#Mali is six feet tall. She's considered short for a female mik-human adult.

[blue-kyber]

@muddshadow A small excerpt from part 2 of "Out There: The 1K."

Mali ran her hand alongside the hull, taking note of the array of various aftermarket parts, “This is a real piece of work. Looks like a custom job,” she removed a scanner from her tool belt and ran a check, “Oh yeah, I’ll need to tighten that. And that’s rotated the wrong way. That's not even the right part,” she added with the bite that some of the modifications were done by a do-it-yourselfer with skill who made repairs on the fly with whatever resources they could get ahold of. “Where’d you get this girl?”

“She doesn’t belong to me,” Jeina greeted her with matching conviviality, “I need your help tuning her up for a friend.”

“You’re gonna need more than me.” She banged her fist against the side. A metallic ‘bong’ sound reverberated, “This is a cobbled together mess. Who modified this thing?”

The glint of metal from the stern between the engines caught her eye, “Hold the bolts… I know that shuttle…”

“You can stop insulting my ship any time, you know,” Yune strode down the ramp.

Mali’s bright expression vanished to shock, “Great gob-balls… Aren’t you supposed to be dead?”

“So I’ve heard.”

“Well,” her tone turned salty as she pushed up her already cuffed sleeves and glared down the smaller mik, “Let me fix that for you.”

He knew a threat when he saw one, “Hey, now.”

Being taller and bigger, she let the intimidation of her size compound with the anger burning from the grease-smudged creases of her face, “You have five seconds to get your undead keester out of this hanger before I make you regret coming back to life.” 

Jeina pushed her hand down after Mali removed a laser welder from her toolbelt, “Easy, Mali.” She knew her friend well enough to know that was no idle threat. And she had prepared for that. She held her back using her source internally to temporarily increase her strength beyond that of a mik.

“Easy?! Oh, I’m going anything but easy on this pile of yarf scak,” she snarled. “He’s the reason that poor kid and the princess are–”

Will appearing from the ship cut off her rant. With a happy gasp, she abandoned the rage to punch Yune's face to the back of his skull and zoomed for Will, “Little Bit!” she scooped him up into a bear hug before he had a chance to speak, “Oh, thank the Light you’re ok!” 

Will’s feet dangled off the ground. His voice choked, “I won’t be if you keep crushing me.”

#out there the 1k #ott1k #writing #writeblr #sci fi #I love their homeship #the Horizon #that beautiful mess of a ship. :) #Mali is six feet tall. She's considered short for a female mik-human adult.