Delilah Espinosa de Jesús Dominguez del Beltran, more colloquially known as Deli Beltran, or even just Deli -- who had time for more than two syllables? -- was the poster child for bright-eyed perky fuckers. 

Granted, all this had been true nearly from the day of her birth, even considering she and her two brothers had been born almost two months premature, each of them severely underweight. But she had story after story after story from her mother about her creepy little newborn baby smile had been absolutely endearing, even to other parents in NICU. 

But that had been twenty-one years ago (or twenty-four? She wasn't sure, and didn't care to ask. Stasis aging or no, she was pretty sure she wouldn't like the answer either way). Before Diego started talking, and before Dacio had stopped. Before little Fredo had come along, before running away to join the circus with her mother, and being dragged back to a relative reality with her father. Before -- though not long before -- discovering her love for explosives and anything capable of making fire. 

Before the New Kind. Before the Mountain. Before the Change. Before the [i]Copernicus[/i]. 

And before waking with little more than a half headache that a full pot of coffee had already put behind her. It had been going [i]into[/i] stasis that had nearly undone her. But they had drugs for that, and Deli could almost pretend she hadn't been screaming at them to leave her before they dosed her six ways to Sunday.

But time went on, even while you slept and dreamt of dying, if not in the nightmarish sense. That was fine. What what weird was the tech who'd showed her to her room (where she was already hanging movie posters and magazine cutouts), had told her it had been just three years, not the semi-promised fifteen. Fredo and Diego were still sleeping in their pods, alive and well to hear the techs explain it. But she wouldn't be joining them again for another year. There'd been an accident, they'd said, back on earth. 

And now she was in fucking [i]outer space[/i], or whatever the science geeks called it. 

"First things first," came the briefing to the briefing. "You've been reassigned."

Deli had looked back to the row of now-empty pods and grinned. "I'd noticed. What am I doing?"

"Demo for a asteroid mining pod. Three-man team. You'll be joined by Owen Reece and one 'Big Bill' Cothran. Or you'll be joining them."

Deli yawned, but she was far from bored. Or far enough. "Okay. Are they cute?"

The tech gave her a wry look, clearly unimpressed. "A little out of your age range, I'd think."

Her grin widened. "I don't typically do all that well with people telling me I can't do something."

"Then you're going to have a hard time here."

Deli exhaled, blowing a cluster of brown curls out of her eyes. "Yeah, so I've heard."

Three clothing changes and a forty-minute shower later, she was on her way down to the conference room. She got distracted by a floor to ceiling window to the rest of her new world en route. 

Yeah. She could make a pretty big mess out there.