Cohost writing prompt: @make-up-a-starship-pilot — Starship pilot who isn’t supposed to be here
The Empress stalks into the ship’s galley in the way she goes everywhere: without explanation and as if she owns it.
Timni, hollow-eyed, ignores her; runs steaming water from the spigot into the one bowl she owns, carefully scoops pea-sized amounts of miso paste and micronutrient supplement out of their jars into it, tears open the wrapper around a noodle brick, and cracks it apart; half of it into the bowl, half rewrapped.
“You are eating insufficiently,” the Empress says coldly.
“Effulgence,” Timni says dully. “You have given me places to be, and a timetable, and from a trade standpoint, they make no sense. With my available capital, there are only so many categories of goods I can take on, and the returns dictate refuelling, and so trade naturally falls into the patterns it does by economic necessity. Your schedule loses money at every turn. When I run out of ways to cut costs, our budget will shrink, until we cannot take on cargo and we cannot refuel, and then you will have to find somebody else and leave me to die.”
“When an Empire starves, if reflects poorly on its administration,” the Empress says. “No less if my Empire is currently very small.”
Timni closes her eyes for a long moment, only opening them because the darkness makes her dizzy. “Don’t make me reply to that, Paramount Highness,” she says dismally.
“You will spend the money you require to eat,” the Empress says.
“Not if you want to keep flying.” Timni forces herself to put noodles into her mouth, exhaustedly chew. “This situation is not exactly addressable with taxation policy tweaks, Effulgence,” she adds incautiously, and quails under the furious cast of the Empress’ eyes.
At the next port, the Empress strides off the ship ahead of Timni and simply goes, somewhere; Timni is sufficiently unnerved that she nearly spoils her negotiations with a local contact, entirely without the Empress’ interference. Nonetheless, she manages to brush off the near-disaster with wobbly laughter and the excuse that the turnover in Imperial administration has shaken the trade markets, and she is all nerves and empty pockets.
It’s enough to refuel, with a little over. Biting her lip, Timni hesitates over the letter of her Empress’ instruction; whether she has been required to eat now or to provision for the trip ahead. She visits, in the end, a street food stall; leans against a wall, lightheaded, as she takes careful bites of stuffed fried dough and feels as if she is committing malicious compliance.
The Empress takes a long time to return; long enough to drive Timni into a state of nervous vibration. She waits aboard the ship, dreading, not daring to leave to do what little provisioning she still could. Hours drag by.
When finally the airlock rattles open, she thinks she might swoon from nothing but the release of anticipation. And then the Empress enters, upright and chilly as ever, but swathed in an unfamiliar scarf and brimmed hat, with an equipment belt slung low around her hips, a snub weapon tucked into one side like anywhere’s scumside gun-henries.
“What,” Timni whispers, bewildered, then flinches at the notification sound of a funds transfer into the ship’s account; flinches again at the amount. “What.”
“There is an office in many ports offering mercenary work,” the Empress says, in a voice like icy glass and darkness. “This body is for combat.” She sweeps past Timni, not looking back, even as she issues a coldly ringing edict on her way out of the room: “You will spend the money you require to eat.”
”…Effulgence,” Timni replies, in a tiny numb voice.
