Hard Luck Hermit

“Ending your stay already?”

“Yeah, as much as we love paying ten times as much as usual for food and beer, I think it’s time we hauled out,” Tooley said. “Give me my final bill and get me the fuck out of here.”

The novelty of looking at pretty kites and listening to bells had entirely worn off after a few days. They were also getting pretty sick of having days. As frequent space-travelers, they were used to living on their own schedule, independent of things like sunsets and sunrises. Between that, the crowds, and the high cost of everything, the crew had agreed it was time to take a vacation from their vacation. The girl at the desk signed them out, gave them one more round of complimentary juice, and opened up the hangar so they could take off. Tooley did not take off right away, on account of the sticker shock.

“Ugh, bite my neck, a while back that would’ve been enough money to get me through two solars,” Tooley said, as she looked at her recent transactions. “How the fuck did I spend that much money in five days?”

“That’s the point of having money, isn’t it?” Corey said. “Got to spend it to enjoy it.”

“I don’t mind the booze or the souvenirs or whatever, but this was just the fucking docking fee,” Tooley said. “How does it cost this much just to park?”

“You’re going to have to take that up with capitalism,” Corey said.

“Damn it, capitalism,” Tooley mumbled. She cursed the dominant universal economic system and then sat down in her pilot seat. “Alright, watch carefully. I’m going to try and do this slow so you can actually see shit.”

Even going slowly, Tooley’s hands still had to dart across the controls. In a very short timeframe, she had to align their flight path with their assigned exit route, accelerate the Wanderer to escape velocity (after doing the calculations of ship weight versus local gravity), and then make small adjustments to their speed and heading to accommodate changes in atmospheric density as they ascended. Only once they had breached the exosphere and began a comfortable drift through zero-gravity did her hands stop dancing across the various consoles and controls in front of her.

“You get anything out of that?”

“Not really, no,” Corey said.

“I took like twice as long as usual!”

“Well your ‘usual’ is so damn fast that even twice as slow is hard to keep up with,” Corey said. “If I’m going to learn how to fly, I think I might need a normal teacher eventually.”

“I’ll figure it out,” Tooley said. She set their course to a stable orbit around a gas giant in the same solar system as the planet they’d just left and then stepped away from the controls. “Alright, we are officially spaceborn once again, what’s our next move?”

She stepped into the common room and found Farsus was the only one there, reading a book about local planetary history he had purchased back at the festival.

“Where’d the other two idiots go?”

“Kamak was hungover, and Doprel was simply tired,” Farsus said. “I imagine they have both gone to sleep.”

“Surprised Kamak didn’t mouth off about where he wanted to go first.”

“He was very hungover,” Farsus said, with heavy emphasis on “very”.

“Makes sense,” Tooley said. Kamak had been stupidly quiet and moody the entire vacation, so Tooley found his state of mind hard to notice, but he had been leaning on Doprel more than usual. “Ugh. I don’t want to stay in this fucking nowhere star system too long, but I don’t want them whining about our heading later.”

“When in doubt, head for Centerpoint,” Farsus said. “It is still the center of the universe, despite someone’s best efforts.”

“True enough,” Tooley said. She turned back to the cockpit and headed for her seat. “Hey Corvash, turn our work contacts back on and look up some shit to do on Centerpoint.”

“Way ahead of you,” Corey said. While they had unanimously agreed to shut off all non-emergency contacts during their vacation, Corey had still been curious to see what messages they were receiving. Turning on his tablet and checking their messages had been one of the first things he’d done after they took off.

“Anything interesting?”

“Not really, same old same old,” Corey said. “Bunch of rich fucks who want to use us as set dressings, ceremony invites, and...do you still like doing interviews?”

“Depends on how much they’re paying me to get interviewed,” Tooley said. She had like all the attention at first, but she could only answer the same questions so many times. Everybody kept asking her about the secret of lightspeed maneuvering, as if Tooley had some kind of hidden lever she was pulling to make it possible. She was just really, really, really good at flying.

“Pretty good,” Corey said, doing a quick check of the pay offer. “Though it’s some kind of ‘inspiring women’ event run by Centerpoint’s Gender Equality group. I don’t know if you’re into that sort of thing.”

“What info-network is it on?”

“Uhh...A5-37.”

“We’re doing it,” Tooley said, without a moment’s hesitation. “That network goes to Turitha. It’ll make the Structuralist’s so fucking mad.”

Tooley had finished punching in the coordinates to Centerpoint before Corey even finished putting away his datapad.

“Are you sure you want to piss them off again? That comes with a non-zero risk of us getting shot at.”

Though they had technically helped save the universe in the battle against the Horuk, the Structuralist’s had done so only to save their own asses, and had gotten right back to their usual routine of intense xenophobia and misogyny right afterwards. Tooley, as a Sturit who was both a woman and not racist, ranked very high on their shit list, and she got higher on that list every time she mocked the Structuralist regime. They had even sent an assassin after the crew a few months after the battle, though Kamak had spotted the assassin and blown his head off before he’d so much as pulled a gun. Corey would still prefer to avoid provoking more assassination attempts, though. They might get a competent one eventually.

“You’re not really living unless you’re making assholes mad, Corvash,” Tooley said. “We’re doing the interview.”

“Fine,” Corey said. He got out of his seat as the ship accelerated into FTL. “Farsus, we better check all the guns.”

“Already underway,” Farsus shouted back.

“What, you hear that whole conversation?”

“No, I am simply a responsible gun owner,” Farsus said. “All equipment should be regularly maintained, especially equipment that keeps us alive.”

“Well let’s do it especially good this time.”