Sayeeda tossed the ration wrappers into the trash and wiped the crumbs onto her battle dress trousers. She drew a permanant maker from a closed pressure seal on her pants and wrote on the wall:

WISHLIST

She underlined the word and beneath that she added:

Coffee 

That completed she slipped the pen back into its pocket. Maybe they could find some wideawake when they got where they were going. Not that she could afford to buy more than a cup of coffee right now.

"I had been planning to run guns out of Thaler, make some credits," she repeated, slipping past Neil to walk out across the cavernous cargo hold, her footsteps ringing hollow on the metal deckplating. A large multipurpose console was nestled amidst the conduits and duct work leading to the fusion bottle and she bought it live with a click. Readouts of reaction mass and output cascaded past, all pleasantly in the green. The system wasn't too dissimilar from those she had seen on the various skimmers she had crewed and the familiarity pleased her.

"More generally, I figured there are always people who need work done by professionals," she eyed Neil as she spoke the last word."

"Booster give me a ten minute alert to the mass shadow," she commanded.

[@POOHEAD189]