that." Then she grinned, "I hear too it was you who saved our girl.
 Apparently you realised the automatic eject on her Neo had failed, had you not warned her they say 30 more seconds and she would'a been destroyed along with her machine - Good job Nilas."

The man shook his head, "No, that's the minimum I could do, not like I managed to do it for any of the other injured pilots..."

"Hey now, didn't I already have this chat with ya? You can't take responsibility for everyone out there Kolme, cut yourself some slack man."

Kolme didn't respond and for a little while they sat in silence, sipping their tea. It was bad tea, horrible in fact - But it felt like the right thing to be drinking in that moment.
 Finally Kolme spoke up once more;
 "Scarlet, do you ah... Do you remember the first time you saw a Casnel?"

She blinked and tried to give it some serious thought. It was weird for her to think about, the threat of one Casnel or another on her life had been a constant for so long now that it was easy to forget there had been a time when they didn't exist.
 After some thought, she shook her head unable to recall.

"Well that's fair enough, I mean you've piloted and destroyed Casnels in the past - They must all blur together after a while--" Kolme replied, it made Scarlet cringe a little - It was the sort of sentiment she often faced from well meaning people, as though facing off against titans of war ever got easier.
 "-- But I remember my first time, sometimes I wish I could forget."

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Kolme continued, laying down his half-empty cup, a far away look overtaking him;
 "It was the third year of the war, I got transferred from the engineering core to the TSU Vijaik programme - Before I knew it I was the pilot of the 'new' mass production TSU Vijaik being sent up to space. You remember the old Casnel-MBT right lass? A Vijaik made to look like the First Casnel, but not actually a Casnel itself."
 He laughed almost fondly.
Scarlet too smiled, she indeed remembered many hours with her comrades making fun of TSU's bad naming schemes, back then it had been make fun of them or sit in fear of their vastly superior specs.

Kolme continued, "I was assigned to this little flotilla of three ships, on its way to meet up with the home fleet, mundane stuff - But we got ambushed, an Abhailen group, something like 5 ships and maybe 20 to 25 mechs, mostly the old Mk2s, a couple Mk1s and a Heavy or two.
 Who knows whether they were headed towards Bhaile or retreating away from it but they were ferocious, experience and skilled - We had fifteen machines but most of them were like me, rookies who were in space for the first time ever with barely any mech training."

"Within minutes we'd lost ten machines and two ships - I truly thought that was it for me Scarlet, life's way of telling me I should never of left Ivernia heh. And then it came.
 It was already legendary by then, the ship and the mecha that were changing the tide of war almost single-handed, the Cheval De Troy and the First Casnel.
 It flew past me, shimmering white, and it crushed them Scarlet. One by one, 20 or more mechs couldn't even scratch it. It smashed and gouged and burned and slashed its way through every last one of those poor bastards, and then it kept going, bursting open the enemy warships, tearing them apart piece by piece - All by itself."

Scarlet listened attentively, she found it fascinating. For years now she had heard stories from the opposite perspective, from Abhailen soldiers who had survived an encounter with the First Casnel, watched their friends and comrades die by its hand.
 "Was it like an angel?" She asked.

Kolme's brow wrinkled, "Why an angel?"

"Well, everyone's always told me it was a demon, a demon of war coming to kill them, so I thought maybe for you, being on its side was like seeing a benevolent angel of war?"

Kolme visible shuddered at the suggestion, "No." He put firmly, "A demon you say? Ya that sounds about right, a demon clad in white maybe, but demon no less. I was just lucky enough to be on its side of the fight.
 But now, now whenever I think about our next battle with the Curadh, whenever I try to think up ways we could beat it, all I see is that memory - That time I watched a lone Casnel tear apart a force three times larger with ease."

Scarlet stared at Kolme, his face a ghostly shade as though he was reliving the memory even now - She wasn't sure if her next words were a lie or not, if they were a cruel deception or not, but she wanted to say them, wanted to try and give the fragile creature before her something to latch onto;
 "Hey don't go getting weird ideas ya hear? If a Casnel is about to burst through that door, then I'll deal with it ya know? So relax a little, you're too high-strung for ya own good. The Curadh is one ship, the Casnel is one mech - They aren't the Cheval De Troy, nor a demon - We'll get through 'em somehow right?"

He didn't respond, but she felt, deep in those grey eyes she saw the faintest glimmer, the tiniest ember of hope still holding on - It made her smile a little.
 "Kolme you got a partner, like an Ex still holding a candle or a wife back home or something?" She added with a grin - It had the desired effect as the man was broke from his musings, his cheeks regaining some colour at last;
 "You're the second person to ask me that lately! What sort of image do you all have of me?" He borderline pouted, than sighed;
 "I had a partner, before the First War, we were to be wedded but she died. She was a Magi believe it or not!
 A real one too, not just good at predicting the weather, she used to know how people felt, she could even detect diseases in people months before any machine could!"
 He spoke as though boasting on the woman's behalf; "But she died, I mean to be fair who doesn't know someone who died in that war eh? After I joined the army, guess I've never really looked back."

Scarlet tensed up a little, "Kolme there no chance that I--"

"No, no. I mean you're a hard woman to track through history but I did look into it as best I could when I first heard we would be working together and I'm pretty confident you were on a different continent when she died, so don't worry about it.
 And anyway, even if you had been there, how would I know which of the many soldier shooting at us had killed her? Or say hypothetically I could find the one, what then? Revenge? We we're soldier's on opposite sides of a war and trust me, what me and her were doing at the time was as good as asking to be shot at.
 Nah, just shows how crazy all this fighting is that we could go from mortal enemies, to drinking tea together eh lass?
But what about you, must of had a few suiters with your looks right?"

Scarlet grinned, "Flattery is it now Kolme? Ya I've had my fair share of 'action' - Though since becoming a pilot keeping things stable has got tricky, lot'a one night deals before shipping out I suppose."

Kolme nodded, blushing rather cutely at her flippancy on the topic - Too cutely in Scarlet's opinion;
 "Hey you should know by the way, there's a rumour Remembrance is on the mov--" The man began.

She pounced.
 It was a panther-like movement, announcing that she would not be letting this moment pass in favour of political chatter.
 Aside from the large dampener-field over the bed, the rest of Kolme's room had only little gravity, enough to sit in a chair, but light enough to let you float over the coffee table and hang in the air with your arms crossed around Kolme Nilas'es neck, bringing your faces intimately close.
 
The man in question was set ablaze, trying to pull back, flustered in the extreme;
 "Sc-Sc-Scarlet what are you doing?!"

"What do ya think?" She purred back, pulling in closer any time he tried to pull away.

"I-i-I thought you hated me?" He shrieked.

"Hates a strong word, I thought you were a naïve idiot."

"And now?"

"A pathetic idiot, but a brave one"

"Is that a compliment?!!"

She leant in, their lips briefly met, she pulled back and smiled.
 "I'll stop if you want, just say the word - If you don't like me back, or if you'd find it a betrayal of your last partner, I'll understand. But don't feel guilty or any crap, I would Never debases myself to the level of sleeping with you out of pity Kolme, this and you being sad are separate you got that?
 I just suddenly saw something I like and can't be bothered with all the flirting and hand holding crap the kids get up to, I like to skip to the good part - So?"

Kolme stared at her face, her almost glowing eye, long streaming crimson hair like a mane behind her - Her smile, for once soft. This time he leant in and there lips met once more, for longer this time.

The half-drunk tea soon went cold.
 And so it began.

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