A thin sheathing of shimmering steel encased his right arm, ending in a multifunctional blaster/number-cruncher/blender. A shimmering red helmet obscured his face. Out of the helmet cylinders spike, blinking with red, green and purple lights. Riman. His boots clicked on the slippery metal floor. He entered his small cabin through the circular door that hissed open when he laid his scaly hand upon the panel in its center.
Once in his room, he sat on a small stool and sighed. Poor Stailacity. Their energetic, seemingly untired, sparky, cheery ship-captain had the worst luck Fortune ever gave to any entity. On the slowest ship, a steam-powered prototypical junky. Computers with less processing power than a calculator, which was why he'd come. To be the computer. He sighed again. Stailacity was pretty cool. He hooked his brain into the computer system, (such as there was), and knuckled down to some serious number-crunching. At the current rate, they would be lucky if they reached Mars in a year and a half. Those toffs on the state-of-the art starjumper would surely get there first and grab the power.
He was hungry. He rummaged in his locker, found a bottle of water, a cup, and some powdered smoothie mix, and clicking the blender attachment into his arm socket, blended himself up some lunch, or dinner, or brunch, or whatever you liked to call it.
He then hooked himself back up to the computer. Suddenly he had a brainwave. Those space probes in the hold! Not only were the heavy things impeding progress, they were outfitted with better blaster rockets than the ship had; carbon-gas ones. He could get Sparky to dismantle them, outfit the ship with their rockets, and dump the rest. Yes, there were laws against space littering, but in a case like this it was justified, and anyway, a teeny bit more junk couldn't hurt. By the next evening, the ship was cruising along at a far quicker pace. Sparky had been a bit concerned that the ship wasn't made for this kind of thing and was very law-abiding, but Riman brought him around to his point of view. With a gun, that is.
Stailacity was very pleased with him, which pleased Riman. He had done something his idol appreciated. That was enough reward for him. He re-wired himself into the computer system and expressed his elation by putting the ship through a series of intricate loop-the-loops.
ns 15.158.61.20da2
