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Fording 0.4

Pylo felt this was deeply unfair.

Yes she could understand the frustration, it was nice of Quarti to preface it with stating the two older terrans were going to recover and be perfectly fine but the injuries would be incapacitating annoying.

But then there was a deep well of hateful communication that actually strained and injured the elder terran’s body a bit with heat build up.

She was pretty sure some of that nervous tissue would never grow back the same after being over excited like that. And all of it was to vent vitriol and pain and deep deep displeasure at Pylo for bringing them through the star like they had.

It was deeply unfair because for one Pylo had very little to do with picking Tunie’s course beyond the broad strokes of where they were trying to get too and broadly by what paths.

The minutiae of exactly where and when and how to position the ship was naturally and preferably on the capable F’teropods of Tunie’s own mastery of such navigation. And Explaining to Tunie the nature of the injuries and the way it had distressed Quarti was going to be a trial.

She could do it, but it was going to be so awkward and sad.

And what’s more it was not even her fault either! Tunie had been feeling kind of dirty’ thanks to the resonance parasites the terrans had brought. So she simply did what was natural in these situations and took a dip into the solar turbulence to help cleanse herself of the discomfort.

Nevermind that it apparently had mostly not disrupted said parasites. The experience made her feel better, cleaned out some OTHER things that had been accumulating and made for a happier and healthier ship.

For the parasites themselves they were mostly getting the irritants under control now. In particular they made the rounds of Tunie’s Eyes and optical ganglion to clear them of the parasites. So that she got no more phantoms in her sensoria that could endanger their course at cruising speed.

So in total Pylo concluded that Quarti’s displeasure was deeply and terribly unfair and was just going to make her and Tunie feel bad and was all around rather mean. It was an unfortunate and thankfully harmless mistake.

But it was also a reasonable request. Pylo affected a terran sigh and shook her head. She was going to have to spring for Tunie getting a proper bath at the next properly equipped facility.

And that meant shuffling all the fragile cargo outside the ship, securing storage for it, arranging for a berth with the necessary high energy projection systems needed to strip and clear out any accumulate that Tunie would normally be able to deal with herself.

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At least New Cloverfield, was technically in line with a course that would meet the requirement of her other deliveries. It would mean dropping one of the uplifts stops though from the itinerary.

But it was one of the only options that could reliably have the equipment needed for proper ship care and would also take in trade the materials she had in hold or were likely to acquire along the way.

Not cheaply though.

[https://i.imgur.com/NagXfLD.png]

Ugh stupid fragile terrans.

As soon as their polity matured to being able to avoid the whole discount she was going to be making some recommendations to them on how to properly document their care and handling instructions, what the real rate and cost of handling them was and in general several other notes on added costs transporting them incurred.

They probably would not be happy about how much it was going to inflate their rates but Pylo would call a tribunal down on the grist-bloated fish beast and its inhabitants to make sure the whole situation was made perfectly clear.

Honestly she suspected she might not be the only one calling for it if any of the other uplift missionary traders were having even half of the issues she was.

Still they were halfway done with the trip now.

And if pattern holds of the other times she had come calling there was going to be a care package from her mother at the next port.

That gave her a complex of fluttering emotions. It had been long enough since her last communication with her family that she had mostly lost track of most of the context of them.

Getting a refresher on them would be nice.

But also complicated, it was going to make a lot of nicely dulled and softened hurts flare up again.

And then there was the port’s inhabitants.

She liked them well enough for being stationary port siders.

But the polity was different from most.

Her mother had arranged the situation for her when she had gotten word of her situation with tunie back to Clan Courtesan. Which meant that this particular polity had only one tradeship connecting them to the rest of the reef.

And that ship was Tunie.

A single intermittent visitor linking them in their isolation from the rest of civilization. Surrounded on all sides by terrible and impenetrable wilderness.

They tended to make a much bigger deal out of her arrivals then other ports.

And thanks to her mother they made a pretty big deal out of Pylo too.

This was going to be so embarrassing to show the Terrans and ▙◀, and it was going to be impossible to keep them from noticing.

Pylo found this deeply unfair.