Incursion Vector

012

[▲] Tāwhiao Retreat, New Zealand, Earth

Flight Methuselah stayed up for two days and most of a third, waiting in shifts for word about the migrant fleet. One person would watch the news feeds, one would keep an eye on the com, one would sit with Leo, and two would nap until their turns came. No one really knew why they had ended up in such a pattern, but it just seemed the natural thing to do at the time.

Leo had been genuinely surprised when Nim and Keiji had shown up with a bag full of dolma and dates, handing it to him on the porch where he had been sitting and staring out at the deluge with empty eyes. After having a good laugh as Nim retold her story about a lack of haggling and venturing into a market where they actually slaughtered "cute little pigs and sheeps" they had just stretched out on the porch in a line of reclining chairs that mirrored the order of their own fighters back in their hangar on the Heinlein. They passed around dates and dolma and eventually settled into their waiting shifts when Calli and Karda fell asleep and Damien and Nim confiscated their personal computers to keep watch on their information feeds.

Damien's family had a good idea of what was going on through his father and array of curiously empathic grandparents. The Lewises opted to leave them be, quarantining the kids somewhere on the first floor where they couldn't interrogate the flight as to whether or not their battle had really been like the space fights in Terran Marine, or if the Terran Marine-whose actor looked disturbingly like Captain Michael with an artistic battle scar-could have kicked the aliens back into dark space. Aside from bringing out food and drinks every so often the flight was left to their own devices. Quickly rendered bored out of his mind and in dire need of a distraction from his itching, peeling sunburn and land sickness, Keiji took to cataloging every member of Damien's family.

At his last count there were fourteen nieces, nephews, and younger cousins running rampant through the house with their parents and even a few in-laws doing one thing or another. Some worked in the greenhouse attached to the main house or across the orchard in a small horticultural laboratory, some further out in the Retreat, and others just dropped by for a few hours to chat, mostly with the elderly relatives. Everyone hugged one another and kissed on both cheeks in greeting, even the few people that had stopped by to do business with the Retreat who were in no way related to the family. It made so much more sense to him now why Damien was easy-going and open with everyone he met; if he had been anything else but his massive family would have driven him insane.

Keiji had never before been around so many people that weren't in one military uniform or another. His own family consisted merely of himself, his sister, their father and their grandfather. His reclusive mother was rarely around except to attend the traditional New Year's shrine visit and most of his extended relatives were either dead or wanted nothing to do with his father's branch of the family. Despite not having lived anywhere near Earth for five generations his father and grandfather enforced all the traditions of classic Japanese culture, including the extensive honorifics, excessive bowing, elaborate tea services, and the predetermination of his exact role in adult life. After he completed his service in the Navy Keiji was to return to his father's side and slowly be handed the reigns of the Yutani colonial empire. From there he would be groomed to take over the massive complex of investments in mining and colonization efforts that had slowly given the family enough wealth to rival that of engineer and inventor Alexander Ironside-Seig's own father, though he hadn't known that until after what happened.

Things had ended badly when, in the middle of his sixth year on board the Heinlein, he had gathered up his courage and told his father that he would not be returning to the Colonies to inherit the company. He had declared his father and grandfather idiots for not allowing his elder and much more capable sister Nobuko to inherit the company simply because she was a woman they viewed as more of a bargaining chip than a person. The only contact he had with the man now was through his secretary Ueda; his father's pride refused to permit him to speak with the boy he had effectively disowned and his grandfather absolutely refused to acknowledge his existence. His sister always called on New Years, or she had until the communications blackout, but they had never been incredibly close in the first place. It didn't surprise him in the least he'd heard nothing from any of them even after the First Contact Incident made prime time news.