Walter thanks Arkhip then moves to an empty chair at the side of the room and shuts his eyes as he waits.
Virvel takes the seat next to you, in the row in front of Arkhip.
: You two lovebirds on a movie date now?
Markus comes over, curious to see what's going on.
: [Are you Markus Hermann? The guy that stayed in the bombardment zone to save those cadets?]
Ajka half-heartedly replies, paying more attention to the song than to his rambling. "Uh huh. It makes a lot of sense when you put some good thought into it," she says, "Porlaq invading Aesthia really was just a false flag by the trogs to bolster their own standing in the world."
: [That's not what I said,
Porlaq is using
Aesthia, not the other way around. What's their Sky Marshal's name again? Talkirov? That's not an Aesthian name, Aesthians have names like "Gunderson" or "Engstrom". Anything ending in -ov is a Porlaqi name. The pikes are behind this whole mess, I know it.]
: [You know, now that I think about it, that gun cam footage had to be from a Shikra, which as far as I'm aware is extremely rare in Aesthian hands. Nothing else can carry the kind of firepower it showed off. And
that guy, sitting over there, showed up here in a Shikra with a bigger gun on it.]
: [Think he's the one that killed Marcus?]
: [I wouldn't accuse him of it,
yet, but think about it- they'd probably give their rebuilt Shikra to someone who already knows the platform it was based on, and how many Aesthian pilots do you think got a chance to familiarize themselves with one? I think it's worth asking, at least.]
The pilots glance at Akja, as though expecting her to be the one to do it by merit of her speaking the most fluent Aesthian of the group.