Cohost writing prompt: @make-up-a-starship-pilot — Starship pilot who speaks in bold text
The docking ring is incredibly crowded and far too loud, like 1AM in the most unfun nightclub imaginable.
Katja's voice is only small, and the only times in her life she's managed to deliberately yell have been when she was quite drunk and obscenely angry, whereas now she is cold sober and tired and frustrated and her voice is just going squeaky from the stress pulling at her throat. The vendor's stall is fronted with laminated catalogue pages, and the only way to order anything is to yell up to a dingy little hole with just their begoggled face peering out. Katja feels like she's assailing a fortification, and being successfully repelled.
She feels Danika arrive, more than anything, as if a wall of stone has rolled up behind her and shaded the sky.
"She wants a Kanisky oh-four-four model life support filter," Danika says in a way that punches through the noise of the crowd, and Katja feels tiny and useless and superfluous as the face instantly cracks a smile and ducks down, coming back up with a head-sized white cardboard box with part numbers pencilled on it. She wraps her hand around the palmprint handle, clicks the consent-to-pay thumb button, stands on tiptoe to take the box. Curls head-down around it and follows Danika back to the ship.
"Sorry I took too long," she mutters, cycling through the airlock, and Danika purses her lips and shakes her head. "How do you — with your voice."
"Habit." Danika nudges a handful of froth out of the hand san dispenser as the lock cycles them through. "Learned to fly on a ship from the tail end of the Voice Activated Digital Agent user interface fad. Janky shit, but there's an intonation you learn, for giving instructions. Try not to, much; works too well on people, too."
"Seems useful," Katja mutters.
"Yes. That's why. Not fair." Danika gives her a look, sideways.
"S—"
"Stop being sorry," Danika says, and Katja feels herself go pale and wide-eyed and practically swoon. She hiccups.
"See?" Danika says.