“Anyway, I didn’t tell you all that to make you feel bad for me. I wanted you to know that I understood what it was like to lose someone,” she said.
“Thank you,” he said. “I’ll remember Star with you. She won’t be forgotten."
“Never,” she agreed, then started blinking rapidly. She pulled out of his grip and quickly rubbed her hands over her eyes to brush away the tears. “How do you have so much wealth? Did you rob a station?”
“Nothing like that,” he said, willing to change the subject if that was what she wanted. “We discovered that both our moons have deep veins of dimmerion.
Nova looked confused. “But your government owns the moons and the dimmerion. That doesn’t explain how you have so much wealth.”
“The dimmerion made our entire species wealthy," he said. “We all get paid the same no matter what job we do. Our yearly pay is based on a set percentage of the wealth gained from dimmerion sales after the government takes out what’s needed to buy warships and other communal things.”
Her jaw dropped. “You all have that much?”
Her confusion was a little adorable. “Yes, we all have that much. Which means you shouldn’t hesitate to pick out what you want.”
“I’m getting one of everything that fits!” she declared and started grabbing items with exaggerated greed, making him laugh.
“As long as you don’t try to wear them all at the same time,” he teased.
“I’ll do what I want,” she sang, dancing deeper into the room with him following close behind.
In the end, she didn't pick out any silk outfits because it turned out she didn’t like how the fabric felt on her skin. Her disappointment was cute and quickly brushed away when she spotted all the shiny hair ornaments.
“My skin might not want fancy things, but my hair doesn’t have a choice!” she declared.
Her hair was jingling with decorations by the time they left.
Chapter 17
Nova
After spending a life wearing either costumes or old uniforms that weren’t fit for the crew to wear any longer, Nova couldn’t stop petting the front of her new shirt. It was the softest thing she’d ever had.
The scooped neckline exposed almost as much shoulder as Miran’s giant shirt, which she found a little amusing. It had to be deliberate because any warrior they passed would always look at her neck first before meeting her eyes.
Did the Hissa have a neck fetish?
Miran finished neatly stacking all her choices in the largest storage locker in his room, then turned to face her. “That should last at least a few days.”
She chuckled. “Can we wash things on this ship, or do we have to wait until we’re docked at a station?”
He pointed to a hatch in the wall she hadn’t noticed before. “You can put any garment, including shoes, in that. But don’t put different types of garments in together or the machine gets confused. For example, don’t put shoes in with shirts.”
She stepped over to the hatch and opened it to find a small depression. She’d never seen anything like it. The circus workers on the Delight always cleaned their outfits by hand when they were in the bathing area. She knew machines like this existed, but this was the first time she was seeing one in person.
“Oh, fancy,” she said and looked around for her old costume. Grabbing it from the floor, she shoved it into the unit and closed the door.
“You don’t need to wash that,” Miran said. “It’s old and worn out.”
She ignored him and frowned at the closed latch. “How do you activate it?”
He stepped close to her. “It’s automatic. Right now it’s sensing the cloth type, soil level, and if it needs to be sanitized or not."
She snorted. “It probably needs to be sanitized twice.”
“The machine will know,” Miran said, then put an arm around her and guided her out the room’s door. “What would you like to see first?”
Feeling the need to move, she did a couple of bouncing steps ahead of him. “Are there any open areas? I think I’d like to do some stretching and tumbling.”
