“Stealing a ship wasn’t my first choice.I just wanted to lie low until I figured out what was happening.Then the thugs who attacked me entered the docks.”She looked away.
“Sure.I could have entered a few other ships, but they were deeper in the docks and I couldn’t have flown them by myself.I would have needed an entire team to take any of the other four ship classes.”
Her explanation made perfect sense, but Lacy’s familiarity with boosting ships was worrisome.
“Are you a pirate?”
“What?”She choked out the word.“No.Of course not.Piracy is illegal in most known space.”
“That sounds like something a pirate would say.”
“I.Am.Not.A.Pirate,” she ground out.“I’m a mechanic.You’ve seen my ID.I can prove my skills if I have to.”
She paused, tilting her head like she was considering something.“And I’m pretty sure I have a way to solve your cargo problemandmy sister problem.”
I rolled my eyes.“Let me guess.If I help you find your sister, you’ll tell me where I can get some cargo.”I made an exasperated sound.“I think that helps you more than me.”
She narrowed her eyes and glared at me.“No.My plan will help us both.At the same time.”
It sounded too good to be true and I wasn’t sure I believed her, but still...“How?”I asked cautiously.
She gestured toward the holo table tucked in the back of the bridge.“May I?”
I nodded.When she approached the table, I followed her.
With a flick of her hand, she pulled up the star chart on the holographic table, twisting and turning the image until she was satisfied.
It took my brain a moment to adjust to seeing the usual two-dimensional maps in 3D instead.“You’ll have to show me how to do that,” I said, while I studied the new terrain.
“This is us.”She pointed to a glowing blue dot on the edge of the current view.
Fortunalooked so small amongst all the glowing white stars and planets.
“Where are you picking up your crew?”
I looked over at her sharply.This was the first time she’d mentioned my crew.As I rattled off the locations, little green lights sprang to life on the map.“Very cool.”
“I know, right?”She smiled at me and my breath caught.
I’d thought she was pretty when I first saw her, here on my bridge, but when she smiled...Her smile outshone any of the stars on the map or out the windshield.She was obviously in her element working withFortunaand I hated to admit that I was jealous of the attention she was paying my ship.
She programmed additional commands into the table and some of the existing lights changed colors, subtly glowing pink.“This overlay shows the locations of cargo requests.”
“How did you...”The question hovered on the tip of my tongue.
“You’ve been visiting Floyd’s Freight Forum looking for cargo jobs.”She didn’t even have the grace to look ashamed at knowing every move I’d been making.“It’s a decent start,” Lacy said, patting me on the arm, “but I know better places for cargo.We’ll get to that later.”
I shook my head.Damn her for being as frustrating as she was intriguing.
She rotated the map, changing the view until she was satisfied it met some unspoken criteria.“That’s Elegium Station.”
The little pink dot she pointed to looked very far away.We’d traveled quite a ways from the asteroid station in our day in space.Going back now would be a waste of time and fuel.
“This is our current trajectory.”A blue line appeared on the map, spearing through the 3D space all the way to the edge of the map.“Obviously we’ll need to change course to pick up your crew.”Dotted blue lines radiated fromFortuna’sblue dot, creating a fractured pattern on the star map.
No matter which dotted path we took, we’d pass a number of cargo opportunities.I reached out and “touched” one of the pink lights we were approaching.The screen zoomed in and data exploded on the map.Cargo type, job timeline, payment.“This is amazing, Lacy.”
It wasn’t just amazing.It could be a game changer for us.No more scrolling the forum.All we’d have to do was click on the nearest point on the map and go.
