A few old favorite past times

You begin to settle into the co-pilot's chair, feeling the warming gel inside the passing mold itself to your body's contours, which you know to be a comfort aid as sometimes a pilot and co-pilot could be sat at the controls for a good few hours, although thankfully nowhere nearly as long as they did in the early pioneering days of space faring. You recall a brief history lesson on the matter, although you couldn't recall if it was from one of your museum trips with your mother to get away from your father for the day, or one of the dry and dull tutors your father hired to try and make you more appealing to whomever he planned to marry you off to for his own gains.

In the earliest days of space travel outside of the systems of the Old earth that was, pilots would be sat at the controls ensuring that the chartered navigation course wasn't altered by any debris or gravitational pulls as they neared large celestial bodies, as while they could correct them later, if they had been missed early on then it could cost more precious fuel than they might have to spare. As a result of being stuck in the cockpit for the foreseeable, all normal functions like eating, sleeping and even using the bathroom had to be either done at the cockpit or forgone altogether. So they would often take **** to help combat the atrophy of their muscles, stimulants to fight fatigue, and even their food was very basic nutrient paste and high energy ration bars. This also meant their uniforms, which were often space suits had to facilitate bathroom habits, and you dreaded to imagine what the culmination of all this was like when the pilot and co-pilot reached their destination and needed to clean themselves up.

Thankfully today's spacefarer has at least much less discomfort, with even your most basic junkers being fitted with an astrogation computer to help keep to the correct course, and the space restrictions being less so that you could afford the comforts of crew quarters. Running out of fuel wasn't an immediate **** sentence as it was back then too, providing you had a distress beacon and were traveling along a reasonably often traveled course someone would pick up the signal, that said should that person be a pirate or some other opportunistic asshole then your survival odds might still be pretty grim, but as the old saying goes, slim is better than none when it comes to survival.

You turn your attention away from Ant who is preoccupied in flicking through various holo-screens all of which seems to contain various displays of little meaning to you, and you suspected limited use to Ant bar serving as a coping mechanism for his nerves about your presence. You watch and once again admire the haunting beauty of the passing stars, as their unobstructed twinkles acting as a stark reminder of the vast emptiness between you and them, and you shake off a small sense of isolation as you dwell on the vast cold emptiness between you and the passing lights. You scan the celestial horizon and spy just coming into view a large cloud of brilliant scarlet nebula clouds, and an Idea strikes you suddenly, as you begin to experiment with the controls to the side of the chair until you find one that reclines you slightly.

"Hey Ant, I don't suppose you've ever done Cloud spotting with Jacque or Viper have you?" You ask as you begin to watch the nebula clouds drift into view from the corner of the hyperspace tunnel, wafting in like smoke trailing off a lit tobacco consumable, or the various digital relaxant pipes.

"Cloud spotting?" Ant asks in an unsure tone, which answers your question succinctly but also proves enough distraction from his idle swiping of Holoscreen to reveal one of an impressive collection of Scantily clad women draping themselves over various mechanic stations, including one of a very waifish looking elf pouring some kind of oil over her exposed slender breasts, with an icon flagging the image as a personal favorite. Ant notices this and with reaction times that many dogfighter pilots would be happy with, flicking it back to another unintelligible graph. Ant glances over to you to see if you had noticed, and while you toyed with the idea of teasing him, you decided to pretend you hadn't seen it by focusing your gaze on the approaching clouds.

"Yeah, it's an old pastime that I used to do back when I was a kid on my home planet, You see those nebula clouds coming up on the left?" You ask as you slowly gesture towards them from your reclined position.

"You mean those red ones on the port side?" Ant asks adjusting his chair slightly to get a better view.

"Yup, well what you do is, watch them drift by and point out ones that look like something, and see if the other person can see it." You say as you slowly scan them glad to see that this particular cloud seems to be a huge size giving you a lot to work with. "Like that one you see that one just emerging now, it kinda looks like worm." You say gesturing with your fingers as the clouds sailed into view.

"I think so, worms are those creatures like string that riggle in the ground right?" Ant asked as he traces the cloud with his finger.

"Yeah, I guess not every planet get them." You say as you scan the clouds for more.

"Oh I think I see one, it's a bit out of shape but there's one a bit after your worm which looks like one of them tall satellites with a solar ring." Ant says as your eyes scan for what Ant described and sure enough you can see it, and aside from being a bit bent out of shape, you could see the resemblance.

"Oh yeah, jeez it's been years since I saw any like that, are they out of production or something?" You ask as scan the surrounding clouds to see if you can see any recognizable shapes in them.

"Maybe, I think they tend to only be used in systems with either a very large star or maybe multi-star systems." Ant explains as he too scans the clouds.

"Oh yeah, like your home planet right?" You recall as you finally spy a cloud that looks like something. "Oh got a cloud that looks like cargo container with its gravity net drifting off it." You continue as you try and point in its directions.

"Oh yeah, I see it." Ant replies with a smile as he turns and nods to you. "Also yeah we got a bunch around our home planet that actually gather energy for the planet, all bunched together like a solar farm, causes a right mess with orbiting ships waiting to land. That was my first proper job maintaining one of the orbital groups." Ant continues as you finally feel like he's relaxing around you. "I think that one looks like the head of a cat, did you have cats where you grew up?" Ant continues as he begins to recline his own seat, and sweeping his hand flicking many of the near transparent holo screens aside to free up more of the view.

"Yeah we had cats, always wanted one as a pet, but my father wouldn't have any of it." You reply as you spot the vague cat head shaped cloud, it was more reminiscent of a child's drawing of one without its features but it was still recognizable. "So how did you go from satellite maintenance to pilot." You ask to try and continue to conversation.

"Oh well I was always good with Astro calculations in school, so got into one of the corporate training schools where they taught me about the engineering issues of space and how I could apply my talents to help with satellite maneuvering as well as all the other useful skills about electronics and engines and all the helpful stuff for a pilot to know. A year or so later there I am several miles up in high orbit controlling 80 odd satellites providing power to my home continent, moving them to get maximum power generation and then shipping the high energy capacitor crystals in drop cargo pods to be slotted into the energy distribution centers." Ant says with a smile as he reminisces in his own head about his first job.

"Sounds like a pretty intense job." You say with a smile as you turn to look over at Ant.

"Nah it was a cushy gig, beauty of twin stars is there aren't many shady areas, and the planet wasn't high traffic so aside from the other orbital farms there wasn't much to crash into, just keep a steady orbital trail so you don't come crashing down, hell the thrusters were powered mostly by the solar energy so I could of taken the thing on a joy ride around the system and back and would still of been fine for fuel." Ant continues with a smile on his face.

"Bet the station boss would have had words about that." You reply with a smile at the thought of Ant sailing his collection of satellites around his home system.

"There wasn't one, just me up on the main platform with the satellites kept in the large cradle, the space walks were a little nerve wracking when I had to do direct repairs on the satellites, but thankfully we had plenty of drones that could repair most stuff so they were few and far between." Ant continues as he looks out at some of the past clouds. "Oh speaking of drones, just about to drift off view got one that looks like a repair drone." Ant says as he quickly points his fingers.

"Damn I think I missed it." You reply as you scan the clouds on the edge of your vision and can't see the shape of any drones you've ever seen.

"Hang on one second." Ant begins as he sits up and presses a few buttons on his terminal. "There we go." he continues, as the solid metal walls of the bulkhead suddenly turn transparent and the whole cockpit becomes an observation platform. You let out a slow whistle as you are impressed by the sight of it all, as bar the floor and consoles you can see the entire expanse around you pass by, and you even spot the drone shaped cloud to your left. You look over to Ant with a look of pleasant surprise on your face, as he smiles and rubs his neck. "Optical sensors displaying over the walls, we normally only use them for slow precision maneuvers when you need the extra vision but yeah, it's also a pretty cool feature." Ant says as you settle back into your chair after sitting up a moment to examine the skies around you.

"Well, that's a very nice party trick you got there." You say with a smile as you look over to Ant who nods and chuckles to himself. "So how did you go from a cushy if not a lonley gig of satellite maintenance to freelance piloting." You ask with a smile.

"Yeah it was a bit lonely but then I wasn't very good with people anyway, and it paid well and my mods to deal with the high radiation was covered due to my risk from space walks, although truth be told I was more insulated than half the population was in their own homes." Ant begins as you notice that he does seem to have fewer scaled patches of skin on the parts of his body than Jacque or Viper did. "So anyway one day I get a distress hail from one of the other orbital farms, as there had a meteor shower heading right for them, but due to a sensor crapping out they couldn't get far enough way from them. Thankfully due to my rather flexible approach as to where my orbital farm could sit, I was close enough to get to him, So I told them to sit tight, and piloted my farm into his with enough speed to move the other farm out of the flight path of the meteors." Ant continues with a smile as he finds himself sitting up as he gets into his story.

"That was pretty heroic." You say with a slightly flirty tone and a smile on your face.

"Yeah, but unfortunately for me, I damaged my own farm's thrusters so now my farm was slowly drifting into the flight path, so I had to detach the command module, which was an old shuttle basically fixed in place, and use its thrusters on maximal to stop my farm drifting too far. In theory, it was a simple plan, but I managed to overlook that even doing so I'd leave my own module in the path of some of the meteors right up until the impact sensors began to flare up, just as I had finished getting the farm to safety." Ant continues with a smile as he looks at you as he pauses for dramatic effect, as you realize for someone bad with people he sure knows how to tell a story.

"Well I know you didn't get smashed into dust, so how did you manage to get out of it." You ask with a giggle and grin as your eyes meet Ants and rather than looking away he nods.

"Well unfortunately for me, these shuttles had a lot ripped out of it, and only a very basic navigation module, so with little time I turned the module to face the oncoming meteors, and got the computer to plot their trajectories and then I manually calculated each movement I'd need to dodge all the incoming balls of rock and debris." Ant says with a grin, his voice putting on an almost dramatic heroic tone than its usual one as he is really into spinning this yarn now.

"Wow, were you scared at all?" You ask playing the part of an enthralled audience to the tee, although you were genuinely interested in how Ant ended up being a pilot, seeing as you were trusting by extension your life in his hands while aboard the ship.

"Oddly no, you see I was nervous and worried, but once I had my hands on the old manual thruster sticks and was rapidly calculating my movements in my head, I was really calm and focused, and by the time I dodged the first wave I was enjoying myself as I ducked and dodged every bit of junk floating my way." Ant says with a satisfied grin on his face.

"Wow so were you given a heroes reward or free drinks at our local bar?" You ask with another giggle.

"Afraid not, as while I was saving the other farm I missed a scheduled drop, and by the time I had gotten my back to my own farm and dropped the crystals it was an hour late. As a result of that and apparently damaging the other farm, despite saving it being compleltey destroyed by the meteors, I was fired, and while a good few locals knew of my heroics the story was killed by the mega corp and I was mad to look reckless, hell they practically tried to blame me for the whole mess. Shortly after that I met up with Jacque who was one of the few who believed my side of things and well not long after that I was working as his pilot." Ant says with a smile as he shrugged in the manner that tells you how let down he felt but glad that things ended up how they did.

"Wow that sucks, I mean after that kind of heroics you should of been keeping the girls at bay at least the first few months." You say with a smile as you reach other and put your hand on his shoulder reasuringly.

"It's ok a real hero needs no reward." Ant says with a chuckle as he smiles at you.

"Sure about that, because maybe a certain someone would like to give you your long over due reward." You say seductively as with how relaxed Ant seems around you now, you decide to see if you can help him out and maybe pass the time with another old favourite past time, as your hand slowly runs down the front of his jumpsuit and slowly reaches his crotch which you notice is quickly becoming hard.

"Well I never did say was a real hero anyway." Ant chuckles nervously as you move closer to him and continue to run your hands over his body.

"Mmmmmm good to hear." You say seductively as you slowly unzip his jumpsuit down to his trousers exposing the thin shirt covering his slender body, and the plain shorts tenting slightly under the touch of your hands.