This choice: Shira is currently working as a captain of her own ship. • Go Back... Shira huffed for the umpteenth time since she arrived in orbit, her nostrils flaring. It was supposed to be a simple delivery job of some heavy farm machinery, but what the contract hadn’t mentioned was the destination was some fringe world mired in so much bureaucracy that any ships arriving tended to have to wait half a galactic standard day or more before even landing, and then there was the inspections, customs, and on and on. The Xaithan should have known something was up with how much was being paid for the job, but her unease was outweighed by her desire to want to eat this month as well as getting some repairs done to her ship – loosely translated as The Red Arrow – that some recent inspectors had been hounding her about, citing public safety hazards and other regulations. Shira knew exactly how much she could push her ship though, knowing it inside and out after personally restoring and rebuilding much of what a used to be a ship that was considered by many useless for even parts.
“Any change, yet?” Shira called out into the still and quiet bridge.
“No, captain, we are still being told to hold position,” a steady feminine voice said from the overhead speakers.
Shira still grinned slightly whenever she heard herself being called “captain”. It was technically true, and she often slipped it into conversation usually as a pick-up line, but it rang a bit hollow considering that it was often just her forming the entire crew on the Arrow, except for a few special cases that might require a specialist for containment of the cargo or something. The only exception was Shira’s personal AI, Nova, a simple but effective artificial intelligence that Shira had cobbled together out of spare parts. While Nova was many magnitudes less powerful than similar government or military AIs, she was perfectly capable of running the more mundane aspects of both the Arrow and Shira’s life: sensors, repeating hails, scheduling, and so on. The little AI also helped keep Shira sane on the long interstellar journeys, just as someone to talk to, even if she was just a somewhat intelligent computer system.
Shira shifted in her chair and huffed again; one arm propped her head up, leaning on an armrest, two more were keeping busy with a puzzle cube that she had picked up a bazaar on one of her stops recently, while the last was trying to sooth her stomach which continued to voice its displeasure with not being fed yet. Shira hailed from one of the Northern provinces of Xocha, specifically one that didn’t put quite as much focus on a female Xaithan’s weight compared to some of the other regions of her homeworld, but it still played a part. Shira had always been a misfit growing up though, so while she could easily be considered fat by the majority of species out in the galaxy, she was downright skeletal compared to the majority of her own species’ women. Her own mother was barely able to walk without assistance, and her younger sister (only by two years as she liked to remind anyone who would listen) looked to be well on her way to matching or beating their mother’s records. In the states where it was more of a requirement, young Xaithan women were often fattened nearly to if not past immobility by the time they were of marriageable age, and most did it with glee. Shira hadn’t quite taken to the prospect with the same zeal, wanting to explore the galaxy beyond and see strange new worlds and the people that inhabited them. Perhaps in time, she might consider settling down and letting her instincts take more control till she was a bloated ball of blubber, but for now she was content to pilot her ship throughout the galaxy.
Shira tossed the cube away in annoyance, mostly with the planetary travel authority rather than the puzzle cube which was proving spectacularly easy to the Xaithan, and watched the puzzle tumble slowly through the microgravity. A whirl of photons appeared beside her chair, and as it resolved, Nova appeared in her standard appearance of a small mote of light with some little fluttering wings.
“You can head back and get something to eat if you wish, captain. I will notify you if we are ever cleared to land.” Nova said in her soft tones, a slight chuckle at her little joke came as well.
“No, I would rather be here so we can get moving whenever or if we can,” Shira responded.
With an annoyed grunt, the Xaithan unclipped the harness holding her down and, with the tiniest of nudges, drifted to the forward viewport, stopping with the help of a slight touch of a hand to the deckhead above. The view outside was still what Shira had been seeing for the past while: ships of all sizes, ranging from smaller family-style planet skippers to massive cargo freighter ships that made the Arrow look like a single person ship in comparison (those giant ships would have to dock and offload at one of the orbital stations rather than landing), all orbiting a rather typical inhabited world below. Only a few ships had moved out of this high orbit holding pattern since she had arrived, though more than number that had been added in the same time.
Shira now turned her gaze to the ghostly reflection of herself in the glossy panel. She scowled a bit as she saw how close her clothes were getting to being ill fitting across her rotund frame; something else she would have to be purchasing soon. Two of her hands were put to use finger-combing the thick curls of black hair sprouting from her head, while a third itched the band of shorter softer hair going down her spine and out across the top of her muscular tail. Shira ended up getting a little lost in rubbing several of her hands across her soft and deep-blue scales to try and stimulate her blood flow to keep herself awake, that she almost missed the soft chiming notification of an incoming message.
“Shira, did you hear me? There is a hail coming in,” Nova announced, her holographic avatar zipping up to bob in front of Shira’s face.
“Yeah, I heard you. Put it through.”   indicates the next chapter needs to be written. |
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