Free Star Force: Starchaser (SF69) by Aer-ki Jyr

people around her she was always alone, and that epiphany
was not something she was going to forget.
    Mina settled back down into the water as the tiny
pinprick of light ahead of them began to grow into the silhouette of her
jumpship, but even the sight of it didn’t strike her as ‘home’ anymore. It was
a place she stayed and worked out of, traveled on, but her real home was her
body. Wherever she went she was home within the confines of her skin.
    No wonder she liked disrobing so much. The clothing
was essentially a hitchhiker on her journey through life.
    She continued to ponder her new insights as the
jumpship grew outside the clear canopy. It wasn’t as large as the Star Force
models, nor as fast, but the Kefron produced Nightstalker model was more than sufficient to get her from system to system in a timely
manner and avoid the hassles of having to book transit on the ADZ grid. It was
her private possession, and since Star Force owned all property on planetoids
the only way you could get your own bit of turf was by building it in space.
Stations required permits and were harder to obtain, but buying a ship and
moving about gave you a little island of your own where you could do your own
thing.
    There were no monitoring devices in the corridors like
in the Axius colonies. Star Force might respect a person’s privacy in their own
quarters, but public movements and actions were always monitored so they could
track down problems after they happened by going back through the exhaustive
records…and it worked too, with almost no violations whatsoever in the colony
she’d lived in after coming out of the maturia. But there was something about
being away from observation and on your own that was appealing to many people,
hence the extensive ship building industry outside of the Star Force line.
    But now Mina realized that even in the Axius colonies
she was still alone. Watched via people and technology, but still alone. It was
a very freeing realization that stayed on her mind as the jumpship grew to fill
almost the entire forward half of the bubble dome over her jacuzzi and interrupting her bathing in the stars.
    Knowing that they had only a minute or so before
landing in the bay, Mina stepped out of the tub and walked down to the lower
level of the dropship and the exiting ramp, dripping a trail of water all the
way through the ship and out onto the jumpship’s bay floor that tracked across
to the entry door before resolving itself down to a random drop here and there
as her body slowly dried off. While her team dealt with unloading and other
measures she headed off into her ship alone, always liking the idea of dripping
as she went.
    It was messy, but totally clean at the same time. It
was just water. It would dry so no harm done, but it did seem to mess with the
unspoken rules of society and she liked that, even onboard her own ship where
she could set the rules however she liked…except she couldn’t, because her crew
brought with them their own expectations and culture and whatever else you
wanted to call the hive mind that society operated off of. Mina had always been
slightly put off by it, and now even more so as she seemed to finally make the
mental disconnect and realize what it really was to be an individual in both
mind and body.
    She walked through the ship’s corridors to her private
quarters, dunking herself in a shower tub for the autowash’s scrubbing cycle that scoured off what grime the concert dunking and jacuzzi had
left on her, then she walked into a drying tube that left her with a pine-like
scent when she stepped out and into some silky soft pajamas. From there she
headed over to the ship’s dining area and the chef whipped up an array of small
portioned items that she favored in only a few minutes, giving her an
opportunity to get into bed without much delay.
    Mina fell asleep quickly, exhausted from this
planetary stint and having already cycled the adrenaline out of her system.
Dreams