“Good evening, Annise. You look lovely as ever. One of these days, I’m going to take you away from all this tedium,” I told her with all the charm I could muster.
“One of these days,” she replied, her smile beatific, “I’m going to throw myself out of an airlock, Mr. Milenko.”
That part about all the charm I could muster? Relative term
.
“The Captain’s waiting for you,” she finished professionally. She pressed a button and the doors to Captain Rominger’s office slid open.
She’s really coming around to you, stud, Paige taunted as I entered the office. Another hundred years, she might even go out with you.
I ignored her, focusing instead on the Nebulan flag that took up the entire rear wall of the Captain’s office: a hand holding a torch on a field of black, its flame a stylized sun surrounded by eight differently colored orbs. Liberty holding aloft the planetary system that birthed our people. I knew I was a verbose smartass—an asshole if you asked the right people—but never let it be said that I was anything less than a patriot.
Which was why I was here, why I worked for the ship’s captain. In the government of the Free City-Ship Nebula, the captain was an elected position on the same level as the president. A Libertarian Republic, the Nebula’s constitution was based heavily on the original one used by the old United States of America before the Dim Ages. Where they’d had three branches of government, we had a fourth, the Naval. It ran the ship’s security, law enforcement, and the ship itself.