Wonderous Expanse
Juleka kept her eyes sharp as she scanned the horizon. One overlooked Sentinel and they could both be dead.
Ok, that wasn’t likely. She could easily handle one sentinel with her Omnitool, but you never knew what you were going to find on these little corners of a very big universe.
“We’re here!” Chimed in a familiar chipper voice, pulling her from her thoughts. Refocusing on the person in front of her, she saw Rose unclip her own Omnitool and look up at the massive pillar of Ore.
“Well, let’s see what it is!” She said, and aimed her mining laser at it. As chunks flew of and were vacuumed up by their bags, Juleka watched her UI count up the amount of…
“Nickel! This stuff is useless!” Juleka exclaimed, folding her arms.
“Aw, don’t say that. We may need it later!” Rose replied as she continued to drag the laser across the monolith, collecting.
“Well, right now we need to get back to the ship before our toxicity protection runs out.” Juleka replied, eyeing the depleting meter in the bottom left of her visor readout.
Rose sighed and let go of the trigger on her Tool, turning around for the walk back to the ship.
As they took off, Juleka took stock of their supplies as Rose piloted them toward the Hub Satellite.
“Well, we could definitely do without all this Gold” she called out to the cockpit.
“Aaawww. It’s so shiny!”
“Half.”
“A quarter.”
“One third.”
“Deal. We can always learn a few new words too.”
“Juleka, I will not let you scam that poor alien!”
“What do you want me to do? He asks for 20 Carbon, and he gives me 60 when I ask! It’s practically teaching them a business lesson!”
Their conversation was interrupted by an incessant beeping noise and flashing red light.
“Oh no.” Rose said as they were yanked out of Pulse Drive and Juleka hopped on the guns. “I don’t suppose I could convince you not to shoot them?” She called back as the weapons system warmed up.
“Not a chance.” Juleka replied, ice in her voice.
Bandits.
Juleka wasn’t really a violent person. Far from it really. It was more the fact that Rose refused to be violent. At all. And the cold hard truth was that sometimes you can’t hug your way out of it. That’s why Juleka’s Omnitool was better suited for combat, and Rose’s for mining. That’s why Juleka knew her way around the weapon’s system, and Rose did the piloting. Because Juleka would rather destroy every star in all of existence then let someone hurt her wife.
And so Rose flew, looping and rolling and twisting. And Juleka shot, her fingers cramping from pulling the triggers as much as she did. And when all the bandits were dead, and they made it to the Hub, the pair decided to lay in bed and hold each other, all too aware that this could have been the last time they could ever see the other person. Smell the shampoo they used, feel the lips pressed against their own. So they savored it with a new appreciation.
And then they moved on. Ever closer to the center.