Junk
© 2020 by Walter Reimer


Thumbnail art by  ahro


“Junk?” Christina Brown asked. With the start of the second week of the A Quiet Life’s shakedown, the entire crew was gathered together again to be briefed on the schedule. “We’re loading junk?”

Meredith smiled and nodded. “Last week we were loading and unloading empty cargo containers, and this week we’ll be carrying enough mass to equal our designed capacity. So we’ll be weighing about three times more than we had been, and,” she chuckled, “you can all believe me when I say I’m not going to try stunting the ship around like I did last week.” The rest of the crew laughed.

Another member of the crew, a junior engineer asked, “Did you get in any trouble for that, Meredith?”

The golden palomino mare’s ears dipped. “Not – well, not really,” she replied, giving Jax the eye as the rat chuckled. “Kucherova-jih said she was going to file a reprimand against my pilot’s license for what I did, but I said that we went through the same maneuvers with the Kiss Me, and if that ship could take it, this one should be able to do the same.”

“I’ll bet that raised her hackles,” Jemel Fikset said.

“It started to, but one of her own designers said that it was a great test of the design, and that he’d done it himself,” and the rest of the furs in the room chuckled. Even ‘Happy’ Rayner, usually so morose, assayed a brief smile.

Meredith waited until the laughter died down and said, “And just remember, everyone – we have one more week of this, and if we get through without any trouble, we have two weeks’ vacation planetside.”

Everyone cheered.