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At once this was an awful trip as far as Tunie was concerned. She didn't ever get to go fast and there was hardly any real pushing. Just little shovies here and there to keep the course and avoid ablation or collisions.

Tunie was a Ship meant to leap to the edges of light and snuggle against it. To crush time and space with her raw speed!

Not scoot scoot around like some dumb reef crawling freight!

But also this trip was one of the best!

It was the best because Tunie had made a new friend!

It had started when the Passengers had been given access to the crew com-links. And at first it had been blah-blah-blah-blahs and super boring!

But then the Passengers had asked something proper and not boring at all. It had been sort of silly and the courses and trajectories had not been right at all, but they had tried!

And then they had blah-blah-blah-blahed to ask how they had gotten it wrong and so Tunie had told them. And then the Passengers had tried again and it was a lot better!

Not only that but they were really kinda slow about it which was great because Tunie had a lot to look at and fill up her eyeballs with while they got into the right vector for stopping at the Port!

So it also made the discussion relaxing instead of distracting.

Which was great because sometimes Tunie could not talk immediately with her Crew when a lot was going on and she had to politely tell them to stop talk-talk-talking because she needed to avoid a particularly dense cloud of hydrocarbons without snapping her own spine.

So these short little dances of conversation with nice long gaps were just the best!

Especially during all the hassle and doldrums of stationmatching!

To be fair this port was at least a proper singular vector solution instead of the constantly changing one of the stupid fat space fish!

So it did not require constant drains on her stored potencies, but at the same time there was SO MUCH MORE traffic to contend with.

And traffic was in some ways much worse than burning a tiny bit of potency.

There was so much chatter, so much signaling, so many rules and regulations and noise! So much having to shove and stop and go slower and slower and SLOWER.

Tunie hated traffic a lot, it made her feel like she was having to pretend to be an invalid. She was hatched to plan ahead tons to the limits of her vision. She was bred to live at the edges of speed.

Not do little puff-puff manuveres like this!

She slowly tumbled feeling so slow and dumb and not fast or smart at all.

But still she had to watch everyone because with so many objects moving around there were so many opportunities for dumbness and there were also important signals to look out for that indicate much more serious dangers.

Traffic was the worst just the worst like that.

Too slow to strain and stretch the eyes or F’terapods but too complicated to ignore.

But then her Passengers helped her out, They tried to tell her a joke. It was pretty crude, not very funny but it was an amazing attempt. Way better than her Crew’s first attempts at a joke.

After that the jokes got better and it became a bit of a thing as she maneuvered and coasted to feel for them. Well they got better besides one which was just so disgusting and so awful it made her tremble and floof her feathers out protectively.

Why would anyone even think THAT could be funny she had no idea but Passengers and not-ships were weird like that.

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They were sort of dumb and short sighted.

At least with anything important like interstellar velocity courses and predictive ballistic solutions of impact scatter with implied second and third stage cascades.

Then again Tunie did admit she had only a loose grasp of things like ‘politics’ and ‘society’ she understood morale what more was there to keep track of?

Ports had Morale, Passengers had Morale, Crew had morale.

When the passenger morale was signaling good it meant well satisfied contracts and filled bellies!

When Ports had morale signaling good it meant lighter loads carried AND fuller bellies!

When crew had morale signaling good it meant better care and better port and passenger morale which of course lead to satisfied contracts and even fuller bellies!

Really all of it seemed very simple to Tunie, just combine good Crew with Passengers and Ports to improve Morale, receive contracts and nice full bellies to enrich the F’terapod and drive potencies and keep the loads in the hull light.

There was of course the more subtle gardening required to make sure that a port would grow into a place with the grist for filling Tunie’s belly but most of that was a fairly well developed technique that Ships shared amongst themselves freely. Everyone wanted nice fat ports ready to fill hungry bellies!

So there was no point in hoarding any secrets or tricks learned.

And although the specifics of Port Morale were nebulous it seemed like most of the time Ports kept up good levels as far as signaling was concerned when they also were fat with grist for feeding Ships.

But really what more could there possibly be to all these ‘economics’ or ‘social unrest’ It was all just Morale and belly filling.

Ports and Passengers and even Crew were very silly. But they were also so cute and helpful.

And at this Port they were even providing a cozy little cradle just how Tunie liked it.

There was a good open space for fleeing quickly if there was an emergency or fearful monsters that she must escape but a nice covering area for hiding from predators and keeping her blind spots and vulnerable side out of sight!

Tunie liked it when ports knew how to make a Ship comfortable. Some left her too open and exposed (like the stupid fat fish terra), others were way too cramped and claustrophobic not giving her a clear shot to flee if there was danger.

But here they did it good and Tunie even had loading spots in reach of several of her mouths!

That would mean she could eat so many more times at once then she had at Terra!

Really this was a good port all around she thought.

This port was also apparently very high on morale signaling and according to Tunie’s excellent Crew they were actually giving them extra feed and lightening the holds heavily too!

This was the best kind of Port!

Tunie loved her Crew!

It was always nice when an exchange ended up better than Tunie or her Crew thought it would!

Oh and now her Crew were bringing out the Brush!

Brushies!

This was now the best trip.

Until the next one when she also got brushies of course. Because then that would always be better!

Tunie enjoyed the feeling of subtly damaged and ablated F’terapods being stripped and reformed in tight lattices while she also looked forward to the next time when it would all be even better.

Life was good.