<a class="link link--external" href="https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/67/ba/d6/67bad6b09e26897151727e29ffe811e3.jpg" rel="nofollow ugc noopener" target="_blank">Thomyris “Riz” Heroux</a><br/>Location: Main Hold<br/><hr class="bbc-hr bbc-hr--3"/><br/><i>A week.</i>They had been at Kohlberg Station for a week and in that entire week, all they handled was bagged sheep.<br/><br/>Thomyris doubted it would be the strangest thing they would ever to transport. She never asked questions though and kept her complaints to herself. Unlike others she wasn’t in a position to comment on the type of work they were doing, having no other alternative. With the others, they had laboured many hours in handling each of the bagged little buggers, carefully floating them through zero-gee forces and sending them planet side for processing. For food, for breeding, even as pets. But Thomyris didn’t care. It took all her willpower, especially when one of the little packages was lost and mangled into an unrecognizable mass of guts and gore, to not vomit. It was hard to dissociate the scene from the image of her bashing a banker’s head in, leaving it splattered like a dropped grapefruit.<br/><br/>For most of the time, she watched and assisted the one called Mateo work the power loader, datapad in hand. Thomyris was always haunting the cargo hold, checking and double checking whatever consignment they currently had, busying herself perhaps a bit too excessively in the work. She took care of the manifests, uploaded them periodically to the ship’s central computer, ensuring that what they were supposed to have on paper was what they actually had in physicality. She seemed to have a gift for the administrative side of cargo management and anyone who tried to supplant or interfere in her systems was quick to earn her ire.<br/><br/>She was always tapping her pad with a<i>stylus</i>, kicking herself off to the various crates, reading their numbers, cross-checking it with the figures she had when they first loaded up this cargo. When they were ready to shift over, she would deactivate the grav-locks, letting the crate float up in zero-gee, to be fetched by the power loader and moved. They were usually locked down in this fashion rather than allowed to free float. No one wanted a crate to bump into another, break open, and send sheep fetuses floating everywhere in the ship. Besides, it would probably be her job to clean up and collect. Regardless now, they were all moved and gone and the cargo hold would soon be empty and ready for their next consignment.<br/><br/>But now that was finished and Thomyris joined many others no doubt in breathing a sigh of relief. It may not have been overly dangerous work, but it had still been unsavoury. Now with a rumble in the hull, the ship cast off from the station and Thomyris watched as the beetle-like shape of Kohlberg Station drifted into the background until it was no bigger than the tip of her thumb in the distance.<i>Funny how space could make even such large things seem so insignificant in the vast scheme of things.</i><br/><br/>Captain Knutesdottir’s voice crackled in her ear piece but Thomyris only half listened.<i>A full forty-eight.</i>Others might find it relaxing but she wanted nothing to do with the planet or its offerings. A wanted criminal, a runaway debtor, the last thing she wanted was to be recognized and hauled off, dragged to some prison sweat camp to work out her family’s liabilities, which were wrongfully thrust upon them. Thomyris had every intention to stay on the St. Anne and avoid any contact. It gave her a somewhat anti-social edge, a person given strictly to work but if the Captain demanded Thomyris’ presence, she would go and do whatever was asked.<br/><br/>Still, she got on with the rest of the crew pretty well and shared some sentiments, half-smiling to herself at Serena’s remark. They had indeed passed enough meat between their hands to last them a lifetime. Her hands felt weird after handling such delicate baggage and the thought of a nice hard stick of carrot actually sounded decent. On the other hand, the strange faced Donovan seemed to be the inverse. She wouldn’t know though as<i>Annie</i>departed. She remained in the cargo hold, a good foot of the ground, slightly tilted as she grasped a handle bar next to an observation screen and watched as their ship moved out. It felt safer out here anyways, with only a few inches of hull and metal to protect her from the vast cold vacuum of space.<br/><br/>The Captain and others would be musing over their next consignment, which Thomyris had to admit she usually had an interest in. Still, she didn’t rush towards the bridge, remaining the cargo hold. The crates were empty of sheep fetuses now, to be reused for whatever product they were going to move next. She took too arranging those, kicking herself about towards each empty crate, shoving them towards one end, where she set them down, activated their grav-locks, and stacked them neatly for reuse. She never contacted the Captain directly with such things either. Usually at least. The inventory logs were her main form of communication with the Captain, noting the relative emptiness, as well as other analytics such as spacing, storage size and so forth for which could be used to judge how big of a cargo they could take next, which was usually the same. Unlike people, the ship never grew in proportions but Thomyris was certainly thorough in her work. Perhaps she was over-nervous about keeping her position here.<br/><br/>Yet today was different and once the cargo-hold was restored after the final delivery of sheep, she too kicked herself off towards the bridge,<i>swimming</i>one might say through the zero-gee forces until she hit the bridge, where her feet were dragged down and her boots touched the metallic floor, striding moments after Donovan into the bridge, though she didn’t announce herself, simply standing there with her datapad in case there was anything else to be done. It was almost as if Thomyris was shying away from potential planetside relaxation, hoping for more duties.