Sunday -- Oldies but Goodies
A prim, silent woman sat stiffly upright at a small table in the darkest corner of the seedy spaceport bar. Appearing in her late thirties, she wore an epensive, well-tailored skirt and jacket, obviously made planetside. Her legs were crossed, and an elegant high-heeled shoe shook in vague agitation as she fidgeted with a pair of glasses hanging from her neck on a silver chain.
Doctor Iona Nysengard shifted positions in the battered, wobbly chair and winced a little, pressing a hand to her side. She moved again when the handgun tucked into her waistband hit the back of the chair and pressed into the small of her back. A scar and a sidearm -- her two lasting mementoes of her eight months as chief computer engineer on the Martyr.
It was a bit of a comedown in her life, leaving academia. Still she had managed a very lucrative second career as a “private consultant”, but as long as the arrest warrants were still active, she really had no choice but to continue this nomadic, spacefaring lifestyle.
She had to admit her prospects were not very wide for her future. She had money to spare, so she would neither starve nor run out of the medications that kept her anxiety and antisocial tendencies in check. In addition, she had good references from a good Captain, which ought to stand for something, even if he did operate on the fringes of legality, so to speak. Still, without some kind of intellectual work to keep herself occupied, it would be only a matter of time before the ever-present threat of boredom became a reality, and the “crazies”, as the rest of the crew had called it behind her back when they thought she wasn’t listening, would drive her around the bend once more.
She needed another job.
Sighing again, she tapped on the table with a well-manicured hand and wiped absently at a spot on her glass, until she realized it was on the inside, whereupon she pushed it away with a grimace of disgust. She would have to get up soon and talk to people. Shuddering, she reached into the handbag on her lap and pulled out a bottle. Swiftly downing two tablets without drinking from her glass, she closed her eyes and waited for the artificial courage to kick in.