RavensDagger

  Chapter Forty-Three - Spacekward

  Spacekward.

  It was a term that had appeared during the early cultural zeitgeist of space exploration and travel, and while it had never peed the more serious academic discussion and was generally side-stepped in favour of more officious terminology by more serious people, the expressioed anyway.

  It existed to represent the awkward feeling uo spacefarers stu a tin , hurtling through space while pletely uo escape the presence of someohey had just itted some social faux-pas with.

  It was the whispered expression that two crewmates would shoot at each other when the married first mate was caught sleeping with the navigator. It was actally admitting to a co-worker that yes, their body odour was noticeable, a having to work o them for the nine months.

  That's what the Sappho was experieng at the moment, and Ivil wasn't enjoying it.

  She was used to a certain level of... perhaps ostracization wasn't the right word for it, but it felt close to that. People frequently avoided her, perhaps because she had a well-earned reputation for disassembling annoying people into their stituent atoms and spreading their remains across a body of space whose area was best calcuted in astronomical units.

  The day after her fession, the Sappho was supposed to meet up with the Held Together. The freighter was in dire need of her meic back, but the exge wouldn't be possible. More importantly, the ship was running out of fuel.

  The captain had filled up on enough fuel to make it from Ceres to Callisto and for additional manoeuvres. That didn't include a detour to a pirate station and the subsequent hard-burn escape from there.

  Bringing more fuel to begin with would have been smarter, but it wasn't airely unove. For a spaceship, mass was everything, and fuel was both dense and heavy. It made se just what was needed for a trip. Every added litre of fuel meant that more fuel would have to be spent to move that extra litre.

  The Sappho had full bunkers when they left, and now she still had nearly eighty pert of her fuel left. Transferring that from the Sappho to the Held Together took half of a day. It required that Twenty-Six extend the ship's fuel li, then override its safeties so that it would vent the liquid fuel out into space.

  Oher end, after man so that both ships were almost toug, Sonic Spectre brought out the Held Together's fuel line and with a bination of cores from both the Tech-Maid and Ivil, they mao syphon fuel out of empty spad into the Held Together's tanks.

  It was a stupidly dangerous and risky move, but not ohat was entirely unheard of.

  Ships ran out of fuel sometimes, and uerrestrial car, a ship in motion and out of fuel wouldn't just stop and sit there, it would keep on moving forever, or until it rammed into something.

  There were ships across the sor system desigo fly fast and hard and carry enough fuel to refill the tanks of wayward vessels. Then the pilots of these refiller ships would send in an invoice with so many zeroes on it that some captains had aneurysms on the spot.

  All that to say that while it was a difficult trick to pull off, it wasirely unventional. There were overrides and systems io aodate for an in-motion refuelling, even for a ship as old as the Held Together.

  Ohat was dohey adjusted their flight. The hard and quick burn away from their piratical friends hadn't been aimed all that accurately, and so they o make adjustments on the fly.

  By the end of the day, a mentally exhausted Ivil returo the captain's and id down on its bed, fully clothed. She didn't need sleep, of course. She had some three dozen cores that all worked in different ways to prevent her from needing to sleep, and the exhaustion she felt at the moment was more... emotional than purely mental.

  She had cores that kept her mind sharp as well. They were necessary, actually. It was all well and good to have reflex enhancers, time ditors, and a dozen abilities that let ohink faster, but if a core user couldn't keep focused, then all of the thinking speed in the world wouldn't matter for much.

  Right now, however, she was feeling the kind of tired that no core could fix.

  Actually, that wasn't true. She was aware of and had once had access to some cores that could fix emotions. Some of them pyed on the user's mental state, allowing them tute their own feelings, and others were empowered by certaiional cues. She'd once discovered a core that made a person's eyes light up when they were happy, ahat allowed the proje of heat when angered.

  She didn't want anything to do with those. They were only a step away from the kinds of cores that turned someoo a sociopath, into someone who was more mae than man, and while that might be the end-goal for some, she didn't desire power to the detriment of sanity.

  It was why she was on her current quest.

  After a decade of rexing herself by watg her favourite soaps and reading raunchy romanovels, Ivil realized that she wanted what she was reading. It wasn't a desire borne of lust--irely, nor was it just some whim.

  Ivil had spoken to her therapist about this at length. She wao experienpanionship and before that, romance. But failing at that would be utterly uable. Not only would it be somewhat frustrating, it would also lose her precious time, and perhaps jeopardise her reputation.

  Her therapist had proposed that she buy a dog.

  She had proposed a long walk out of a short airlock.

  Her therapist had, at that moment, crossed out the suggestio a cat--without bringing it up.

  The therapist rofessional, however, and had easily shifted tracks. First, they tried dating apps. Ivil found these entirely insuffit. She had seen a few iing prospects, of course, but after sending MINT in to ihese uhe guise of national security threats, she found all of them to be liars or entirely unsuitable, no matter how suggestive their profile pictures.

  She couldn't believe hoeople simply lied on their profiles. How could these people expect to start a retionship if they were ht lying from the start?

  So, she had started looking elsewhere. The thought of visiting a pleasure world like Phobos had crossed her mind, but she wasn't looking for sex, she was looking for love. There were plenty of people in the Martian navy who were somewhat iing as well. Many of the women and some of the men were rather attractive. The navy had strict standards for physical fitness, after all, and it was filled with bright-eyed young hopefuls but... well, that would be dating a coworker, and a subordi that.

  Not to mention, over a decade of heavy propaganda led most of them to be rightly terrified of her.

  There were a few that were brave enough to flirt with her. She'd been asked to dance or twi the rare occasions where she attehat sort of political event. But more often than not the flirter was just trying to climb the ranks. It wasn't love, it was sex with power pys.

  Ivil didn't want sex... well, okay, she did, but that was easy to procure. She wanted a life partner, someoo grow old with, someone who would be tender and kind to her, that she could bicker with, that she could dote on.

  Ivil kicked her legs up and down on her bed, safe in the knowledge that no one would ever know that she, a perfectly grown woman, was throwing the equivalent of a tantrum.

  The seer had tricked her!

  Why did she have to find so many potential lovers here? Why not just the one?

  But then, the choices were good! Twenty-Six was the cutest little genius. Ivil wao pinch her freckled cheeks and give her aire shipyard.

  Missy was dark and daring, with a dangerous, sexy past, and the way she wore that jumpsuit had Ivil thinking uhings. She was the kind of woman that would ence Ivil to do some truly dangerous things, but they'd be fun!

  Aurora was a calm, cool beauty, the sort of princess-like woman that would be the star of any soap, only she was real. Shrewd, too, with a whip-fast mind and the sort of ambition that would lead her to taking over the entire sor system if given the ce.

  Ivil grumped into her pillow.

  At least, on the bright side, she only had to pick between three cuties.

  ***

  RavensDagger

  We're back, baby~ Some of my stories are on TopWebFi!-amon Bun-Stray Cat Strut-Lever A-Dead Tired-Heart of Dorkness-SpeddonVoting makes Broccoli smile!

  The following books are avaible as paperbacks (and as Ebooks) on Amazon. Oh, and there’s like, a billion audiobooks of my stuff now!

  (The images are links!)

  All proceeds go to funding my addi to buying art paying for food, rent, and other ies!

  Thank you so much for all your support everyone! And thank you extra hard for allowio do this for a living; I’ll do my best to keep you eained!