The skipper was taking some time out. With his legs stretched out on the main flight console and ankles crossed, he was staring vacantly out through the bridge’s forward viewscreen, his mind empty. For a few moments he let his thoughts drift along with the little blue star that was currently crossing the gap between the toe tips of his pale brown hand stitched cowboy boots.

Sometimes you just needed a break.

However, Korfus Epsilon Minor had barely made it half way to his right foot when a tap on his leg brought him back to reality. He glanced down to find a small girl looking up at him.

“Hey Sheila, whats up?” The girl smiled back at him and patted his knee again. “You want up?” She nodded. He reached over and, with a small groan of effort, lifted her up. Her small stature bellied her weight, beneath her loose fitting play clothes she was a knotted bundle of muscle and gristle. He set her down in his lap knowing that his knees wouldn’t have been able to take the weight for long. “So? What do you want?” Her eyes shone as she held out her left hand to him. For the first time he realised that it was clamped tight in a little fist. “What you got there?” She opened it up to reveal a tiny naked blade. He could see that it was viciously sharp, sharp enough to cut through flesh even under just its own weight alone. Marvellously, her skin was unmarked. She held the blade with supreme skill, clamping it flat against the ball of her thumb with the tip of her middle finger, keeping the edges from their intended purpose. He looked back up at her. “Where’d you get that?” Her little voice was full of pride.

“Made!”

“You made this? It’s great!” She beamed under his praise. “What’s it for Hun?”

“You!”

“It’s a present for me?” He reached out to take it carefully from her but she snatched her hand back and held her fist protectively against her chest. She was biting her lower lip to supress her own giggles but her eyes sparkled with mischief. She shook her head briefly.

“Trade!” She offered.

“You want to trade me the blade for something?” She nodded. He couldn’t help smiling himself. She was a sharp little character and he loved discovering her little projects. “O.k. what do you want to trade it for?”

“Story!” He let out a bark of laughter at her little joke. So it was just a gift for him after all. They both knew, he would have quite happily told her any story she wanted without any trade. He had done it a hundred times before and would do it a hundred times again. This was just her way of saying thank you. Her way of showing how much she loved him. Making and giving him something valuable showed that she thought he was valuable too.

“O.k. Hun, what story would you like?” She cuddled up to him laying her ear against his chest.

“Me” she replied quietly. He knew what this meant. She didn’t really want to hear about herself. She wanted to hear the story of her origin, where she had come from, how her parents had met. She loved that story, he knew. It was the one she asked about the most often and it was the only one she never interrupted, letting each and every word of it flow into her and sink deep as he retold it again and again. He took a deep breath and stroked her hair for a moment as he reviewed his task. He knew exactly how the story went. He knew exactly how she liked it told and exactly which parts he was under no circumstance allowed to miss out. Still he paused, like he always did, it had become a part of the ritual of the telling. He let his mind drift back through time along the long string of events to the approved entry point. The point it had started. He drew in a slow breath as if breathing in the story itself and was just about to begin when the screaming of another small child interrupted him. He twisted round slightly in his chair to view the floor of the bridge. Four or five other small children similar in size and build to Sheila were playing rough and tumble on the deck. One boy had a girl in a nasty head lock and was twisting her arm brutally making her scream in protest.

“Hey! Cut that out will you?” The boy continued, twisting even harder. The man scanned the console for something loose and finding nothing fingered the clip release on his holstered pistol. The fully loaded magazine popped out into his hand and he launched it with a sharp punching motion. “Hey, Shitzfah!” The magazine spun and tumbled as it followed a short flat trajectory that terminated when its sharpest corner struck the boy in the back of the head. The boy yelped and dropping the girl’s wrist spun round rubbing his head. He fixed the man with a livid stare. “Yeh! You I’m talking to, Ayel! Quit beating up on your sister. I’m trying to tell a story over here!” The boy growled back baring his teeth. The man gave a kind of shrug whilst sticking out his chin and turning the palms of his open hands upwards. The boy backed down and accepting his punishment began to turn away. With a click of his fingers the man gained the boys attention again before pointing at the magazine clip lying on the floor. The boy picked it up and threw it back underarm before finally returning to his playmates.

The skipper shook his balding head in reflective bewilderment. Yeh, little Ayel there was a real handful but he wasn’t the only one. They’d all be tearing up the galaxy one day. May he’d never get to see it himself, of course. Most likely, by then he’d just be some soilent green mess dribbling into someone else’s breakfast bowl. But he didn’t need to see it. He knew it. With their mother’s good looks and their father’s, well that was always an interesting point to ponder in itself. What had they got from their father? Good looks as well, perhaps? He gave a short coughing laugh at the irony of it. Anyways, it didn’t matter to him what genetic traits they had ended up inheriting, he knew they’d turn out fantastic and make Grandpops proud.

He sighed and meditatively scratched his greying stubble. Yeh, Grandpops! As much as he loved the sound of it, he often pondered how he, a scarred and embittered old hard-ass, with a barely legal operation and a band of cut throats for a crew, had ended up turning his patched and broken old ship into some kind of interstellar day care centre for a bunch of grandkids he didn’t even have any blood connection to. Sheila lifted her head and poked him sharply.

“Story!” she insisted. He smiled down at her.

“Sorry Hun.” That was exactly the point though wasn’t it? The story she wanted to hear was exactly how it had happened. He drew in another breath and began to tell it.