Mach idly browsed the listing of job openings while he reclined in his bunk, offer after offer after offer, every single one on more exciting or pleasant, or both, planets than Percipero, and none of which he was even remotely qualified for. Sure, he could take out a loan to purchase a skillshard to load into his neuralink, but even with the raw knowledge his brain would still require months of hands-on application to fully absorb it. Meanwhile even entry level jobs required five years of experience, which begged questions Mach felt wholly pertinent yet knew would never be answered. He sighed quietly, his naturally deep voice dropping to a rumble, and covered his face with a forearm. Regret filled him over his choices of Majority skillshards, awarded to every Terran once they reached eighteen; Piloting had seemed like a wise choice at the time, but how was he to know that almost every single other boy his age would also take it? The galaxy had more pilots than it had starships a dozen times over at this point. Still, at least that skillshard had gotten him a job with the CSPS, though he had spent vastly more time being paid to occupy space in a bunk than flying his ship. See the galaxy, the recruitment offer had exclaimed, meet exotic new alien species and beautiful space princesses! A life of adventure and rewarding service awaits! He snorted dryly at the memory; The closest he had come to any of those was meeting a witch from ancient myth who stank of the abyss itself, or damp cigarette ashes. Whichever was worse. Probably the damp ashes, when he thought about it.
No, piloting had been a decent enough choice, and even with the ennui of being on eternal standby he stubbornly clung to that belief. It would also be much more tolerable if he could go outside without a raincoat at any point in time, ever. What had been an absolutely terrible choice was Classical North American Literature; What madness had driven him to choose a skillshard that imbued him with the languages and cultural knowledge necessary to understand the writings of a civilization two thousand years gone? The United States may have been the greatest culture in human history, one that reshaped the world with a single touch and pushed science forwards relentlessly, and one he had a fascination with since childhood, but... a lot of their literature was terrible. Knowing exactly what "grimdark cultivation isekai slice of life harem litrpg" actually meant was quite possibly the most cursed knowledge possible. Mach wished, not for either the first or last time, that he could have that particular bit of information burned out of his brain, but those procedures had been banned after enough patients ended up technically brainless. Still, he was fluent in all dialects of American, and one never knew: It might come in handy someday. There was no situation he could imagine where it would, but it might!
Suddenly and without the faintest warning an alert flashed in the middle of his vision, his neuralink's volume settings overridden so that the blaring alarm screaming inside his skull so loud his vision shook. Mach shot upright reflexively, at least up as far as he could before he slammed face-first into the gel of the Jolt Pad taped to the bottom of the next bunk up, then cursed as he held his nose with one hand and tried to wave his other through the bright alert in the middle of his vision. Once the stinging subsided Mach managed to focus enough to mute the alert mentally, then rolled out of his bunk as he opened the details. It was... a job! Finally, something to do other than passively absorb money like some kind of financial house plant! He stood upright, stretched, and smiled in raw excitement.
Broad shouldered, on the tall side for a male human, with the telltale dirty blond hair, bright blue eyes, and pale skin of a Reclaimer rather than the dusky tan of a standard Terran. By all standards he was handsome, though too clean shaven and neatly groomed to be ruggedly so. His hair was combed back and still damp from a recent shower, and his standard issue jumpsuit had creases meticulously ironed into it despite being normally a baggy, nearly formless vac-suit liner. An eager dash took Mach to the equipment bay, and a palm slapped to the interface called up his personal space-rated, rain resistant CSPS uniform. Six robotic arms unfurled from the walls of the person-sized cylinder, and as soon as he stepped into his boots they went to work assembling his suit around him. Gel-seams flowed into each other as they made contact, sealing each individual piece against vacuum. He could, of course, fully suit up unaided in every situation it might be required, including in zero gravity, but the arms did what took him ten minutes in less than one. The myomer musculature activated once the last piece was in place to take up the added burden of all his SOSHA mandated gear, reducing the perceived weight to little more than than the thin jumpsuit he lounged in. His helmet Mach intercepted mid drop, the robotic arm releasing it as soon as he had a grip on it, then tucked it under his arm. The rounded shell and clear face plate was unwieldy, but its purpose was to protect the wearer from hostile environs while maintaining an open and friendly look rather than be intimidating. Mach actually preferred it that way, being imposing was for military and security folk. Otherwise his suit was clean and light grey, unadorned beside the logo of the CSPS on one shoulder and, on the other, his personal touch: The Stars & Stripes, the symbol of that ancient empire he still held so much affection for. It didn't mean anything anymore, at least not to anyone but him and a select few history buffs, but he still wore it regardless.
Even the moment it took the sluggish autodoor to begrudgingly slide open felt like an eternity for Mach, who was practically bouncing in his boots. A twist of the shoulders let him slip through when it was halfway open, and as he strode down the hallways Mach tethered into his ship via neuralink. A few mental flicks of imagined switches and a cognitive crank on a starter handler got the vessel turned over and warming up, the pre-flight checklist running in the corner of his vision. It was halfway through when he reached the wider, taller door to the non-human dormitory thirty feet away, and fully complete when the plasteel portal finally ground itself open.
"Dryn! Get Cory up, we got an ultra priority job to do! We gotta lift off in thirty!"
Three hundred pounds of smooth brown exoskeleton marked with intricate black swirls and whorls, turned towards the human on six slender but incredibly strong legs. Three eyes, wet and solid orange colored except for a black pit of a pupil in the middle of each, which were set in an arch below a pair of long sharp horns, settled on Mach. The long, double jointed pair of manipulator arms which mounted on each side of a brutal crushing jaw, gesticulated with approximations of human grief. Once again Mach thought of the lovechild of a bull and a rhinoceros beetle, then Dryn spoke in his quiet, soft, faintly feminine lilting voice.
"I must, with great grief and the heaviest of hearts, inform you that Cory has departed for the great beyond. He was, in his wonderful gentleness and sweetness of soul, the greatest creature I have had the fortune of knowing, and I will dearly miss him."
Mach leaned around the bulk of the alien, still wringing his mandible-hands in anguish, and fixed his eyes on the whippet splayed out in a cushy dog-bed. The canine was on his back, legs up in the air but folded limply, and its chest rose and fell ever so slowly and faintly.
"Cory's not dead Dryn, he's just sleeping."
Pity colored that gentle voice, as if the alien knew Mach was in the denial stage of the grief cycle. "Our beloved companion, gone too soon from this cruel yet wondrous world that is a little darker without his presence, has not moved a single muscle in almost six hours. Moreover, he has begun to emit the terrible smell of decay."
"He's not dead, he's a whippet! They're just like that!" A faint twitch of the tip of the whippet's bushy white tail was followed shortly by an incredibly noxious smell. "...Dryn, did you feed him a can of refried beans instead of proper dog food again?"
"The departed, in their kindness and tolerance of my many failings, did not issue complaints about his meal."
Mach placed his face in the palm of his free hand and sighed, and he made sure to only inhale through his mouth until the filtration system could scrub the air. "I don't know how you can be such a great engineer and yet so fundamentally incapable of reading labels or noticing breathing, my friend. Get your vac-suit on while I wake up Cory, then get out to the ship. She's already warmed up and all green, but I want your confirm before liftoff."
"It would be improper to prepare Cory's body for burial, in honor of his soul returned to God's loving embrace, in so disrespectful attire as a vacuum suit."
Mach put an edge of annoyance into his voice as he almost shouted "Dryn! Vac-suit! Now!"
The handibles rose placating as the bull-beetle took a step back, and shared grief colored his voice now. "As you wish; I shall prepare a pod to send his body home to Earth once we are underway." Dryn skittered over to the oversized equipment bay to call up his own vac-suit, which was quickly fit over his exoskeleton by double the amount of robotic arms as in the human equip-bay. Wholly expectedly and as usual, the Xarlozch complained the entire time. "I still question the necessity of this equipment; My body is capable of full speed operation under hard vacuum for fifteen minutes, nearly an hour if I conserve energy, and can go into stasis indefinitely on a single breath. Moreover, it is undignified for my etchings to be concealed so scandalously."
Another sigh escaped Mach, the tension of the counter ticking down on his neuralink balanced against the silly routines that came with Dryn. He had yet to decide if the alien was more frustrating or funny, but either way it was a natural stress reliever. So, instead, Mach knelt down and shook the whippet's chest gently.
"Cory. Cory!" A few little kicks of the dog's paws and a twitch of his tail signalled his ascent to consciousness, though he remained asleep. Mach drew in a deep breath, immediately regretted it as the canine outgassed further, then shouted "CORLEONE! UP!"
The dog jerked and rolled away, kicking up onto all fours with his bushy tail tucked between his legs. Soft, brown almost to black eyes set in a long face, scanned across the room, his long ears laid flat. Corleone's fur was perfectly white, soft, and impeccably clean, the canine's love of showers only eclipsed by his love of bacon and coma-like naps. A thick collar was around his slender neck, though it was for the canine's utility more than any human purpose.
"...walkies?" The voice that issued from the vocoder in the collar was perfectly clear, though clearly still foggy with sleep. As it sounded, however, Cory's posture changed from surprised to happy, tail wagging and ears relaxedly tipped forwards with a slight fold. A stretch of one leg followed another, and a wide yawn with a curl of the tongue followed that. Mach couldn't help but scratch the top of the dog's head, a faux pas between an uplifted canine and anyone not considered a close friend. That Cory just closed his eyes a little and licked his black nose contentedly put a warmth alight in Mach's broad chest.
"Workies. Have a good sleep, buddy?"
The dog yawned again, but briefer this time. "I dreamed I was taking a wonderful nap. I believe you mentioned something about a job?"
Mach patted the whippet on the of its upper chest, the faint outlines of ribs beneath luxuriously soft fur highlighting his good health, then stood. Dryn stepped out of the equip-bay, now looking like a bull-beetle wrapped in light grey pillows, then signalled surprise with his handibles. "Cory! You have been restored to us, praise God and His infinite mercy!" Mach fixed him with his sternest glare, and the big alien skittered out of the dorm towards the landing pads. Cory, meanwhile, watched in doggy amusement.
"I love the joy Dryn seems to take in melodrama, and the complexity of emotions he conveys through his scents adds to the depth of expression." The whippet fixed an eye on Mach, and the human couldn't help but pick up a note of disappointment in it. "Right, you can't actually smell it, can you?"
"Nope. I can smell those refried beans though, and I hope you don't mind stewing in it. Let that be a lesson to not eat them when our big illiterate friend repeats the mistake, even if the onions and garlic don't affect you like a primitive canine otherwise. Suit up and be at the ship ASAP, we'll be set to go as soon as you're ready."
A few sneezes and an energetic wagging of the tail served as an equivalent to a canine's laughter, and in a flash Cory was halfway to the small equip-bay. He froze, then redirected to the lavatory section of the dorms. Mach turned and departed, trusting Cory to attend to everything with his usual promptness. As he walked the corridor to the sorting room Mach noted the cleaning drones scrubbing a particularly vile bit of graffiti from the otherwise clean plasteel walls, and nodded to them.
"Excellent work as always, boys." The drones beeped in response, which Mach liked to interpret as thanks for his appreciation. If only the counter witch didn't forbid them from her lair it might smell a bit nicer in the front lobby. While he walked he dove deeper into the delivery order, then whistled as he got to the list of handling requirements. What sort of apocalypse-grade ordinance did that witch drop on his crew? Mach never understood why the CSPS didn't forbid shipping weapons of mass destruction like the postal service of ancient America did, and his requests to change that policy went ignored. He, and most of the other rank and file CSPS employees, suspected the suggestion box was just a repurposed paper shredder.
The box that awaited him, safely held on its grav plate until delivery, was unexpectedly large. That it was of strange-metal, a catchall term for materials from alien species that didn't particularly feel like sharing their metallurgy, was interesting but not really important. If it was going to react violently to anti-gravity it would have done so already. A few thoughts in the neuralink tethered it to him, and as he slipped on his helmet he also toggled on the plate's force field. It wasn't strong enough to stop anything more than a lazy punch, but it would keep the rain off the cargo and that was enough. There were no handling instructions about dampness, but Mach couldn't think of anything that wouldn't benefit from not being rained on. Particularly not with Precipero's nasty blend of skyjuice. He stepped out of the sorting room through the outer bay doors and into the night, and gazed in renewed wonder at his ship.
Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.
She was... inelegant, if one wished to describe her kindly. Boxy in places, lumpy in others, duck-billed and ungainly; The CSPS Winnerbagel was the demented crossbreed of a brick and an upside down athletic shoe, all function and absolutely no form. Not the fastest ship in the universe, but armored and shielded enough to fly straight through a star's corona without any more damage than peeling the clean white top layer of plasteel off. Armament... was lacking beyond some point defense turrets to down incoming missiles, but combat was not in his job description... except in that it was to be avoided if at all possible. There were countless others like her in service, standard issues intergalactic vessel as she was, but the Winnerbagel was Mach's and he treated her well. Sometimes that meant bribing Maintenance to bring their A-game when they serviced her, and other times bribing them to ignore some of the modifications Mach had done out of his own pocket. Those he had to service himself, or rather have Dryn service, but the alien's ability to keep the Winnerbagel in top shape was unmatched. Mach was pretty sure Dryn could rebuild his ship from the ground up in a cave with a box of scraps if it came to it, aside from one core component.
His moment of appreciation for his cosmic cudgel taken, Mach proceeded further into the night. Water streamed off his vac-suit, the soft fabric of the joints between plasteel armor treated to make them just as impermeable as the metal, and the caustic rain that pooled on the forcefield surrounding the cargo poured onto the decking with a loud splash. The light thrown by the spotlights focused on the Winnerbagel was hazy with water vapor, and in outer lights the usual gaggle shipspotters seemed ghostly in the ethereal mist. How they could stand the burning stench of chlorine was a mystery to Mach, but most of them were nonhumans. Perhaps they didn't smell the same way humans did, or found it appealing, or just couldn't smell anymore. That last option seemed almost enticing, at least in comparison to the full experience of the witch when she got up in his face.
Soon enough Mach was climbing the ramp into the Winnerbagel's cargo hold, the grav tray maintaining perfect perpendicularity with the gravitational pull. Resistance met the step that crossed from ramp to interior, the soft forcefield like stepping through a membrane of gelatin; Every single drop of water was forced off his vacsuit as he passed through the field, condemned to rejoin its damp brethren outside, and leaving the man perfectly clean and dry. Inside was as clean and white as the outside, every surface except the grippy textured floor the soft gloss of well polished plastic. There wasn't much space, barely more than a spacious living room in a moderately expensive apartment, but what little there was could be compartmentalized with fold out racks to hold hundreds of packages. Now it was all empty, the only obstruction the access port to the engine bay hinged up, and the only sound was the soft hum of said engines and Dryn's quiet singing. Mach dropped to one knee to gaze down within, his perspective struggling with the angled gravity giving the impression that the big alien was hanging off an almost sheer wall. Dryn was fussing with some terminals, tuning two entirely separate things simultaneously without issue. That was always impressive to Mach.
More impressive were the two microfusion reactors, heavy spheroids of tubes and siphons, each synced to the other in energy and matter output. The matched pair of ultraglass fuel tanks, laden with metallic hydrogen and antihydrogen, were each topped up beside their respective engines. Beyond them, in the furthest depths of the engine bay, lurked the Inverted Singularity Engine. That thing, a bit of ultratech well beyond Mach's understanding, existed as a tiny spark of pure white light that hung in the midst of an array of feeder spikes and an impenetrable cocoon of force fields and anti-grav beams that neutralized its immense gravity. Were it to run wild the resulting explosion of released raw energy and matter would make the antimatter tank breaching look like a birthday candle flame in one of the fire hurricanes of Pyros.
"Everything looking all-green, Dryn?" It was not a question that needed to be asked, because the engineer would have been screaming in panic were it not, but Mach asked anyway. That was only proper.
"Antimatter nozzle six is three tenths of a nanometer out of specification." A few pokes at one terminal followed. "Now corrected to be exact." One orange eye came to bear on Mach following the slightest twist of that horned, and now armored, head.
"The temporal sync subsystem of the ISE was also two picoseconds slow. That would have resulted in an unacceptably inefficient consumption of fuel over galactic distance, reduced our profitability, and like as not stranded us in the great void to die in boredom and misery."
The thought that Dryn was being very overdramatic crossed Mach's mind, and was entirely reasonable given the alien's response to basically everything not going perfectly being just that. A smile was offered in response, because there was no such thing as being too safe when it came to hurtling through space well past lightspeed.
"Impeccable work as always. So, is the Winnerbagel good to go?"
"Yes, within reason. There is always the chance that God decides our work is done and calls us home in a spontaneous conversion to subatomic particles, but my part in ensuring our safety is complete." A series of retreating steps backed the big engineer out of his bay, his segmented body bending sharply in steps as he returned to the normal gravity plane, then his eyes locked on the box that floated merrily beside the tall human pilot.
"I do not like the look of that." Was all he said, to which Mach flapped a soothing hand as he called up a dangerous items locker. The cylinder slid up out of the floor, interlocking durasteel bands sliding back and over themselves to expose its inside. All that waited within was a flush mounted grav-plate that fully isolated the inside of the cylinder from all outside gravity shifts and influences, keeping it perfectly at whatever value was specified and inertia-cancelled. The box wafted itself inside then set gently on the greater grav plate, the lesser becoming part of the greater machine. A mental command from Mach closed the bands again, and a simple small metal hoop popped out from the final interlock that, when sealed, would prevent the entire mechanism from opening. Mach took a simple, plastic shelled padlock from a rack and clicked it into place, fingers brushing against the ancient letters of Earth: MasterLock. The key slid free of its primitive slot and was secured in the depths of Mach's vac suit, where it would remain until arrival.
"That's why we've got the thing in the serious business bay, my friend. The list of special handling requirements is so long that whatever's in there has to be some terrible and delicate weapon, or the most priceless artifact in the Milky Way. Either way there's enough Corgis on it to warrant giving it the best treatment." Another mental command slid the locker back into the floor, Dryn's eyes following it all the way down.
"I still feel apprehension, as if its mere existence will bring us hardship."
That was answered with a slight shrug, then a nod as the two walked further into the ship. "Part of the job we can't really avoid, sadly. Still, a healthy dose of caution is... uh, healthy." Part of Mach was glad Dryn couldn't see the tilt of his head and heat rising on his cheeks inside his helmet from this angle. "Coulda phrased that better."
Trills of alien laughter-equivalent followed, which only made Mach's cheeks hotter. "You do your best with what you were given by our Creator, Captain. However lacking in eloquence that may be at times."
They passed through the combined sleeping quarters and living room, configured with a solitary bunk for Mach and two pods for the non-humans, and its array of perfectly organized, well secured daily items. Those ranged from board games to bookpads to videochips to, by far the most expensive, a holo-nest that generated reality-perfect illusions with matching gravity and forcefields. The nest even had the most expensive, top of the line aroma-synthesizer Cory had been able to afford, which was actually the top of the line when it came to smell-o-vision. Made sense to Mach, a hologame without smell to a dog was like one without sound to a human, and might as well not even bother with that.
The mess and latrine were both cordoned off behind sealed doors for decency's sake, Dryn's cooking not being much different on either end. An earnest attempt on Mach's part to experience Xarlozch cuisine had been a significant mistake, to put it lightly, and the aftermath best left wholly unexplained. A few more seconds took them into the cockpit, Dryn taking his place on a large bench-seat encircled by a metallic ring near the rear of the cabin. Clunks and hisses followed by the bench rising up on a hefty mechanic arm. Mach sat in a more traditional upright chair covered in clean white canvas with multidensity, non-Newtonian foam cradling his form. A series of impacts along his spine accompanied by telltale lights in his neuralink letting him know that he was secured, then his own chair rose up slightly. Only the final, seatless arm front and center of the cockpit remained unoccupied.
Behind Mach the rapid clattering of tiny vac boots on deck heralded Corleone's arrival, and before the human could blink a white blur launched past his shoulder. The unoccupied arm shot out to catch the whippet's still slender even in a bulky vac-suit form from midair before he could slam into the viewscreen. Overeager legs kept kicking in an attempt to run without any solid surface to run on at the moment. The vocoder voice that issued from the armored dog translated his excitement into Terran perfectly.
"Security Officer Corleone, present and ready for departure!" Excited but muffled yipping came from the canine's suit, a complement to the words spoken in Terran.
"Chief Engineer Drynvozalchenisg Ur Xarlozcheniq, present and ready for departure." Dryn followed. Mach nodded inside his helmet as he gripped the pair of joysticks built into the arms of his seat. He felt the confirms light up green as the loading ramp closed and sealed, so he sent in a takeoff request to Control. It took mere seconds for launch authorization to be given from the air traffic control AI, and the countdown clock froze at two minutes and forty five seconds. Early was on time, and Mach loved being on time.
"Captain Mach Kerrison, present and ready for departure. Engaging grav-inverters."
The weight of gravity slowly faded as Mach pulled back on the left flightstick, the interior of the starship reaching zero G without the exterior moving a millimeter. The arms holding each of the occupants spun slowly a hundred and eighty degrees so that each was upside down, then came the perspective shift as the up of the outside world became down. To Mach it was like they were now hanging off the bottom of a misty, dark plane, upon which rain fell up. The glint of pearly white teeth showed inside his helmet, and as soon as Mach switched off the docking clamps the Winnerbagel began to plummet towards the stars.
On the landing platform one of the bystanders watched the chunky white cargo ship close up, and just before it began its ascent he raised a raincoated arm. A slender tube of dark metal ringed by mag accelerators slid out, targeted the side of the craft, and left out a soft pop as a projectile escaped the end. The fat bullet hit the clean white side with the softest of plops, resin foaming and turning into a hardened gum that bonded its cargo to the plasteel in milliseconds. Then, his task completed, the bystander shuffled off into the stormy Precipero night as the CSPS starship flew into the sky.
A few gentle nudges of the flight sticks shifted the gravity point from above the Winnerbagel to in front of it as the starship entered the Mesosphere, pulling Mach against the mounts along his spine. The readout of their groundspeed hovering in his vision rapidly increased, their orbit rapidly circularizing in a separate window. Another gentle nudge of the right stick uncircularized it, the projected line skirting out past the handful of other, uninhabitable planets in the system and out into the dark beyond. Mach pulled up their assigned route, tweaking it a bit to remove stops in several systems up to the very last one at the edge of the gap between galactic arms. Projections dropped the time to arrival at Rhombix 3 to barely more than a day and cut fuel by a third. Not bad, in Mach's estimation. Another nudge of the left stick set the grav point further out, and the Winnerbagel blasted out of Precipero's gravity well. A few minutes more and they were above the plane of the system entirely, well clear of civilian paths of travel.
A few mental flicks of imaginary switches deployed the Bussard-type Ramjet collectors, massive invisible grav-sails that collected dark matter and pulverized space dust into harvestable atoms, which Mach had installed a year ago despite their being... more than a little very illegal. That would keep their ISE well fed with cosmic mystery stuff, which would in turn continue to spit out useful raw elements like hydrogen and antihydrogen to keep their thrusters firing. Speaking of, Mach adjusted the grav point towards the closest node on their path, then pulled the grav point back into the Winnerbagel and placed it below deck where it belonged. Now they were just moving along at a comfortable .05c on momentum alone.
"Lock in, boys!" He called out, even as a mental signal from him moved their restraints into acceleration position, Dryn pivoting to place his underside towards the rear of the starship and the arm curling around Cory to support him. A faint hum built in the Winnerbagel as Mach toggled the sticks into direct flight mode. He drew a deep breath, then slammed the left stick all the way forwards.
A light brighter than any sun flared inside the single booster of the Winnerbagel as the antimatter rocket fired off, helium and antihelium mixing within a shaping funnel of force fields. Every last ounce of thrust was channeled backwards, and the starship leapt forwards like a soccer ball shot out of a cannon.
"SPEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEED!" Howled Cory, the whippet kicking his legs around the cradling arms of his seat as he looked out the viewscreen at the rapidly redshifting stars streaked towards them. The grav-point countered most of the brutal acceleration g-force, but Mach could still feel the seat yielding beneath him as what would be hundreds of Gs was dampened down to merely three-so.
"Compensating for relativistic time dilation." Dryn stated flatly, working through his own neuralink to adjust the ISE's tempo-sync to match the time dilation caused by the Winnerbagel's rapid approach towards half lightspeed, then accelerating them well past the speed of normal reality. Through the viewscreen the stars vanished entirely, black on black on black as their starship began to, from the outside, move several orders of magnitude faster than the speed of light.
Mach double checked his pathing and found it acceptable, then set a decel timer to alert him at thirty minutes to approach on Proxima Psi, the final inhabited system before they crossed into the long span between arms of the Milky Way galaxy. Once they reached their target speed Mach throttled down the antimatter rocket, letting them coast at several hundred lightyears per hour. The hard Gs of acceleration slacked to a comfortable one G, Earth standard for all CSPS vessels, and Mach triggered their seats to return to normal position as he also enabled autopilot. A series of clunks and a sense of freedom let him stand up from his chair once more, free to move about the Winnerbagel.
"I'm going to make us some pizza; What do you all want on it?"
"Bacon! And Canuck Bacon! And Ham! And Sausage!" Cory yipped excitedly, as if he wouldn't be just as excited if Mach piled it all in a bowl for him to devour.
"I would like pineapple, as well as the aforementioned meat bevy." Dryn chimed in mildly, further confirming his questionable tastes in the human's eyes.
"Maximum Hawaiian confirmed." A bow towards the two nonhumans signaled his assent, followed by a quick crick of his back. Personally Mach preferred anchovies and spinach, but those two never wanted anchovies anywhere near their pizza. No accounting for taste, Mach supposed, though maybe if he could recruit a kitty too that would change. What role would a kitty fill, exactly? The Winnerbagel didn't need two security officers, and especially not one as combat focused as an uplifted feline would be. Aw well, maybe if Cory retired some day, though hopefully not anytime soon.
