Hey there, a bit of author's notes before we begin. Those who don't care for this type of thing may want to scroll down right to the story. You may always come back later. It's not going anywhere. :)

First off, repeating from the summary, this is, or will eventually be, a yuri (girl x girl) romance, so if you're not into this king of thing you might want to stay away.

The story also contains a small amount of anthropomorphics (furries if you will), so be advised on that too.

And another content warning. Beware of WAFF. :)

I originally planned to post this in the SF section, but seeing as there is a Manga section I decided to put it here, as the story is very much Manga and Anime inspired. Just not by the one you will probably be thinking about once you read it. Let me explain. After reading this most everyone who knows Cowboy Bebop will suspect I was heavily influenced by it, if not outright accuse me of stealing ideas, for the cast and basic setup if not actual plot. But weather anybody believes it or not, the truth is that the Strangers' many parallels to Cowboy Bebop are a complete coincidence. I came up with the characters, ship and basic plot quite some years ago. At that time the only thing I knew about Cowboy Bebop was that there exists an anime of that title. Of course, by the time I actually got off my butt and wrote the first episode of Strangers I had seen Bebop, and I can't deny that it influenced my ideas. It actually was seeing Bebop that gave me the push to write this instead of allowing it to gather dust in my mind. But the basic similarities were already there. Anyway, it's not as if the "mismatched group of bounty hunters roaming around in a second hand ship" is such an original idea in the first place. Anyway, that's my story and I'm sticking to it. Maybe I'm spazzing out over it out of proportion anyway. And the anime that actually inspired me in the first place? It was Plastic Little. Which explains some things, I guess. ;)

And yes, I know I tend to go into looong descriptions. David Webber writes like that, and I like his style, so that's where it probably comes from. I'm a very verbose fellow (as I'm sure you already noticed :) ). But I'm trying to improve on that.

I just couldn't stop myself, so the story contains shout-outs and veiled references to books, comics and anime, but that's not really important to anyone but me (and my friend whose family name I used in the name of the FTL drive :) ). Not getting the references will in no way detract from the story itself. But by all means, if you spot them let me know! The title is, obviously, a play on the famous novel by Robert A. Heinlein.

One more warning before we begin. It was brought to my attention that the story's beginning may be viewed as a bait and switch. It was not my intention, but I admit that's what it came out looking as. So be advised. If you like the Gibson-esque cyberpunk thriller beginning and continue reading hoping for more, that's not the kind of story Strangers is. I'm very sorry to disappoint like that, but it's just the way the story goes.

OK, I think I prattled on long enough. Let's get to it. Enjoy! (I hope).

The Third Delusion on the Left and on 'til Morning Studios

In association with The Alternate Realities Workshop

( opening song: Mr. Mister – “Kyrie” )

Strangers in a Strange Land

Episode 1: Run to You

Triss was running. Though, especially in her own mind, somewhat skinny and not very graceful, she was still in fairly good shape. At least compared to what could be expected when considering the walk of life she chose for herself. Triss was what most people called a hacker. She herself preferred the insider-slang term “spider”. But, as she thought darkly, in her present situation, there was another, more fitting slang word: “runner”. At nineteen slowly going on twenty, she was no stranger to running. It was not the first time she was trying to outrun security forces in the employ of some authority or another - she had had her fair share of slip ups, especially early in her “career”, as was to be expected from all mostly-self-taught teenage data-jockeys – but it was the first time ever she was quite so desperate and terrified. The reason for that was simple. It was also the first time said security forces were not trying to apprehend her. They ware trying to kill her.

Everything started out perfectly normal. Triss arrived on Mantell, a Mid-Rim colony owned and run by a subsidiary of the Kirishima Industries, one of the biggest, most important interstellar corporations, three days before. The young redhead came here on a whim, pretty much the same way she did all her traveling. She was a perfect example of a rolling stone, all her possessions fitting into a duffel bag, no fixed address except her e-mail, a VISA credit slate her only traveling companion. She started planet hopping at the age of fifteen and went wherever the solar winds blew her, living on what she made from her web work and small part-time jobs, mostly at restaurants, shops or electronic workshops, and never staying long in one place. The money from data-jockeying could be quite good, even considering Triss rarely did anything illegal – she mostly stuck to programming, graphics and sys-admin’ing. She was young, had almost no normal education and absolutely no diplomas to show. But, doing all of her buiseness over the galaxy-spanning Ethernet, she could easily hide the first part, forge some quite convincing certificates to cover up the other two, and had the brains to back them up, even if she never really earned them officially. She was good at what she did, and she liked her job. Triss was a bit of a prodigy. She could do quite inspired work, but, as the girl herself would sheepishly admit if pressed a little, she still was somewhat deficient in the actual, hard, technical skill department. To that end she spent much of her free time honing her abilities. And that day three days ago, not long after settling into a small room in a cheap but nice hotel, she decided to do a practice hack. The few real hacks Triss has done so far were rather small jobs, as hacks went, nowhere really near the Black level of security. But, as the girl reflected with satisfaction while setting up her gear, after years of training, if she ever needed to, she could go fairly close to it – although not quite there yet. She was feeling a little bold today, and, after jacking in and configuring her deck's arsenal, she headed for the Kirishima data-fort. She decided to do a little spot of dumpster-diving. It seemed like a good idea at he time.

When she got right down to it, she admitted it really was her own fault. “Dumpster diving” was a time honored activity among spiders, a perfect exercise. One hacked into some system, preferably some high level one, and then snooped around in its recycle-bin. Practically all the difficulty and possible danger in it was involved in gaining access to the system itself. The recycle-bin being what it was, once inside the data-fort, regardless of it's security, the hacker could safely spend hours digging through all the thrash a normal day of activity at a typical corporation beaureau produced before anyone noticed anything. Only about one in a million such refuse racking expeditions produced anything of value, but that was not the point. Dumpster diving was often an amusing past time – one could come across all sorts of weird, entertaining stuff – but it was done mainly for practice. It was also a way, a little silly and juvenile when one got right down to it, of thumbing one’s nose at the high and mighty corporate or government authorities. It was quite safe – but not perfectly so. While in enemy territory, a hacker should always watch his back and never take anything for granted. It was an important lesson. And one Triss, in her glee of recycle-bin plundering, forgot. She forgot about it for just about five minutes, but, as it now appeared, that was perfectly enough. She didn’t expect the Kirishima system-operator would get bored and decide to do his own trash digging to kill some time. She forgot to set up her “proximity alarm” utility the moment she entered the bin, and then it was too late. The corporate jockey went into the bin too – and ran almost smack into her. She got spotted, and much, much worse: she got traced. To top off the string of bad luck, it seemed there was a corporate security patrol doing rounds not far away from her physical location. For Triss, things got very neatly pear-shaped.

So here she was, running for her life. The corpos and the government didn’t like hackers, that was a fact of life, but they didn’t usually issue a shoot-to-kill order against simple dumpster-divers. Triss thought she could make a pretty accurate guess, at what was different in her case. It seemed Kirishima had decided to stage their own little exercise for their security division, with her as the “simulated” target. She got scheduled for “blanking”. And this, frankly, had her scared almost out of her mind. Blanking was a time-honored activity among corporate dirty-work sections. First they killed somebody, and then made it so as if he never existed. In Triss’s case this would not be at all difficult. She was basically a homeless tramp and, furthermore, she herself did her best to erase her past from the meager records that existed on her homeworld.

She managed to keep a clear head, despite the panic that threatened to overwhelm her, and think about making good her escape. This was not easy, for she was quite shaken with the casual brutality such a move signified, and with which the corp security went about making it happen. She heard about such cases, of course, but to experience it first hand, to be the target was, obviously, an entirely different cup of tea. And the security people were brutal, and quite casual about it. There was no pounding at the door, no demand for the young spider to open up and surrender, like every other time. They opened up with a railgun spray straight through the door and wall, and followed it up with a frag grenade. Triss had been completely unprepared for such an opener, but she never waited for the usual one anyway, and was, luckily, already one floor down on the fire-escape. The next half an hour or so was a frantic blur of near-panic and close-call-ridden escapes from trigger-happy men and women in black suits or urban cammo armor. Triss admitted it was probably at least as much luck as anything that she managed to elude them then, and keep at it for two whole days, in unfamiliar territory. She was also aided by the fact that they didn’t try as hard as they could – she was not exactly a high-profile target, blanking exercise or not. Still, the level of the areas saturation with security personnel and the granularity of their blanket search was the highest she was ever up against. The girl knew she couldn’t hide forever. Sooner or later her luck would run out, regardless of how skilled she was at such cat-and-mouse games. She had to get out of the city, off the planet. The problem: Mantell was what was called a colony, not a colony world. It was very well developed, but was still only one, if quite big, city, surrounded by various production complexes. As such, it had only one starport, the one Triss arrived at. It was her only way of true escape, and the corpos knew that. By now, even considering they were taking it a bit easy, there ware sure to have the place swarming with security goons, under so much surveillance a mouse would have trouble sneaking through without being spotted. But Triss had to try, had to make it. She was trying to come up with some kind of plan, taking it calm and rational, like it was just another tight spot like the ones she found herself in before, with nothing more than several months jail time, and not her life, on the line. That is, she was thinking about it just as she was walked in on by another corporate patrol.

And now she was running flat out through back alleys behind some shopping district street. She had once again managed to lose the patrol. Now she tried to put as much distance between herself and the place they spotted her as she could. She was hoping to slip past the tightening ring of reinforcements she knew that one patrol called, that were now homing in on the area. She waved through the labyrinth of narrow, damp, shadowy alleys, hoping fervently that she didn’t loose her direction and wasn’t now heading back to where she started.

Triss was breathing hard. She didn’t know if she was far enough away or not, but she knew that she couldn’t keep up that pace much longer. She was in good shape compared to the stereotypical hacker, but not much so when put against somebody in real good shape, like the security agents. She decided it was time to slow down. She might need a little reserve of stamina later on. Besides, she would hate to find out that she was, in fact, far enough away, but she somehow drew attention to herself by her mad running. Or run smack into another patrol because she was scrambling instead of proceeding with caution. Of course, just as she thought that, a second before she managed to put it in practice, she tripped.

Triss gave a startled yelp as she was assailed with the sudden sensation of falling and tried to put out her hands to stop her face from impacting on the rapidly approaching ground. She wasn’t quite fast enough, and she hit down hard, her palms and knees scraping on the concrete and sliding from under her, and she slammed face down, the air forced from her lungs in an explosive exclamation of pain. She managed not to hit her head, but her glasses were knocked loose by the impact and clattered away.

“Owie...” whimpered Triss, blinking back tears of pain, stirring feebly on the ground. The pavement was cold, dirty and a little damp.

“Ow man! That was quite some fall you took there. Are you hurt?” inquired a sympathetic voice.

Triss blinked in surprise and directed her gaze, slightly unfocussed without her glasses, forward. Said glasses turned out not to have gone very far, only a meter or so, since they fetched up against a pair of feet. The feet were shod in Chuck Taylor sneakers, once cream-colored, now age-grayed and quite worn out, and seemed to belong to whoever has asked the question. The prone girl cranked her neck, to try and see more of whoever that was just as the stranger crouched down, which allowed Triss to take the whole of him in. Or rather of her.

It was a girl, Triss guessed more or less her own age, and very pretty. Her eyes were of a beautiful, striking shade of green. Her hair, thick and shiny, cropped into a shortish boy-like cut, matched it perfectly. It was a little longer in front and a white, tigerprint headband kept the unruly bangs out of her eyes. The girl was dressed, apart from the sneakers, in form-fitting, faded blue jeans with threadbare knees and a light, pale-orange-and-white nylon jacket over a light-gray t-shirt emblazoned with white letters spelling: “If you had time to read all this, it means you’re spending too much time staring at my chest”. Triss actually blushed slightly at this and hurriedly brought her eyes back to the stranger's face. The green-headed girl was looking at the fallen hacker with an expression combining earnest concern and interest.

She must be wondering, who this klutz who managed to crash-land at her feet is, thought Triss self-depreciatingly.

“Nothing... Major, I think...” said Triss tentatively, answering the earlier question and the look.

“That’s good. Well, come on up then,” said the stranger, extending a hand. “You don’t strike me as the type who enjoys lying around on pavements,” she added, smiling a friendly smile.

“You’re right, I’m definitely not,” replied Triss, who found herself returning the smile without even thinking about it. She took the profferred hand and allowed herself to be helped to her feet, wincing and hissing as she put one of her bloodied knees on the concrete on her way up. The girl handed Triss her glasses.

“Um... Thanks...” said the hacker awkwardly. The green-headed girl turned out to be a few centimeters taller than Triss, trim and athletic. Her face and bearing spoke of easy confidence and strong character. She was now regarding Triss with the same inoffensive smile, and the redhead shifted a little uncomfortably under this scrutiny, feeling self-conscious. She supposed she must be a rather pitiful sight right now. Her bright orange, spiky hair was by now tangled and quite dirty, like the rest of her. She was dressed in blue denim short-shorts, a light-purple t-shirt, a slightly puffy white-and-red jacket, matching floppy socks and red Chuck Taylor’s that were the only part of her clothing whose bedraggled, rather the worse for wear appearance wasn’t a development of the last two days. On her back, she carried a small pale-green denim backpack containing her deck and precious little else. Her palms and knees were beginning to really sting – she scraped them up pretty bad when she fell. Triss wondered if she looked as miserable, frantic and scared as she felt.

Presently, she looked around. They were standing in a side street running off from the main artery at a right angle. Turned out Triss fell just as she exited the mouth of a back alley that emptied into it. It was a small street, but was still bigger than the back alleys, with a few little, rather disreputable looking shops of its own. What looked to be a dingy Chinese restaurant advertised itself just to the right, with a flickering red neon sign. Except Triss and the green-haired girl, the alley seemed to be completely empty at the moment, but the hacker could see people streaming by its distant exit, where it merged to the main street.

She stared turning to the stranger, intending to thank her once more and be on her way, but she never got that far.

“You!” came a menacing shout, “Freeze!”

Triss cringed and stole a terrified look towards the alley’s exit. A group of three corporate security troopers in urban cammo armor ware running toward them from the main street, unslinging their rail-rifles. Their pouldrons bore the stylized snow-topped mountain that Kirishima used as their corporate symbol.

The redhead turned to the other girl. The girl looked at the troopers, then brought her gaze to their quarry, her brow furled in consternation. Behind her big, round, rimless spectacles, the fear and desperation were quite obvious in Triss’s wide, reddish-brown eyes as she returned the stranger’s look.

“Please...” Triss whispered in a tiny voice, “They’ll kill me...” She didn’t know what she expected the other girl to be able to do and, truth be told, she didn’t really expect her to do anything. Triss was desperate and the green-haired stranger just had this kind of face. But it was one thing, helping a stranger to her feet after an unfortunate fall, and a completely different one, aiding someone who, for all one knew, was a fugitive from justice. As it turned out, not in this girl’s book, though.

The green-headed girl nodded to herself, coming to some decision, and her face settled into a determined look. “Come on then!” she shouted and, grabbing the startled Triss by the wrist, broke into a run and dove into a side alley.

What followed was another high speed scramble from which Triss, being dragged around by the other girl, remembered little. She was sure of one thing though. The green-haired girl was just as athletic as she looked and then some. After five minutes the redheaded hacker was panting for breath, sweating and struggling not to fall, while her ally wasn’t even breathing any harder.

“Can pant we gasp slow wheeze down huff a little?”

“You’re not very sporty, are you?” asked the girl casually.

Triss didn’t know quite what to make of that remark, blunt and rather catty as it seemed, but then she noticed the girl looking back at her over one shoulder, with that friendly smile again. Despite the seriousness of her predicament (and the fact she had very little breath to spare at the moment) she laughed a bit. “No, I guess I’m not.”

“Well, I think we can take a breather,” allowed the girl, slowing down and stopping, “We lost those goons.”

Just as she said it, there came the scream of a railgun projectile. Two men in black suits, from the plainclothes division of security, have appeared at the end of the alley the girls were in, spotted them and opened fire.

“Or not. Down!” she shouted, showing Triss down and into the cover of a nearby dumpster. “Some situation you got me in,” she stated matter-of-factly.

“Sorry...” mumbled Triss, lowering her eyes guiltily.

“Nah,” said the girl, smiling at the hacker again, “Just teasing. I involved myself willingly, didn’t I? Don’t worry, I live for those things. I –make a living- from those things, actually. My day was pretty boring anyway,” she added, making Triss smile, a little shyly, back. Then they both involuntarily cringed a little as new shots pummeled the dumpster.

“OK, I’ve had enough of those assholes,” growled the greenhead, her face setting into a grim scowl “Think you’re so brave, trying to gun down defenseless civilians? Lets see how you like that!”

Triss, still quite breathless and scared, wondered what “that” was. What it turned out to be, as Triss’s new acquaintance plunged her right hand inside her jacket and brought it out again, was a gun – the –biggest- freaking revolver Triss has ever seen in her life. It was a piece of steel-gray metal with white enamel accents, massive, angular and very imposing, and the barrel bore was enormous! It managed to look both modern and old-fashioned at once, by virtue of being a revolver, which was a design type all but unseen in modern sidearms.

Triss made a little alarmed sound. The guns the security people wielded were scary enough, but she supposed if anybody ever pointed a gun like that at her, she would most probably wet herself. Even in this day and age, unnecessary as it was, thanks to modern technology, for actual killing power, big caliber did wonders for intimidation value. And that gun had a hell of a lot of it.

“All right,” said the armed girl, her scowl turning into a fierce, dangerous grin, “Here we go!”

The girl turned around, pistol in hand, and stole a quick glance into the alley, poking her head out from behind the dumpster. She ducked back immediately, and waited for the volley the security suits send her way to stop whizzing by and ricocheting against their cover. Then she set herself and dived straight out into the open, rolled over one shoulder and came up in a classical half-kneeling firing position, arms outstretched, the gun held steady in both hands, all in one incredibly fast and graceful movement. Her green eyes narrowed slightly as she took aim in a space of a heartbeat, and squeezed the trigger twice.

Triss winced in anticipation and then blinked in surprise as the huge gun barked off two shots. Knowing next to nothing about weapons, modern or otherwise, she was unconsciously expecting the gun to be, true to its revolver form, an old-fashioned firearm, with the recoil, muzzle flash and roar to match its bulk. But, apart from the six-chambered revolving magazine, the pistol had nothing to do with those antiquated weapons. It was in fact a completely contemporary railgun, like the ones the corporate security people carried, launching projectiles using artificial gravity. It did jump in the firerers hand, but the recoil was negligible, compensated for by a gravitic inertia damper, as was standard issue for modern kinetic weapons. It had no muzzle flash at all and made surprisingly little noise, even for a railgun, because its projectiles were subsonic.

Triss, hiding behind the dumpster and busy being surprised, didn’t catch what happened to the black suited men. She only heard two loud detonations, coming so close one after the other as to be almost one sound, a split second after her ally let fly. Uncertainly, she got up and looked over the top of the dumpster. The men were lying sprawled on the ground, unmoving. She could see no blood.

The green-haired girl got smoothly to her feet and jauntily twirled her enormous revolver around her trigger finger. “And that, ladies and gentlemen, is that,” she remarked, turning to smile at Triss and returning the gun to the inside of her jacket with studied nonchalance.

“Did... Did you kill them?” asked Triss hesitantly.

“Nah, I don’t like corpos, but they haven’t pissed me off that bad yet. Shockwave stunners,” answered the other girl casually, and clarified at Triss’s puzzled look, “Fourteen-by-forty millimeter micro grenades. This beauty,” she said, patting the side of her jacket hiding the gun, “the Tsunami EX-9 Equalizer, is more of a multipurpose grenade launcher then a pistol. Quite useful,” she added brightly, winking at the redhead.

“Grenade... Launcher...” repeated Triss in a weak voice, staring at the other girl with a stunned expression. Truth be told, she would be staring at her, quite stunned, anyway, grenade launcher or no. The way she handled that gun, the way she handled herself in that stunt she pulled, every move purposeful, precise, fluid and self-assured. Her attitude, rather brash but teasingly playful, apparently unruffled by the fact that that she just got herself into an armed altercation with the forces of a powerful corporation by involving herself in the troubles of a complete stranger. Her looks, pleasantly tomboyish and casually attractive. Triss found herself quite in awe of the green-haired girl. Who was she?

“Guess we better keep moving. There’ll be more of them along shortly,” said the girl, unaware of the bespectacled hacker's thoughts. “Have to find some quiet place. You ready to run some more?" she extended a hand towards Triss, smiling mischievously.

“OK...” Triss took the hand, again smiling back unconsciously. They ran.

Fifteen minutes later, the girls were sitting on a packing crate, their backs against a wall, hidden among stacks of other crates of various sizes at the back of some shop or another, catching their breaths.

“OK, -now- we lost them,” said the greenhead wryly, drawing a giggle out of Triss.

“Looks that-OW!” Triss gave a strangled exclamation of pain, as she tried to use her hand to help herself change position on the crate, momentarily forgetting about her injured palm.

The other girl tutted at herself in mild annoyance and delved her hand inside her jacket again, this time bringing forth a small field first-aid kit.

Triss blinked at her in surprise, then smiled a little despite her own discomfort, allowing the girl to start tending to the hand. “A grenade launcher, a first-aid kit... What else you got stashed in there?”

“Yeah, I like to be prepared,” replied the green-haired girl smilingly. “Hmm, you scraped them completely raw,” she observed. “This will sting,” she warned before swabbing at the damaged flesh with a piece of disinfectant-dampened gauze. It did sting, and Triss hissed a little, blinking furiously. After cleaning out the wound, the taller girl applied over it a layer of synth-skin bandage from a small spraying can, then moved on to the second hand.

Triss let the girl repeat the process on her left hand and then both the knees, watching all the while. The stranger turned out to be every bit as competent at administering first-aid as she seemed to be at giving people reason to need it, every move as self-assured and smooth as like when she was fighting. The stranger... Triss realized with a start that she still didn’t know her name.

As if reading her mind, the green-haired girl glanced up at Triss in the middle of putting the dressing on her right knee. “We didn’t exactly had time for introductions, what with all this running and shooting, huh?” she observed, finishing the job. She closed up the kit and made it disappear into her jacket, like the gun before it, then hopped back up on the crate and turned to face the bedraggled hacker. “I’m Rika. Rika Din’Alt,” she introduced herself. “What’s your name?”

“Triss,” replied the other girl. “Actually, it’s Patricia Kobayashi, but... friends... call me Triss,” she added shyly.

“Pleased to meet’ya, then, Triss,” said Rika, putting out a hand and smiling pleasantly at the hacker.

They shook, both careful not to disturb the fresh dressing on Triss’s palm.

“Listen, Rika... Thank you... For all you’ve done for me,” said the redhead, feeling awkward.

“Don’t thank me yet. We’re not out of trouble yet. We still have to get you off the planet,” replied the girl bluntly. “But don’t worry,” she went on, smiling reassuringly at Triss’s renewed look of apprehension, “I have it all covered: I happen to have a ship,” she announced, once again reaching for her jacket. “...No, silly, not in here!” she added, grinning, as she noticed the involuntary boggled look the other girl gave said garment, which had it's desired effect of braking Triss up laughing.

Rika produced a chalk-red-and-white NAVI from her pocket and unfolded the paper-thin screen from its roll. She set the device to vid-com mode and selected a number from the speed-dial list. It ringed twice before being answered by somebody Triss couldn’t see from where she sat.

“Rika?” said a man’s voice, deep and a little bit hoarse but rather pleasant. If Triss wanted to guess she would peg him at least for middle age, possibly even over twice her own. Rica’s dad? she wondered.

“Hi, Shain,” smiled the girl. OK, probably not her dad.

“I had expected you’d be back by now,” said the man – Shain, apparently.

“Something came up,” replied Rika. “How’s the resupply going?”

“We’re basically finished.”

“Good. Do me a favor and tell Nic to get ready to rise ship as soon as I get back.”

“Rise ship? Are you in some kind of trouble?” wondered Shain, a note of concern touching his voice.

“In a manner of speaking,” answered the green-haired girl, shooting a quick, tiny smile at Triss. “I’ll need you to break out one of our overdrive universal forgeries.”

“Are you sure? We only have two of them left.”

“Yeah, I know, but it’s really important.”

“Just checking,” said the man, and Triss noted that, from his tone, it really appeared as if he was doing just that – not challenging the girl’s decision or implying in any way that he thought it unwise, merely checking if she was sure what she was doing. She was, and it was cool with him.

“Send it through to my NAVI, I’ll get back to you after I fill it out. I’ll explain everything once I’m back,” promised the girl.

Shain nodded. “Be careful,” he said gently, if somewhat resignedly.

“I will. Thanks,” said Rika, grinning, and deactivated the connection. “OK, that’s taken care of,” she said brightly, turning to Triss.

“Overdrive universals?” wondered Triss, recalling the last part of the exchange. Finally, a subject she knew something about. “You have a spider friend?”

“Nah, we bought a few, some time back,” replied the other girl unconcernedly.

“But that had to cost a fortune!” blurted the shocked hacker. “And you want to waste one on me?”

She was exarregating a little, but overdrive universals were really very expensive pieces of code. They were the ultimate forgeries, possible to configure into imitating almost any official document. Once configured, their “executive tendrils” were released into the local area of Ethernet, virus-like, and basically made the forged document legitimate, in that area at least. An overdrive universal’s failure and detection rate was around one in a thousand, the lowest there was, to the eternal chagrin of net-security divisions galaxy wide. It achieved it's success rate, however, by being short-lived and one-shot. It quite literally burned itself out as it ate it's way into the target systems and then run countermeasure and falsified the results of any authentication checks run against it – hance the “overdrive” part of the name. The life span of an OU was anywhere from several days to a few hours, depending on the difficulty of the forgery. On top of that, OU’s were also a bitch to create and, as such, rare and painfully costly to buy, to the undisguised relief of net-security divisions galaxy wide.

“Actually, we got them cheap, as a return favor of sorts. We’re using them in emergencies, and this is one. Don’t worry about it. Anyway, you were the one who wanted my help,” Rika pointed out casually.

“Yeah, but... I hope I’m not inconveniencing you too much...”

Just as she said it, Triss realized, how a... woefully inadequate way of putting the trouble the green-haired girl was going into –that- was, and she hung her head, feeling very stupid and guilty.

“Hey, relax!” said Rika, putting an arm around Triss’s shoulders and rocking her a little. “Like I said, I got into it of my own free will, so now I will see it through to the end, whatever it takes. Would be pretty cruel of me, get this far and then turn around on you, because I suddenly decided there’s really no percentage in it. I’m a tease, not a heartless sadist. Really, don’t worry about it,” she said earnestly, smiling warmly at the other girl.

“Thanks...” replied Triss, looking at Rika with grateful eyes.

“Somehow,” Rika remarked, “I don’t think you’re usually this subdued.”

“Yeah, well, I can be a bit shy, but no, you’re right, I'm usually not”

“Happy to hear it,” said Rika, and indeed she seemed to be. “Guess you’re a bit shell-shocked, huh?” she went on, in a gentler tone.

“You could say that, yes. This is the first time anybody ever tried to... Kill me,” said Triss, realizing as she did just how surreal and frightening at once she found what happened to her over the last three days.

Rika squeezed Triss’s shoulders a bit. “It’ll be OK,” she said, giving the other girl another reassuring smile.

Triss returned the smile gratefully and thought how lucky she was to have met Rika when she did. She realized that this actually meant she was lucky to trip when she did. If she hadn’t fallen back then she would have surely simply passed the girl in the alley and continued on, and who knows what would have happened to her later. Triss didn’t really believe in destiny, but it was pretty suspicious, wasn’t it, she thought amusedly, that she would flop flat on her face at the feet of the one person on the planet who could help her. And said person... Rika was everything Triss felt she herself was not - graceful, strong, confident, brave... And quite gorgeous. She stepped into a dangerous situation to help a complete stranger, on a moment's notice. She seemed to know how to take charge of her life. She could laugh and could make Triss laugh, even in the, rather dire, situation they were in. She made Triss feel at ease, even safe, with her simple reassurance that everything would be fine. And she apparently was a -spaceship captain-. Triss found herself wishing she could get to know Rika better, spend more time with her. Be her friend.

Her reverie was interrupted by a soft signal from the NAVI Rika had left lying open on the crate beside her.

“Aha,” said the girl, picking it up. “Our OU has arrived. Now then,” she turned to Triss, holding up the NAVI and manipulating something on the device, “Scowl.”

“Huh?” replied Triss, puzzled.

“Good enough,” grinned Rika. There was a silent click as she snapped a picture of the redheaded spider-girl with the NAVI’s built in digital camera.

“What’s that for?” wondered Triss.

“I have a plan,” replied Rika cryptically. “Lets see, if I can make this thing into a convincing arrest warrant,” she mused smilingly, manipulating the setup screen of the OU.

“Arrest warrant?” asked the other girl, a trifle alarmed.

“Yeah. Did I mention I was a licensed bounty hunter?” answered Rika cheerfully.

Triss only stared.

-ooo-

Rika’s plan was straightforward, really. Triss was a little unsettled, when she found out that it involved her putting on a pair of imposing handcuffs Rika produced out of her jacket pocket (And where –did- she keep all those things, anyway? That jacket was –small-). The handcuffs were a piece of work, state-of-the-art law enforcement equipment. What unnerved Triss the most was the tazer system built into them. Rika tried to put the other girl at ease, assuring her it was all just for show. It all came down to the question of trust.

Do I trust her that much? asked Triss of herself. How can I be sure she won’t turn out to be some kind of galactic slave-trader or some such? Or that she doesn’t just turn me in to the corpos for some benefit? And the answer, surprisingly unhesitant, was that yes, for some reason, she did trust Rika Din’Alt that much. So she allowed herself to be cuffed.

The rest was simple. Using the picture she took and personal statistics Triss provided, Rika made the overdrive universal into an arrest warrant for the teenaged hacker. It was to be supposedly put out by the Omni-Consumer Products corporation for serious net-security offenses committed on the planet Balthazar. Balthazar was a colony world located both near enough to be plausible for Triss to have run from and far enough for a truly detailed check to take too long. Then she send it back to Shain for implementation.

As they waited for the OU to become operational, Triss gave Rika the story behind her having become the object of a colony-wide hunt.

“I thought it was something like that,” said the bounty hunter, a dark expression, like the one she wore during the shoot-out, on her face, jarring in contrast to her normally cheerful disposition. “Don’t worry, I won’t let them have you,” she assured Triss vehemently.

Half an hour later the girls walked straight into the star port terminal. Rika was looking smug and cocky. Triss looked appropriately sour, defeated, and not a little scared - not a difficult look to achieve with one's wrists cuffed. The Kirishima people were not happy, but couldn’t do much about it. They tried to argue, but Rika informed them flatly, that, according to the concord on bounty hunters Kirishima ratified, the girl was her catch and so no longer in their jurisdiction, that there was no way she would forgo the reward waiting for her on Balthazar, and further, that if they wanted to make a fight out of it, then she, Rika Din’Alt would be more than happy to give them one. The chief of security operations called his superiors and was told, a trifle reluctantly, to let the matter drop. It looked rather amusing, a rough equivalent of a battalion of security officers backing off from one punky young woman. The local Kirishima bosses were pretty low-level and didn’t want risking an international incident for what was basically just a field exercise. It wasn’t like the hacker had actually done them any harm. And what could she do in retaliation? Go to the press? Sue them? Pleeease. And she was apparently going to jail for a long time, anyway. Still, Triss was sure they would remember her, and Rika too – especially after they find out, that the warrant was a fake.

So it was some minutes later, after passing through a standard customs check and riding a small maglev train in an underground tunnel, the girls found themselves in one of the starport’s small-ship revetments. It was, like all such constructions across the colonized galaxy, a circular hole dug into the ground, this particular one roughly a hundred meters in diameter, to the depth of about five meters, and sheathed in grayish-white (or simply age-grayed) duracrete, its walls angled lightly to the outside, with built-in positioning lights and the like scattered here and there. It resembled nothing so much as an artificial lunar crater.

“Well, here she is,” said Rika without turning her head. They both still had to play their roles, at least visually – there were surveillance cameras in the complex and revetments.

Triss looked up at the spaceship parked in the rough center of the duracrete floor. It was more or less sixty meters long and around seventeen high in its highest place. It looked fast, with a burly engine section and a forward-leaning look, and had a surprisingly naval air about it, like its designers wanted to make a futuristic ocean-going yacht or fast schooner, and then decided to remake it into a spaceship instead. Its lines were aerodynamic, its main hull pointed and roughly triangular in cross-section, with a kind of superstructure added on top for about half its length, from one third of the length down. The highest point of said superstructure was a thin, forward-leaning, flat-topped blade- or wing-like piece, rather like a anorectic submarine kiosk, with a smallish, windowed “booth” growing fluidly from it at its base, slightly off-center, where Triss guessed the ship's bridge was situated. The main hull flowed smoothly back into the wider engine section, two Ishida-Gallagher “turbines” in an over-under configuration to a side, on both sides of the blunt, slightly tapered stern that contained the, now open, main cargo ramp. The ensemble was finished off with snappy, negative-angled lifting surfaces and a weird stabilizer fin assembly close to the nose, similar to a hydrofoil’s lifting strake. The ship was perched on low, nicely substantial landing legs. It was thermocoated in a pleasant scheme of white and orange, with some black accents, and featuring racing-green go-faster stripes, adding to its overall hot-rod appearance. The paint-job was a bit faded and occasionally scarred, with faint re-entry scorch marks on the leading edges of the aerodynamic surfaces. Paradoxically, it didn’t detract from the ship’s appearance in Triss’s mind, but made it look somehow... stronger instead, like a seasoned veteran, scarred but unbroken. On its prow, red, italicized letters spelled out the name “Etranger”.

“What do you think?” asked Rika, leading the way to the cargo ramp.

“It’s so big!” breathed Triss. “And you really own it?” asked the redhead, amazed.

“Me and my friends do, yeah,” answered Rika, off-handedly.

“It’s so cool!”

“Happy you like it,” said the bounty hunter, smiling.

They went up the wide ramp into the main cargo hold and were finally able to relax, out of the cameras’ field of view. Rika went to a control panel on the wall to close the ramp, and Triss looked around, eagerly. She saw a lot of different cargo holds in her life, because on some of her trips she traveled as a stowaway, but was always interested in their contents. Some people traveled with the weirdest things. This hold was quite spacious, but about half of the available space, on the left-hand side, was taken up by a big, unidentified shape covered with a gray tarp. Behind its far end, a portion of the wall was taken up by what looked like a mechanical workshop. By the right-hand wall, near the control panel, a chopper-like repulsor cycle was secured to the floor with magnetic clamps. Behind it, a small and rather boring, four-seater repulsor buggy, its top open but for a pipe crash-cage, was similarly stowed. In the far corner of the right-hand wall, near the powered bulkhead door leading into the rest of the ship, there rested a stack of standard-issue packing crates made from heavy-duty plastic, just like the ones the girls were hiding among earlier.

The cargo ramp closed, and Rika came up to Triss.

“OK, we’re home free,” she declared smilingly. She regarded the bespectacled redhead, and Triss saw the by now familiar spark of mischief light up her green eyes. “You know, of course” remarked Rika thoughtfully, her smile turning just a bit evil, “now, that I have you cuffed and on my ship, I could do anything I wanted with you, like spank you ‘till you cried for mommy, and there would be nothing you could do about it.”

Rika’s evil grin and the menace in her voice were so obviously mock, that Triss could only crack up laughing uncontrollably, albeit with a furious blush burning across the bridge of her nose.

The green-haired girl took a moment to savor that view. She decided she really liked making that girl laugh. And it was a really nice laugh, too.

Presently, Triss mostly calmed dawn, with just little aftershock giggles shaking her shoulders now and then. “You’re such a tease,” she said shaking her head, still a trace of a blush on her face.

“Hey, I warned you. I guess it’s my way of dealing with stress... When I don’t have a criminal to hunt down and use as a punching bag,” replied Rika, shrugging. She input a code on the handcuffs' control unit, a light bangle with a few buttons and a display screen the size of a postage stamp, that she wore on her wrist, and the cuffs beeped and fell away from Triss’ wrists, into her waiting hand. She banished them into whatever pocket in her jacket spawned them.

Triss, deciding to ignore that last comment for now, went over to check out the repulsor bike. It was long, low slung and powerful-looking. It featured lots of silver chrome, and the parts that weren’t chrome were painted in a glossy, rich black, so deep it seemed to suck the light from the surrounding air. It was rather imposing.

“Looks dangerous,” she observed, impressed. “Yours?”

“Nah,” answered Rika, “it’s Clive’s. But he lets the rest of us borrow it.”

“Clive’s?”

“One of our crew. Come and meet them. We should probably blow this joint pretty soon anyway, before the Kirishima guys realize they’ve been doped,” proposed the bounty hunter, moving to open the door. “After you,” she smiled, gesturing to the corridor beyond.

Triss stepped through and Rika followed. The corridor was a bit narrow, but still broad enough for two people to pass by one another with some shoulder room to spare. It was pretty straightforward, with smooth walls colored an inoffensive cream shade, two light strips built into the upper corners, a dark-green no-slip floor and air conditioning vents spaced equidistantly on the ceiling. It stretched on for about twenty meters, ending in another bulkhead door, with a branch turning left at about half the distance and a smaller sliding door with a receded “frame” to the right.

“This is the ‘basement’,” explained Rika as they started walking, “where all the technical stuff is, the guts of the ship. Pretty boring stuff, unless you’re an engineer.”

Triss turned to look at her over one shoulder. “So, what was-” she started to speak, intending to ask about the big thing under the tarp, but stopped, noticing the smile on Rika’s face morph into an alarmed look. She should have been watching where she was going. She snapped her head around, but it was all she managed to do before colliding with whatever that was that had found itself in her path. Triss rebounded with a squeal of surprise and pain and fell backwards, landing on her butt. She had time to register that whatever she’d hit was yellow and had been covered in what felt like short, soft fur, rather pleasant really, but was hard as a rock directly underneath.

“Owie...” whimpered Triss, blinking back tears of pain. Great, she thought, this seems to be my day for having accidents. She shifted feebly on her bruised behind and felt gingerly at her nose, which she smashed into whatever it was, with one hand, adjusting her glasses, which had been knocked askew and rather painfully squashed against her right brow-ridge and cheekbone, with the other. She finally looked up to find out just what had she walked into... And made an involuntary sound of alarm, her eyes going wide.

He, for it turned out she walked into a man, was so tall and so broad-shouldered as was almost impossible for a Human. Which was perfectly all right, since he wasn’t Human. His general configuration was standard enough, with the right number of appropriately placed arms and legs, a head with two eyes, two ears, a nose and a mouth, and right overall body proportions and skeletal structure, but there the similarities ended. His entire body was covered in short, dull-yellow fur, with black tiger stripes on his sides and back, the outside of his arms and the top and back of his head. He had a long, thin, mobile tale, also tiger-striped, which he had previously kept looped around his hips and now unfurled. His hands had only three thick fingers in addition to the thumb, and, although they tapered off and flattened at the ends like a Human’s did, they had no fingernails. The man’s most striking, inhuman feature, however, was the head and “face”. On his shoulders rested a head that would be perfectly in place on a big hunting cat, with a muzzle for a mouth, a small, moist nose on top of that, impressive whiskers and triangular cat’s ears. From the top and back of the head grew a mane, which he appeared to have cropped and combed into a kind of military crew cut. His deep-set eyes had vertical slit pupils. His cat-like features were a tiny bit distorted, moving subtly away from being perfectly feline and towards what could be described as primate territory - his upper lip was not split, for example. The overall effect was what most people would imagine a tiger or lion would look like, if it were an upright-standing, sentient being. Which was almost-exactly the case here. The man was a Purr.

The Purr were the second sentient race Humans encountered in space – and the first one they waged war with. The war ended over a century ago, but there were still a lot of people, on both sides, who nursed a grudge. In general, however, Humans and Purr got along now, co-existing amiably enough. Still, many Humans tended to be unsettled in the presence of Purrs. The cat-people evolved out of predators, and their predilection for consuming large quantities of rare stakes and sushi was not the only legacy of their primal ancestors they retained. They tended to be rather laid-back people, even if their culture highly valued personal honor and warrior prowess, but once roused they were truly terrible opponents to face. And nature made sure that, even without weapons, they were very dangerous. A Purr’s nail-less fingers and toes concealed four-centimeter retractable claws of considerable sharpness and durability, and his jaws were strong like vices and equipped with rending fangs (although his overall teeth set was that of an omnivore). All Purrs were exceptionally strong, limber, fast and very, very tough. It wasn’t hard to see how all this could unnerve somebody.

On the other hand, there were also many people who thought that Purrs were just the darn –cutest- beings ever.

Triss, now that her initial shock started to fade, supposed she could see where that could have come from. She had nothing against cats, and the man’s feline features were actually quite pleasant to the eye. He didn’t look scary – intimidating, yes, but not outright dangerous – although Triss was sure he could if he only wanted to. His athletic, powerful frame was almost two and a half meters tall and almost a meter wide at the shoulders. He wore black military fatigue pants, huge black combat boots with chrome buckle closures, a wide leather belt with a impressive silver buckle and studs and a peculiar black tank-top, covering only his chest, leaving his finely-muscled mid-riff exposed. Triss realized that –that- was the rock-hard thing she almost broke her nose on – his belly muscles! His tail waved in the air, in a way Triss thought indicated surprise, but how she figured that out she couldn’t say. He looked down at the fallen girl with eyes of an even more peculiar shade of green than Rika’s, oddly reflective and shot through with tiny specks of gold, over a pair of electric blue, narrow, wrap-around shades, quite cool really, pushed low on his “nose”. The lines of his face seemed to express puzzlement, but again, as with the tail, Triss wasn’t sure, because she never interacted with Purrs before and had no experience at reading them. She also wouldn’t even try to estimate his age.

“You OK, Triss?” Rika asked crouching down by her side, sounding as if she was sincerely concerned, but at the same time struggled not to be amused by Triss’s reaction to the man.

“Fine, mostly,” replied the other girl distractedly, still staring at the man.

“Hello, capt’n. And who might you be, young lady?” asked the Purr leaning down a little.

Triss blinked. She expected his voice to be deep and booming to match his bulk, but it turned out to be surprisingly mellow and almost gentle if throaty, with just a hint of an accent. Because of their mouth and speech apparatus construction, Purrs had trouble learning and pronouncing Human languages, like the New English Standard they were all speaking, but it could be all mostly overcome with practice. It seemed this particular Purr had a lot of it.

Rika stood up and extended a hand. The Purr did the same. Triss took the hands, a trifle hesitantly in the man’s case, and they hoisted her to her feet. The Purr’s hand was almost twice as big as Triss’s and felt funny because of the velvety fur it was covered with.

“Triss, this is Clive,” indicated Rika. “He’s our engineer and heavy lifter,” she went on, smiling in a way indicating the last comment was a long running joke. “Clive, Triss Kobayashi, the best spider on, and soon to be out of, this dump,” she announced, grinning at Triss’s embarrassed look.

“Charmed, Miss Kobayashi,” said the Purr solemnly, inclining his head and extending a hand again.

“Just ‘Triss’ is fine Mr, um, Clive...” replied the redhead awkwardly, her hand momentarily lost again within his huge grip.

“Just ‘Clive’, please,” he returned, smiling with his “lips” only – Purrs being what they were, displaying teeth was for them a sign of aggression. “I have taken to using the name because I found most people end up biting their tongues, when they try to pronounce my full Purr name.”

“OK,” nodded Triss, smiling back more confidently.

“I sincerely hope you were not hurt?” said Clive, referring to their collision.

“My... pride... is a little bruised,” said the girl rubbing at her nose and, more discreetly, on the seat of her shorts, “but it’s nothing I won’t survive.”

“I am glad.”

“Don’t mind his pompous speech patterns,” advised Rika mock-dismissively, “He reads too much sword-and-sorcery fantasy. He’s trying to talk like he’s some kind of medieval paladin or something,” she grinned.

“It never hurts to be polite,” replied Clive equably, then asked, “And to what do we own the pleasure of having Triss aboard?”

“The local corpos were being obnoxious and giving her grief,” understated Rika cheerfully, “so we’ll give her a ride somewhere she’ll be appreciated more.”

“Indeed, a worthy endeavor,” agreed Clive. Triss was sure he was well aware, just by looking at her dirty, disheveled appearance, that Rika considerably downplayed the situation, but he was courteous about it.

“Accidentally,” he added, “what is that smell?” he wondered, looking around for the possible source, missing Rika’s suddenly pained expression. Purr sense of smell was notoriously more sensitive than the human one.

Triss started guiltily. The way Clive wiggled his nose was pretty funny, but she wasn’t in a laughing mood. “That... Would be me,” she admitted, feeling a blush building on her cheeks. The Purr gave the erstwhile fugitive a puzzled look. “The day before yesterday... I hid in a dumpster. Slept in it, actually... It was half-full...” explained Triss lowering her eyes in embarrassment, her face going completely scarlet. That was the first time she had to go dumpster-diving in the real world since she was sixteen, and the experience had been as unenjoyable now as it was then. She didn’t have to repeat it yesterday, so the smell mostly faded, but she still, well, stank.

“That was a smart move,” Clive said, quite seriously, by way of recovery as he finally noticed Rika’s face and realized he might have been somewhat insensitive. “Those things block heat signatures,” he explained to Triss’s surprised look.

“He’s absolutely right. And don’t sweat it,” added Rika, putting her arm around Triss once again, then continuing in a tone of broad confidence, laying a hand beside her mouth for added effect, “It’s not like my socks are exactly fresh, either.”

“No, they are not,” confirmed Clive, deadpan, wrinkling his nose again.

Triss couldn’t help herself, she had to laugh at that. Rika looked smug.

The hacker realized Rika had to notice the smell earlier – couldn’t have –not- noticed it, the way she put an arm around Triss’s shoulders when she was cheering Triss up back then. But she must have figured out where it came from, and said nothing, not to embarrass her.

“What you down here for, Clive?” asked Rika meanwhile.

“I intended to take a look at the rear left landing leg. It would seem the number four magnetic ram is not pulling its weight,” explained the Purr.

“Oh. And I wanted to raise ship,” replied Rika, apologetically.

“No matter, capt’n. I can work at it anyway. It will be a trifle cramped, but it is nothing I will not survive,” he assured her, smiling and nodding pleasantly at Triss.

“OK then. We’ll go do lift-off now. Holler if you need a hand.”

“Certainly. A pleasure to make your acquaintance, Triss. Capt’n,” Clive nodded and smiled at both girls, received nods and smiles in return, and moved off down the corridor and through the hold door.

“So that’s Clive, huh? A little weird, but seems fun,” said Triss, as Rika led the way down the side corridor.

“He is. Provided you can pry him off from his books, MMORPG’s and mechanical fiddling,” smiled Rika. “Hell of an engineer, though, and a very good person to have watching your back in a fight. But he’s a Purr, so I guess that last part is kind of redundant,” she ventured half-seriously.

MMORPG’s? Triss filed this for later persual.

The ship was too small to have even a single turbolift. Instead, one moved between decks using simple, narrow, spiral staircases or a “ladder-elevator”. It was a curious contraption - a big chain, or rather a kind of conveyor belt made of big, flat, rectangular pieces of dura-plastic, with ladder rungs formed out of their surfaces, joined by flexible couplings. It was constantly moving on a narrow, vertical beam, one side going up, the other down, in a circular shaft about one meter in diameter. Rika used the “elevator” and encouraged Triss, who was somewhat apprehensive of it, to do the same. It was quicker and less tiring than using the stairs, and, once one had some practice in getting on and off, a convenient and comfortable way of moving about. Triss had no practice however, and became very alarmed when the time to get off came, the end of the line approaching much too fast for her liking. Turned out she needn’t have worried. A simple but effective photosensor cutoff system prevented anyone’s hand or foot being caught into the mechanism at the top or bottom, stopping the whole thing until the offending limb was removed from the dangerous area.

They rode up two levels. Rika explained that the ship had three decks – two in the main hull and one in the “superstructure”. The corridor on the upper level was pretty much the same as the one in the “basement”, if wider, but that was to be expected, so Triss wasn’t disappointed.

Rika led the way to another stairs/elevator combo, passing by some doors, and the girls rode up into what Triss supposed was the “booth” at the base of the vertical fin.

It was, just as she expected, the ship’s control room, much too big to be called a cockpit but still definitely too cramped to be a proper bridge - no place for the captain to dramatically pace, pondering a hard decision, like in the movies. The room was done up in cream with black trim, featured five asymmetrically placed semi-wrap-around workstations with comfortable chairs and a huge number of keyboards, switches, computer displays and blinking lights, which Triss, never having been to a starship’s bridge before, found quite exciting and a little dazzling. It had a bustling air about it, even if nothing was happening at the time. In front, a single wall-wide, slightly curved, forward-leaning window gave a commanding view of the ship’s prow and the space beyond, and had the biggest computer screen mounted above it.

The elevator deposited its passengers directly on the bride, at the back and to the left. There were two people already there. A man, not nearly as tall or broad as Clive, but big and powerful in his own right, was sitting at the center console, elevated on a dais above the rest of the bride, pursuing something on a datapad. His hair was light gray, cut short and combed back, and he was dressed in gray fatigue pants, black combat boots and an open gray shirt with turned-up sleeves over a white t-shirt. At the most forward placed station, an athletic woman was lounging in her chair, back reclined, hands behind head, feet propped up on the console. Her hair was dark-purple and pulled back in a low ponytail reaching just past her shoulder blades, the part that was too short for the ponytail falling forward over her forehead in uneven bangs. In the one ear Triss could see, a smallish, steel-gray ear-cuff gleamed. Her skin was on the dusky side. She was wearing a tight, black baby-doll tee and loose jungle-cammo cargo-pants bloused into the tops of her black, metal-reinforced combat boots. Military footwear and look seemed to be the order for most of this crew, Triss noted.

“OK, Nic, let’s haul ass!” announced Rika without preamble, stepping out into the bridge.

The man and woman turned to look. Triss involuntarily shrunk a little, stopping herself from hiding behind the taller girl. I’m still a little jumpy, she decided.

The man had a squarish jaw and sharply defined cheekbones, and a scar, deep but clean, traversed the right side of his face, starting just above the brow ridge, jumping across the eye and continuing down the cheek almost to the edge of the jaw. His eyes were steel-gray. He seemed to be in his early forties and could be said to be craggily handsome. Only now did Triss notice, startled, that his left arm was a light-gray cyber-prosthetic, obviously high quality, but in a utilitarian, no-frills way.

The woman looked to be in her middle twenties. She was quite attractive, but her bright-brown eyes had a cynical, mocking light in them, that made her look rather less pleasant than she should have, on behalf of the rest of her face. Around her neck, she wore a simple, thin chain from which a set of dog-tags hung, falling down to her, rather ample, bosom.

“What took you so long?” asked the woman gruffly, sitting up. “And who’s the four-eyed sewer rat?” she added, looking pointedly at Triss.

“Her name’s Triss. She’s our passenger for this trip,” explained Rika equably, sending a reassuring smile at the girl.

“Passenger? She paying?”

“No, we’ll be doing her a favor,” replied Rika simply.

“We will? Yeeey, us,” grumbled the woman, shaking her head and turning back to her console, which featured a pair of complicated-looking control yokes. “OK, if you say so,” she said reluctantly, punching buttons, which set the screens and lights to agitated life, “I’ll take us up then. The coils are hot.” She placed a commo headset on her head to start negotiating with flight control, at the same time deftly extracting a crooked cigarette from a crumpled pack she took out of her pocket.

“By the way, that’s Nico Ferrel, or ‘Nic’ for short,” introduced Rika brightly. “She’s our pilot, navigator, gunner and official ‘let’s-be-mean-to-people’ person.”

Nico grumbled something under her breath, lighting up her cigarette with an industrial-looking electric lighter.

“Her pilot’s callsign is ‘Nicotine’, ‘cause she smokes a lot,” went on Rika. “Gets on Clive’s nerves a little,” she added.

Triss thought she heard a mumbled “He can bite me” come from the pilot.

“And this,” Rika continued, turning to the man, “is Shain Rainer, my Exec and sensei. Taught me everything I know about kicking ass,” she grinned.

Shain stood up and got down from the dais.

“So, you are Patricia Kobayashi, the young woman I put out an arrest warrant for,” he said with a small smile, extending a hand to Triss.

“Yeah, that would be me,” admitted the girl sheepishly. As she shook his hand, she noticed that his right eye seemed to reflect the light differently than his left. The difference was minimal, but she caught it and realized the eye must also be a cybernetic replacement, the original sure to have been put out by whatever left that scar on his face. They both, however, had a warm look in them.

“I really appreciate your help...” said Triss, stole a quick, uncertain look at Rika and went on at her encouraging smile, “...Shain.”

“Don’t mention it, Triss,” he replied, still smiling, then went on, with a shrug that looked a little helpless and much amused at the same time, “We can’t help but follow where Rika goes.”

Rika actually seemed a little embarrassed by that.

Triss didn’t quite know what to make of Shain. He seemed friendly enough, but at the same time intimidated her slightly, more so than Clive. He had a weird air around him, like someone who used to be – and was used to being – dangerous, but now tried to “kick the habit”, for lack of a better way to put it. But it wasn’t so bad and Triss decided she could get used to him.

It seemed Nico had finished her talk with the tower just then, for she looked at them over her shoulder. “OK, got take-off clearance and a vector for open space,” she announced around her cigarette, seemingly distracted from being unfriendly by her pilot duties. “Sit your butts down, people.”

They did, Rika sitting in the seat on the dais – the captain’s seat, obviously – after placing Triss in the second one, situated behind it and to the right, that the other girl didn’t notice before, and Shain sat down at one of the other consoles. They didn’t have to strap in, during a standard take-off or landing sitting down was safety measure enough.

The purple-haired, rude pilot plied the controls, her moves confident, smooth and skillful. The lights on the entire ship briefly flashed green, warning the crew not on the bridge, at this moment consisting of Clive, of the planned maneuver and then, with a loud whine of repulsors all but inaudible inside it, the Etranger stirred and rose into the air. Its landing legs decompressed under it, then were folded up, hatches in the hull sealing over them. Clive immediately and happily went to work on the number four magnetic ram in the rear left one.

The ship rose from the revetment and headed straight up into the sky, prow pointed upward like an ancient rocket’s tip, the exhaust ports on the I-G grav-flux engines blazing with black “light” halos, thundering through the atmosphere at Mach three and counting. Thanks to the internal artificial gravity and inertial dampers, the ship's movement was almost unfelt by those within, the strongest turbulences mere light vibrations felt through the deck. The big overhead screen displayed a rearview picture, the bustling colony of Mantell compressing into a progressively smaller spot of black and gray on the yellowish continent, for everyone who wanted to look at it. Triss sure didn’t.

In just a few minutes the blue sky behind the window gradually darkened, until it became the incomparable blackness of space, strewn with the glittering diamonds of stars. Triss, for some reason, never tired of the sight of that transition, however many times she saw it. She was so fond of it actually, that she had set it as the startup animation for her Ethernet deck.

The Etranger accelerated even more, shot right through the satellite orbits, past the orbital factories and transfer stations, and ripped itself completely free from the pull of Mantell’s gravity, heading into open space.

“Good bye and good riddance. So, where we going, actually?” spoke up Nico after laying in a course that would take them out of the ecliptic plane.

“I don’t know,” replied Rika smilingly. “So, where we going?” she asked turning to Triss, grinning.

“You’re asking -me-?!” blurted Triss, incredulous.

“Of course,” supplied Shain, amused. “We’re making this trip for your benefit, it’s only logical to let you choose the destination.”

Rika just gave her a look that said: “Well DUH?” then said, “Wherever you want to go. Is there any place you always wanted to visit? We’ll take you.”

Nico, eyes wide, opened her mouth, but after taking a look at Rika and Shain’s smiling, sincere faces she closed it wordlessly and turned back to her console disgustedly, grumbling under her breath.

“Well...” said Triss uncertainly. “OK!” she decided brightly, getting into the spirit of things.

Rika was pleased. Laughing at Rika’s jokes was one thing but in a situation like this she was expecting a shyly mumbled “If you say so”. It seemed, however, that Triss’s shell-shock was finally receding.

“But I don’t really know...” said Triss hesitantly. “Wait, I –have- an idea. I kind of always wanted to see a spot of asteroid racing in person, not only on TV, but I somehow never did...”

“Asteroid racing?”

Triss realized that the question had been asked in stereo – Rika and Nico having spoken at the same time, Rika curious, Nico outright incredulous. The dusky pilot was now regarding Triss with a cool, apprising look.

“I didn’t figure you for being into such things,” said Rika.

“Well, I’m not, you know, overmuch, but I do find it interesting,” explained Triss, trying to ignore Nico’s fishy gaze.

“Then asteroid racing it is! Nico, where can we go for this?”

“The closest –decent- league chapter is at... Alcyone, I think...” replied Nico, taping at a keyboard and consulting a screen at her station. “Yup, Alcyone. Good management, -fair- resident racer complement,” she spoke the last part a trifle disdainfully. “Jackob’s Star it isn’t, but it’ll do. We can be there morning, day after tomorrow.” Was that a note of something like enthusiasm in her voice?

“Let’s make it so, then.”

“Right,” said Nico, shaking her head helplessly, but Triss thought her voice didn’t sound as long-suffering as it did before. “Programming course... The Sycz-Chandra Engine ready.” As she said this, the lights flashed orange and a short warning claxon sounded through the ship. “We punch through to metaspace in three, two, one, now,” she reported, firmly gripping and then pushing forward an important-looking throttle-like slider.

The ship slowed down, the thrum of its engines becoming slower and deeper, as if it suddenly found itself pushing against some invisible barrier. That seemed to really be the case, for now it looked like the very space around its prow started to deform and stretch, like shrink-wrap when someone tries to punch through it with a finger. The ship continued to push for a moment, until it was almost completely submerged in the “indentation” it seemed to make in space, and then, suddenly, it appeared to have broken the resistance, as space shot forward, flattening itself out again, swallowing the ship up. From the point it disappeared in, a single, circular distortion spread out, like one of the concentric rings on water after throwing in a rock, flowing quickly away and diminishing until only the undisturbed blackness remained. There was no trace of the ship. The Etranger had punched into metaspace.

On the bridge, the transition was noticeable only by looking through the windows. One moment the blackness of space seemed to deform, noticeable itself only because of the stars, then, with a jarring, blink-of-an-eye jump it was gone, replaced with the eye-bending, boiling fluid in shades of red and black that was metaspace. Physically, there was absolutely no change. Some people claimed to feel spurts of nausea during metaspace punch-throughs, but it was determined to be brought about by the visual effects themselves.

“Right. Nothing to do now but wait,” said Rika, getting up. She turned to Triss. “Come on, we should find you a place to stay.”

“And a shower,” added Shain, a little pointedly.

Triss started, and then realized the rebuke wasn’t directed at her.

Rika looked mortified. “Oh damn, you’re right! I’m so sorry! Bringing you here, showing off the ship, instead of offering you to clean up first,” she said to Triss guiltily.

“It’s OK, I was so excited myself I didn’t even think of it,” replied the redhead sincerely, smiling. “But now that you mentioned it, I –would- kill for a shower and some clean clothes and underwear... Well, not really, but you get my meaning,” she smiled sheepishly.

“I do. Let’s go!” said Rika, hurrying to the elevator, pulling Triss by the hand, determined to fix her faux pas as quick as possible. Triss allowed herself to be bustled off the bridge, amused. She managed to catch sight of Shain, nodding at her and smiling his tiny smile, and then she was riding the moving ladder down. She heard him saying: “We’ll be around if you need us,” to Rika and Nico saying something unintelligible in her long-suffering tone.

“Please, don’t mind Nic being such an asshole,” said Rika as she led the way through the corridors. “She’s almost always like that. Give her time to get used to you. Two years, and we still don’t have her completely tamed. She’s actually a good person, she’s just...” Rika sighted, “...Difficult.”

“I’ll give her a chance,” nodded Triss, touched by the green-haired girl's concern for the gruff pilot.

“Thanks. That was smooth, by the way,” complimented Rika. “Wishing to go see asteroid racing I mean. I think you actually managed to get into her ‘slightly-better-than-completely-useless’ people book, right off the bat. You’ll see why,” she said cryptically, grinning, to Triss’s puzzled expression.

Presently, the girls came to a door. A star, cut out of golden-yellow sticker paper, was stuck to it, a little crookedly. On it, in black marker, the name “Rika” was spelled in a jaunty hand, a small heart added underneath.

“Not very modest, are we?” noted Triss, arching an eyebrow amusedly.

“No, I guess I’m not, huh?” grinned back Rika. “OK, you can use my shower, unless you want to wait for me to take the guest room out of the mothballs?"

“If you –really- don’t mind,” replied Triss, trifle shyly, “I really do need to wash up...” She wasn’t exaggerating. Now that the more pressing concern of her safety was taken care of, Triss realized just how dirty she was, how bad she smelled and how itchy her skin had become after three days of living rough in the same clothes (not to mention the night spend in a dumpster, half-buried in trash).

“Great! Come on in then,” invited Rika. “Smart choice. My bathroom already has soap and stuff,” she smiled. “The guest room is bare ‘xcept for the furniture, very basic I must add. We don’t get visitors often.”

Rika opened the door and they stepped through.

“Wow,” commented Triss, looking around, “big.”

“A mess, though,” replied Rika, not very concerned or ashamed but honest.

“I’ve seen worse. I’ve –made- worse, actually,” admitted Triss. “It’s not like there’s actual garbage in it. Like your style,” she went on, smiling. “It really could be a celebrities hotel room,” she said, referring to the star on the door.

The room was certainly spacious. It was rectangular, around two times as long as it was wide, the entry door set in one of the long walls. Two-thirds of the wall opposite the door were taken up by a three-part window, reaching almost from floor to ceiling. There were two more doors, Triss guessed one leading to the bathroom, the other one a closet. The main furniture was a huge, king-size bed in the far right corner, a big, modern data-desk with chair in the corner by the part of the long wall not occupied by a window, a tiny kitchenette built into the short wall between the desk and one of the doors, a big set of hanging bookshelves on the wall with the door, with a chest of drawers beside it and a pair of battered but comfortable-looking armchairs beside a round, glass-topped coffee table in the rough middle of the room. Several standing lamps of different height were interspersed, apparently randomly, throughout the room. All the furniture was mismatched, but not jarringly so. Altogether, the room looked like something a college or university student could have rented and lived in. The resemblance was strengthened by the “artistic disarray” the room was in. Articles of clothing, magazines, books, pillows and various other items lay strewn about in a careless manner. On the coffee table, for example, stood an orange Chuck Taylor sneaker, accompanied by a few bullet shaped items Triss realized were probably ammunition for Rika’s gun, and a book with a brightly colored cover. On a closer look, the book turned to actually be a comic book of some kind. The drawing on the cover depicted... An anthropomorphic bunny, apparently, his fur white, a thin, crescent-shaped scar above his left eyebrow, dressed in a blue kimono and black pants, and carrying a katana. He looked quite fierce. Wierd. Triss realized now that most of what she had taken for books were actually comic books. Seemed Rika was a manga fan. Triss could relate.

“You’re in luck,” said Rika jokingly, “you get to witness the final stage of the accumulation of thrash. I usually clean it up when it gets this far – I planned to do it today, after getting back from the city.”

“Here you go,” she said, leading the way to, and opening the door on the short wall by the bed. The bathroom beyond looked a little cramped, but clean, nice and well-equipped. “While you’re at it, I’ll take your things to the laundry. You have any spare clothes?”

“Afraid not,” replied Triss, troubled, taking off her tiny backpack. “I had to pack light and in a hurry. Just saved my deck, roms and some random small items. All my clothes were... Blown up along with the hotel room.”

“You can have some of mine, then,” offered Rika. “They should fit all right,“ she assessed, giving Triss a smilingly apprising look. “Unless you’re opposed to wearing somebody else’s underwear...” she hesitated, suddenly awkward. Triss thought it was quite sweet.

“It’s OK,” she smiled at her, then ventured a little quip: “I’m sure it’ll be clean.”

Rika chuckled. “OK, step right in,” she said, gesturing to the bathroom door. “Use the towel on the rack, I just got it out, haven’t used it yet. Take as long as you like and help yourself to whatever you want.”

“Thank you,” said Triss softly.

-ooo-

Triss emerged from the bathroom a little over an hour later, feeling human again. First, she had taken a shower, to scrub away all the filth and sweat, then, gratefully putting Rika’s invitation to do whatever she pleased into practice, she took a long, luxurious soak in the low, rectangular bathtub, complete with bubble bath, to soothe her aches and bruises. She even lit up a small scented candle she found, just for the hell of it. She brushed her teeth with a spare toothbrush she found in the cabinet, still in its package, clipped and cleaned her finger- and toenails and made judicious use of the available personal care products. Rika’s tastes in those, like Triss expected from her tomboyish style, seemed to run towards the sporty, unobtrusive, and utilitarian. The only lipstick to be found, for example, was the colorless, moisturizing kind. Triss, never having much use for flashy makeup herself, was not disappointed. True to her word, sometime when her guest was under the shower, Rika slipped in and took away Triss’s discarded messy garments, replacing them with a small stack of neatly folded clothes from her own closet.

So it was that Triss padded barefoot into the room, dressed in a pale-yellow baby-doll t-shirt and loose winter-cammo cargo-shorts. The outfit had come, as promised, with underwear – simple, pristine white cotton, the bra strapless. Triss was somewhat surprised at how well it fit. She wondered why she got no socks, though. She stopped wondering the moment she stepped into the room. The entire floor was covered with a collection of big rugs, pleasantly mismatched like everything else in it. Triss noticed them earlier, of course, but walking on them in her shoes she didn’t notice just how shaggy, soft and nice they were. She just had to stop and soak in the feeling, wiggling her toes and moving her feet a little, knedling the deep, tickling fur under her bare soles. She looked up, feeling quite silly, when she heard Rika giggle.

The green-haired girl lay facedown on the bed, head propped up on her elbows, feet kicking aimlessly in the air. When Triss was enjoying her well-deserved soak, Rika had cleared up the mess in the room and changed into comfortable sweat-pants and tank-top. When Triss entered, she had been reading something on a datapad. Now she was looking at her guest with a knowing grin. Triss noticed Rika’s own feet were bare, sneakers discarded by the foot of the bed, socks stuffed inside. She grinned back, understanding.

“That’s great,” she said.

“Thought you might like it,” replied Rika smugly. “Hope you like the clothes, too...”

“I do. But winter-cammo?” asked Triss, tugging at the shorts.

“Yeah, we’re a pretty military bunch,” Rika shrugged, a little apologetic.

“I don’t really mind,” assured her Triss, “But winter-cammo –shorts- ? Isn’t it like an oxymoron?” she wondered half-seriously.

“Well, there are races that don’t really need all that much clothes in arctic environs...” ventured Rika. “And I think they suit you pretty good, actually. Who would have thought!” said the other girl, sitting up and giving Triss an appreciative once-over. “There was a real cutie under all this dirt.”

Triss blushed over the bridge of her nose again, making Rika grin. Now that the bespectacled hacker’s face was clean, Rika could see that she had a widely spaced scattershot of freckles over the bridge of her nose and tops of her cheeks. The teenage bounty hunter wasn’t joking – she really thought the girl was cute, if a little bit on the scrawny side.

“What now?” asked Triss to change the subject. She walked to the table, where Rika had laid out the items from Triss’s backpack as she took it to the laundry along with the clothes. She picked up her hairbrush. She felt kind of silly, looking at it now – of all the things to grab when fleeing from arrest or execution, a hairbrush didn’t seem a very high priority item.

“Whatever you feel like. Are you hungry?” asked Rika.

Triss opened her mouth, but didn’t get to say anything, interrupted as she was by a loud growling, gurgling sound, perfectly audible in the sudden silence.

“Guess you are,” interpreted Rika cheerfully.

Triss only nodded, grinning embarrassedly.

“I have instant pizza and random beverages,” said the other girl, indicating the miniature kitchenette with a move of her head, “or we could go to our galley-common and get you some different instant – a lot of instant on this ship – or try to improvise something from our meager supply of fresh products. It’s just down the corridor, prow-wise. Every room has a kitchenette, but we mostly just use them for snackage and all eat together there.”

“If it’s all the same to you, I’d rather just stay here for now. I’m too worn out for any more exploring today,” said Triss apologetically.

“Sure,” agreed her host equably. She went to the kitchenette. “You want tea, soda, or raka juice?”

“Tea, please,” replied Triss.

As Rika busied herself preparing the food and drink, Triss sat on the bed, brushing her hair. Her orange locks were thick and just long enough to brush her shoulders, if she got them to lay flat on her head, for normally they didn’t. They were wiry, taken to standing up and had the tendency to become naturally spiky. Rather than fight it, Triss had long ago made the decision to ravel in it, and help them along. As a result, her normal hairdo was swept back and a little to the right, forming a cascade of quite distinct spikes, with just a few stray wiry bangs escaping forward to hang over her forehead.

Soon, the pizza was ready. They sat at the coffee table and ate. Rika, sprawled sideways in her armchair, got herself a single slice and was munching on it slowly, drinking raka juice – a thin, milky-blue liquid, tasted like strawberry milkshake. Triss devoured the rest of the first pizza – pepperoni and triple cheese – in what looked like five savage bites and gulps – one for each slice. First hunger satiated, she started on the second one – grilled chicken and green paprika – in a much more calm and dignified manner, feeling sheepish, the grin on Rika’s face not helping.

“So, you really make a living hunting criminals?” asked Triss between bites.

“Yup. Me and Shain, since I met him three years ago. There’s a wanted poster, we go track the man down and bring him in,” replied Rika casually.

“It’s dangerous, isn’t it?”

“Well, they usually don’t come quietly. That’s why I carry that gun,” the girl jerked a thumb at the desk, where her equipment – the Equalizer, NAVI, handcuffs and first-aid kit - was laid out, the jacket that had mysteriously contained it all hanging from the back of the chair. “I mostly pack stun grenades – the ‘dead or alive’ routine is very, very rare, unlike the movies will have you believe. And I can kick ass in hand-to-hand if I have to.”

“The pay’s good?”

“Depends on the individual case, but overall, you can make a decent living, if you’re good enough. We are – we have pizza,” Rika grinned. “But the competition can be fierce. Some of the other hunters are even worse than the fugitives. Some are honorable about it, but others would gladly put a bullet in your back for a lucrative catch. But no worries, we’re much too good for them,” she finished brightly, as she realized her guest didn’t need to hear that last info as part of a light conversation over dinner, especially after the day she’d had.

“Kobayashi,” she mused, changing the subject. “You don’t look even vaguely Asian.”

“My grandfather, on the mother's side,” explained Triss. “Or so I’ve been told at the orphanage...” she added glumly.

“I’m sorry,” said Rika, realizing she stepped in it with her mention of family, circumferential as it was.

“Don’t worry about it,” said the spider-girl. “Do... Do you have any family, somewhere?” she asked hesitantly.

“The crew is my family. Shain is the closest thing to a parent I had since I was ten,” replied Rika, shrugging. “And –you- don’t worry about it too,” she added, smiling, as the other girl looked about to say something.

Triss nodded, smiling back, and the mood, which threatened to turn brooding, was lightened up again.

There was silence for a while, as Triss finished off the pizza and tea, then slid low in the armchair and sat for a moment, a beatific smile on her face.

“OK, -now- I feel completely human again,” she sighed in a happy voice. Then she became serious again, sitting up. “Rika... Why?”

“Why I helped you?”

Triss nodded.

“Like I said, I don’t like the corpos. Anything that pisses them off is fine with me. Even if they do sign my paychecks, most of the time,” she added smirking and shaking her head, aware of the weirdness of her logic. “What they tried to do to you... It’s the typical, high-handed bullshit they like to pull. I couldn’t just stand by and do nothing,” she shrugged.

Triss was aware that –that- was not all there was to it, but she didn’t want to pry. The girl would tell in her own time.

They got up from the armchairs.

“Listen... Thank you. For all you’ve done for me...” said Triss, deep gratitude in her voice and eyes. “Without you... If I haven’t met you... I’d be dead by now...” she said haltingly in a suddenly small voice.

“Hey, Triss...” Rika, concerned, uncertainly reached a hand toward the other girls arm.

Triss’s lower lip was now trembling, her eyes misted over, and suddenly she gave a huge sob and fell against the taller girl, clutching at her in a desperate hug like she was Triss’s last salvation from drowning. More sobs, muffled by Rika’s chest to which she pressed her face, shook the hacker’s shoulders. Rika awkwardly placed her arms around the other girl, rubbing at her back and stroking her head. She tried to make appropriately soothing, friendly noises, rocking the grief-stricken redhead gently. Damn, she thought, I suck at this.

Triss thought she was OK, she had –been- OK. But suddenly, without warning, in the middle of this quiet moment in this safe place, with this friendly person, all the fear, stress, desperation and helplessness of the last three days snuck up on her all at once and impacted like a ton of bricks at a hundred kilometers per hour. Only now did Triss –really- realize, with all horrible clarity, just how close she had come to oblivion, and how immensely lucky she was to be alive, here, with this girl. And that fear and relief overcame her.

It seemed that, despite her own lousy opinion of her ability in that area, Rika’s attempts at offering comfort were serviceable. After a minute or so of crying, Triss’s sobs subsided into silent sniffles. Then she gave a heartfelt sight and released the green-haired girl, stepping back, wiping at her eyes and cheeks with the back of one hand. She was blushing slightly.

“I’m... I’m sorry... I just...” she tried to explain, feeling lame and awkward.

“It’s all right, I understand,” said Rika and, in a display of empathy she would be later proud of, gave Triss a quick hug. “Feeling better now?” she asked gently, a hand on Triss’s shoulder.

“Yes... Thank you, seems I needed that,” replied Triss. She tried out a smile. It felt good, so she left it there. “Sorry... I got your shirt wet.”

Rika looked down at the tear-soaked spot on her top and shrugged, smiling a “’s OK” smile.

“You want to maybe call it a day? You had a long one, and the two before it.”

Triss nodded.

“OK then. Let’s go open up the guest room,” offered Rika.

“Umm...” started Triss hesitantly, then plowed forward at her host’s encouraging smile, “Could I maybe... Stay here tonight?...” she finished in a whisper, the bridge of the nose blush coming back, full force.

“Do the college-roomies thing?” asked Rika, a little surprised. “Sure, if you want to. The bed’s huge,” she said brightly, understanding. Even if she would not admit it openly, Rika knew she probably wouldn't want to be alone either, after an experience like the other girl had. “But I must warn you, I snore and kick around. You’ll be doing it at your own risk,” she cautioned, grinning.

“I’ll take my chances,” replied the other girl, smiling.

A few minutes later Triss, dressed in an oversized white t-shirt, was sitting in the bed, made for sleeping, her glasses laying on the small bed stand on the right. Rika sat on the covers on the edge close to her.

“Thank you. Really. It means a lot,” said Triss, still a little shy.

“Don’t mention it. What are friends for? And stop thanking me all the time. I might start thinking I’m so great or something, that’ll be a disaster,” joked Rika. “It’s a little early for me to crash yet, but I’ll be here. I’ll try not to disturb you.”

Triss nodded, then watched Rika darken the room, except for one of the standing lights, which she brought over to the coffee table. The girl sat in one of the armchairs, in the gentle pool of light, and picked up a datapad. She turned and gave Triss a warm, reassuring smile.

“I’ll be here when you wake up.”

Triss smiled back.

“Good night, Rika.”

“Good night, Triss.”

Triss lay down, pulled the covers over herself and curled up on her side. She realized she was really tired. As she drifted off to sleep Triss felt a curious, warm, glowy feeling in her heart. Just before consciousness slipped away, she realized where it came from. Rika had said: “friends”.

Triss Kobayashi slept, and dreamed of life.

( ending song: Cindy Lauper - “Time After Time” )

The Cast

(in order of appearance)

Patricia “Triss” Kobayashi

Rika Din’Alt

Kirishima Security trooper Mikel O’Neal

Kirishima Security trooper T’Alk

Kirishima Security trooper Daniel Jackson

Kirishima Security agent Will Du

Kirishima Security agent Corben Dallas

Clive

Shain Rainer

Nico “Nic, Nicotine” Ferrel

Preview:

Coming at ya: High stakes, excitement at extreme speeds, old acquaintances, engineering emergencies and assassination attempts! All this, plus Triss in skintight clothing, in the next stunningly exciting (hopefully for real this time ) episode of “Strangers in a Strange Land”! Don’t miss: She Drives Like Crazy!

“If you puke in my cockpit, I’ll –kill- you!”