(Note #1: All comments and constructive criticisms are welcome and appreciated.

Note #2: The art in this chapter was provided by Steve Rayner (images 1 – 3) and Faith Desky  (Image 4).

Note #3: And finally, thanks to volunteer Literotica editor TheNyxianLily for her help with editing.)

The trip to Toron took six days, not the weeks Calley had expected. They were able to reach the system in one Hi-Vel jump instead of two, so they saved a lot of time not having to wait until the engines were recharged. Calley could have been worried that she’d get less starcred than originally expected, but after the first few days of their trip, her shipmates were already talking about her helping with the maintenance once they’d landed. It seemed like they were planning on keeping her around for a while.

She was happy not to worry about the next job for the time being, and she discovered more benefits to her current situation. It turned out the captain liked to cook, so she never had to. The meals weren’t fancy, but they were hot, satisfying and much better than what she was used to. She made sure to thank Sal after every one. He seemed genuinely pleased with her thanks.

Her fears of having part of her salary withheld for unexpected expenses turned out to be unjustified. At the end of each run, the captain loaded the standard guild rate into her finance account. After a few runs, Calley found herself sitting on a decent amount of starcred. Had she been inclined, she could have left the ship on a decent port and lived off her savings long enough to search for a different posting. But she doubted she’d find as good a fit with better employers so she stuck around the Ravenfang and neither Captain Sal nor his beautiful companion seemed to mind one bit.

She helped Alezanna with the ship maintenance, especially the comm arrays. They needed re-tuning after every trip through an atmosphere, so Calley was fiddling with them more often than not. After the first few runs, the Bellixan just let her work on them unsupervised, assured that the young woman knew what she was doing.

It was on the third trip, delivering four hundred Wolsa birds to a farming collective in the Risarius system, that Calley made another amusing discovery about the captain. She needed to inoculate her shipmates against an outbreak of Rubeola that had broken out at their destination. She found them both in the cockpit with Alezanna in the pilot’s station and the captain scanning the comm channels at the starboard station. After giving the Bellixan her shot, she asked the captain to turn to her, but all he did was grunt as a response.

“He can’t listen to you right now,” the older woman explained. “He’s looking for our next job. He gets so laser-focused on it that nothing else in the universe exists anymore. Just give him the shot. He won’t care.”

Calley rolled up his shirt’s sleeve and inserted the needle into his shoulder to give him the shot. If he noticed it, he gave no sign.

“He’s really concentrating, isn’t he?” she observed.

“Nothing short of a ship alarm will distract him,” Alezanna agreed. She addressed him and said “Captain, there’s a space dragon off to starboard.”

Without looking up, Sal grunted.

“You try one,” she invited Calley.

“Captain,” Calley began, “pirates have boarded the ship and are stealing the cargo.”

All she got in response was another grunt.

“Captain,” Alezanna said, “Calley and I are going to get undressed and make love in the galley, if that’s all right.”

He let out another grunt.

She turned back to Calley and said, “If that one didn’t snap him out of it, nothing will.”

“Why the galley?”

“Because we eat there, so it’s disgusting.”

Calley burst out laughing, and her shipmate joined in. The captain, meanwhile, continued what he was doing unawares.

The next time she saw the captain in such a state was a few days later. They were on another run and it was her turn on watch. Someone was always required to be in the cockpit when the ship was underway in case the Ravenfang’s computer should detect something and cut the Hi-Vel engines. But aside from sit there, there really wasn’t anything specific you were required to do. Calley had already read up on their destination and taken all the necessary medical precautions called for. So she had spent most of her watch playing computer games and catching up on her favourite holo-vid series. Every now and again, to amuse herself, she would say something outlandish to the captain since he wasn’t paying attention.

On a whim, Calley got out of her seat and stood to his side. She unzipped her jumpsuit and pulled it open, exposing her chest. “Captain,” she asked him, “are my breasts getting bigger?”

She got the standard grunt in response. However, she hadn’t expected Alezanna to appear at the very next instant and take in the scene. Calley was frozen in embarrassment while her shipmate started laughing.

“If you can see your face right now,” the Bellixan said. “It’s priceless. Gods Calley, please tell me this isn’t the first time you’ve let a man see them.”

A red-faced (well, in her case, more like a shade of orange) Calley zipped up her jumpsuit and nodded her head while avoiding her older shipmate’s gaze.

“Now that is a tragedy,” the raven-hared beauty said as she sat down in the port station, leaving Calley standing. “Such a lovely sight wasted on someone who couldn’t appreciate it.” Turning serious, she asked her companion, “Has there really never been anyone?”

Calley felt a little sad as she answered, “No, no one. I moved around a lot. And when I served on a ship for a while, my crewmates were always older so I wasn’t interested. Most of the time they kept their distance.”

“And those that didn’t got the power conduit. Well, at least you kept your honour. These days, that’s quite an achievement for a girl your age.”

“Thanks, but sometimes it doesn’t feel like something to brag about.”

“Don’t be so hard on yourself, Calley. There’s nothing wrong with taking your time. On Bellixa, because of how slow we age, we’re only considered adults at 30. The day after my 30th birthday, I lost my virginity. Neither he nor I had any clue what to do, so it wasn’t the most enjoyable experience.”

“Were you in love with him?”

“Gods no!” the older woman replied with a chuckle. “We barely knew each other. I just decided I wanted to know what sex was like. And if seducing a politician’s son embarrassed my parents, so much the better. Unfortunately, the scandal it caused was so minor they barely bothered to ground me. Maybe I should have set my sights on his father instead.”

“You really disliked your family enough to do that?” Calley asked in disbelief.

“I did. In hindsight, I see it was less them and more Bellixan society as a whole. If you’re lowborn, you have more freedom to make choices about your life. But for the highborn like me, it’s a life of rules, family honour, arranged marriages and constant intrigues. I wanted no part of it. I hated it, I hated my place in it and I hated my family for going along with it. I couldn’t take my anger out on society in general so I concentrated on my parents. I tried to find something I could do that would make them send me away so I’d be free to live my own life. But no matter what I did, they never let me go. So finally, I ran away.”

“Did your family come after you?”

“I was chased, yes. For quite a while I was much like you, moving from place to place. But in my case, I was keeping ahead of bounty hunters. And I was also discovering all the galaxy had to offer, so maybe I would have been rootless anyway. What was important to me was that I was finally making the decisions in my life. So overall, I was happy most of the time. And if I did some things that I wasn’t proud of, well, at least they kept me free. I got rather good at justifying some terrible things. Looking back on it now…”

Alezanna let the statement hang in the air and then shook her head. “That’s enough reminiscing for now. I’ll take over the watch. Get some sleep. I’ll need you to help me calibrate the Lo-Vel engines later.”

As Calley was about to leave the cockpit, her crewmate added, “Oh, and Calley? In case you’re wondering, a blowjob will shake the captain out of his trance. So don’t try that one unless you’re willing to live with the consequences.”

Calley wondered if the Bellixan was warning her off her man, but the smile she gave her younger shipmate seemed to indicate otherwise. “I won’t ask how you know that.” Calley said.

“Isn’t it obvious?” the dark-haired woman asked with a smirk.

Calley went to her stateroom and turned in, thinking about her conversation with her crewmate. Every time she found out something about her, it always seemed to lead to more questions. She was definitely an interesting lady.

One thing that wasn’t in question, however, was that she and the captain were in love. It was obvious if you spent more than a few minutes with them. Their manner towards each other was familiar, like a couple of friends who had known each other and been bickering all their lives. But whenever they were close to one another, it seemed like their hands always found themselves drawn to the other’s body. A quick caress of an arm or a hip. Sometimes the grope of a buttock. They seemed to do it automatically. Calley didn’t think they were even aware of it most of the time. If they were, they didn’t seem embarrassed about it in the slightest. Nor was the Bellixan shy about getting Calley to keep contraceptives stocked in the medical supplies.

She could understand that captain’s attraction. On her worst day, Alezanna could turn heads wherever she went. On the ship, she wore tight outfits that wouldn’t get in her way when doing maintenance. They did little to hide her figure. It was only when the ship was docked that she bothered to really dress up. So the captain was always treated to a beautiful vision of his lover. It was clear that, however long the two had been together, it hadn’t been long enough for him to stop enjoying the view.

The captain’s style of dress, on the other hand, was very casual. While in space, he favoured a series of loose robes tied with sashes. If she hadn’t been around, Calley assumed he’d have left them untied if he bothered to wear them at all. On planets, he’d go out wearing plain pants and one of a collection of garish shirts. Said excursions usually preceded by Alezanna asking him, “Are you really going out dressed like that?” Once, perhaps because Calley was within earshot, he explained his choice of dress.

“If I go out looking as elegant as you do, my dear, then the people I buy from would think that I have starcred to burn and hike up their prices accordingly. And when I’m selling something, they’d assume that I’m well-off enough that I won’t be offended when they give me a lowball offer. No, when making a deal, it’s always best to look poor, but not desperate. That’s why I never bring you ladies with me when negotiating. As distracting as you are, the traders would figure I must have something going for me to have two lovely ladies like you at my side. And since I’m not that good-looking, they’d assume it was starcred. That, or one monster of a penis.”

Calley knew that while the captain had complimented both of them, it was really Alezanna he was talking about. She was the one who went out dressed elegantly. Calley doubted the Bellixan could have passed unnoticed even if she tried. Not that she seemed inclined to do so. The Gynapsi secretly wondered if her beautiful shipmate looked forward to leaving the ship in order to show off her exquisite wardrobe. Even on mundane trips to buy provisions or hunt down rare engine parts, Alezanna dressed like she was attending a high-class gala.

But the captain’s point about her presence sending the wrong message in trade talks seemed valid to Calley. Captain Collondo, as personable as he might seem, was absolutely cutthroat when it came to negotiation. On one run, Calley overheard him hammering out a deal to transport and sell betorite gas to a mining colony on Tarssus. She‘d never heard so much swearing in her life. For him, every microcred was something worth fighting for. And if that struggle turned out to be to the death, well, so be it. Things got so heated between the captain and the mining chief that the latter threatened to shoot the crew on sight and the captain threatened to strafe the mining camp. But by the end of the communication, both sides seemed satisfied and wished the other well.

After he turned off the comms. Sal turned to find Calley staring at him, wide-eyed. He smiled at her and said, “Business is war, Calley. Don’t let anybody ever tell you different.”

“I’m glad you’re on my side then,” she said. “But for a man who says he doesn’t like to get shot at, you sure didn’t seem afraid to push that guy to the brink.”

“Well, both parties in that discussion might be a wee bit guilty of exaggeration here and there. But he’s a miner, and they work hard. They’re not pushovers when it comes to negotiation. They can’t afford to be. And in the transport business, we can’t afford it either. He understood that. There’s no hard feelings between those miners and us. Still, maybe stay close to me with that carbine of yours when we unload the gas.”

Calley thought he said it in jest, but she wasn’t sure. The captain had a flippant manner that could be very disarming but kept his true motives hidden sometimes.

As driven as he was to make as big a profit when it came to cargo, he did seem to have a soft spot when it came to passengers. Six sub-cycles into Calley’s tenure on the Ravenfang, the ship was hired to take a family of Ravonites on a religious pilgrimage to Ravona. They were nice enough, but Calley doubted they had two credit units to rub together between the lot of them. Alezanna had expressed similar doubts when the captain had announced the charter to his shipmates.

“There’s no way we’re turning a profit running that lot to where they’re going,” she told Collondo.

“Actually, they paid three thousand up front. Now that may not sound like much…” he started to explain before the Bellixan interrupted him.

“Because it isn’t. Three thousand will barely cover the cost of getting there before we factor in feeding them.”

“We don’t feed them. They can’t eat anything but those wafers of theirs until they finish their pilgrimage. And since the buyer of the plastex we hauled here got herself arrested before she could take it off our hands, I had to find another buyer. Nobody around here wants it, and the closest buyer I could find happens to be on Ravona, so we have to head there anyway. Which makes that three thousand a nice little extra profit.”

“And I suppose if I were to look for a buyer on a planet full of construction projects like this, I wouldn’t find any either,” Alezanna stated before she threw in the towel. “Fine. But if any of them try to convert me to their religion, I’ll throw them all out the airlock.”

A little later, while she was helping the older woman replace some defective power cables, Calley asked her, “Is it really a bad idea to run that family to Ravona?”

“I suppose not,” Alezanna conceded. “This is just something Sal does every now and again. He’ll meet somebody with a hard-luck story and suddenly we’re taking on passengers. Always on the cheap. I guess not every run can pay off like a gilsa mine, but I just wish he’d at least try to make these charters worth our time a little bit more. Still, I can’t ask him not to show a little charity now and again. If he didn’t have a soft spot for the unfortunate, I’d have never ended up on his ship.”

Seeing an opportunity to find out more about her shipmate’s interesting past, the younger woman asked, “So you were a hard-luck charter too?”

“Not a charter, but definitely down on my luck. I’d been running a bar that had gone belly-up and racked up quite a few debts doing it. One of the men who came to collect fancied himself a mobster and tried to strong-arm me. But I could tell he liked looking at me so I cozied up to him. I figured having a criminal on my arm would keep the other lupines at bay for a while. It worked, but instead of a syndicate boss, all Feyro turned out to be was a low-level errand boy with a taste for chems. The only reason his bosses tolerated him was because they liked having me around and I could keep their leader’s classic gravmobile running. Beautiful vehicle that was. Zephyr-29, cherry red exterior, white detailing, back fins like a Nespartian razorbeast. Pain in the arse to maintain but Gods, what a ride!”

“Sounds like you liked it more than you liked your boyfriend. Why didn’t you just seduce one of the higher-ups?”

“The thought crossed my mind,” Alezanna admitted. “And they certainly had an interest. But that world, Calley, it’s too much for me. I’m no angel, girl. If you threaten me, I’ll do whatever it takes to make sure you can’t harm me. But hurting people is all those people do. Trading in slaves, dealing chems, running rackets and all that. It’s an industry of misery and I didn’t want a bigger part of it. No, I was looking for a way out.”

“So what happened?”

“Since the syndicate head had that classic gravmobile, some of his lieutenants started getting some of their own as a mark of status. I worked on all of those and this made me need parts that were old and hard-to-find. Hard-to-find means expensive and this is where Captain Sal Collondo makes his entrance.”

“As he does when there’s a profit to be made.”

“Precisely. He delivered a load of parts I’d ordered and that’s how we met. Feyro and I went over to pick them up from the Ravenfang and I could see the ship could use a mechtech. When I pointed this out, the captain admitted that the ship’s last one had drunk himself to death a few runs back and asked me if I knew anyone he could take on. I liked that, right away, he had realized that I knew my engines and wasn’t just Feyro’s arm candy. After sub-cycles of dealing with sexist mobsters, it felt nice to be recognized for something other than my looks or that I was a Bellixan. Then Feyro tried to shortchange him on the price of the parts. Well, you’ve seen the captain negotiate so you can imagine how that went. Honestly, I’m surprised Sal didn’t send him home wearing a barrel held up by suspenders.”

Calley laughed at the image as Alezanna continued her story. “So after we got back to the garage, I assessed my situation. Despite my time with the syndicate, I was still destitute. Feyro was working the last of my nerves. My behind was red from constantly getting pinched and, sooner or later, some more dangerous mobster would try to take me for his own. As a girlfriend if I was lucky, as a working girl if I wasn’t. And to top it all off, I’d been on Sallist almost an entire cycle and with a price still on my head, I figured it was time to go. I gave Feyro his chems and pretty soon he was nice and sleepy. I packed my wardrobe, made my way to the spaceport where I woke up the captain and offered him my services. And he turned me down flat.”

“What?” Calley asked in surprise.

“He told me he didn’t want to get on the wrong side of the syndicate. I told him nobody would care if Feyro complained but he was more worried about the other gangsters. He told me I’d be too much trouble. So I turned on the charm and offered to share his bed. But he turned me down again, if you can believe that. Granted, it wasn’t my most polished of seductions but it had always worked before. The bastard had too much self-control to fall for it. It got me close enough to him though that I was able to put a knife to his throat and tell him he was taking me off-planet and that’s all there was to it.”

“Are you serious? You really threatened him?” Calley asked in disbelief.

“I am and I did. I was desperate and confused. Men had usually done what I needed them to do and here was this spacer captain, stonewalling me. But the threat didn’t get me anywhere either. The medic we had before you, Goppu, showed up and levelled a blunderblaster at us. The thing had to be over a hundred cycles old, with the trumpet muzzle and everything. He’d have cut us both down if he’d pulled the trigger. But the captain didn’t seem worried about him or me. He just told me I was making a fool of myself. So I told him the truth about my situation. I explained how I’d fallen in with Feyro and the syndicate, how I was afraid of what I might become with them. Then I surprised myself and told him about how bounty hunters were chasing me down too. I must have told him half my life’s story. You have to understand Calley, I hadn’t confided in anyone since I’d gone on the run but that night, I couldn’t shut up. By the time I was finished, poor Goppu’s arms were so tired he couldn’t hold up his gun.”

Alezanna took a deep breath before finishing her story. “I’m a daughter of one of the highest houses of Bellixa, Calley. I’ve never begged for anything in my life and I didn’t beg that night. I didn’t cry either, but the captain sensed how upset I was. He didn’t say anything the whole time I was going on. He just listened and stood there a few centimeters away from me and my dagger while I unloaded all this cargo on him. Finally, when I was done, he walked up the gangplank past Goppu, looked behind at the both of us and said “Are you both coming or what?” And just like that, I was a member of his crew.”

“He didn’t even negotiate your wage?”

“No. He just pointed me to the barracks where we take our showers and told me to grab a cot and get some sleep. So I did just that. A few hours later I woke up and started prepping the ship to leave. While I was doing that, the captain came into the reactor room and told me he’d pay me the standard guild rate. Considering he knew how desperate I was to leave, I was surprised he was being so generous. I accepted it, of course, and that was my first encounter with Sal Collondo’s penchant to help out hard-luck cases.”

Standard guild rate for a desperate woman, thought Calley. That sounds awfully familiar.

“Did you ever see Feyro again?” she asked Alezanna.

“Just once. The ship was about to leave when he pulled up in the Zephyr. He started shouting something about challenging the captain to a gunfight. I presume with me as the prize, but I’m not sure. He wasn’t making a whole lot of sense. Anyway, the gangplank had already been retracted so there wasn’t really much he could do. As we were lifting off, he pulled out his gun and might have shot at us except Goppu got fed up with him, turned on one of the ship’s bottom turrets and blasted the gravmobile. Feyro was far enough away that I think all the explosion did was knock him down. But considering all the work I’d put into that Zephyr, I was sad to see it go. Regardless, I knew there was no way the syndicate had lent it to him, so he had to have taken it without asking. And now that it was gone, well, if he was smart, he’d start running. But Feyro was never smart, so I assume he must have come to a bad end.”

With the repair work completed, the two women moved some of the thin mattresses out of the bathroom’s berths and into the empty space in one of the cargo bays. This way, the passengers and crew could shower in privacy. It wasn’t the most comfortable of set-ups, but the Ravonite family, when they soon boarded, assured them it was fine.

It didn’t take Calley long to realize that the passengers had been through their fair share of hardship. To call their belongings meagre would be to exaggerate their worth. When she asked them for their medical histories, she learned that they hadn’t had a check-up in cycles. She thought at first that their faith had some sort of interdiction against modern medicine. But it turned out it was simply a case where they hadn’t been able to afford medtech’s visits. Therefore, she made sure to give each Ravonite as thorough an examination as she could. She inoculated all of them against some common diseases and others found more frequently on Ravona. She even cleared up a minor lung infection that had been bothering the family’s youngest child, Ushna, an adorable seven-cycle-old. The girl’s mother, Wivon was very grateful.

Wivon had two other children. Thirteen-cycle-old Prittu was a young girl who reminded Calley a lot of herself at that age, shortly before she went off on her own. Wivon’s only son was Pakaar, a young man only a few sub-cycles older than Calley. Unlike Prittu, who was sullen and fairly uncommunicative, Pakaar was open and friendly, save for a little bit of shyness at first. During the trip to Ravona, it seemed Wivon was going out of her way to make sure Pakaar spent time with the young medtech. Making matters worse, Alezanna kept telling Calley that she wasn’t needed to do maintenance and could spend time keeping the Ravonites entertained. It became obvious everyone was looking to see if there was a spark between her and the young man. But although she found him nice and enjoyed talking to him, she simply didn’t feel any romantic attraction towards him. Pakaar likewise seemed not to have any such feelings for her either. Or keeping them well-hidden if he did.

Wivon and her husband Bagaar told Calley the compound they planned to settle in housed five other families not unlike theirs. The young Gynapsi suspected they were trying to sell her on the advantages of living there, but she had a different takeaway from their discussion. She went to the cockpit and asked the captain if she could go to the compound with the family when they landed and inoculate the people there as she had done the ship’s passengers. He agreed and when she offered to pay for the drugs out of her salary, he assured her it wasn’t necessary. This earned him a dirty look from Alezanna, so Calley left them to hash it out. She was surprised the Bellixan seemed to object. The drugs wouldn’t be too expensive to replace. And aside from her objection to low-paying charters, the older woman rarely seemed to care about the ship’s finances. It would only be a few days later that the scene would make more sense to her.

In the meantime, the Ravenfang made it to Ravona without any incidents of note. As soon as they were docked, the family went off to their temple while Calley and Alezanna started the routine maintenance of their vessel. After a few hours, Pakaar came to advise Calley that his family was on their way to the compound. Calley grabbed the vaccines and some med kits and let the young man lead her through the crowded streets full of short, squat buildings to his new home. When she got there, she found the Ravonites preparing a welcoming banquet for her and the new residents who, their pilgrimage complete, could now eat whatever they wanted again.

Calley spent the rest of the long, hot day tending to the compound’s inhabitants as she had done to Pakaar’s family on the ship. They insisted she had to stay for the evening’s festivities. Many of them also asked her if she’d like to stay longer. Wivon made an impassioned offer to bring Calley into the family but the medtech had to decline. She was too much of a wanderer to settle down in one place, she explained. In truth, she wasn’t sure if she wanted to settle down or not. She just knew that this wasn’t the time or place she had in mind. So after a good meal and some nice company, she said her goodbyes and returned to the spaceport.

The moons were up and casting a decent glow as she approached the Ravenfang. She saw the captain loading some crates into the cargo bays. “So what’s our next run?” she asked as she started helping him.

“Musical instruments to an academy on Glorcindal. They make some fine wind instruments around here and they’ll fetch us a pretty price. Speaking of which, you just saved me a hundred credit units by showing up.”

“How did I do that?”

“Alez was convinced you were going to stay with the Ravonites. I promised her some things if that were true. If you had just come back to pick up your stuff, you wouldn’t be helping me load these boxes. Also, you said “our next run”, not “your next run”. So it sounds to me like I’m not short a medtech.”

“You indeed are not,” she assured him as they kept moving boxes. “I don’t understand her though. I thought she was trying to push me towards Pakaar. Why would she do that if she didn’t want me to leave?”

“She wanted you to have a fling, Calley. Not settle down with the man. Just have some fun with him and then toss him aside. Now personally, I’m not sure a Ravonite is the ideal kind of guy to do that with…”

“Especially when his family was never more than twenty meters away from us the whole trip.”

“Yeah, I can see where that might cramp your style. I think Alez’ history with the opposite sex might have coloured her judgement a little. She’s used to men falling at her feet, so she thinks that’s what they all do when they deal with a beautiful woman. And to be fair, she’s not always wrong in that assessment. So maybe the boy wanting to have a fling with you too isn’t so impossible. Something to think about the next time the opportunity presents itself.”

Although her discussions with the captain usually had an easy-going tone, this one wasn’t amusing Calley all that much. In a slightly morose tone, she declared, “I don’t have a lot of luck with things like that. Opportunities are for women like Alezanna, not me.”

She put another box in the cargo hold but before she could go grab another one, Sal was next to her with his hand on her shoulder to bid her stop. His manner and tone turned serious as he told Calley, “Knock it off with that self-pitying crap. You’re a spacer Calley. From what you’ve told me, have been all your life. Well so am I. And I’ve been one long enough to know that this life will let you meet everyone in the galaxy if you stay at it long enough. But that you’ll never really get to know any of the people you meet. You come to a planet, you stay a day, maybe two and then you’re off again. That goes a long way towards keeping you alone. I should know. But your looks are fine Calley. Better than fine when you’re not slouching. With the right outfit and a little self-confidence, you’d be getting just as much attention as Alez.”

“No way,” Calley said as the discussion continued to make her uncomfortable.

“You don’t think so?” he asked with a raised eyebrow. “All right then, answer me this: For the last six days, Pakaar was on a ship with you and Alez. He could have tried talking to either one of you, but he chose you. Why do you suppose that is?”

With a shrug she answered, “He knew she was with you.”

“No he didn’t. He never saw us together. And there’s no wedding rings on her fingers. She was in the reactor room by herself most of the time, easy to find and, as far as he knew, available. But he’d rather talk to you.”

“Well, his mom was pushing him to me,” Calley suggested as an explanation.

“And none too subtly, from what I saw. But she didn’t start that until after you’d given them all their examinations. On the second day. He was already talking to you before that, wasn’t he?”

Calley realized he was right, and it left her flustered. “Well, yeah but…” she began before realizing she wasn’t sure what to say. She started again with, “We didn’t… connect like… what I think…”

He helped her out by finishing her thought for her. “You didn’t have the right chemistry. Okay, fair enough. That’s not the end of the planet. Sometimes you take a chance and it doesn’t pan out. But my point is, Pakaar decided to take that chance with you, Calley, not Alez. So don’t give me any crap about you not getting your opportunities. You just had one. They’ll be others. And when one comes up, don’t be afraid to explore your options.”

“Are you trying to get rid of me or something?”

“Hells no! I love having you around. And Alez, well, when she thought you weren’t coming back, she tied one on and said some pretty nasty things to me about letting you go. Things she better apologize for when she’s finished sleeping it off. No, Calley, we don’t want you to leave. But we don’t want you to be alone either. It’s already a miracle she and I found each other, but so long as you stay on this ship, the odds will be even worse for you. You two ladies do such a great job, I don’t need to hire any other crew. So you’re not gonna meet anyone that way. You hardly ever go out when we’re on planet, and that’s not always a bad thing. I’ve seen crewmembers drink away their wages in one night. You seem to be saving your starcred and that’s commendable. But between staying on the ship all the time and losing all you earned at bars or brothels, there’s gotta be a middle ground.”

Calley was even more uncomfortable now as she pointed out, “You and Alezanna stay on the ship as much as I do.”

“Because we have each other, and that’s enough for now. But we’re also working towards a goal here. In ten cycles, maybe fifteen max, we’re gonna give up this life and settle down somewhere. Maybe become farmers or something. Raise some kids. I want one, she wants thirty. We’re still hashing out the details. When that happens though, I don’t want you to still be around and suddenly out of a job. And worse, still alone with half your life gone. You deserve much better than that. I’ll keep paying you an honest wage for your work and as long as you want it to be, this ship is your home. But if you have a chance to find a better one, to get a better life, you take it, girl. Alez and I can live with seeing you go if you have a smile on your face when you leave.”

The captain’s words had a powerful effect on Calley. Telling her the ship was her home was part of it. She had wandered so long that she wasn’t sure she knew what a home was. But he’d just told her she had one. She realized in that instant that, as much as she’d liked serving aboard the Ravenfang, some part of her kept waiting for the day she’d have to leave it. Now she’d been told that she could stay as long as she liked and leaving would be solely her decision. This was unlike anything she was used to.

The other reason Calley was overcome with emotion was that it was clear that Sal and Alezanna cared deeply for her. The young Gynapsi was moved that the thought of her departing had driven the Bellixan to drink excessively. She’d never seen her comrade so much as touch liquor before. And the captain was obviously concerned about her welfare based on everything he’d said. She hadn’t had anyone watching out for her so much since she’d left her family behind as a young teen. All those cycles of being on her own had made her miss how much her shipmates loved her, she realized.

She couldn’t think of how to express these feelings to Collondo so she stepped forward and hugged him. He put his arms around her and they simply held each other for a few minutes under the moonlit sky. Eventually, they disengaged and the captain kissed her on the forehead. The two then finished loading the cargo before they turned in for the night. Calley drifted off to sleep in her stateroom, feeling happier and more at ease than since she could remember.

NEXT CHAPTER: Trouble on planet Palcon.