Staring into the void

It was pretty hard to explain recent human history to the other two. Dustin had been trying ever since the pirate den had been removed from existence by Sola’s cannon, and they were now a mission further on - with some pretty cool music being uploaded back to earth while their flight had them closing in on the repair site that would mark the end of their hopping around in space before the final jumps to the Feliax home world. He’d had to explain a bunch of concepts that had been part of his history lessons on Earth - after first contact, Earth had unified pretty rapidly - but explaining the concept of a species fighting against itself into the atomic age had been a hard one to explain to the others.

Meli had been shocked by the illogical nature of conflict within a species - the Velca having stopped fighting amongst themselves shortly after developing bronze working, while Rye who Dustin thought might have understood due to the rapid overpopulation her species had dealt with was even more bemused. “Didn’t your leaders just, y’kno, fuck to figure out who should be in charge and then merge their lands together? That’s what happened to our ancestors according to my history lessons.” The bunny girl had said. Dustin had opted to not go into massive detail about the level of barbarity his species had engaged in just a few years before their first inter-system travel to the lunar surface had been conducted - nor what a lot of the technology used for the lunar landings had been developed from.

The two women had thankfully not looked at him differently after that - he’d been a little worried that revealing humanity’s darker side would have lead to the pair shunning him, but they’d both taken it in their stride. “Your species’ history is… odd. But that doesn’t mean you’re odd. If we were to be weird with you because of what humanity did in it’s history, then what about my folk fucking the species almost to starvation?” Rye had explained when he asked outright if they were okay with everything. Meli’s comment had been far simpler. “You are my Li’ah’a. What the rest of your kind did in the past isn’t really relevant to us. Besides, it’s just one other way in which humans are so fascinatingly different from other species. I wonder if the pressure of internal conflict is what drove your L’anl constant so high…” After that, she’d spent most of a day locked in her room doing research before emerging with a shrug and a “Insufficient data” as the only explanation she’d give.

Despite both women reassuring him that everything was fine, Dustin was never the less quite happy when they finally arrived at the orbital array. The species that had requested their aid were descended from avians and retained a certain Dodo-like appearance that he found utterly charming when the crew had discussed the mission with their leader over view-screen on the flight in. There were some twenty satellites in the array, of which five had fallen out of alignment and needed repair and repositioning. With Sola’s drones handling four, Dustin had pulled rank and taken a shuttle out to the final one.

The controls on the shuttle’s remote arm were limited, but it wasn’t that hard to maneuver the ship and arm into a position where he could attach it to the satellite. From there, he’d be able to drag it back into near-alignment once the repairs were done, and then the internal systems could handle the fine tuning. Sliding back from the console and double checking his suit’s seals for the third time since leaving Sola’s hangar, Dustin activated the atmo purge and felt the hiss as his suit’s internal supply took up the strain. Once the cabin pressure had dropped to near enough zero, he opened the door to the cargo bay and stared out at the satellite, lit by the distant glow of the system’s blue star.

It was quite beautiful against the night, and he absent-mindedly took a picture with his suit’s camera as he prepped his tools before climbing out along the extended remote arm. The far end of the arm was just shy of a metal grab handle on the side of the array unit, and it was a matter of a moment to hook a pair of clamps together to lock the two into place. He worked carefully, enjoying the momentary calm. With the shuttle and array locked, he paused - then pushed up and turned so that he was sitting on the arm, staring out into space with only the system’s sunlight to orient him.

“It’s been a hell of a week” he muttered to himself as he contemplated the emptiness of space. Confronting hostile entities had always been something he’d known he’d have to do at some point - and ever since he’d got into a relationship with Meli he’d been determined to protect her no matter what. That was a very different state of affairs in the abstract than the practical. While the pirates had started it, in returning fire with Sola’s rail cannon he knew he’d wiped out multiple lives - there was no way an asteroid with that many guns had only had a single occupant. The fact that after reviewing the files on the likely group revealed that their members were horrific criminals only marginally made the impact of taking life any easier.

The darkness of space helped. His relationships helped. Between spending time with each of the women and staring out from the observation deck at nothing, the stress of the situation was slowly beginning to fade, but that didn’t mean it was gone completely. “And we’ve nothing left but a series of jumps to Feliax space now” he mused, kicking his legs under the arm he was sat on before grabbing for it hurriedly as the motion threatened to send him tumbling into the void. While it might feel like he was sitting on a railing or a steel beam like one of those old-timey construction workers pre-contact, that didn’t mean he had gravity to help hold him in place.

Once that particular moment of panic faded, he returned to his musing. “A week, maybe two at tops with Meli and Rye, and then we get another crew mate. One they both are convinced is going to actively require her presence in our relationship. And I’m not in the best of states mentally right now. Maybe I should ask Sola to delay the travel time a bit? We could take our time to go really slowly and scan everything twice just to be safe.” He sighed, breath hot in the suit helmet. “No, that’s no good. It’d make the ladies worry, and it’s my hang-up to deal with. Mission comes first and all that. And hell, trying to integrate someone new to the crew will certainly take my mind off of those pirates.” With that, he checked his tools again, and began climbing up the satellite to the area that needed repairs.