“For fuck’s sake. Another inspection?” Jiru asked her engineer, a human named Jeff. When Jiru had first thought of the idea of having her own spacecraft, she was not expecting to be bombarded with all of these inspections. First, there was the pre-flight inspection to make sure the ship wasn’t going to fall apart.Then there was the cargo inspection, which was to make sure all of the cargo was aboard and properly strapped down. And then, there was the inspection that happened after touchdown to make sure all of the cargo made it. It was exhausting.

“Sorry, Captain. You know the rules,” Jeff said, unable to fully mask the dopey grin he always got whenever Jiru would complain about the inspections, which happened more often than not.

Jiru groaned. “I swear, they are making this one take longer than usual. I knew I should have gone to work for Hermes Corp instead of Trans Galactic. ‘Trans Galactic is the best around,’ they said. Yeah, right.”

“Just think about it this way. Without Trans G, you would have never met me and your ship wouldn’t have been retrofitted to handle larger cargo,” Jeff replied, his grin not having left his face yet.

“I can live without you, but I guess the ship upgrades were nice I suppose,” she said, knowing her response would get a rise out of her human friend.

Trans Galactic, upon Jiru’s acceptance to the company, went about upgrading parts of her ship with a larger cargo hold and updated electronics. Of course, they did all of this with the expectation of getting a larger cut of her profits.

Jeff gasped in anger she knew wasn’t real. “How dare you. This ship wouldn’t run without me and you know it.”

“Whatever, Jeff.” Jiru slumped into her seat. This shipment had been a long one. They had travelled over 500 light-years over the course of the last three weeks. While Jeff was a nice guy, there was only so much they could realistically talk about.

The two sat in silence for another ten minutes before they got the ‘all-clear’ from the inspectors. Jiru shouldn’t have been too surprised at the length of the inspection because they were shipping higher-end consumer electronics to Earth from Gaia. Something she found over the course of her tenure with the company is that inspections take longer with more expensive cargo.

But, she could live with all of this. After all, she had made more money these past few months than she had in her entire life before building her ship. Looking at her bank account after getting the credits from jobs transferred may or may not have brought out tears of joy. Another part of her paycheck was shares in Trans Galactic. As a publicly traded company listed on the Gaia Stock Exchange, it had amassed a valuation of $3.4 trillion, which placed it solidly within the middle tier of freight transport companies. As such, she was not suffering when it came to money, especially compared to where she was before. She made sure to spend what she could on minor upgrades here and there on her ship to keep it as up-to-date as possible. The last thing she needed was to lose out on potential profits.

These upgrades also included some defensive measures as well. The fringes of civilization held dangerous people and the governments could only do so much patrolling and keeping the spacelanes free.

Thankfully, this past job went without any major issues, unless running out of chocolate could be considered one. Something Jiru had learned since becoming able to afford treats every now and then is that Jiwa were able to taste chocolate better than humans. This newfound fact was something she made sure to exploit whenever she could.

“Alright, Jiru. You’re all unloaded. I’ll have the boss transfer the money to your account. Do you plan on doing another job today?” the voice coming from the flightdeck speaker asked.

Jiru and Jeff made eye contact having an entire conversation in the span of a few seconds with just body language. “I think Jeff and I have earned a weekend.”

“Okay, sounds good. We don’t have anyone else scheduled to land in your gate for a few days, so you can just leave your ship where it is. Enjoy your stay on Earth, Jiru.”

The two got out of their seats and made their way out of the ship and onto the surface of Earth. Even though Jiru had delivered cargo to and from Earth before, as it was her usual route, she never actually left the ship. If they ever needed to stock up on something, she would just make Jeff do it while she looked over her spreadsheets and ship data.

But now was her chance to explore the origin world of the force that was the humans. Their personalities and ethics weren’t that different compared to Jiwa, due to the similarities between their two species. However, many of the Mursk and La’ik she talked to found them odd for whatever reason. They just go about life differently than the other aliens. These things were of no concern to Jiru though. She had a planet to discover.

She spent her entire weekend just in the area around the spaceport - somewhere called ‘San Diego.’ If there was one thing that confused Jiru about the humans, it was the way they named their cities. She understood naming them after people, considering she grew up in a city called ‘Dickson.’ But, from what she could gather, they named some cities after these things called ‘Saints?’ She didn’t know who Diego was, but he must have been a good guy since he was a saint and got a city named after him.

Nonetheless, she decided San Diego was a nice city. The locals said the weather is nearly perfect all year. However, she thought it was a little warm for her as Gaia had a slightly cooler climate.

Another thing she found odd about the humans was their whole idea of having many nations on their planet. It just seemed unnecessarily complicated to her. At least it came with benefits like the so-called ‘Mexican food.’ Tacos, she decided, were her new favorite food. She would need to ask Jeff to get some ingredients for tacos.

On her way back to the ship, she ran into Jeff sitting outside a restaurant eating something.

“Hey, Jiru. How was your weekend?” he asked. “I don’t think we’ve ever spent more than a day on Earth since I was hired for your ship.”

Jiru nodded enthusiastically. “It’s been great! I had this new thing called a ‘taco.’ I wish the food on Gaia had been as good as the stuff I’ve had here,” she said, with a hint of sorrow in her voice.

“I bet! Hey, I was talking with the company, and they said they have a new job for us whenever we’re ready. It’s a shipment of high value food for some city on La’Grouem.”

“That’s one of the La’ik planets right?” Jiru asked. She had never gone to any of the La’ik worlds before, but she heard about how their cities were renowned for having elegantly crafted skyscrapers and cities that manage to block the dirty slums which tend to surround them. Supposedly, the La’ik had at some point been a utopia in almost every sense of the word until some greedy people decided to overthrow their government and start an authoritarian regime which caused the species’ economy to enter a freefall and plummet. They were still feeling the repercussions of it today forty years after the fact.

“Yep. If we’re lucky, we might even be able to catch a glimpse of the informal housing! Did you know the La’ik are among the worst when it comes to wealth disparity? I actually haven’t been to La’Grouem before, but I have been to Lie’Brun. If it’s anything like that shithole, we’ll be in for a treat,” Jeff said with a slight chuckle.

“Interesting. We should probably head back to the ship then,” Jiru said. Then, as if in deep thought, added, “Maybe, with the money we get from this job, we can see about doing the engine room retrofit I know you’ve been wanting.”

Suddenly, Jeff’s face perked up and he stood from his seat so quickly he managed to fall flat on his butt. He was able to recover from his fall and stood back up. “Well then, we better get going! Right away, yes. Let’s go.”

Jiru laughed at her friend and jogged after him all the way back to the ship. The ship was pretty much the same as it had been the other day, with the exception of the crates of food by the cargo door. Jeff must have already accepted the job.

It only took half an hour to get the food all loaded up into the cargo hold, which was remarkably faster than she would have expected, especially from Trans Galactic. This just meant their journey could get started earlier, which also meant it would be sooner that she would be able to do the engine room retrofit for Jeff.

They made it out of the atmosphere only an hour after that. Their journey would be a little longer than their last one. The La’ik world was around 800 lightyears away, which meant their trip would take around a month travelling at their cruising speed of 10 kilolightyears, or simply kly. She could live with how long it would take to get there as they were being offered a serious sum of money due to the fact the spacelanes running to the planet from Earth were much more rundown than the more heavily trafficked ones. If they did run into anything though, debris or otherwise, they would most likely be able to handle it with the pulse weaponry on the ship Jiru had been sure to get when she signed up with the company.

Also, Jiru had chocolate.