Chapter 2

As I lowered the gang plank to disembark from the shuttle I could already hear Ryan complaining. Ryan, the Chief of the Deck, was probably one of the grumpiest cusses on Venus. But he was also the most talented mechanic I had ever met. I once witnessed him turn a smoking heap of a starfighter into working order overnight. Obviously his whole deck gang was working with him, talented mechanics in their own right, but the fact that I had something to fly the next day amazed me.

He was at the foot of the gang plank glaring at me by the time I got there. His bright yellow and perfectly regulation jump suit screamed in the dying light of the day. If there was a speck of dirt on it, I couldn’t see it. Furthermore, I doubted there was a tread out of place. His shaggy black hair was just shy of needing a cut and his facial hair had recently been shaved. I knew he shaved three times a day to keep the wild growth under control and the process usually relaxed him. His height was desperate to be one and half meters, so my sister and I towered over him by a third again his height. But his presence easily made up the difference.

I didn’t even have time to square up with him before he started yelling. “What the Sol did you do to my ship, you Terrainium?” he screamed in my face, graveled voice shaking. Then more quietly, he followed it up with, “Sir.”

I smiled back at him. This was probably my favorite part of our relationship. “Not your ship, Chief,” I said, stressing the first and last words. “This rumbling piece of space trash is the proud property of the Senatorial Protectorate. And if you want to retain your position as Big Mouth of the Deck, you’ll get your gretting ass moving and bang the dents out ASAP. Senator Lacy is doing a flyover of the training grounds tomorrow and needs a nice looking ship to be able to do so.” I stepped up close to him and bent down. He didn’t budge so our noses ended up touching. “You got a problem with that, Chief?”

The corners of his eyes bunched up as he fought off a smile. “Only thing I got a problem with,” he said, his graveled voice echoing off the tarmac, “is the gretting manure smell coming out of your mouth.”

I held my smile in check, but I could feel my belly shaking a bit as I fought to keep my laughter from bursting forth. “Seriously?” I whispered, trying not to move my mouth. “Manure?”

The side of Ryan’s mouth that was away from his deck crew smirked. “It was either that or Terran Vagina,” he whispered back. “Figured you’d have to write me up for that one.”

I felt it in my throat before it actually expelled itself from my mouth and I tried desperately to keep it inside, but I failed miserably. I laughed; a full on belly laugh that echoed all the way to the hangers.

Erika came up behind me and put her arm around my shoulders. “Beat you again, huh brother?”

I took a step back being guided by her hand. “Be careful,” I warned her. “If Ryan finds out you’re marrying a Terran, you’ll never live it down.” Erika cringed and froze. Ryan’s devilish grin forced me to wipe tears from my eyes. My cheeks were starting to hurt from laughter.

After I took a moment to calm myself down I turned to him. “I gotta say, Ryan, that vagina line took me off guard.”

“Not surprised,” he said, still wolfishly smiling at Erika. I could almost see his wheels turning. “You two haven’t had your wings long enough to get the embryonic fluid off ‘em.”

“No-no,” I waved. “I just didn’t realize you had any idea what a vagina smelled like.”

It was Ryan’s turn to laugh. His belly laugh was much deeper than mine and always reminded me of the sound tug engines made as they fired up for long distance jumps. It also had that quality to it that made everyone around him look in his direction and smile. Part of it was the sheer volume, but the other part was its rumbling breathy nature.

Ryan continued laughing as he walked away from us. He didn’t get in the last word so it looked like I had won this round for a change. My wins came few and far between. Erika was a little better at it.

My sister gripped my shoulder a bit harder and pointed me back toward the gang plank. “I’m going to get you for that.”

I gave her a toothy smile. “I have no doubt.”

Once we started boarding the shuttle it finally dawned on me we were going the wrong way. “Why are you leading us back onto the ship?” I asked.

“Senator Lacy wants you to see what you did to his cabin with your acrobatics up there,” she explained. “I think he feels like you did it as a slight just to make a mess of his belongings.”

I sighed, knowing that wasn’t the case, but I let her lead me up the ramp anyway. At that moment, I had to admit that I felt really lucky to have my sister with me. She was an amazing co-pilot, true, but moreover she was my best friend. We had been joined at the hip from birth. Not literally, but we certainly were inseparable. She was older than I was by barely a minute, so I had been told time and again. She never let me forget it, to be sure. But it never mattered. We were better friends than anybody I had ever met, much more heard of. We connected on every level. Only our sexual preference differed. And we rarely fought. When we did, we always ended up figuring it out quickly enough that it didn’t affect any part of our lives. Another thing about my sister that I loved was that she was the only person I knew I could beat in a wrestling match. Granted, it was only because she would start laughing and then couldn’t give me much of a struggle, but hey, I’d take what I could get.

To that end, I whipped my arm up in front of us and circled it backward knocking her arm off my shoulders. I followed that up by swinging it forward at head height, pulling her head down into a headlock. Sure to her normal reaction, Erika burst into laughter and staggered, almost pulling us both down to our knees. I took a stabilizing step and continued up the ramp back into the ship and vigorously rubbed my knuckles into her hair making her laugh even harder.

Sometimes escaping certain death gave us the giggles.

Next Chapter: Chapter 3