Aesir: Prologue

She was beautiful. That was the only word that sprang to mind when he looked at the Firefly. Beautiful. Miko turned to the, though he hated to admit it, ever-so-slightly-taller man at his side.

“What do you think?”

He made no effort to hide the fact that it made no difference what his husband thought. The pleading look in his eyes was simply a formality, a routine that they both frequently went through to convince the other that they had a choice.

Hamish kept on looking at the transport, the barely detectable hint of a smile beginning to pull at the corners of his mouth. He mumbled something to himself that Miko couldn’t quite make out. The general tone sounded positive, though.

“All her papers in order?” Hamish still didn’t turn to face him, but Miko knew that the little transport had passed the test.

“Yup. Checked ‘em all twice ‘n then ran her up on the Cortex just to be sure.” Hamish at last turned to face him, and Miko quickly noted the lines on the man’s forehead where the eyebrows were raised. He quickly explained himself before he got one of Hamish’s good-natured, but irritating scoldings. “Look, I know that were in the core, but Firefly’s have a reputation for being used by... disreputable folk. I just wanted to make sure this old girl didn’t have too shady a history.”

Miko handed Hamish a clipboard and loaded up the file he’d compiled earlier that week. He’d hitched a ride to Ariel on his cousin’s cargo-hauler a month before, helping process the various foodstuffs her crew had picked up (along with him) on Greenleaf. He and Hamish had been planning on getting a ship of their own for years, and the cut from their last transport job (some real high-grade Alliance medical goods) finally meant they could hand in their notice and head back home for a short spell, before they started to put the wheels in motion.

They knew early on that they wanted everything to be as legit as they could make it. While working on the Takashi they’d had their fair share of shady dealings.