(no subject)

[mandercommander]

The door opens, and Bonzo steps through.  As usual, it opens into one of the gates in the Battle Room, opening into a massive space that you can look up or down into and see over a hundred feet.  The room itself is well over 200 feet across, with a few cubes strewn about it.

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[newgoldenage.livejournal.com]

Luke stares as they come out of the Bar into the gate. He's spent a good seven years training, but never in spaces or large as empty as this.

"So," he says when he's shaken off his surprise, "which way to the swag?"

[mandercommander.livejournal.com]

Bonzo looks around. "Well, our door is there..." Bonzo gestures back to it. "So, this way." He nods to the big room, and suddenly runs off the edge, leaping...and doing a flip in the zero gravity in there (as opposed to the far more normal gravity in the gate) before stabilizing his flight as he moves across the room. "Woohoo!"

You guessed it: He's having fun. He can't do this every day in the Bar.

[newgoldenage.livejournal.com]

...........

Okay, it's one thing to know you're going into outer space and quite another to see your partner in maybe-kinda-sorta crime go spinning out into air like that.

Luke freezes for a moment, his foot poised on the edge and his mind taking him back to that night in the garden when -

No. That is the past. This is now. He's the son of the god of travelers; strange places hold no fear for him. He won't let them.

So he copies Bonzo's leap off the edge, his cautious smile becoming a genuine grin as he heads towards one of the cubes, his arms outspread like bird in flight.

This is nothing like using the flying sandals.

This is even better.

When he's steadied himself against the cube, he looks up and Bonzo and says "Fun room. You guys must have loved class in here."

[mandercommander.livejournal.com]

Bonzo comes to a stop on a cube that's on his way. "We didn't get to think about how fun it was. We were too focused on the laser tag." He grins back. "When you're not looking for stuff to snag, we can come back in here and play." With that, Bonzo launches himself off towards Luke's star.

[newgoldenage.livejournal.com]

"Laser tag?"

That's a method of combat training Luke's pretty sure no one at Camp Halfblood has ever considered. He considers trying to introduce it, but - nah. Not enough time, and you'd never convince the Ares kids to take part in something so bloodless.

"And I guess official training would take the fun out of things." It's hard to appreciate the beauty of the woods when you're trying to keep your guts on the inside. "So speaking of this stuff," he says as Bonzo drifts closer, "where exactly is it?"

[mandercommander.livejournal.com]

"Through that gate." Bonzo gestures to the gate opposite from where they'd just come. Down some halls.

[newgoldenage.livejournal.com]

"All right, then. Let's do this."

So saying, he focuses and leaps from his cube to the gate Bonzo indicated. He feels a pang of regret about leaving the zero-g room so soon, but maybe if they get what they came for quickly enough they can play around some more as they leave.

Even if suggesting anything like that would be a little embarrassing.

He lands on the far ledge with only a little stagger as he readjusts to normal gravity, and peers into the hallway beyond.

[mandercommander.livejournal.com]

Bonzo nods, and follows Luke. His landing in the normal gravity is almost picture perfect. "Ok, follow me."

With that, Bonzo steps out of the gate and enters a hall that leads to a passage that itself leads to a corridor that links with the hall to the gate on the other side of the Battle Room. And that? Leads toward the main body of the station.

[newgoldenage.livejournal.com]

Luke follows close behind, trying to take everything.

The whole thing almost disappointingly mundane. He didn't know what he expected a futuristic military academy would look like, but after the weightless joy of the Battle Room the dull gray panels are something of a let down.

Of course, this is just a hallway. Who knows what lies ahead?

Mainly to keep from being psyched out by the oppressive silence, he asks "So you said they brought you in at age six? Man, I can't even imagine what that must have been like."

He'd only worked up the nerve to leave his mother and her insane ramblings when he was nine.

[mandercommander.livejournal.com]

"Yeah. I think I was in there just about every day from a few weeks after they first brought us up here." The hall continues on for a bit, and then the gravity begins to trail off as they come to a ladder. The gravity doesn't bottom out at zero, but it's probably somewhere around 1/10 standard Earth gravity.

At the end of the hall is a set of ladders leading down (or, rather, towards the outside of the station, if you will). Bonzo starts climbing down, quietly thankful that this battle room was aligned with the corridor now.

[newgoldenage.livejournal.com]

That gets an odd look from Luke. "You've been coming to Milliways for that long?" he asks as he follows Bonzo down the ladder.

He's been trapped for about half a week or so, by his reckoning. The thought of it dragging out for years has kept him from sleeping well.

[mandercommander.livejournal.com]

"Luke, you have no idea." Bonzo smiles to him just a bit as he gets to the next deck. "I just wish I'd had Milliways when I was here then. Alright, the Game Room is on this deck."

The lights are all dim and everything is pretty quiet. It's clearly 'night' here.

[newgoldenage.livejournal.com]

Dark and quiet. So welcoming to a born thief, and yet so unnerving.

"Sometimes I get the impression I could live in Milliways 'till I was a hundred and I wouldn't have any idea how time works there." The days sometime seem like they're bleeding together in his confinement, but this excursion is already helping him get his level.

He gazes across the deck, alert for any movement in the darkness. "So where are those computers we're looking for?"

[mandercommander.livejournal.com]

"Unless there's a storage room on this level, the next two levels should have plenty." Bonzo points down the ladder further. "We can go down; my old quarters are down there, as are my army's."

[newgoldenage.livejournal.com]

Luke nods, then he hesitates. "You sure they haven't added any extra security since you were here last?"

To be honest, he's kind of hoping Bonzo says no. A run-in with the law would do him good just right now.

[mandercommander.livejournal.com]

Bonzo shrugs. "I don't know of any, but I haven't been down here in a long time."

[newgoldenage.livejournal.com]

And Luke?

Just grins.

This might be more interesting than a boring old milk run. So he eagerly jumps ahead of Bonzo and heads down the ladder, two rungs at a time.

[mandercommander.livejournal.com]

Bonzo chases after him, managing to slide down the ladder after him quickly, even in the reduced (if increasing) gravity. Can you tell he might have been late to class once before?

As they get two decks down, Bonzo gestures to proceed to the starboard. "Two doors down. My army's old barracks."

[newgoldenage.livejournal.com]

Ouch. He hadn't counted on the shifting gravity, and hitting the rungs with his suddenly heavier feet makes his soles smart. He manages to beat Bonzo to the ground, so to speak, but he's wincing as he lands.

"Your army?" he asks as he subtly leans on the less aching foot.

[mandercommander.livejournal.com]

"Yeah. I was their commander for several years. From when I was eleven until when I was fourteen, and we were near the top of the scoreboard almost the whole time."

There's definitely some pride in his voice.

[newgoldenage.livejournal.com]

"School champs, huh?" The Hermes cabin tends to vary wildly when it comes to camp competitions, given the many different demigods who pass through it. He always was able to win the chariot race for them, usually.

When they could get away with cheating.

"How many armies were there when you were going here?"

He wonders how many children grew up surrounded by cold gray metal and the void of space. It makes him almost grateful for the hills and farmland of Camp Halfblood.

[mandercommander.livejournal.com]

"Twenty. Forty kids in each, plus their commander." 840 total, he doesn't add, though to be fair that number ignores a certain number of launchme...er..launchies. "Though I've heard the number of armies varied a bit over the years."

They get to his old barracks, and Bonzo promptly attempts to palm it. The palmpad blinks, but nothing happens. He tries a second time, and again nothing.

Great...

[newgoldenage.livejournal.com]

Luke whistles. "That's some impressive recruiting. Especially for kids capable of fighting a war."

He wonders sometimes if Chiron couldn't have doubled or tripled the number of kids at Halfblood, if only by making the satyrs bring in even the children of minor gods.

He frown at the palmpad. "Trouble"

As he asks, he feels his heart start to beat a little faster. He's never tested his skills against a space station's alarms.

[mandercommander.livejournal.com]

"Not when you've got a network the world over to work with." Bonzo is at least slightly dismissive of the recruiting numbers. 200 a year out of millions?

Turning to the palmpad, he shakes his head. "Yeah, it's not clearing me through. Any ideas?" Bonzo does not look pleased at the 'surprise' that he's just run into.

[newgoldenage.livejournal.com]

"....Yeah, I guess that helps. We had recruiters working for us, but it was...kind of too spread out at times."

He hasn't got any idea how many satyrs there are out looking for new kids at any give time, but he's willing to bet it's less than a world government could muster.

He leans in, trying to get a better look. "Have you got any kind of tools to get inside it? Or would that just set off the security system?"

[mandercommander.livejournal.com]

Bonzo shakes his head. "I wasn't thinking this would happen." He growls. "I really didn't foresee this."

He's not the Oracle, you know!