Private At the Ledge

[Suri Loré]

"Only souvenir is what you dig up with your own hands", said Suri with a shrug. She reached briefly to scratch her backside, then opened a cupboard, retrieved two plain mugs, and poured the caf.

"Here you go", she said, handing one of them to Sira. "Where was that atmospheric prediction report of yours again? Can I see?" She smelt the caf for a moment, enjoying the sensation, and looking at Sira over the edge of the mug. She was still getting a grip on this day.

Sira Veyne​

 

[Sira Veyne]

"I expected some dusty little frontier stall—nails, fusion bulbs, maybe some flowers wilting under the sun. You know, old Outer Rim charm."

She eagerly accepted the mug, cradling it in both hands as if savoring the heat. The absence of her usual makeup-highlighter and mascara alike revealed her lack of sleep. Her eyes moved a bit sluggishly, a thin crimson vein linking the corners of her eyes and her pupil. She shifted the grip on the mug to one hand, slipping her pad from her pocket and unlocking it with a very elaborate thumb gesture before handing it over.

"I'm almost hoping for rain..."-she let off a thankful murr as she carefully took a small sip of the caf.

Suri Loré

 

[Suri Loré]

Suri took the datapad and then placed herself in the seating area to pour over it. "Rain is fine. It's thunderstorms like yesterday that are the problem", she replied, missing the point. She took a sip of the caf and then looked sideways at Sira with a smile. "Don't worry, you'll have hours to sit around either way."

The projection was what it was—there was hardly a data source to get real-time updates from—, but she was interested in the area which was supposed to clear up tomorrow. She hoped it might open up already today. It turned out to be a large band across the continent somewhat north of their current location. Suri looked at it intently and then sat up, satisfied, and drank the rest of her caf.

She got up and went to the refrigeration unit in the kitchen to retrieve a pair of green eggs and two square-shaped pieces that appeared to be half-way between a cereal bar and a cake, then busied herself frying the eggs in the ship's small galley.

Sira Veyne​

 

[Sira Veyne]

"So..."-she took a new sip, casually and laxly as always. "What are you going to do with your cut?"

She perched herself against the tapestried walls, swirling the caf idly in one hand as she observed the Zeltrons day to day. Her eyes narrowed slightly—not in suspicion, just quiet observation, as if she were taking stock of every little gesture: the way Suri stirred the eggs, the slight bounce in her step, the rhythm of someone who'd done this a hundred times before. A faint smile tugged at the corner of Sira's mouth, but she didn't say anything. Just watched, sipping slowly.

Suri Loré

 

[Suri Loré]

"I dunno. Survive. Gotta live on something, right?" Suri shrugged and moved the pan with the scrambled eggs, which were a sickly green, onto two small plates. She put the two square meal bars next to them—or more accurately, she took a bite of one of them and then put it next to the eggs on one of the plates, the one that was destined to be hers.

The eggs tasted like eggs did all over the galaxy, no matter their colour. They were always roughly the same king of slush of protein, fat and water—as long as one was concerned with carbon-based life forms, at least. The square meal bars had a bit of a more interesting taste, clearly they contained some fruity and chocolate-y aromas that were probably meant to make up for the very unexciting texture.

After this humble breakfast, Suri briefly disappeared to exchange her negligee for yesterday's more workman-like clothes.

"Let's get going and see if the scanners work anywhere already. Maybe we don't have to wait until tomorrow", she said optimistically, moving towards the cockpit.

Being a single pilot, she had to sit down in the pilot's chair and get back up again several times to manipulate various buttons and switches. At one point, she stopped to look at the engine monitoring display, frowned, went back to shut the engine down again and start them back up after a moment's wait. The result still didn't seem to satisfy her, and she proceeded to shut everything down again.

"Engines aren't running like they should. Better now than some other time. I'll go see if I can't do something about it. Might take a while." And with that, she made for the engine room.

An hour later, she had still not emerged from there.

Sira Veyne​

 

[Sira Veyne]

Sira remained at the small table after breakfast, legs crossed at the knee, slowly nursing what remained of her caf. She'd cleaned her plate without comment, though she'd eyed the green eggs like they might try to crawl away first. Idly, she spun a ration bar between her fingers like a knife-hucker and took a bite, chewing with the corners of her mouth before speaking out:
"I didn't know we're celebrating with the good bars!"

When Suri vanished to change, Sira leaned back, arms draped over the back of the seat, watching the streaks of morning light filter through the narrow viewport. Her eyes followed Suri's return with casual interest, a brow arching slightly as the pilot launched into her startup ritual.


She didn't offer help—just watched from the hatch with a lopsided smirk, occasionally muttering things like "Looks serious" or "Try hitting it harder."

But when Suri disappeared into the engine room for good, Sira finally stood, wandered to the cockpit, and glanced over the mess of lights and switches.


"I'm gonna assume you're not dead in there." she called, loud enough to carry aft.


Then quieter, mostly to herself:


"Hope you're not making it worse. Need a second pair of hands or just moral support from someone who thinks a hyperdrive is a kind of drink?"


After a beat, she stepped in and knelt beside Suri, squinting at the open paneling and the mess of conduits and diagnostic lights, unfurling the laywomans diagonstic.

"Okay. This one looks... important." She pointed vaguely at a junction with a blinking red light.

"No idea what it does, but it's blinking red, and that usually means 'bad', right?" Her voice carried a mix of humor and honest effort, brows furrowed as she scanned the controls.

She reached into a nearby toolbox, pulling it by herself with a shrug.
"Tell me what to pass you. And if something sparks, I was never here."

Suri Loré

 

[Suri Loré]

Hearing the steps, Suri looked up, still holding a hose in her hands somewhat limply, all covered in grease and looking mildly exasperated.

"No idea what it does, but it's blinking red, and that usually means 'bad', right?"

"Yeeeah... That's gonna blink red as long as I haven't reconnected all the couplings I've disconnected. But it's not the actual error message. It's not a big deal, we could take off no problem, but the engine monitoring said there was a loss in efficiency. So we'd only be at, like, eighty percent. Fine as long as we don't have to run, except I don't fancy wasting the fuel—and since we've got the time, best to fix it now before it gets worse or starts to really matter. Only problem is, if you don't have a hard fault of some kind, just something vaguely not working well, it's not that easy to figure out what it is. Could be half a dozen things. I've got it down to two now..."

Suri was quite engrossed in the work, if perhaps at times mildly scatty. It took another half-hour for the likely fault to be identified and corrected, and tests to be conducted to establish that the engines were now indeed disposed to operate as they should.

By the time she had cleaned herself up, put on new clothes, and returned to the cockpit, a good part of the morning had passed. The weather here had not noticeably changed, but it was milder than last night and take-off would not be an overly dangerous procedure—though it was anyway easier to take off with strong shear winds than land.

Lights came to life and the soundscape in the ship changed, the tinny patter of the rain on the hull being augmented by a number of beeps followed by various hums, the latter of which remained. Suri pointed the ship upwards at a very moderate angle and soon enough they were enveloped by the clouds...

Sira Veyne​

 

[Sira Veyne]

The clouds thinned below them, revealing a rugged sweep of land: ridges, dry washes, the occasional shimmer of ancient floodplain turned to dust. The kind of terrain that spoke of hard seasons and forgotten roads. Sira had returned to the co-pilot's seat, one leg folded under her, caf in hand.

She let the silence stretch a little longer, fingers still tracing the edge of the robe where it gathered at her elbow. The fabric moved like breath against her arm, never cold, never stiff.

"You always keep something like this tucked away on the ship?" Her tone was light, but the question carried weight beneath it.


She held the edge of the robe up slightly between thumb and forefinger.

"This isn't junk. Someone took care making it."

The statement wasn't accusatory. It was gentle, a hand knocking twice on a door she hadn't been invited to open. She felt the thrumming shame in her chest-usually she did this for work-now? She was genuinely curios.

Sira watched her for a beat longer, then added, with a more subdued curiosity:
"Yours… or someone else's?"

Suri Loré

 

[Suri Loré]

Suri laughed light-heartedly. "You mean whether I nicked it? Nah, I bought it fair and square. Don't ask me why, though. I've found it's the sort of thing you wear only when you're about to take it off again, which kind of defeats the point." The one time she hadn't taken it off in time, it had ended up with stains that took a while to remove.

Sira Veyne​

 

[Sira Veyne]

Sira's eyes narrowed slightly with amusement, the corners of her mouth curling in a slow, silent grin. She turned her gaze back to the clouds below, absently adjusting the robe around her shoulders, pulling it closer as if to defend its honor.

"Maybe that's why I like it."-she said, voice low and thoughtful.
"It's impractical. Pointless, even. But someone made it to be worn anyway. Not just tossed aside."

She smoothed the fabric across her lap, fingers lingering on the stitching near the sash.
"You buying it might've been the first real vote of confidence it got."
The cockpit fell quiet again, save for the steady atmospheric rush beyond the hull. Sira leaned her head against the seat's cushion, eyes half-lidded, her voice softer now. "It's a good robe. I'll try not to ruin it."

A pause.

"But no promises."
She didn't look over, but the quiet smirk was clear enough in her voice.
Suri Loré

 

[Suri Loré]

"You're not leaving the ship in it", said Suri with mock sternness. "Well, right now, you're not leaving the ship at all. I haven't got a parachute."

Momentarily the cockpit was flooded with golden morning light as the ship broke out of the thick cloud layer into the utter atmosphere. Sure closed her eyes and for a second enjoyed the sudden feeling of warmth on her skin, unconsciously angling her face upwards.

Then, as if she had caught herself, she opened her eyes again and checked the navigation console to find their surface-relative position. They were already at the edge of the area that seemed plausible to scan, but more altitude was needed to achieve an angle for reasonable coverage. The empty freighter's powerful sublight engines remedied this in no time.

Eventually, Suri put the ship into a slow cruise at constant altitude and let go of the manual controls.

"Scanner console's in the back, didn't fit in here", she explained as she was rising from the pilot seat.

Sira Veyne​

 

[Sira Veyne]

Sira didn't move at first. She remained settled in the co-pilot seat, half-wrapped in the long robe, one leg folded beneath her. The sudden burst of sunlight had softened her expression, even if she tried not to show it. She'd blinked against it, letting the warmth sink in while it lasted like the heat of a sunlamp after too many cold corridors.

"Guess that means I stay on the throne, then."

She murmured, gesturing vaguely to the seat as Suri stood up. "Doing whatever Chandrillans do all day long." She didn't know how to fly herself but she took note of the way the ship acted, the way it pierced the clouds and struggled easily against the pull of the world below. How far back the Lodge felt was gaping to her, left in favor of discovery. Or scam.

"I guess I can't just sit around quite...regal-y."- she chimed as she unfolded from the seat.
The robe shifted as she stood, long hem brushing her ankles, sleeves gathered slightly at her elbows.

Suri Loré