chapter 4

(Robin) the forth chapter

(5 days later somewhere else)
I found sleeping on my ship was more of a challenge then I thought it would be, instead of a bed my sleeping area consisted of a zero-G field with environmental homeostasis and the most annoying alarm clock I have ever encountered, I never thought I would miss the simple pleasure of snuggling under a nice warm blanket and playing Tetris, the field just wasn’t the same. Things got better this morning when I was privy to a wonderful treat; a small ship crashed in to the side of mine, it happened while I was on my way to the bridge with a cup of tea, which resulted in me burning my pinky toe on my left foot and my right ear in the most bizarre spill I have ever seen. I calmly asked the ships computer what was it that had just collided with us in such an unfriendly manner, “A small Privateer-class starship” the computer replied in a perky an overtly joyful voice, “Will they be hitting us again” I asked patiently, the ships computer had no ideas about proper decorum. “Nope, its engines were destroyed in the crash, looks like they did not intend to hit us” the computer answered sounding somewhat disappointed. Unsure of how to respond to the ships dejection about the lack of hostile intentions by the unexpected visitors I decided to remain silent and go inspect the damage.
By the time I got to the crash site the ship had already sealed the hole and re-pressurized the area using the other ship for raw material, much to the apparent dismay of the smaller ships crew. The entire crew, save one girl, was trying to stop my ships automated repair bots from “eating” their ship, sadly they were unsuccessful.
The girl had an exotic beauty she radiated in the “she is unaware of her beauty sort of way” she had bleach white hair that seemed to shimmer with purple and red. The girl must have heard my approach because she turned to look at me while dropping into a slightly defensive stance, her face caught me by surprise, she had the face of a porcelain doll except for the four scars on her face, one under each eye with the other two coming down from her forehead and stopping just above her eyebrows, not one of them was wider than an inch and they looked to be slow and deliberately cut into her. As odd as her scars were her eyes stood out far beyond anything else about her, she did not have any white in her eye, they looked like large black bottomless pools that filled up her entire eyes.
Since I had already been spotted I figured I would venture over and introduce myself to my new guests and hope they weren’t to mad about their ship.
“Hello, fancy running into you here” slipped out before I could think of anything better to say, I was also much too chipper when I said it,  I have to quit hanging out with my ships AI so much. The alien girl looked confused and the man behind her chuckled,
The man extended his hand to me, “Hello my name is Tamas. Could you kindly ask your ship to leave mine alone?” This Tamas fellow reminded me of a mixture of characters from the silver screen, most of them being lovable scoundrels. “I am sorry, I had no idea it was this hungry, I thought it had just eaten” I replied as I shook his hand. My ship chose that moment to finish off its “meal” leaving their fifteen man crew and myself alone in the large empty room where their ship had once be lodged. “So… um, I guess you can stay at my place for a while” I said kind of awkwardly, what does one say to a person that just had their ship consumed. “You are very kind, I do hope your ship is quite full now miss…” I can honestly say that no one has ever kissed my hand before when introducing themselves and I must say it startled me a bit, “Oh how rude of me, my name is Robin Birk, nice to meet you” I introduced myself quickly so he did not notice my nervous reaction to his touch.
Tamas introduced the rest of his crew to me and then asked me if I had a brig to lock up the girl, whose name I still had not learned. When I inquired as to why she would need to be locked up, she looked nice enough to me; I was told she was a Draconian as if that was enough information. “What is a Draconian?” I asked when Tamas made it clear he wasn’t going to supply that information, the face of every one of them mirrored an identical expression of shock and disbelief, “How can you have not heard about the most ruthlessly brutal race in the galaxy?” one of Tamas’s crew finally asked after a fifteen minute long silence. “My race doesn’t get out much” I said in an off hand manner.
From my point of view the girl wasn’t so bad, us humans have probably done far worse things then her race or at least equal to them, and I have never seen much point in stereotyping one person based on their race, but my guests where quite insistent about me locking her up and the Stupid ships computer seemed to agree with them so I had little choice. However, they could not stop me from taking her food and talking to her, which is exactly what I intended to do.