Archive:Graeme Devine's Blog/Spirit of Fire/Poker Game

This is a word-by-word replication of the original page on Graeme Devine's Blog. As such, any errors or irregularities are simply carried over from the original page.

SAL

Sal can’t play anymore, but we still leave a seat open for him...

There’s a poker game on tonight in the mess hall. It’s about the only time we all get to relax these days and there is usually a good turnout. We always leave a seat open for Sal because he organized the game for so many years and was a real bastard about it. We all miss him but we all know he’s not coming back.

We’re en route to Arcadia, which totally sucks because that means no rotation. No rotation means we’re all stuck on this ship for the time being. All stuck on this ship means more ghosts sitting in seats. No one wants to be a ghost. No one wants to look at someone who might be a ghost tomorrow.

We’re looking for alien activity in the neighborhood. We can’t match their big ships but command would sure like an up close and personal look at some of their smaller stuff. The Herald and Pompadour are accompanying us and Cutter has been in conference with them all day.

It’s weird. The first time this ship was at Arcadia it was to help build the colony, the last time we were there it was to help in a policing operation suppressing a student riot and now we’re going to be there to protect those same civilians from some god awful ugly aliens. The irony of protecting the kids that were throwing Molotov cocktails at us a couple of years ago is not lost and not forgotten.

Sometimes all we have is the damn poker game. Sal would say that he didn’t trust a man until he’d played a game of poker with him. Sal had real trust issues.

Yeah, I miss that son of a bitch.