<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: Ventral Bay/Space<br/>Tagged: Iona Knutedottir<br/><hr class="bbc-hr bbc-hr--3"/><br/>Thomyris nodded and proceeded to adorn herself in the clunky parts of her pressurized hard suit. It was a tedious process and unlike the Captain who didn’t mind floating in all manner of angles and directions, Thomyris consistently forced herself upright in the zero-gee while she covered herself. Nothing was uniform about their equipment and gear, collected, salvaged, or outright stolen from all sorts of sources and origins.<br/><br/>After clonking her T-visor helmet over her head, sealed and pressurized to her suit, she turned and inspected the Captain’s suit, pulling on limbs and straps to ensure it was all tightly fit. With a tap on the Captain’s shoulder, Thomyris indicated she was all good to go. Everything looked good and she was thorough, though a fear of missing something would remain in the back of her mind until they were safely outside the ship. She too followed the Captain’s safety precautions and guidelines with extreme severity. Growing up on a mining world, rife with accidents, had instilled Thomyris with a healthy sense of diligence in that regard a s well.<br/><br/>With another grunt of acknowledgement, she used her datapad to remotely vent the atmosphere and unseal the lock, a brief rush of air sweeping by them as the doors opened to reveal the dotted blackness of space. The ventral bay doors opened fully and the hollowness and silence of it flooded over them then, engulfing Thomyris in a deadly shroud of vacuum, separated from death by the sheer fabric, metallic, and plastoid material of her jumpsuit and hard suit. She took a deep breath of the recycled air in her suit and followed the Captain,<i>swimming</i>her way out. One slip up could see one tumbling off into space on an unrecoverable trajectory. Thomyris would not deny that she could be quite terrified of these experiences, despite having done it many times before.<br/><br/>Other than her shallow breathing, the next sound Thomyris heard was the grav-locks at the soles of her sealed boots thumping onto the underside of the<i>St. Anne’s</i>hull. Every movement was slow and deliberate, as if walking underwater. Observant, she paused to allow the Captain to hook herself to Thomyris’ suit and then proceeded to walk in small hops, like a happy girl skipping down the street, towards the aforementioned storage bay. She still had no clue what they were up to when they reached the exterior bay, again thinking they were going to do repairs or a spot inspection as the gravity sled was prepped.<br/><br/>She listened attentively to the Captain but said nothing. What was there to say? She wasn’t asked a question, nor was she overly knowledgeable on the guiding and conduct of a ship. She never considered herself in any such position. She wordlessly took the reins of the small sled when instructed and waited again, looking down at the controls. Even with something as small as this, she never piloted before. It was always one of the others.<br/><br/>At first she felt another modicum of resentment.<i>Treating me like a baby again</i>. She glanced back, her expression veiled, when the Captain made a jest about the nav system on the sled being out.<i>When did we have anything that fully operated anyways?</i>She was still inspecting the controls, moving her hands across it but not touching it, as if to familiarize herself. She had a decent enough memory so she didn’t have to stare at it long to know where everything was. She just wanted to get this right.<i>And prove I’m not just a baby everyone needs to look out for. If only they seen his head…</i><br/><br/>Something about that memory made her snarl inside her helmet.<br/><br/>It didn’t help when the Captain outright told her she was going to flop, this time making Thomyris glance back at Iona sharply.<i>What the hell…?</i>Then she jerked her gaze forward, again flushed with resentment at being singled out for a lesson. But any such consternation within her was silenced when Iona began to...compliment her?<b>“...stand in front of a ship's crew and lead them…”</b>she repeated quietly to herself, amazed and taken utterly unaware that she was even being considered for leadership. Now she was thoughtful, unmoving, staring down at the controls, her gloved hands gripping the accelerator.<br/><br/><i>I can do this.</i>She told herself. But did she believe herself? The Captain gave her permission to go but Thomyris did not react immediately. She could already deduce that she would have to aim ahead, further down the station’s orbital trajectory, taking the sled’s speed of propulsion into consideration, as well as the station’s speed. But such calculations figured little into her mind at that moment. The fear of launching off into space never to be found again, or to run out of air and slowly suffocate, or to indeed botch up a repair on the Anne and blow the entire ship up, even those did not factor in.<br/><br/>If she failed, they both would die a slow, probably agonizing death. If Thomyris succeeded...she would be expected to become responsible for others if the Captain’s aspirations for her came to fruition. Responsible for others...Thomyris didn’t know what was more terrifying, that or dying in the cold, empty vacuum of space. She went to extreme measures to take care of herself already. How could she possibly do so for others?<br/><br/>Instead in a squeakish tone, she answered.<b>“Aye, aye, Captain.”</b>She shifted the forward-nose of the grav-sled towards the station, then angled it a bit forward of it.<br/><br/>Still, she didn’t take off. And in a more firmer tone, she added.<b>“You sure have a way of unwinding your surprises on us too, Captain. Either I get us there...or we both die. Fun.”</b>She added in her usual dry tone. Then punched the accelerator before the Captain could reply and now it was the moment of truth.<br/><br/>Or rather moments. For a time, they drifted off into the space between the St. Anne and the orbital station. Other than the deafening silence of space, the only other noise was the rumble of the sled’s thrusters whenever Thomyris applied power. Nor was she timid with the speed. She pushed them to a considerable pace off the bat, nearly reaching the threshold of 3 gees that the Captain had warned about. She was well over 2 for the most part, though slowed after a while. So far, it seemed as if they were going to hit the station at the right approach but a short way past the half point mark, it seemed as if they might fall short.<br/><br/>She cut the thrusters and stayed motionless as the sled went on, carried on by its own inertia.<b>“Still feeling sure about this?”</b>Thomyris voiced again, somewhat in morbid jest, her mouth dry. Her heart was pounding in her chest. Either they made it to the station...or the people of this world would be graced by by not only raining sheep but raining bodies as well. Now was the difficult part of closing with the station and not overshooting, undershooting, or smashing outright into it. By now, the station was as big as her hand in the distance and steadily growing. Soon it would dwarf the two ladies and their little sled.<br/><br/>She decided to go in backwards. She using one thruster to spin them about, then another to correct their inertia, using the rearview camera at the back of her helm. She used the Captain’s body as a pointer, directing it again a little ahead of the station. Then she once more rocketed them in. Ahead of them, the distant St. Anne shrunk until it was no larger than her fingertip, while behind her the Station grew to take up the entire foreground of her camera feed. They were within a quarter of the distance...and the station was passing rapidly.<br/><br/>Thomyris realized they were going to undershoot. Eyes darting to and fro in sudden urgency, she punched the accelerator right to the limit, shaking the sled for a few seconds despite what the Captain had warned. Her whole body shook with the force, wobbling tremendously inside her suit. Yet after a few seconds, she cut the thrusters again and let them carry on, dead in space. Thomyris realized her heart wasn’t beating out of fear...but adrenaline. Flying was actually, dare she say it, exciting.<br/><br/>Then at the last second, she activated the aft thrusters, causing them to lurch into the top of their hardsuits, her head bumping the ceiling of her helm and pressing there firmly. They would have one bruise at least, but they wouldn’t smash into the station like a meteor at high speeds. The reverse inertia brought them to a slow enough speed to allow them to reach one of the rear docking bays on the station. All they had to do was latch on.<br/><br/><b>“I think this is where your promise of no harm befalling me needs to come in…”</b>Thomyris commented, craning her neck to look over each of her shoulders for guidance, her rearview camera now useless as she was too near to the station to glimpse much detail besides seemingly endless exterior hull and plating.