"Captain?"

The young cadet's voice snapped Captain Jenny De Rue out of her reverie. Since she'd taken over as Captain of the drop ship Ol Steadfast, she'd learned it was easy to zone out when flying through the vastness of space. They were still about a month out from their drop site and everyone expected it to be a boring mission for the most part.

"Yes, Cadet Benjamin?" said Jenny turning her attention towards the raw cadet she had begrudgingly picked up at the last starport. He was tall and gangly, with short red hair that made him look as though he were perpetually in puberty, but in this sector she needed something to help her pass the long hours of monotonous space.

"Uh Captain," said the cadet as he turned to look back down at his console, "we have an incoming distress beacon. What should we do?" He turned and faced her with an anxious look on his toothy, elongated face.

"Are you serious?" cried Jenny jumping up from her captain's chair knocking over the coffee she had been absentmindedly balancing precariously on the edge of her armrest. "My God man, tell me you're not serious!"

Benjamin's eyes watered as his brows raised. He sank deep into his chair as the panic took over. "Is... Is this bad? Should I sound the alarm?" His eyes darted back towards his monitor.

The petite, blond haired pilot sitting to the cadet's left let out a loud guffaw as she leaned out of her chair, pointing at the young cadet.

"Come on, Torres," Jenny said, reluctantly regaining her composure so she could throw a disapproving glare towards her pilot. "He would have been running up and down the hallways banging on people's doors in a few more minutes. I mean everyone needs a way to entertain themselves on the ass end of the outer rim."

The pilot made a half-assed attempt to stymie her smile as wiped the tears from her eyes.

"Sorry Captain," said Torres as she resumed the mind-numbingly cumbersome task of plotting their way towards the last outpost on Zeta R. The Cadet however continued to look ill at ease.

Jenny snickered internally as she wandered over to the cadet's station. "It's no big deal Ben, we're in a shipping lane. These things are pretty common."

But Jenny's faced hardened at once as she peered at the message blinking in bright red all along the sides of the console.

"Then why do you look so worried?" he asked hesitantly, not sure whether she was still messing with him.

"Torres, full stop," said Jenny stalking quickly back to her chair as she pulled up her station's monitor.

"Captain?" said Torres as she turned towards the center of the closed, confined space.

Jenny paused a moment as she turned her attention to the large viewer at the front of the circular room, contemplating how she would handle the situation.

"Captain," said Benjamin with a squeak to his voice, "it's the military. We have to go."

"Not necessarily," said Torres turning her attention back to the captain. "Theoretically, we could wipe our all flight records and pretend we were never here. I hear Talos II is nice this time of year."

Jenny let out a heavy sigh as she shook her head. "While I appreciate your enthusiasm at ducking our federal obligations and the vows we took as stewards of an interstellar vessel, I'd really rather not end up like Captain Marsh."

Torres gave a slight shudder, "Right, he went to the Pits of Reticuli, I forgot about that." Torres looked up at the captain. "So what do we do?"

Jenny's face fell as she tapped a few keys into her pad. "Readjust our course to intercept the military vessel."

"Confirmed," said Torres turning back to her monitor. "We should reach them in about an hour."

Jenny fell back into her over-sized plushy chair and crossed her legs as she glared out the central viewport.

"We never get any fun distress beacons," mused the Captain, staring at the stars as she bounced her leg in the air impatiently. "I would kill for a crystalline entity or a salvaged Reaver ship just floating astray. Hell, even being kidnapped by pirates would be something amusing. I never get any pirates."

Jenny glared at the young cadet who had returned to browsing over potential work orders and manifests they would need gearing up for at their next port and wondered if things could possibly get worse when the doleful ginger turned and made eye contact with her once again.

"Will they kill us?"

Jenny shook her head, but stopped abruptly. "Unlikely."

With the confused, and uneasy look on his young face Jenny adjusted her ass to fit snuggly at the optimum point in the chair.

"Interacting with the military is never fun out here. We'll get within blaster range, exchange a few pleasantries, and after I fill out about five thousand forms in triplicate and give them whatever spare part they need, we'll be back on our way to Zeta R."

"What if they want to board the ship and search it?" he asked.

Jenny stared at him for a minute, not saying a word as he turned a deep red. "Why, Benjamin, do you have contraband on my ship?"

"No... no Ma'am," said Benjamin avoiding all eye contact.

"Ma'am? Excuse me Cadet?"

"Captain! Sorry Captain Ma'am."

Jenny raise her eyebrows as she looked over her newest cadet. Despite his rather satisfactory appearance, and considering his requisite abilities she was convinced that he would be a rather adequate steward after he flew a few more missions, but she doubted that he would ever stop looking like a lost puppy and gave a slight shake of her head.

"You might find it well within your purview to take a five minute break so that you may remove any items of discerning interest that may or may not be hiding in your bunk. Are we of an understanding cadet?"

He nodded.

"Dismissed."

The cadet blushed and ran off the bridge as the automated door slid closed behind him.

"Newbies," sighed Jenny as she peered over the edge of her chair at her fallen coffee cup, wondering if she was willing to wait for the cadet to return before she wanted more coffee.

"You're so bad," said Torres turning around once more.

"I know, but they're so gullible and innocent at that age. Seriously, I know you were thinking the same thing." A frown slid over the Jenny's face. "I hate when the military waves us down. Last time they delayed us for a week. It was ridiculous."

"I lost my on-time delivery bonus."

"Yeah, well this time we're carrying medical supplies. If they detain us, I'll fire a complaint over the spoiled goods. They hate that sort of PR so it should be a quick stop."

Torres shook her head, "I hope you're right."

"Hey now," scoffed Jenny, "I'm the Captain. I'm always right."

"You wish," said Torres rolling her eyes.

Jenny grinned before turning to her personal console and punched in the number of her second in command. The schedule was setup such that her number two was on an alternate schedule, which helped break up the tediousness of these long delivery flights, which meant he was the lucky bastard to sleep through the night shift.

"Wake up!" yelled Jenny into the intercom.

"What the hell!" said a voice over the loudspeaker on the bridge.

"Morning sunshine," said Jenny in her most faux enthusiastic voice. "Get your ass up here. We have a distress signal. Oh and Miles, wear your clean clothes."

Muted curses came back through the intercom as Jenny caught the sly grin her pilot was making.

About five minutes later Miles stumbled his way onto the bridge. His uniform was a mess of wrinkles and his untidy black hair and scruffy looking face with dark circles under his eyes gave her the distinct impression he hated being awoken in the middle of the night.

"Ah come on Lieutenant you call those clean?" said Jenny with a wry grin as got up from her chair to pace around the room.

He squinted down at his wrinkled uniform and flopped down into the chair she had just abandoned. "It is clean," he said brushing his hand down the side of his jet black pants as he unsuccessfully decreased neither the size nor the number of wrinkles. "It's just not ironed... or whatever. Besides, it's Alex's fault," grumbled Miles as he groggily looked down at the captain's monitor.

"The cook?" said Jenny in haughty disbelief.

"Yeah," said Miles as he continued to mumble through half his words, completely ignoring her implied disapproval, "but he's been busy chasing after one of the civilians."

Jenny shook her head as she crossed her arms and leaned against Torres' console.

Miles finished reviewing their position and status and slowly lifted his gaze, one eye still closed as he eyed her. Her body was pleasant enough but knew that wasn't what he was really looking at. Instead she knew he was judging her. Because she was the night shift and pajamas were often her uniform of choice when nobody was looking.

Jenny grimaced as she looked down and realized her sweats had a nice stain of mustard on them. "Yeah, well I called you up here to take over while I change. And I actually have a clean and ironed uniform I'll have you know."

"Well you'd better. Or what kind of example are you giving the rest of us?" he said with a leer and a waggle of his eyebrows.

With a snort, Jenny headed for the door and paused as it automatically slid open.

"Try to get those wrinkles out. We're about to meet up with a military vessel with an SOS. And you know how those go."

Jenny smiled with grim satisfaction as she heard him curse briefly before the door closed behind her.

She quickly walked down the darkened hall, wondering how much grief she would get when the Captain of the military vessel saw how she ran her ship. Except for Benjamin, the crew had been together for years and she had developed a family-like environment on the ship than had endeared her crew to her. It made the long trips more tolerable when everyone could simply speak their minds and instead of acting like childish prats bound to incessantly annoying protocols that would otherwise dictate every waking moment of their corporate-driven lives.

Jenny liked her job and was fairly certain that the rest of the crew did too. A jolliness generally hung around the common areas despite the humdrum experience of traveling in space at faster-than-light speeds. The trips themselves were often pretty boring. Every so often there would be an amazing view of some astral phenomenon like a cosmic string or the opening of a temporal distortion, not to mention the stars were always entrancing. But space was large and there was not a lot floating around in to watch out for.

The real fun of the missions occurred on planets, and Jenny always loved the beauty and personalities she could find in each one.

She slid into her room which was the same closet-sized multifunctional room the rest of the crew had. There was a pullout bunk that was still extended, and it shared the same space as her shower and toilet, either of which could be summoned by the press of a button. She pulled open her closet and shook her head. There were a few different dress uniforms in there for when she had to meet with higher-ups at different planets and they were all immaculately pressed since she usually wore sweats on the ship.

Jenny pulled out the dullest uniform and put it on. In her opinion, there was no need to make the military goons think she was dressing up for them, even if she was. She hastily braided her hair and checked her reflection in the mirror. Her auburn, flyaway hair was mostly contained for the moment as she gave a quick check that her oversized black boots, tight fitting black leggings, and dark grey jacket were all buttoned and fastened appropriately.

The one benefit of her dullest uniform was that it also accentuated her breasts. She wasn't above flirting with another Captain to get what she wanted. And in this case she wanted them gone as soon as possible. With a fleeting glance in the mirror, she left her quarters and made her way back towards the bridge.

A moment later the automatic door to the bridge slid open and Jenny stuck her head in.

"We all good in here?"

"No," said Miles grunting his disapproval. His attention was on the front monitor which showed a lethal looking Apex Class Destroyer engaging its thrusters to slowly maneuver the massive ship into position for a space dock. "What part of 'I'm awake and some tool bag is about to steal our spare parts that we'll probably need some time next week and we're going to lose our on-time bonus' don't you understand?"

Jenny turned to Torres, who was sitting perfectly still keeping her attention on the front monitor, and let out another heavy sigh. "Quit getting people riled up about our on-time bonuses."

"You're vexing me right now Captain," said Torres turning around in her swivel chair. "What else am I supposed to do? Contemplate each and every possible way that those military ghouls out there could possibly shoot us out of the sky for no good reason whatsoever? You do realize that they have enough destructive capability in their pinkies to completely and instantly obliterate every-"

"Stow it," interrupted Jenny, rolling her eyes as she turned her attention to Miles who seemed ever so slightly more composed than he had been when she had left. Both of his eyes were now open and bleary. "Try not to get us blown to smithereens. I'm going down to the dock to greet them."

"We'll be starting the hookup process in ten," said Miles stifling a yawn.

"Good. No mistakes. Let's keep this boring and be on our way."

"Yeah, I'm sure that's going to happen," said Torres.