There are two details that the vids never really mention about space. They go on, and on,and on about the endless potential, and the opportunities for exploration. That brushes the biggest issues right under the rug. First the reason there’s infinite potential is there’s a lot of space, like more than you could ever imagine. Or really comprehend, which brings us issue number two. All that stuff, it’s a very long way apart, and getting from one bit of it to another, both takes a while, and is often bloody boring.

It really helped that this time I had a whole bunch of ships to poke and prod at, but what we could do with them before we got to our destination? That was limited. So far we’d done four big slips, of which two we’d exited early. Because malfunctioning probability drives? They’re tricksy little things. By which I mean, look at them wrong and they will suck the entire of any reality even close to our own into a vortex, chew them up, spit them out, then leave them a bad review on Chowdown. This technology is not the kind of thing you muck around with unless you are foolish, reckless, or both. Drunk could also be an option, but, for obvious reasons that’s definitely one of those things you shouldn’t be when playing round with the drive. Remember kiddo’s, don’t drink and violate causality. Causality may not appreciate it, and will smack you down hard, assuming humanity doesn’t do it first, ya’ know? To prevent you from trying to muck about with causality while completely off your face. There aren’t any laws against it in theory, but that’s only because the tech is already banned harder than saucy novels in a totalitarian state.

For now we were keeping ourselves occupied as best we could, Nara was doing her best to disguise our trail, keep the Cartel from sniffing around as long as possible, and that was definitely keeping her busy. She has this tendency to cackle when scheming something, kinda like a Saturday morning vid show villain, and I mean the good kind, not the kind who take the role seriously. That’s no fun. She had treated us to no less than three maniacal cackles this morning already. A few muttered rants about fools, incompetents, and how they would never best her, and some pretty sweet dancing so far. It was adorable in an “I’m secretly an evil genius super-villain”, kinda way. (In the interests of clarity I should state, that what she is not is a secret evil SUPER villain. Apart from a really excessive amount of smarts, she will swear blind she doesn’t actually possess, despite all evidence to the contrary, she demonstrates no powers beyond those normal for a heavy G world raised human. (No before you ask, none of those abilities are those listed in superman, damn false advertising.)

She definitely shows at least some attributes commonly associated with regular villainy, mind you. But only once she gets to know you well enough, and you figure out no bank, message, or security system is beyond her reach. She dresses a little long for the role though, no evil mastermind should wear a daisy print “give peace a chance” shirt, even ironically, let alone an ocular screen rig in hot pink, with love hearts etched along the side.The flares really don’t help her case either.

As for Jenel, well she’d decided that while we were on the way, once she’d patched things up enough to make sure we didn’t all end up floaters. That she’d take a little time to clear out the Ponics bay, ready for future use. She’d taken a whole mess of knackered old drones, the ones that were too fried to hold any complex commands, and essentially started turning them into janitorial bots, without the cleaning chemicals. (Apparently most of those are really bad for plants, well it should be pretty obvious, the ones that were laying round on this ship? Most of them had probably been banned on a few worlds by now. Wouldn’t surprise me to find that there were planets out there somewhere, where that shit would make the local fauna grow additional heads or something. Near infinite variety at its finest.)

A few of the drones had some kind of bladed metal implement attached to the back, and were dragging it through the soil, hauling up the remains of the previous plants in the process. Others were carrying them over to Jenel, who was popping them in the incinerator. (It was bad enough trusting some of these walking scrap heaps with improvised farming tools, you definitely didn’t want them anywhere near fire. That would not end well.)

Another couple, who had apparently been instructed to deal with a few dead saplings, had a unique approach to the fine art to lumber Jilling. They were repeatedly charging headlong into the trunk of the aforementioned tree. Which seemed to not be inclined to collapsing. They had so far rammed into the thing twenty times since I’d stopped by, and did not seem to want to give up their task. I would have stopped them a little while ago, but they’re not hurting anything, not even themselves, given that it was a match of titanium plate, vs very old timber. and frankly there was a distinct lack of entertainment right now. Even the vid screens were running on secondary power. So using them to watch cartoons would probably not be my best idea to date. (Don’t worry I did have a micro-generator to watch later if this trip dragged on too long.)

As we closed in on out next jump, the drone got stuck head first in the well-rotted trunk, theoretically the other drone could have helped out, but frankly they weren’t exactly in the best condition to make reasonable judgements either. Once it got stuck too Jenel finally noticed, with a sigh and came over to extract them from their improvised headgear. She shot me a disapproving tut, of course, but there was no malice in it. She loves me really, no, really, why is a mystery to me too. I’m just as surprised as you.