Cohost writing prompt: @make-up-a-starship-pilot — Starship pilot who is a very legitimate customs inspector and really does need to see the contents of your cargo hold immediately. Honest.
Content notices for: extremely poorly negotiated kink, extremely dubious consent, passing reference to sex trafficking.
Harriet collects her documents and walks back down the loading zone to the docking spars, allowing herself to feel the first uncurlings of relief. She'll be undocked and away, soon.
There's someone outside her airlock.
There's someone outside her airlock standing tall and severe in a crisp black tailored suit, with impenetrable black shades on her face. Magnesium blonde hair in a severe topknot.
"Lanie?" Harriet says in a strangled voice. They'd been — poorly defined, once, a deliberate mumble of a dodged conversation about how serious they both might have been. And then they weren't anything, careers in very literal different directions. Lanie had been terrifying then, commanding and intense and almost hypnotic.
"Captain," Lanie says, a billion times more frightening now, cold and professional. "That's Special Inspector to you." She briefly flashes an ID card, which Harriet can't tear her eyes from unreadable shades and her own fearstruck reflection to read. "Your ship's been selected for...special inspection."
Harriet makes herself nod, feeling like her head's just uncontrollably wobbling on the end of her neck. "I have the manifest right inside," she manages to say, keying open the airlock.
Lanie gestures, sharp and precise, for her to go first. Harriet's neck prickles, as she cycles them through the lock, yanks a magnetic clipboard off the bulkhead, hands it over. It shakes, a tiny but visible tremor, in her grip.
"Centre hold," Lanie says, and Harriet can't even say anything, just leads her down the gangway to it.
"As you can see," Harriet says, stepping through the inner hatch into what little of the hold is currently easily walkable, "palleted dry cargo. Hydroponics equipment."
"Your ship specs," Lanie says, sharp and infinitely cold, and Harriet's blood runs instantly to the same temperature. It's all over. It's all over. "Some irregular numbers, here."
Lanie has the years in shipping to know. To see instantly.
"It's me," Harriet says desperately. "You know me. I'm not a smuggler or a pirate. I'm not running drugs or luxury contrabrand or any of that. I don't do that. I wouldn't do that."
Lanie puts her hand in one of her severe suit jacket pockets, and expressionlessly brings out a set of cuffs.
"Oh fuck," Harriet says, thin and high, and Lanie snaps them onto one of her wrists, pushes her to the bulkhead face-first, twists her arm up behind her back to cuff the other wrist to it.
"I'm going to have to pat you down," Lanie says, and it's too — it's too much and it's too much like better times.
"Lanie," Harriet says, and Lanie's hand stops in the small of her back at her tone. "Lanie, the ship's...not...totally to spec. Okay? It's not. Please, I'm not — you used to—" she tries and fails to hold in a helpless sniffle. "There are seventy-two androids under this deck."
"Androids," Lanie says, after a long pause.
"Fully sapient autonomous androids."
"Sex bots. You're stealing a shipment of sex bots."
"Sex slaves," Harriet says. "You used to care. I'm helping seventy-two trafficked people to escape—"
"Harry," Lanie says, in a gentle, rueful way, and undoes the cuffs from one of her wrists. "I'm not actually a customs inspector."
"What?"
"My ship's docked one over, I recognised you heading up to the port office. I thought — you used to enjoy a bit of — well. When you were scared, a certain amount." The cuffs come off, altogether. "I didn't mean to actually— well, not like that."
"Oh," Harriet says, and her knees threaten to buckle. "Oh, fuck—"
Lanie catches her, holding her weight up effortlessly. "Harry, you stupid, beautiful bastard," she says against her hair. "Look, I'll understand if you want me to just get off your ship, but I'm thinking you need — aftercare? Right now?"
"Yes," Harriet says. "Please."
"Next time someone flashes a badge at you, read it, for god's sake," Lanie adds, as Harriet crumples, shivering, into her. "That was a sandwich bar stamp card, Harry."
"Oh, fuck you," Harriet informs the fabric of her jacket, as still-familiar hands gently stroke the length of her back.
"...All things considered," Lanie says, warm and rueful, "I'd be very surprised if you did."