Cohost writing prompt: @make-up-a-starship-pilot — Starship pilot who is, unfortunately, utterly shipless
"You're on the wrong side of the hab ring, flygirl," Nullpointer Vaz croons. The butterfly knife spins and spins in his hand, light glinting off the blade and his fingerfuls of rings. "Everyone knows you limped in with main drive failure. Everyone knows you don't have the money to fix it. You don't fix it, you don't fly. You don't fly, you don't work off what you owe. You don't work off what you owe, people call and give a job to me."
"Drive's been busted for two days," Bubbles says shakily, missing defiant or even confident by miles. "I've got time. It'll get sorted."
"You've got as much time as you're given," he says, grinning hugely. "And flygirl, your time's all out. Game over. They want you to pay out in blood."
She backs up a step, feet crunching on litter, drifts of Burger Pharaoh wrappers from a franchisee who went belly-up three years ago. "This isn't good business," she protests, and he laughs like a Halloween toy.
"Flygirl," he says. "You're rizzless, dripless, bitchless, and shipless. Business? This is cleanup detail. You're bringing the neighbourhood down—"
A tall figure sidesteps abruptly out of an alley and smacks him in the back of the head with a length of pipe. His shiny knife skitters away across the deck as he drops, limp and loud as a sack of ground beef.
"Who's the lesser-known clown?" the newcomer says, nudging him with the toe of a deep-spacer magboot.
Bubbles blinks at her a few times. "Local mob enforcer," she says, panicky and miserable.
"Better go, then." The deeper flashes her a bright grin, grabs her arm, and strides off, towing her along. "You're the clapped-out hauler in holding orbit three, right?"
"I'm a fucking walking corpse, is what," Bubbles says.
"Aren't we all!" she chrips back, and bundles Bubbles into an inter-ring elevator, thumbing D for docking. "I'm with the Anarchist Fleet. Want a tow somewhere?"
"Aren't you...." Bubbles clears her throat. She's feeling a little dazed, she thinks. "Like. Cannibals?"
"Aw, no, that's the Ancap Fleet. Not to be confused. We just have lots of procedural meetings!" the other pilor chirps. "Lots and lots of procedural meetings. I'm not recruiting, by the way, I just didn't want to watch you get stabbed."
"Oh, he was probably gonna cut my ears off first," Bubbles says. "You'd have had time to walk off."
"Not actually the point. You do want to get out of here, right?"
"I think I might be in shock," Bubbles says.
"Was it the pipe? Shit. Optics. If we meet Anthea, don't tell her about the pipe, okay?"
"You're still holding it," Bubbles says, and the other pilot drops it and kicks it into the corner of the elevator, looking guilty. "What's — what's your name?"
"Oh, hey, that would have been good to lead with. Sorry. Don't get out much." She looks at the grip she still has on Bubbles sleeve, lets go, and slowly retracts her hand like she's trying to do it unnoticed. "Iota. Iota Webster."
"Iota." Bubbles tries it out. "You're really just gonna — give me a tow somewhere?"
"Yep!"
Bubbles hesitantly holds her hand out. "Bubbles," she says, starting to wonder, in a sneaking sideways fashion, if she's going to live to the end of the day after all.
Iota shakes it thoroughly. "Damn," she crows. "I made a friend!"
"You're a real fucking weirdo, Iota," Bubbles says faintly.
"Thanks!" Iota says, beaming like it's the best thing anyone ever said.