Who: Selene, open to Banshee crew What: Late night musing Where: Hyperspace When: After her meeting with Alucard Rating: PG for vampire thoughts
Some captains let the autopilot handle navigation and automatic alarms and the astromechs wake somebody up to handle any problems. Selene preferred to have someone on the helm at all times, even if they were reading or running sims or listening to music. Machinery sometimes failed, even on the best-maintained ship. Astrocomps glitched, not everything was charted with 100% accuracy, and there might even be a few old Imperial interdictors unaccounted for. Since she could get by on less than a few hours sleep a week, she usually took the overnight shift and ran battle simulations on the computer or did kata in the open center of the bridge.
Right now, though, she was just sitting in the pilot's chair, watching the moving lights of hyperspace and thinking. Her brief meeting with Alucard had been interesting. All of the undead vampires she had come across in this universe were young, fledglings. He was almost as old as she was, but... empty was the word that came to mind describing his mental state. Boredom, being happy than an enemy had survived so he could fight them again, his talk of pouring blood into a void. And he had mentioned Hellsing seals. Selene had noticed his gloves, and something inscribed on them. Maybe that was what Alucard had been referring to. Something that kept him in check, apparently. Something he seemed concerned might fail him in this new universe.
Alucard had spoken of Buffy Summers. A hunter; Selene could only assume he meant a vampire hunter. She had come across a few of those over the centuries. Until the Purge, the had been singularly ineffective. It wasn't until humans began hunting vampires in militarized teams that they had any real effect on any of the Corvinians. She would send a holomessage, though, and arrange to meet the woman. Alucard had implied she had some concern for him, unusual behavior for a vampire hunter. Although it was hard to decode his sometimes cryptic way of speaking, Selene had the impression he meant for this Buffy to clean up the mess if his adventure in subterfuge cause him to go off the rails. Banshee was in between contracts again; they could go to Naboo - that was where most of the Rift refugees seemed to end up sooner or later. It was a relatively peaceful planet, a good place for a crew flush from a run of successfully completed contracts to take shore leave. Hunting pirate ships always did pay well.
Then there was the group Lir was putting together to go to Coruscant to hunt down a former friend who had gone rogue in some mystic way. It seemed overkill. Selene knew she could handle just about any human out there, live, dead, undead, before lunch on just about any day. It was quite possible Lir didn't understand that; she would have to consider outing herself to someone else. Or not. Time would tell. Her little side trip would be a good excuse to send Peter out to shop for a fighter. He should probably take River with him to make sure he got one with a good soul. She would let River explain that to him. It would be fun to watch.