“ Kira!” Captain Sharp snapped, drawing the attention of his navigator.
“ Captain!” She jumped, hitting her knee against the steel at her station. She was tall and her predecessor was considerably shorter. The handyman on the Rented Mule hadn’t made it up to adjust the ergonomics for her yet. She clenched her jaw to bite back the pain and turned to face him. “Sir?”
“ It’s a milk run,” he said, grinning at her to show he was amused, “but have contingency courses plotted, this isn’t the core shipping lanes we’re flying.”
“ Yes Sir,” she snapped. “I’ve got two backup routes and a warning alert in place for proximity.”
Sharp nodded. “Good, we still on schedule for the jump in two hours?”
“ Aye, Sir!”
Sharp turned away from her and looked at the rest of the small bridge of his transport vessel. He was a private merchant that made money trucking goods for the highest bidder. The rumor was so far he’d only handled legal fair, but that was only because the right offer hadn’t come along. “Where’s Tarn?”
“ He was in the galley last I seen him, Captain.”
Sharp grunted, then hit the ship-wide intercom on his chair. “Tarn, report to the bridge!”
Nearly three minutes later a mildly overweight man with a scar running from his disfigured left ear across his cheek and nearly to his chin stomped through the hatch to the bridge. “What’s up, boss?”
Sharp turned to stare at him. “The galley is twenty feet away!”
“ Had to finish my sandwich, Skeet was eyeing it up.”
“ Skeet’s a songbird in a cage.”
“ Never trusted birds. I seen rebels running greenhouses on Venus using birds to communicate to each other!” Tarn protested.
“ You got problems,” Sharp said with a sigh. “Look, we’re jumping to the Altair jump station and heading from there to the mining stations. We unload mining equipment and pick up ore to ferry back to the smelter. There’s a good reason for anyone who knows our payload to be interested and Altair’s not heavily populated. I want to make sure our defenses are up, are they?”
Tarn snorted. “Best they ever been, Cap. Shields are ready and the damages from that last brush when was chasing that comet are fixed.”
“ Weapons?”
“ Yeah, plasma defenders are good.”
Sharp grunted. “Make sure you set up early warning alerts when we get in system, it’s a three month trip and I don’t think you want to be the only one up for it.”
Tarn laughed and waved his hand, then headed off the bridge. “I’m an ex-Marine, Captain, I’m always ready.”
After he was out of earshot Kira turned and caught the Captain’s eye. “What?” He snapped.
“ Sorry, Sir!”
“ Kira, you’re new, but so far you haven’t screwed anything up. You got something on your mind, you say it — unless it’s about me, then you tell me in private.”
She nodded and swallowed visibly. “Okay, um, Sir. I just… I thought there was no such thing as an ex — Marine?”
Sharp nodded slowly. “Yeah, me too.”