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  • Personal Space Ch. 01

Personal Space Ch. 01

12

On my back on the floor, I felt the vibrations spring back to life. A few hours after embarking on your first flight, you get so used to the low hum of the engines that your mind filters it out... until it stops. In this cramped maintenance shaft, it seemed louder than ever.

I finished mounting the panel and let my arms fall to the side, relaxing into the mechanical massage. Newer ships don't have this noise anymore, the dampeners are now tuned well enough to pick up the slightest vibration. But I liked it. It told me that things were going to be okay, even with the systems as badly damaged as they were.

Artificial gravity cut out just as I turned over to move. You never realize how heavy your head is until suddenly, you don't have to support it anymore and bang it against the cover plates, which were luckily thin enough to give a little.

"Sorry, James!" came Lisa's voice from upstairs, which I could no longer tell from downstairs. I hoped she would hear my grumble, even though I was happy I wouldn't have to crawl the whole way back out of the tube.

Upon grabbing hold, I noticed my own eyes staring back at me in the distorted reflection of the panel. In the side light, my eyes looked even darker than usual, and I needed a shave. I decided that I liked it. Could be worse.

Upon launching myself gently down the tube, I pulled my bandana over my head, keeping wild hair from drifting into my face. Zero-g is an unsettling feeling at first, but once you get used to it, it makes navigating through the ship a smooth and effortless thing.

It wasn't much of a ship, but it was mine and I was proud of it. Maybe one day I would join the front line of exploration, but for now I was saving money by hauling things between solar systems. Things like the prototype machine in the cargo hold.

I remembered to check the load straps, hopefully the loss of gravity didn't bang the device around too much. I tried to remember if I had left any tools that might now be floating around the room. While I was there, I could have another look at the package, I had a few guesses as to what it actually did.

I grabbed a handlebar and made a sharp turn towards the cockpit, but as I passed the central hallways, I stopped myself. Lisa had crawled up the ladder -now sideways for me- and had stopped halfway to check the cables for damage. Her feet were towards me and the very sight pulled me right out of my thoughts.

I decided to take a small detour and pushed myself off ever so lightly. Gliding through the tube, I brushed my fingers along the walls to make slight adjustments to the flight path. The implants in my bones made them quite heavy, but when gliding this slowly, the softest touch could change a course.

Her feet passed my field of vision. I briefly wondered why she bothered with socks in those sneakers, poking out between the comfortable seal of her pants. The parts of her clothing were meant to compliment each other, but she threw that right out the window with socks. I couldn't imagine why she bothered with the expensive one-piece suits in the first place, though I wasn't complaining.

Lisa was a hard worker and her legs showed it, even when they weren't supporting her. A feeling of guilt crept into my stomach as I admired my employee's body drifting by, as if that was what I had hired her for.

Her age was honestly the only reason why she worked for me; Competent as she was, if she had been a few years older, I would have been working for her instead. I was happy to have found someone as driven and smart as Lisa, before she had a chance to pilot her own ship and make a career.

My dilemma faded quickly when her rump came into view. Suppressing a sigh, I traced her curves as they passed in front of me. Lisa was intelligent and competent, yes. Her suit was better quality than most things on this ship, yes.

But right now, all I saw was her gorgeous ass and the fabric hugging it tightly. The only thing that could beat my love for her backside, was my admiration for her work.

I let that thought linger as I followed the swell of her hips and curves of her back. She had broad shoulders, I noticed, but at this point my view was cut off by her brown ponytail, drifting in all directions and tickling my face. I had hoped to pass her stealthily, but I was afraid she would back up enough to notice my presence.

"Hi," I said matter-of-factly in her ear, and launched myself away from her startled flailing with a wide grin. Skillfully, I maneuvered myself towards the cockpit, deaf to the swearing behind me. We would be ready to resume course soon.

--

Lisa plopped down heavily in the co-pilot chair beside me, nearly spilling her tea. Booting the data screens, she set her cup down on the nearest horizontal surface, hidden right behind the tilt indicator. But I did notice, and reached through the hologram to set the cup down in a safer spot, giving her a stern look. She didn't seem to catch on.

"Life support is back online," she said, stating the obvious. She knew I liked that, redundancy makes a dangerous job a whole lot less dangerous.

-"So we may live another day," I grumbled, flipping through the menus of the starboard screen. "And return the favor to those damn Belgians who upgraded our battery grid." I literally punched the throttle.

Lisa looked at me with some concern. "There's no way they could have known, James. If anyone, it was my fault..."

She said more, but I wasn't listening. Instead, I wondered what it was about Lisa that sailed her right past my guard. When she spoke, I listened. And when she spoke the truth, I hated her for it.

I flicked the player and the music abruptly resumed where it had stopped when Lisa's "intelligent" tea cooker decided it didn't like the battery modifications and started a resonance feedback loop.

--

"Two hours," I shouted after Lisa as she walked away with a wave. This station was known for its shopping floors and though we were in a rush, Lisa's help saved me plenty of time to give some of it back to her, in the form of shore leave.

I had to pick up a few things of my own, which gave me a convenient excuse not to go with her. I treated myself with a few more seconds of ogling before turning on my heels.

I looked around as I strolled through the station, and hopped from one transport beam to the other. Very few people actually lived here, most were tourists who considered shopping at a space station a status symbol.

This was actually a science station once, a robotic guide had told me, repurposed into District S as we know it today. Quite well, I had to admit. The oversized clothing stores weren't my style but any place like this had its own back alleys, where the interesting little shops were, fixing, modifying and selling electronic and bionic trinkets, tolerated by the law.

It takes a special type to do my line of work. Facing agoraphobia is difficult, and anyone maintaining a ship has to get over it. Space suits have improved a lot over the years but they still feel claustrophobic, while at the same time, the space around you seems to want to suck you in. Without thrusters on your suit, all you had to do was let go, and before you knew it your ship would be just out of reach, and you would drift off, ever so slowly, into the void.

I stopped to look through a window, at the dozens of hand-held devices. While we are space grunts and proud of it, we are also nerds.

All the bravery in the world couldn't compensate for technical knowledge, when it comes to difficult descents or slingshot maneuvers, where numbers are your friends and equations your tools. This was the part that Lisa excelled in more than anything, though she didn't mind doing some heavy lifting, either.

I caught myself daydreaming of her doing exactly that, and snapped back to a stubby man looking at me from inside the shop. I entered, but took my time.

What was it about Lisa that was getting under my skin? She looked pretty, but so did my last assistant and long story short, that one taught me not to judge a book by its cover. Not in this line of work. But Lisa...

"What do you want?" To the point, I like that. I looked into his beady eyes and gave a curt nod.

-"An RF scanner, going below 118 megahertz." He stared a moment longer before mimicking my nod and turning his sweaty self away from me.

--

I was preparing for launch when Lisa walked in. "What do you think?" I turned my chair around.

She was wearing pretty much the same skin-tight suit as before, but it seemed a thicker material. It hid the curve of her smallish breasts somewhat, while the black and gray pattern accentuated her waist in all the right ways. The color clashed a little with her chestnut hair, which I noticed wasn't tied back in a ponytail as usual.

She looked like a pixie, if a pixie lifted weights on a daily basis. She struck me as gorgeous and I was about to tell her, but I caught myself and nodded approvingly, as if to compliment her on a choice of clothing that didn't snag in maintenance tunnels.

It stayed quiet for a moment as I went back to my checklist, and secretly I hoped I hadn't insulted her.

"Don't you like it?"

It seemed like I had.

-"It looks good on you," I admitted, after looking a second time.

-"I should hope so." She grinned, obviously pleased with my lukewarm reaction. "I went a little over my budget."

I gestured at her. "I don't see why..." She looked good in anything, but I couldn't bring myself to say it. If we wanted to make this work, I had to act professional.

Being in a space ship together for weeks tends to have a desert island-effect on people, and by the time the job is finished they're stuck in a very complicated situation. I had had to repeat that mantra a few times that month.

"It's hardly different from the other two that you have."

She frowned. Great.

"You spent a small fortune on those seats. They're hardly-" I stopped her with a raised hand.

-"I'll have you know, these are vintage CroTex covers, from earthen-"

-"Horses. Yes, I know." She didn't usually cut me off like that. "And if it wasn't bad enough that the company uses sentient animals in their products, they are also responsible for a small genocide on a developing planet."

-"They made the best seats in the history of seats, though," I finished my own story with a mumble. I shrugged and looked to my side, suddenly distracted by the last few items on the checklist.

We flew in silence for a good hour. I didn't mind, there's nothing like the passing of planets when exiting a system and I like to enjoy it in peace. Once we escaped the heliosphere however, I activated the autopilot and leaned forward to put on some music.

"What did you name your ship?" Lisa spoke up and my hand froze in mid-air. She spun and stood up, probably to go make herself a cup of tea.

I watched her hips as she moved away, taking my sweet time. "Why do you want to know?" Her routine for making tea was well-practiced by now. She offered, but I refused.

Slowly, she walked up to me. She was being unusually informal with me, nipping her cup as she entered my comfort zone. I made sure my face didn't reveal how intimidated I was as I squinted up at her.

"Just disappointed that after 10 months working together, you still haven't introduced me properly."

I hesitated. "Lisa, meet Theseus. Theseus, Lisa." Gesturing back and forth, I scanned her face for a reaction, but she hid herself behind her cup.

-"Why Theseus?"

She knew I wouldn't give my pride and joy any old name. I couldn't help but feel disappointed that she couldn't figure it out, though.

-"Theseus' ship is a paradox. He left with one ship and returned with another, but he claimed it was the same one. Except, he had been repairing and upgrading it so extensively, that no part of it was the same anymore. So then, was it still the same ship?"

She rolled her eyes and shook her head, but I caught her smile. "You're quite handsome for a geek," she said with a mocking tone.

That surprised me. Was she flirting?

"So why did I become part of the ship?"

When you sit in a tin can together for days on end, without so much as a rotating sun to change the scenery, conversation tends to slow to a crawl. I like that actually, it gives me time to think. So this time, my quick response was painfully obvious.

"I know a good co-pilot when I see one."

She nodded and after a few more seconds, walked away, leaving me to wonder what that was all about.

--

I like my day cycles nice and long, up to 20 hours followed by 10 hours of sleep, though I can halve the latter without ill effects other than a serious case of grumpiness in the morning.

I had separated the sleeping quarters ever since my first female co-pilot, who I had hired as a favor to her father. I thought she at least deserved a little place to call her own in this vast emptiness, regardless if she would end up using it much.

It cost me quite some effort to get rid of the built-in bunk bed on my side, and my king-sized bed was now taking up most of the floor. There's nothing like flopping down spread-eagled at the end of a long day, and fall asleep with your boots on.

I always set up enough alarms so that I'm sure to get a rude awakening if so much as a photon hits the hull (figuratively of course), but until then, the universe can go screw itself.

It was nothing like a sensor alarm that woke me up that night, though. It was my name, whispered in the doorway. It startled me nonetheless.

"Lights ten," I grumbled, and with a smooth 4-second S-curve, the lights faded in and there in the soft glow was Lisa, beautiful as ever. I'm a stomach sleeper, and once I was sure the ship wasn't on fire, put my head back down and closed my eyes.

"Where you sleeping?" She whispered as if she was afraid to wake her parents.

-"No, I was skydiving." She didn't laugh. Alright. She wasn't leaving, either. "What."

-"I couldn't sleep." No kidding, she only sleeps 6 hours a night, the freak of nature. She usually keeps herself busy in silence, though.

As her words sunk in, they brought a sense of doom. This was going to be difficult. Suddenly, I became aware that I was in my underwear, on top of the sheets. Quite like how I had found her in the maintenance shaft, only without clothes on. I had little time to wonder how long she might have been standing there.

"I could use some company." Quickly, she added, "I don't mind if you sleep. It just got lonely in front."

I recognized the symptoms of agoraphobia. They start with a feeling of dread, and if you don't fight it, end in panic attacks. The stages in between were not much fun, either. I couldn't do that to her. Could I?

"Sure."

I grabbed the blanket from the foot end of the bed as she came closer, and just caught her reaching for the zip of that suit she just bought a week ago before I rolled back into the same position as before.

Oh God. She was undressing. She had bothered to put on underwear even though her suit made it obsolete, telling me she had planned for it to go this way.

She crawled in and I tossed the blanket over her. "Much nicer than my bunk," she noticed, and got a grunt in return.

I didn't know where to put myself as she snuggled in close. It wasn't cold in the room at all but she seemed to think that it was, pressing herself against me. I put my arm over her and a small shove later, I was pretty much spooning her, my arm awkwardly over the blanket.

I couldn't help but enjoy the touch. It had been so long since I had felt skin pressed against mine, and even then, it was usually paid for. I gently pressed my face into her neck, closed my eyes, and tried to sleep, strongly aware of my heartbeat in my throat.

Lured into reality by her presence, I slept in short bursts. As promised, she stayed awake. I caught her looking when I opened an eye. This was not at all the Lisa I was used to seeing. I looked at her for a moment longer, hoping to find some reason why. Instead, she reached forward and brushed my hair from my face. It was the softest touch I had ever felt.

My whole body reacted, I couldn't keep my eyes open and a shiver ran through me. The sensation served as a wake-up call, literally and figuratively. I was in bed with my co-pilot, doing things I would regret.

"Time to get up," I whispered, well aware that it wasn't. She just nodded her head a little, and after another stroke, rolled out of bed. "Lights five," I sighed, so she could find her clothes.

--

I threw the scanner aside and yawned again. What was I thinking, an unpowered device wouldn't emit radio waves. But then why is it interrupting the aft scanner?

The client had specifically asked not to remove the safety brackets, but I was tempted after spending good money on trying to figure out what it was without damaging it. I walked around it again, but still found it to be little more than a life-sized gray metal box with a screen and a blunt protrusion on one side.

I looked up and saw Lisa come in. I was running out of excuses to stay out of the living area anyway, so I didn't mind her joining me. I had decided to leave last night's events for what they were, and it seemed that she had done the same.

Lisa picked up the RF scanner and looked at the readings. "Do you mind?" She knew I wouldn't, changing settings long before I could give her permission.

"It's dead," I said, noticing that she was in the wrong menu. I didn't want to interrupt her though, she was smart enough to figure it out.

"I was guessing it would emit some kind of radiation to cause the interference we saw, but there's nothing on the whole spectrum," I continued, pointing. "That could be an antenna though. Or a sensor. It's big enough for..." Lisa was not even facing the right way, as if to scan the empty space in the cargo hold.

-"Mm hm." She pretended to listen, swaying from side to side strangely, fixated to the screen. "Actually, it isn't sending out radiation of its own, it's bending ours..."

She took out her multitool and tossed it casually at the machine. It clanged against the protrusion and stayed there. Lisa's grin revealed her pride. "It's magnetic. The alloys of the hull are not affected, but electrons are. It's a small but incredibly powerful field."

She went over to remove her tool with some difficulty. "If this thing was turned on, your precious karabiner would have ripped your clothes right off you."

I glanced down confusedly. Lisa never missed an opportunity to mock my karabiner on a retractable leash, hanging from my belt. In case of a hull breach, it was to keep me from being sucked out into space. I had never needed it but you never know.

I thought about what she said, and gave her a little applause. "You never cease to amaze me, partner. Can you also tell me what it's for?"

We agreed that it was definitely a sensor, probably even a full array. It was far stronger than anything we had ever seen though, suggesting that it was used to monitor phenomena of epic proportions. As to the nature of those, her guess was as good as mine.

After spending an hour or two coming up with crazy ideas, she came to sit next to me on a crate. I glanced over and saw her serious expression, and decided against joking about the scratch her tool left on the device. Instead, I stared in front of me.

"This is my last job for you, James," came her voice. It seemed to echo into space. "I got a deal on a ship."

I knew I had grown attached to her, but I had never expected to feel so devastated by the news. I swallowed my words, twice, and paused to let it sink in. "Really. What kind?"

-"It's an S-class, a new type called the Narwhal."

She didn't have to explain further. The Narwhal was a scout, designed for exploration and reconnaissance. I couldn't think of a better ship for her.

12
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