Chapter 181: Chapter 181

I cringed as my sister's voice echoed up the corridor behind me. She was using her best worst whine, that left my ears folded back and my tail twitching in irritation. A moment later she joined me in the cockpit, but I spoke up before she could get the next words out.

"I already know what you're going to say," I warned her, "So don't even bother."

She slumped into the empty pilot seat on my right and pouted, "But I'm bored! This is so boring!"

I suppressed a little growl then reminded her, "You're the one who insisted on leaving home and coming all the way out here to the frontier. And you're the one who volunteered for this assignment. Nobody forced you into it."

Her pout intensified as she whined again, "But it's sooooo boring! I thought space travel was supposed to be exciting!"

My ears stayed folded back while my tail twitched again. Then I sighed and shook my head, "Trust me Nyssa, you do not want excitement around here. Exciting is just another word for deadly."

"Hmph," she grumped as she somehow managed to pout even louder.

Rather than continue with the same conversation we'd had for the past six days in a row I just stayed focused on the sensors for the next few minutes. Eventually though I smiled a little as I suggested, "If you're really that bored, you could always start your shift early."

"Oh hells no!" she whined. "That's even more boring than doing nothing at all!"

This time I took my eyes off the sensors so I could frown at her, "I sure hope that doesn't mean you've been slacking off on your shifts. If we've missed it because you weren't doing your job -"

"I haven't been slacking off!" she insisted. "I swear! But it's so hecking boring Amanda, how do you put up with this?"

I sighed again, "Because boring and alive is always better than exciting and dead. Trust me sis. The last thing I want is to see you get hurt, and that's almost always where excitement leads to out here."

Nyssa continued pouting noisily while my focus returned to the sensors once again. It seemed like she wasn't finished complaining though, she was probably just getting geared-up for the second round.

"I'm also lonely," she finally stated.

That caught me off-guard, and I looked at her with my head tilted to one side. "Lonely? Don't I count for something? I know it's just the two of us, but I'm always here for you sis. Or, I'm here for you as long as you're not just looking for someone to whine at."

She flashed me a mischievous look that left me worried. Then she sighed loudly again, "Not that kind of lonely, Amanda. The kind of companionship I'm craving isn't the sort of thing I'm looking to get from my sister."

My ears folded back and my tail ended up tucked under my chair as I quickly focused my attention back on the scanners again.

"Oh," I mumbled, "I definitely can't help you with that."

She was still wearing that mischievous smirk on her face as she complained loudly, "I only brought one toy Amanda, and it broke two nights ago."

"Aaah!" I grimaced and cringed. "I don't want to hear this! I don't want to know about my little sister's sex life!"

"I don't have a sex life Amanda, that's the problem!" she responded just as loudly as before.

Then she asked, "Seriously sis, how do you survive when you haven't seen your girlfriends in so long? Do you have a secret cache of toys to get you by? Sexy vids of Sarah and Rebecca? If this ship's computer has a porn stash it's really well hidden, because believe me I've looked."

"Please stop talking?" I half-begged, while my ears drooped to either side and my tail stayed tucked beneath my seat.

Instead Nyssa reached out and activated the nav screen, "Look sis? We could be on Rolandan-2 in less than an hour if we use Jump-2. Four or five hours if we stick to Jump-1. All I'm asking for is a day of shore leave."

"No make it a day and a half!" she quickly changed her mind. "Thirty-six hours planet-side. That's long enough to go shopping, hit up some bars, and get laid. I'll stock up on new toys, then we can be back out here on the job again, all in under forty-eight hours! Nobody will know we snuck away for a bit of fun."

I shook my head, "You're forgetting the cost of fuel and port fees. And both of those are expensive on Rolandan-2."

My sister sighed, "Then what about the Fuminja Cluster? We can be there just as fast. And fuel's cheap there, right? Plus you can play your hero card. Amanda Voss, the brave foxgirl who beat a Navy destroyer and showed the Imperium what-for!"

Her eyes lit up as she continued, "Oh heck yeah! We could go hit up some bars on Fuminja Beta together. And once everyone knows I'm your baby sister, I bet I won't have any trouble getting some cute waitress to -"

"Nyssa stop talking!" I interrupted, with my ears angled forward and my tail sticking out behind me.

My voice was raised and I probably sounded exasperated as I continued, "Enough already! I know you're bored and I'm sorry you're lonely but this is the job. This is what you signed up for. The two of us are out here together until we find the wreck. Then we send the Demeter an encrypted FTL, and she'll come meet us. Then maybe, and this is not a promise, but maybe we can get you some shore leave after that."

"You know the Demeter will be hauling the salvage to Rolandan-2," I added after a slight pause. "So we'll all have some down-time there. But not until the job's done."

My sister slumped back in the pilot seat and pouted again, "I guess."

"It's just," she continued after a couple seconds, "We've been at this for ages now. I thought this ship's sensors were supposed to be special? So why's it taking so long to find some old wreck?"

I glanced at her once more, and from her expression I got the impression that she was finished being a brat. This was a genuine question, rather than the start of another round of whining and complaining.

My attention returned to the sensor readouts as I explained, "The Artemis has excellent sensors, sis. The problem is we're looking for a shipwreck that's about four centuries old, which means there's absolutely no energy signatures to give away its position. Not to mention that it's adrift in a field of asteroids that are generating a lot of spurious metallic signatures."

"And finally our starting coordinates were three decades out of date," I reminded her, "And we don't even know for sure that the ship's still intact. Unlikely, but some other salvars might have come across it in the last thirty years. Or maybe a little more likely, it could have finally collided with an asteroid and been pulverized."

Nyssa was quiet for another couple seconds before asking, "What if we don't find it? What if asteroids have smashed it to bits?"

"The Demeter found it thirty years ago, so odds are we're going to find it soon. You just need to be more patient," I told her.

She didn't seem convinced though, so I added "It's been fifteen days sis, you agreed to twenty. If we haven't found anything in five more days, then we call off the search and go rendezvous with the Demeter."

"Back on that mud-ball world," my sister made a face.

I glanced at her again then sighed, "Tell you what. If we haven't found anything after twenty days, I'll send the Demeter an FTL and let them know we're swinging by Rolandan-2 for a forty-eight hour stopover. Then after that we'll go meet them at Deveron-8."

"Thank you Amanda," Nyssa replied softly.

Then she asked, "What do you figure they're up to? And why do your girlfriends like hanging out on that world so much? It's so backwards. It's..."

I gave her a sympathetic smile and asked, "It's a lot like home, isn't it? I think that's why you don't like it, the place reminds you of Kaitor-7."

"Yeah," she pouted again. "I guess it's not quite as backwards as our homeworld. But it's close."

I shook my head, "You're not wrong Nyssa. And honestly it's probably not that far off? Especially when we first visited there, the people would not have been happy if they'd known I was trans, or that Rebecca and Sarah and I were all girlfriends. I guess that's where our 'hero cards' come into play."

She gave me a funny look, "So why do you people insist on hanging out there?"

"It's complicated," I shrugged. "You already know we ended up stuck there for the better part of a standard year, and in that time we made some friends. And I guess we got comfortable there. Rebecca's originally from an agri world too, so it's familiar to her. And finally, she and the mayor have some history together."

Before she could ask I quickly told her, "That's not my story to tell, so please don't ask. All I can say is there's history. And I know Mayor Wheeler can be an abrasive old bitch most of the time, but apparently she can also be nice when she wants."

"So what, she's like an adoptive mother-figure to Rebecca or something?" Nyssa asked.

I almost had to bite my tongue to stop from laughing. Instead I just shook my head, "I really wouldn't say that. Especially not anywhere Rebecca might hear you. Or Ella Wheeler, for that matter. Anyways I already said it's not my story to tell."

"As for why they're there and what they're doing right now, it's mostly R and R. And mostly for Rebecca's sake," I sighed, while my ears and tail all drooped.

"She's still not back to her old self yet," I elaborated. "You know what happened to her when we rescued you. Then it wasn't long after we finally got back to work that we had that close call on Tragentis-3. So both Sarah and I thought some more downtime would do the captain good, especially somewhere relatively quiet and peaceful."

I continued, "If you and I can locate the Kára that would be perfect. A nice profitable salvage job might be a good way to ease Rebecca back into a normal routine again."

"Sorry sis," Nyssa grimaced. "I know you and your girlfriends have been through a lot."

I shrugged, "It's fine."

We were both quiet again for the next few minutes, but with my sister around the silence never lasted long. And sure enough she found something else to talk about just as I was getting back into the routine of the sensor sweeps.

"It's totally unfair that I'm still not a foxgirl like you," she pouted. "I can't believe you convinced Jenny not to let me use her Re/Gen pod!"

My ears folded back again and my tail twitched, while at the same time I rolled my eyes. "We've been over this a hundred times Nyssa, I didn't convince her of anything. Jenny's Re/Gen pod is not a toy, it's serious business. If you used her Re/Gen process you'd never be your original self again. The rest of our family wouldn't recognize you anymore, you'd never be able to go back home. You might not even be able to return to the Imperium, since your ID wouldn't be valid anymore."

Despite our best efforts it didn't take long for Nyssa to learn all about the Re/Gen capsule. It was because of that close call on Tragentis that I ended up needing Jenny's help again. And by the time I came out of it fully healed, my sister knew all about how I got my perfect transition, along with my ears and tail.

She made a face as she responded, "I know that Amanda, but I don't care! I'm never going back to Kaitor-7, and I don't care about the Imperium either. I'm staying out here and having space adventures with my badass foxgirl sister, and I want to be a foxgirl too!"

"How come you get to have your ideal body but I don't?" she added. "You're a foxgirl. Cam's a catgirl. Plus Sarah's a hot blonde, Rebecca's a cute redhead, and don't even get me started on the twins. Meanwhile I'm stuck being a normal boring farmgirl nobody. How's that fair?!"

I rubbed my forehead to try and stave off the stress headache I could feel lurking around my temples, before I repeated myself for the hundred and first time. "It's lifesaving technology, not a toy. Rebecca, Sarah, and Cam all needed to use the Re/Gen pod because they'd suffered grievous injuries. In my case the injuries weren't life-threatening, but Jenny helped me anyways in order to take care of my dysphoria."

"Please Nyssa," I added as I gave her a pleading look, "Just drop it ok? Let's try and get through the next five days without any more arguments, and without any more complaining or whining. Alright?"

She glared, then pouted, but finally relented.

"Alright sis," she agreed. Then she offered, "How about I take over monitoring the sensors? It's almost the end of your shift anyways. You can grab some food then get some rest."

I gave her a grateful smile then got up out of the co-pilot seat as I responded, "Thanks Nyssa. Call me if anything comes up on the sensors."

"Yeah I know," she replied as she took my place in front of the sensor screens. "Now go eat. Or rest. Or rub one out, if that's what it takes for you to unwind, Miss Cranky Fox. I won't judge." Latest content publıshed on novel※fire.net

My ears folded back and my tail twitched, but this time I let it go. And without another word I made my way aft out of the cockpit, as I quietly reminded myself I only had to endure another five days of Nyssa's teasing. Perhaps even less, if we found Jenny's old ship before then.