The bridge of Mick’s ship was a little cramped. A U-shaped console provided both floating holographic and inset displays to Mick in the forward pilot seat and whoever would sit at seats on each side. There was some standing room between the ends of the console and the rear wall of the room, where there was a single entrance in the center. A small medicine cabinet was affixed to the wall at the rear port side. Mounted below it was a spray canister that looked like a small brown fire extinguisher. It was for repairing leaks.
Jill was awed by the starfield in the forward viewscreen. "We're in space already."
Mick leaned back in the pilot’s seat. "Yep, I thought I'd take us straight to the rendezvous point. Tia, would you like to do the honor of scanning?"
Celestia had been distracted by her thoughts. She opened her eyes and looked up, focusing her attention on the present. "Yes, m'lord."
Mick casually make a joke of Celestia’s formality. "Aw, don't m'lord me. Sir is enough."
"Yes, sir." Celestia turned her attention to her console.
Jill noticed that Celestia had seemed far less comfortable than Mick. She decided to ask about it. "Umm, Tia, is it?"
"Celestia," Celestia corrected her, then sighed as she realized she would not win this argument as long as Mick kept using her nickname. "You may call me Tia."
"Was something on your mind?" Jill asked.
Celestia turned her head to Jill and smiled. "Oh, I just... I wish I could have had that kind of send-off when I left my world." She turned back to the console to finish her assigned task.
"I.. take it it was not on good terms?" Jill asked. Celestia closed her eyes and nodded. Jill tried to comfort her. "I'm sorry."
Mick grinned. "Don't worry. You don't have to worry about those jerks anymore. I made sure of that. How's the scan coming along?"
"Scan..." Celestia waved a finger across the display, looking for the correct point to select.
Jill offered to do the job. "I can help with computers. My nanites can establish a direct interface--"
Mick waved her off. "Nah, this is training. She needs to learn."
Celestia tapped a point on the control panel and the the entire interface changed. "Is this the correct presentation?"
Mick gave her some help. "You're getting there. One more. It's on your left. Green button, physiometrics menu for the short range ship scan. Long range is under astrometrics, purple button. If it sounds confusing, it is. Whoever designed this menu system was an idiot."
Pressing the button gave Celestia new questions. "Do you want me to run a passive scan or an active scan? It says that passive takes longer and does not work as well."
"Do 'em both. It's good practice." Mick then had another thought. "Definitely do an active scan. It'll wake her up if she's not expecting us back so early, although she should hardly have seen us leave, unless... oh, I don't think we established temporal lock when we came back, did we. I don't think we did it when we left, either. In either case we should be offset in realtime so it won't have been more than a few hours from her perspective."
The scanner results began appearing in tables of data on Celestia's console screen, updating constantly. Looking over her shoulder, Jill was impressed. "Wow, that's really upper-division science stuff."
Celestia admitted ignorance. "I do not know what most of these numbers mean, but I suppose it is my duty to learn."
Jill recognized some of the heading names and pointed them out. "That's astronomy. Those have something to do with chemistry."
"There is more," Celestia said. "Pardon me while I move these records." Using finger motions, Celestia moved the holographic data table aside and showed Jill another part of the results that expanded in size as she made room on the console for it, while the data table shrank. "Over here, it distinguishes ships and planets by their size and speed and the pattern of energy that they radiate."
Mick interrupted them. "And we are being hailed." He made a few motions on his console. "And here we go."
The starfield disappeared from the main viewscreen and was replaced by the view of the pilot's chamber of a small starship. The pilot wore a suit of primarily red power armor that looked like it was put together from scrap metal, with several dings and scrapes attesting to its regular use in battle. The right arm of the pilot's suit ended in a tapering cylinder that extended an extra hand's length beyond where a normal person's arm would end. A small amount of light brightened the v-shaped viewport of the pilot's helmet. The dim lighting on the other ship added to the figure's mystique.
Mick started talking. "Ah, hello there, Alex. We have returned, and we were successful." He gestured towards Jill with an open hand.
"It took you long enough." The masked, modified, and amplified voice carried the full sense of impatience with which it was intended to be delivered.
"How long were we gone for?" Mick asked.
Alex answered with extra stress on each word. "Five days."
Mick didn't believe that. "Noooo, that's not right. You're putting me on."
The power-armored pilot crossed its arms. "I have had to turn down several offers."
The embarrassed Mick apologized. "Sorry. It's a good thing I paid up front, yeah? I'll have to get the time synchronizer looked at. That's a serious problem."
"I've had longer waits before." Alex relaxed. "So that's the new candidate? She looks... normal."
"She's not." Mick said confidently. "Come over and have a look at her. Then we can head back to base."
Jill was surprised that Mick would make this offer. "You're inviting them over?" This Alex did not seem like a friendly person.
Mick nodded as if nothing were out of the ordinary. "Oh yeah, you two can start to get to know each other."
Jill saw the gaze of Alex's helmet looking at her through the viewscreen and decided to introduce herself. "Hi, my name is Jill, and I'm still not clear on exactly what this is about."
"Ha!" Alex laughed. "Mick, you do the best job of failing to explain things."
Mick chuckled. "Hey, I usually get around to it eventually. Tia, do you want to beam her over?"
"MICK." Alex said his name loudly enough to disrupt everyone's train of thought.
Mick blushed slightly in embarrassment. "Oh, yeah. Tia, Jill, the Alex in this universe is still concerned about her secret identity, so don't--"
"MICK..." Alex warned him again.
Mick cleared his throat and tried again. "Alex here has a secret identity and is really serious about keeping Alex's identity a secret, so try to avoid referencing anything that might identify Alex such as age, appearance, contacts, or especially gender since there's a lot of prejudice in this universe against thinking women can be bounty hunters. Pretend she's a guy."
Alex crossed her arms, then uncrossed them. "I'm coming over just so I can punch you the next time you do that."
Mick took it lightly. "Alright. Tia, ready the transporter. You remember how to do that, right?"
Alex spoke first. "No, I'll use the hatch. Hold your position." The viewscreen flipped back to the stars as the communications channel closed.
"Well, that went well." Mick laughed. "You'd think I have stopped doing that by now, since she put it in our contract that it's costing me five thousand creds every time she sees me do that--"
Celestia corrected him. "Every time Alex sees you do that."
"That's what I said, right?" Mick asked. Celestia and Jill shook their heads. Mick threw up his hands. "Majority wins. Anyways, she made it part of her contract shortly after I hired her. I just doubled her pay for the day if she holds me to it."
"You're still doing it," Jill noted. Celestia closed her eyes and tried to avoid laughing out loud.
Mick shrugged. "Am I? Hm."
They waited for a few more minutes as Alex’s ship moved into position. A pair of clanks were heard as the dorsal airlock opened and closed, followed by lighter clanks as Alex descended a ladder and walked towards the bridge. The door to the bridge opened to reveal a figure who was no less imposing in the ship's brighter light, the power armor giving Alex a wider frame and several inches of height over everyone else.
Up close, the lighting revealed that Alex's armor was scarred by a multitude of scratches and scorch marks. A few off-color parts had been replaced relatively recently and were comparatively undamaged.
The details of the bounty hunter's gun-arm could also be seen more clearly. The weapon was encircled near its base by a metallic ring with six equally spaced attachment points. Further down it seemed to be segmented by thin gaps around its armored outer surface that served to dissipate air pressure and heat. One of these segments was also divided between top and bottom, with the bottom part being a removable module that was colored orange.
Alex walked toward Jill and looked down at her in both senses of the phrase. "You like lowtech, Mick. First you send me some soldier from the dark ages, and now you're having me fight a cavegirl."
Celestia was trained better than to react to taunts. Jill protested. "I'm not a cavegirl! And I'm not low tech! Well, maybe I am compared to you, but we had technology. We put people on the moon."
Mick pointed to Jill's gun that was propped against a wall in the back corner of the room. "Hey Alex. You see that gun over there? That's hers."
Alex looked at it and looked back to Jill. "Nice. I look forward to seeing what you will surprise me with, since there seems to be more to you than I can see right now."
Jill had a concern about who Alex was and why they were meeting. "Wait. Mick, is Alex the bounty hunter you wanted me to fight?"
Mick casually affirmed this. "Oh, yeah, we're friends."
Alex corrected him. "We are business partners."
Jill wondered what was really going on. "Why would you have me fight one of your... business partners?"
Celestia made a suggestion to Mick. "Perhaps you should explain everything to Jill."
Mick looked quizzically at her. "I thought I already did."
Celestia responded diplomatically. "You may have Jill confused with another recruit."
Mick had a flash of understanding. "Oh. Oh. Ohhh. Okay. Long story short, you'll be fighting a few bouts with Alex to see if you're any good or not. If it works out, there will be more fights in the future. More business. You'll be spending a week or two in our training facility, and you don't have any extra clothes, do you? I didn't see you bring anything along."
Jill did not. "No."
Mick had a solution to that. "Alright, there's a space station nearby that Alex and I like to go to because the mall has a full armory. We can go there, get Jill some clothes, pick up Tia's new armor at the same time, and while we're there let's get Jill a softsuit for extra protection." Mick rubbed his eyes. "We could do it tomorrow, maybe. I'm getting tired and I need to get put my head down for a bit. I think I've been up for twenty hours. Or if we want to get it taken care of right away..." he turned to the bounty hunter. "Alex, this is your neighborhood. How would you like to take Jill shopping?"
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