#fast freight shipping

[lotusterminalfreight]

Unleashing Revolutionary Heat Treatment Fumigation Services – A Game-Changing Partnership!

Lotus Terminals is excited to share a groundbreaking collaboration that heralds a new era in heat treatment fumigation services. Partnering with industry leader SGS Canada, we’re thrilled to introduce a revolutionary solution to tackle the strict regulations set by the Australian Department of Agriculture and the New Zealand Ministry for Primary Industries concerning brown marmorated stink bug (BMSB) heat treatments.

The Power of Our Partnership

Lotus Terminals is teaming up with a seasoned industry expert to deliver unparalleled heat treatment fumigation services. This collaboration not only eliminates the compliance headaches associated with BMSB heat treatments but goes further to prevent the spread of pests and minimize the risk of damage to your goods.

Comprehensive Heat Treatment Fumigation Services

Our Vancouver facility is now your ultimate destination for comprehensive Heat Treatment Fumigation. Whether you’re dealing with containerized or flat-rack goods, we’ve got you covered. This cutting-edge service ensures that your shipments comply with the stringent regulations, giving you peace of mind and minimizing trade risks.

In addition, these new services, which are compliant with stringent national and international legislation, best practices, and globally agreed quality and safety standards, include:

Fumigation of stored goods

Fumigation of bagged and bulk agricultural commodities (e.g., cereals, cocoa, coffee, peanuts, pulses, tobacco) in silos, stacks, and warehouses

Fumigation during or prior to shipment

Disinfection of empty holds

Denaturation and coloration

Fumigation of cargos loaded in barges and other vessels, containers, trains, and trucks

Biocide treatment of cargoes

Treatment of agricultural commodities against insects and mites

Disinfection and fumigation for the food and beverage industry (e.g., breweries, flour mills, malt houses)

Pre-shipment treatment of wooden packaging materials (e.g., crates, dunnage, pallets, lashings) according to International Standards for Phytosanitary Measures-15 (ISPM-15)

Quarantine fumigation of wood and timber, to obtain a phytosanitary certificate

Ventilation and gas-free measurement

Beyond Fumigation: A Full Spectrum of Transportation Services

But that’s not all – Lotus Terminals offers a full spectrum of transportation services to meet all your logistics needs:

Cross Docking – Import and Export

Over Dimensional Transloading – Import and Export

Freight Management

Intermodal Freight moves

Dry Van and Flat Deck transportation

Specialty Equipment trucking

Full Crating and Packing Services

Canadian Bonded Facility

Your Seamless Logistics Experience

Ready to revolutionize your logistics experience and minimize trade risks through worldwide protection of your agricultural commodities? Don’t hesitate – reach out to us at bringit@lotusterminals.com.

At Lotus Terminals, we go beyond expectations, ensuring that your logistics journey is not just efficient but truly exceptional.

[the-knife-consumer]

what is louie. doing on pnf 404 during dawn pustules. did he just decide to stay there for fun

she would just go there to chill 100% yeah

But she's there for a reason!! because there are some very valuable/exotic wildlife on pnf 404 the president sent her back to get them and sell them. (Louie made the mistake of telling him that some of the creatures tasted good. made the super bad mistake of telling him about glint beetles. very expensive and delicious bug that professional chefs would kill for)

haven't gotten to it (delay in chapters is because I'm laying out proper planning for once) but Louie is sent with the sassy freight ship who now has an updated appraisal ai, specifically for the quality of ingredients and meat.

[valkyriespalkyries]

Bubzy Couriers' same-day freight services are an excellent option for businesses that need to move large shipments quickly and efficiently. As someone who has utilized their services in the past, I can attest to their ability to handle such shipments with ease.

One of the main benefits of Bubzy Couriers' same-day freight services is their speed. When businesses have urgent shipments that need to be delivered quickly, Bubzy Couriers can get the job done. Their team of experienced couriers is equipped to handle a variety of freight sizes, from small parcels to large items. Another benefit of using Bubzy Couriers for same-day freight services is their ability to handle the logistics of such shipments. They take care of everything from pickup to delivery, ensuring that the shipment is tracked and monitored every step of the way. This level of attention to detail is critical in ensuring that the shipment arrives at its destination on time and in perfect condition. When it comes to choosing the right provider for same-day freight services, there are a few factors to consider. First, it's important to look for a company that has experience handling similar types of shipments. Bubzy Couriers has a proven track record of successfully moving freight quickly and efficiently, making them a reliable choice.

Another factor to consider is the company's technology and tracking capabilities. With Bubzy Couriers, businesses can track their shipments in real-time and receive updates on the status of the delivery. This level of transparency and communication is critical in ensuring that businesses are always aware of the location and condition of their freight.

Overall, Bubzy Couriers' same-day freight services are an excellent option for businesses that need to move large shipments quickly and efficiently. Their experience, speed, and attention to detail set them apart from other providers in the industry. I highly recommend their services to any business in need of same-day freight delivery.

[xenmagmarketing]

Experience India's Best Logistics Service with JDAC

Efficient logistics services are crucial for businesses to thrive in today's competitive market. They ensure the smooth and timely movement of goods, reducing delays and improving customer satisfaction. Overall, robust logistics services are the backbone of any successful business. That’s why in this business we recommend the best logistics service in India to help your business grow. 

Why Choose JDAC Logistics?

When it comes to selecting a logistics partner, JDAC Logistics stands out as a leading choice for several reasons. 

Established in 2017 and based in Goa, JDAC Logistics has quickly become a trusted name in the industry, known for its commitment to quality, reliability, and customer satisfaction.

Unmatched Expertise and Experience

JDAC Logistics brings years of expertise in handling heavy shipments and a wide range of logistics services. 

Our team of professionals is well-versed in the intricacies of supply chain management, ensuring that every aspect of your logistics needs is met with precision and care.

Comprehensive Service Range

One of the key reasons for choosing JDAC Logistics is our comprehensive range of services. From transportation and freight forwarding to customs clearance and warehousing, we offer a one-stop solution for all your logistics needs. 

This eliminates the hassle of dealing with multiple providers and ensures a seamless logistics experience.

Customer-Centric Approach

At JDAC Logistics, customer satisfaction is at the heart of everything we do. We understand that each business has unique requirements, and we tailor our solutions to meet those specific needs. 

Our customer-centric approach ensures that you receive personalized service and support at every step of the logistics process.

Proven Track Record

JDAC Logistics has built a strong reputation for reliability and excellence. Our proven track record of successfully handling complex logistics challenges and delivering exceptional results speaks volumes about our capabilities. 

We take pride in being a logistics partner that businesses can trust and rely on.

Innovative Solutions

Innovation is a key driver of our success. JDAC Logistics continuously invests in advanced technology and tools to streamline operations and enhance efficiency. 

Our commitment to innovation ensures that we stay ahead of industry trends and provide cutting-edge solutions to our clients.

How Does JDAC Integrate Advanced Technology in Logistics?

JDAC Logistics places a strong emphasis on integrating advanced technology to enhance our logistics operations. We believe that leveraging the latest technological innovations is essential for providing efficient and reliable logistics services.

Real-Time Tracking and Visibility

One of the key technological advancements we utilize is real-time tracking and visibility. Our advanced tracking systems enable you to monitor your shipments at every stage of the journey. 

This transparency provides peace of mind and allows you to make informed decisions based on accurate and up-to-date information.

Automated Processes

Automation plays a crucial role in streamlining logistics operations. JDAC Logistics uses automated systems for various processes, including order management, inventory control, and route optimization. 

Automation reduces the risk of errors, speeds up operations, and improves overall efficiency.

Data Analytics

Data analytics is another powerful tool we employ to enhance our logistics services. By analyzing data from various sources, we gain valuable insights into supply chain performance, identify trends, and make data-driven decisions. This helps us optimize routes, reduce costs, and improve service quality.

Cloud-Based Solutions

JDAC Logistics utilizes cloud-based solutions to ensure seamless communication and collaboration. 

Our cloud-based platforms enable real-time sharing of information between different stakeholders, improving coordination and enhancing efficiency. Cloud technology also ensures that your data is secure and accessible from anywhere.

How Does JDAC Ensure a Secure Packing Process?

JDAC Logistics understands that secure packing is essential for the safe transportation of goods. Our meticulous packing process is designed to protect your products from damage during transit and provide peace of mind.

Assessment and Planning

The packing process begins with a thorough assessment of the goods to be transported. Our team evaluates the nature of the products, their fragility, and specific packing requirements. 

Based on this assessment, we develop a customized packing plan that ensures maximum protection.

High-Quality Packing Materials

We use high-quality packing materials to safeguard your goods. Whether it's sturdy cardboard boxes, bubble wrap, foam inserts, or custom crates, we ensure that the packing materials used are appropriate for the items being transported. Our materials are designed to absorb shocks and prevent damage.

Skilled Packing Team

Our packing team comprises skilled professionals with extensive experience in handling various types of goods. 

They are trained to follow best practices in packing, ensuring that each item is securely packed and properly labeled. Attention to detail is paramount in our packing process.

Specialized Packing Solutions

For delicate or high-value items, JDAC Logistics offers specialized packing solutions. This includes custom-built crates, anti-static packaging for electronic components, and temperature-controlled packaging for perishable goods. 

Our specialized solutions are tailored to meet the unique requirements of your products.

Secure Sealing and Labeling

Once the items are packed, we ensure that they are securely sealed to prevent tampering or accidental opening. 

Each package is clearly labeled with relevant information, including handling instructions, destination details, and tracking numbers. Proper labeling facilitates smooth handling and tracking throughout the logistics journey.

How Does JDAC Make Logistics Easy? 

JDAC Logistics is committed to making the logistics process as easy and hassle-free as possible for our clients. We understand that businesses need efficient and reliable logistics solutions to focus on their core operations.

Quick Estimate Form

One of the ways we simplify logistics is through our quick estimate form. This user-friendly online form allows you to provide details about your shipment and receive an estimate in a matter of minutes. 

The quick estimate form helps you plan your logistics effectively and budget accordingly.

Seamless Communication

JDAC Logistics is the only logistics channel in India available on WhatsApp. This unique feature allows you to communicate with our team directly through WhatsApp, making it convenient to get quotes, track shipments, and resolve any queries. Seamless communication ensures that you are always informed and in control.

Efficient Pick-Up and Delivery

Our pick-up and delivery services are designed for efficiency and reliability. Once you provide the necessary details, our team will handle the entire process, from picking up the goods at your location to delivering them to the correct destination. 

We take care of all the logistics, so you don't have to worry about anything.

Customer Support

JDAC Logistics provides exceptional customer support to assist you at every step of the logistics process. 

Our dedicated support team is available to answer your questions, provide updates, and address any concerns you may have. We are committed to ensuring that your logistics experience is smooth and stress-free.

Tailored Solutions

We understand that every business has unique logistics needs. JDAC Logistics offers tailored solutions to meet your specific requirements. 

Whether you need specialized packaging, expedited shipping, or customized delivery options, we work closely with you to develop a logistics plan that fits your business.

Conclusion  

In conclusion, JDAC Logistics is a leading provider of logistics services in India, offering a comprehensive range of supply chain solutions to businesses across various industries. With a strong focus on quality, reliability, and customer satisfaction, we ensure that your logistics needs are met with precision and care.

From transportation and freight forwarding to customs clearance and warehousing, JDAC Logistics has the expertise and experience to handle all aspects of your supply chain. Our commitment to integrating advanced technology and innovative solutions sets us apart in the industry, providing you with efficient and reliable logistics services.

With our meticulous packing process, seamless communication through WhatsApp, and exceptional customer support, JDAC Logistics makes logistics easy and hassle-free. Whether you are looking to optimize your supply chain or ensure.  

[piratetransport]

Same-Day Delivery Services in North Dakota – Pirate Transport Discover Pirate Transport's reliable same-day delivery services in North Dakota. We specialize in fast and efficient transportation solutions for businesses and individuals, ensuring your packages and freight arrive on time, every time. Our experienced team and modern fleet are equipped to handle a variety of delivery needs, from urgent documents to large freight shipments. Trust Pirate Transport for dependable same-day delivery across North Dakota. Get a free quote and experience top-notch service today!

[akashzipaworld]

Zipaworld Express Delivery | Fast and Reliable Logistics Solutions

Zipaworld Express Delivery excels in providing rapid and dependable logistics solutions tailored to meet urgent shipping requirements. Whether you need swift local deliveries or efficient international shipments, our dedicated team is equipped to ensure your packages arrive on time and in optimal condition.

With a commitment to excellence, Zipaworld leverages advanced technology and a robust network of logistics partners to streamline the transportation process. Our comprehensive tracking system offers real-time visibility, allowing you to monitor your shipments every step of the way.

At Zipaworld, we prioritize speed, reliability, and customer satisfaction. Whether you're sending critical documents, time-sensitive goods, or perishable items, trust Zipaworld Express Delivery to deliver with precision and efficiency, ensuring peace of mind for your logistics needs.

[krishnatradingcompany]

Top-Rated Air Freight Services in Gurgaon: Your Global Shipping Partner | Krishna Trading Co.| +91-9999313569

At Krishna Trading Co., we pride ourselves on delivering top-notch air freight services in Gurgaon, designed to meet the diverse needs of our clients. Our comprehensive solutions ensure fast, reliable, and secure transportation of your goods to any destination worldwide.

Air freight services in Gurgaon encompass a range of offerings tailored to businesses and individuals requiring efficient, timely, and secure transportation of goods via air carriers. Here are some key aspects to delve into:

1. Types of Services: Air freight services in Gurgaon typically include express air freight for urgent deliveries, standard air freight for regular shipments, door-to-door delivery options, and specialized services for specific cargo types like perishables, hazardous materials, or oversized items.

2. Network and Partnerships: Reliable air freight providers in Gurgaon have established partnerships with major airlines and freight forwarders to ensure a global network for seamless transportation across continents.

3. Customs Clearance: Efficient customs clearance processes are crucial for international air freight. Providers often offer customs brokerage services to handle documentation, duties, and taxes, facilitating smooth clearance at airports.

4. Technology Integration: Leading air freight companies leverage advanced technology for shipment tracking, real-time updates, online booking platforms, and digital documentation management, enhancing transparency and convenience for clients.

5. Cargo Handling and Storage: Air freight services include professional cargo handling, storage facilities at airports or warehouses, temperature-controlled storage for perishable goods, and specialized handling for fragile or sensitive items.

6. Insurance Options: Comprehensive cargo insurance coverage is available to protect shipments against loss, damage, theft, or other unforeseen events during transit, providing financial security and peace of mind.

7. Regulatory Compliance: Adherence to international aviation regulations, safety standards, and environmental sustainability practices is paramount for air freight services, ensuring compliance and responsible business operations.

8. Customer Support: Dedicated customer support teams assist clients with inquiries, booking assistance, shipment updates, and resolution of issues or concerns, offering personalized service and timely assistance throughout the shipping process.

Why Choose Krishna Trading Co.?

1. Speed and Efficiency: Our streamlined processes and strategic partnerships with leading airlines guarantee that your shipments reach their destinations on time, every time.

2. Global Reach: With an extensive network of international connections, we provide seamless logistics solutions, ensuring your cargo is handled with the utmost care from origin to destination.

3. Customized Solutions: Understanding that every shipment is unique, we offer tailored air freight services to meet your specific requirements, including express delivery, door-to-door service, and more.

4. Expertise and Experience: With years of industry experience, our team of professionals is dedicated to providing exceptional service, guiding you through the complexities of international shipping with ease.

5. Advanced Tracking: Stay informed with our state-of-the-art tracking system, which allows you to monitor your shipments in real-time, giving you peace of mind throughout the entire shipping process.

6. Cost-Effective Options: We offer competitive pricing without compromising on quality, ensuring that you receive the best value for your money.

Trust Krishna Trading Co. for all your air freight needs in Gurgaon. Our commitment to excellence and customer satisfaction makes us your ideal partner in global logistics. Contact us today to learn more about our services and how we can assist you in reaching new heights in your business.

Contact Information:

Phone: 91–9999313569 Email: medantahousing_colony.ggr@fr.dtdc.com

[aquantuo]

Shipping from Uk to Tanzania

We ensure proper and consistent pick up from all 50 US states and Uk, for all manner of packages and deliver them to your door. You can also get prompt purchase assistance from us and shipping at the same time. Shipping from UK to Tanzania and shipping from Uk to Ghana is quite prominent with AQUANTUO.

With AQUANTUO, you pay only a fraction of what you would pay to the competition. Especially in comparison to what you generally pay for freight services to companies like FedEx, DHL, USPS/Tanzania Post/Posta Tanzania, and UPS, etc. If you are shipping from Uk to Tanzania or shipping from Tanzania to UK, we are here to help.

We confirm each package received or picked up, verify that they are in a good state, and repackage where necessary before shipping. We also keep you informed every step of the way via timely notifications and through our tracking system. The clearance from customs for all of your items is our responsibility. At Aquantuo, we make sure that you get the best shipping services at low prices.

[galleryyuhself]

Galleryyuhself - Aeropost keeps it neat and discrete.

[myhomecargo]

Top Solutions for Amazon FBA and Sea Freight Forwarding

Success in global e-commerce relies on selecting the right logistics partners. Whether utilizing Amazon FBA or exploring sea freight options, prioritize reliability, efficiency, and transparency. Partnering with the best Amazon FBA freight forwarder and top sea freight forwarders ensures a seamless and profitable international shipping experience.

[winify]

As a global leader in logistics, Winify is one of the trusted & reliable one-stop shops for your all courier and logistics needs. Over decade’s hard work, we have increased our network worldwide to offer efficient and speedy delivery services. Winify Logistics is the leading global supplier of logistics solutions having offices across more than 20 countries. We have an international network of agents and partners working towards the same goal of serving you.

We are the global logistics company that mainly covers all the modes of transportation service that include international freight forwarding along with supply chain solution development. Our team is well-positioned in supplying the diverse shipping as well as supply chain. We are the reliable and most trusted team of experience offering the courier delivery services UK.

[world-logistics]

How China’s Shipping Industry Is Shaping the Global Economy

China is a global powerhouse in many aspects, but one of its most impressive achievements is its dominance in the maritime shipping industry. China’s shipping industry plays a vital role in the global economy, as it handles more than 95% of China’s global trade transportation and supports China’s high-level opening-up and high-quality development. In this blog post, we will explore some of the main trends and developments in China’s shipping industry and how they affect the world.

China’s Growing Dominance in Maritime Shipping

One of the most noticeable trends in China’s shipping industry is its growing dominance in maritime shipping, which has implications for geopolitics and security. China has the world’s second-largest shipping fleet by gross tons and constructs over a third of the world’s vessels. It also produces 96% of the world’s shipping containers, more than 80% of the world’s ship-to-shore cranes, and owns seven of the ten busiest ports in the world (including Hong Kong). China has also surpassed the United States as the world’s largest navy in terms of total battle force ships.

China’s maritime rise has been driven by focused state support since the early 2000s, especially after the 2008 financial crisis when the global maritime industry suffered a collapse in demand. China encouraged its massive state-owned enterprises to consolidate and expand their global market share in shipbuilding and shipping finance. China also invested heavily in strategic locations such as chokepoints, refueling stations, canals, and seaports along its Belt and Road Initiative, which aims to connect Asia, Europe, and Africa through infrastructure and trade.

China’s growing dominance in maritime shipping gives it a competitive edge in global trade and a strategic advantage in times of conflict. China can leverage its shipping capacity to influence global supply chains, prices, and standards. It can also use its naval power to protect its interests and assert its claims in disputed waters, such as the South China Sea and the East China Sea.

China’s State-backed Support for Its Shipping Industry

Another trend in China’s shipping industry is its state-backed support for its shipping industry, which has an impact on market competition and trade rules. China provides various forms of support to its shipping industry, such as financing from state banks, direct subsidies, indirect subsidies, state-backed fundraising, preferential borrowing rates, and other nonmarket advantages from China’s state capitalist system.

According to a CSIS report, combined state support to Chinese firms in the shipping and shipbuilding industry totaled roughly $132 billion between 2010 and 2018. This includes financing from state banks ($127 billion) and direct subsidies ($5 billion). This conservative estimate does not include direct subsidies to unlisted firms, indirect subsidies, state-backed fundraising, preferential borrowing rates, and other nonmarket advantages from China’s state capitalist system.

China’s state-backed support for its shipping industry gives it an unfair advantage over its foreign competitors, who have to operate under market conditions and abide by international trade rules. China’s support also distorts global supply and demand, creates overcapacity and dumping problems, and undermines environmental and labor standards. China’s support also poses challenges for multilateral institutions such as the World Trade Organization (WTO), which have limited authority and capacity to address China’s trade practices.

China’s Challenges and Opportunities Amid the Global Pandemic and Supply Chain Disruptions

A third trend in China’s shipping industry is its challenges and opportunities amid the global pandemic and supply chain disruptions. The Covid-19 pandemic has caused unprecedented shocks to the global economy and trade, affecting both the demand and supply sides. The pandemic has also exposed the vulnerabilities and interdependencies of global supply chains, especially those that rely heavily on China as a source or destination of goods.

China’s shipping industry has faced both challenges and opportunities amid the pandemic and supply chain disruptions. On one hand, China’s shipping industry has suffered from reduced demand for goods, increased costs for health and safety measures, port congestion and delays, container shortages and imbalances, crew changes and welfare issues, and geopolitical tensions. On the other hand, China’s shipping industry has also benefited from its early recovery from the pandemic, diversified markets and routes, strong domestic demand for goods, increased exports of medical supplies and equipment, enhanced digitalization and innovation capabilities, and resilience and adaptability.

China’s shipping industry has also played an important role in mitigating the impact of the pandemic and supply chain disruptions on the global economy.

China’s Future Development and Restructuring of Its Shipping Industry

A fourth trend in China’s shipping industry is its future development and restructuring of its shipping industry to enhance efficiency, innovation, and sustainability. China has the vision to become a leading maritime power by 2035 and a world-class shipping center by 2049. To achieve these goals, China has formulated various plans and policies to guide the development and restructuring of its shipping industry.

According to a conference report by Helong Tong, China’s shipping industry will focus on the following aspects in the future:

Improving the quality and efficiency of shipping services by optimizing the allocation of resources, enhancing digitalization and automation, strengthening safety and security management, and promoting integrated transportation systems.

Promoting the innovation and transformation of shipping modes by developing new types of ships, such as smart ships, green ships, and ice-breaking ships, as well as new forms of shipping services, such as e-commerce logistics, cold chain logistics, and multimodal transport.

Enhancing the green and low-carbon development of shipping by implementing emission reduction strategies, adopting clean energy sources, improving energy efficiency, and participating in global environmental governance.

Expanding the opening-up and cooperation of shipping by adhering to the principles of mutual benefit and win-win cooperation, supporting the Belt and Road Initiative, participating in international rule-making, and improving the international competitiveness of Chinese shipping enterprises.

China’s future development and restructuring of its shipping industry will benefit China’s economic and social development and contribute to the global maritime community and the world economy.

Conclusion

Overall, China’s shipping industry is a key player in the global economy and trade. It has shown remarkable achievements in terms of scale, capacity, technology, and influence. It has also faced various challenges and opportunities amid the changing global environment. China’s shipping industry will continue to pursue openness and inclusiveness, innovation and reform, and win-win cooperation in order to embrace its future development and restructuring.

If you are interested in learning more about China’s shipping industry or doing business with Chinese shipping companies, please feel free to contact us. We are a professional shipping service provider with rich experience and expertise in China’s shipping market. We can help you with your shipping needs from China to anywhere in the world. We look forward to hearing from you soon.

[digitalsymbiote]

The Solar Sprint

You ever heard of the Cannonball Run? It was a thing back on earth, back before corpo wars. It was an unsanctioned race across a continent. Folks would trick out cars with extra fuel tanks, police scanners, the works, and just burn their way from one ocean to the other. Driving for something like a day straight, avoiding cops all the way, and only stopping to refuel. Kinda wild, don’t you think? A test of speed and stamina, seeing how hard you could really push your vehicle.

That’s what the Solar Sprint started out as, you know. First time someone ran it, the Jovian blockade was still up. They blew right past the military lines, their mech too fast for any of those combat frames to catch. It was big news at the time, everyone thought it was some secret R.O.M. tech built to break the blockade. Turned out it was just some wrench-head who wanted to see how fast they could get from Mercury to Neptune. The crazy fucker actually did it too, straight shot from the solar collection station on Mercury, all the way to the NDS Research outpost. The scientists there nearly shit themselves when the Runner went blasting past their observatory like that. Can’t imagine they saw any frames out there that weren’t clunky research models before then, especially with the blockade still up.

There’s still footage of the first sprint up on the Net if you look. Some cargo hauler caught footage of the Runner nearly side-swipping his freight ship between Earth and Venus. There was a leaked clip of them breaking the Jovian blockade too, but you might be hard pressed to find that one these days. runners sometimes carry hard copies though, so if you run into the right people you might be able to see it.

It became a whole thing, y’know? Kind of a fuck you to the corps, the wars, all of it. Building frames in a different way, not just for blowing each other up. Was a kind of creative revolution, an expression of freedom. Corps can’t keep us down, yeah? Something like a thousand runners tried it over the next couple years. Not all of em made it; some of em got caught by the blockade, some of em their frames couldn’t handle the trek. But enough of em made it that it started to become a real competition. Who could make the sprint in the fastest time? Folks posted on forums about crazy ideas they were coming up with for propellants, aerodynamics, you name it. Gearheads across the net had a brand new obsession to pour over.

Soon enough though, the corps caught on, realized it was easier to sanction the thing than to try and stop people from doing it. Enough cargo freighters crashed, enough blockades ran, it became more profitable to make an event out of the thing. The Sprint lost some of it’s luster after that. Speed frames plastered with sponsorships and built with corpo parts didn’t really capture the energy of the original run. The yearly Sprint is technically open to public teams, but any self respecting Runner isn’t gonna attempt it during sanctioned times. Kinda defeats the purpose of it all if they clear the shipping lanes and wait for optimal conditions, right?

Every once in a while though, you might spot somebodies custom frame sitting in orbit around the solar collection station. And who knows? They might be the next crazy wrench-head to break that record.

[not-trannydurden]

STARSHINE FANG-GLINT

PART ONE, CHAPTER ONE

"HERE COMES YOUR MAN"

WARNING! NSFW! SMUT! SEX! GORE! DUBIOUS CONSENT!

ALIEN PARASITE x SPACE TRUCKER!!

Photocredit to H.R. GIGER (WATCHGUARDIAN and RUSTY FEMALE TORSO) and NASA

Having never mastered faster-than-light travel, our ambitions far overestimated our ability to tame physics. So now, if you want anything shipped from point A, to point B, then you are going to need some lowlifes that don't mind giving you forty, fifty, seventy years of their lives to sleep frozen in zero G for a good paycheck and dental. This is why PV2 Camuth Syntrax has been in this business for a very, very long time.

She used to be a girl with stars in her eyes and ambitions. Hell, the whole reason she signed up for this job was to pay for her HRT and tits. She wanted to be whole, at some point in the future.

Now? Well, now she's just a miserable asshole trucker. Who happens to have big tits.

During a routine operation, their freighter is flagged and deployed for a shady Hazmat job. This was supposed to be like any other shady, high paying freight job. Make that top secret military budget money, and only have to shift your morals to the side a little to do it. A trucker is a trucker. They don't control whats in the bay.

Hell, she could hardly tell the difference. Camuth was drunk for most of her waking hours, or balls deep in a stow-away or hitchhiker. This leap's flavor was a peppy biologist with a sadistic streak.

She couldn't begin to understand how ignorant this assumption was.

WARNING: This series will eventually contain Gore, Violence, Cannibalism, Body Horror, and Vore. This chapter will contain: Mild misogyny, A lot of sex scenes, mild mentions of gore and political violence, and some non-consensual flirting.

Also, here's a playlist link ^^ i'd like to thank anyone who may of helped my write the first draft of this; it would not exist without you.

In every star-freighter there is always one pod that leaves you feeling extra sick. It's kind of a running joke amongst truckers; of course, that being a colloquial term.  An homage to societies of the past. No matter what, every voyage, you are gonna have one guy say it; 

"Looks like I got the bad pod."

Bleary eyed and shivering from the thermaebath still. Can't stop getting the bends. Dizzy.

When you are in thermae, the ship doesn't produce artificial gravity. Why would it? Saves a lot more power this way.

So that spinning feeling you get when you are trying to take you first few steps; it's the fluids in your ears adjusting to the presence of any gravity.

So picture this; 14 runs, back to back; almost 3 years spent on jumps from system to system, taking advantage of a Cerebrachem shortage that was sweeping the same direction we are; then, on the way back you deliver beef for a chain of Corpo airlock-exchange fast food restaurants.  

Teiren/Max Corp was meticulous with these sort of long hauls; they had to be worth the costs that it takes to pay experienced Truckers to waste 4 years away from home.

Lucky for me, the wages are great. The ship mates are fine, a couple of pretty girls, an android that you could swear was modeled to be a milf on purpose, and besides that; a few men. 

Men who were smart enough to mind their business. Women in this industry had a nasty habit of mutilating the uncouth that came onto them.

Prison rules. Pick the biggest guy. Grab him by the nuts. Set an example.

Every 5 months you wake up for a few weeks; exercise, socialize, repair the ship and check on the precious cargo. This free time is perfect for when you want to smoke a cigarette or stare at a wall, or eat out that cute biologist tagalong that came to study blah blah blah blah blah blah... 

What? Listen, if you saw this girls hips you'd understand. Hard to focus on much when you are wondering how her jumpsuit fits on, zips up in the center. Conceals all... that.

Maybe not though, because I can't remember why she's here, and we've spent the last 3 years having casual sex together. Watching horror movies and painting each other's nails. She compliments my bone structure a lot. I think she's weird, but in a hot way. 

Dr. Leerson. Doctor Amelia Leerson.

Imagine that you are almost home when everyone, yourself included, is shot upright like frankenstein movie monsters; albeit almost 4 months early. 

"We're not even close to schedule." Captain says. Cap's a big brawly man, pale, malnourished skin with a handlebar mustache. He's older than all of us, but he's healthy enough. Used to be a marine. 

Still built like one, and even though he was a brick-shithouse, a lifetime of protein paste and nutrition gel had left him looking like a strung out corpse all the time.

He's already dressed and dry, meanwhile I'm still on hands and knees letting fluid pour out of my sinus.

"What doya...?"

He points to the automatic calender on the wall. 

"Oh, uhuh...." I rub my chin, apparently deep in thought.

I couldn't remember the depart date.

A fat grey tabby goes waddling out of Leerson's pod. Pets didn't do good alone floating in zero g. It was wise to carry them with you. Picture egyptian burial rules. Anything you want when you wake up, make sure it's buried with you.

"We're gonna have to ration," Captain mumbled, rubbing the stubble on his chin. Cap was constantly talking about rationing, re-using, recycling. I don't think I'd ever eaten a fully allocated meal on this ship. The man was paranoid as all hell about something, anything, going wrong. Getting stuck out in deep space with a fuel injector malfunction, or a buggy navigation algorithm. So they saved old O2 filters. They distilled runoff from their engines into new fuel. They didn't eat enough.

"You'll thank me when we run out of fresh filters one day." Captain would always say, and we knew better than to argue.

"You're always saying that," said Leerson, who had been around just long enough to notice the pattern. Her voice was casually musical, almost teasing. "We're four months out, Captain. What's the worst that could happen?" 

Cap just grunted and turned to go towards center command, the defacto meeting room and geographical center of the ship. In ancient history, all roads led to Rome. In the age of modern space freighting; all roads lead to the center command.

Despite still being nude from the Thermae process, I roll over and stare at the ceiling. Leerson just watches and laughs, before throwing me a towel.

"Camuth, get dressed and get ready for briefing." He paused and looked over his shoulder at Leerson. "And don't let them keep me waiting too long, Doctor."

Leerson smiled, faux innocent. I grazed my tongue across my teeth, hard, before finally heaving myself up off the ground next to my pod, towel still half clutched around me. I panted, my arms trembling slightly from exertion. My teeth chattered slightly, and I leaned my forehead against the frosted over metal of the pod, feeling the bits of sweat and thermae fluid freeze upon contact with each other, making my forehead buzz. 

"Poor thing," Leerson teased, close enough that I could feel breath on my ear. I shivered in a different way at that. Leerson had a superpower that let her walk around noiselessly on metal grates. I felt her fingers wander around my midsection, spider-like in the way they dance between the folds of the scratchy orange towel and find their way to my cold pale flesh. 

"I...- I gotta get dressed," I say, failing to fight back a sigh, halfway between contentment and unadulterated need. A half-whine.

"That's what we're doing," Leerson purrs. She was such a fox, and I meant that in the predatory sense. I meant that with flashes of broken necked bunnies and eviscerated squirrels in mind. Terrestrial viscerality, or sexuality. It all came from the same need.

"I'm helping you get dressed, Second Private." 

Leerson said as she flicked a cruel nail once, letting the towel drop to the floor, exposing me.

"Now," she said, in tones that made me pissed and weak in the knees, "Just where did I put that jumpsuit..." 

My head was spinning, and it was only half from the teasing. I really did feel like shit.

"Get a room, dykes!" Someone shouted as I tried my best to not make a face at her touch. There were no rooms on a freighter. Just notches in a wall big enough to fit a twin sized mattress. 

For this reason, it was not uncommon to find your crewmates fucking on top of the coolant pipes, or on the cargo. You don't want to see what sort of use a hauling strap will find during one of these sessions.

Imagine every fast-food burger you've ever eaten, and imagine backshots being blown on cargo containers of every single of one of them.

"Yeah, fuck off, you're welcome." I say throwing up a middle finger to our electrician, Peter Schulzbern. We just called him Berns. He already has a baseball cap on. One from the tail end of the petrol-industrial era. When we still knew where Earth was. It reads: "I ❤️ NYC"

Leerson giggles, knowing that she's brushing up against my dick as she pulls my jumpsuit over me. Best part is that she's still halfnude, her jumpsuit only on like a pair of pants. Revealing two beautiful tits and a long neck. Biologists. It made sense. She was an animal. Better-yet to study them.

"I'm gonna go debrief honey, make me some coffee would ya?" I asked, and Leerson rolls her eyes.

"Oh yes sir Mr. Syntrax, right away." She says in a fake receptionist voice, making fun of me.

"Please, honey?" I ask, genuine vulnerability in my voice. She bites her tongue and smiles at me.

"Good girl." She says, and I shutter.

"You fuckin..." I'm whispering to myself as she walks away. Giving the whole crew a view of her tits as she stepped past the Thermaebay. Only once she reaches the door does she zip up her jumpsuit the rest of the way.

I'm staring, houndlike, at her ass with each step as I work to button my cuffs and adjust my collar to standard.

"Why do you always get the girl?" A voice asks, coming close behind me. I don't look. I know that it's Ricky Raffington. James Raffington legally. We just called him Rat.

"Because I am a girl. You think a piece like that isn't gonna want something soft and homely like me over some washed up Navy piece of shit like you? Ever?" 

"I don't have nothing you don't have." Rat scowls, unable to stop himself from glancing at the strain I'm currently placing on my jumpsuit, specifically in the crotch area. I'd blown out the zippers on these things before. I was kinda proud of it.

"Besides game, you mean? An extra 4 inches?" I grinned, doing the final button that keeps my collar sinched with a satisfying snap. Berns, over in the corner and already working on touching up some corroded wiring, snickered.

"Fuck you," Rat spit, literally spit on the floor near my boot, before clomping away to go join in on briefing. 

"Four inches my ass..." He mumbled as he went.

"Yeah, yeah, we've all been in the showers together, jackass!" I called after him. I sat there, feeling pretty good about myself, before-

"Get your ass in here, Private! What is this, a fuckin' pool party?" There was the captain, head and insanely wide shoulders poking their way into the cryo chamber, too impatient to spend the extra few seconds walking into the room proper.

I hurried up and over to central command, nearly tripping over myself as I went. The captain scared the shit out of me when he got loud like that...

Central command worked as a sort of secondary helm. The main helm, located towards the front of the ship and attached to the pilot's cockpit, was a fairly small room meant for just the captain and an attendant or two, and almost never saw any use during freight operations like this. Most functions on the ship were automated, anyways. 

Central command was like the living room of the ship. It was in the exact center of the vessel, and all hallways eventually led back to it. It was located directly above the commons areas. This was the most important room in the vessel, the meeting place, the heart and mind of the freighter vessel. 

Gathered in the room was nearly the whole crew. Leerson was off getting coffee, supposedly, and as a tag-along her presence was not required. 

The engineers like Berns, about a half dozen of them, had been woken up first along with the captain, debriefed, and sent along to check vital components and fix the worst of the damage. 

That left about a dozen of us left, gathered in various chairs and on desk or railings around the circular room. All shivering and weary from wake-up still. 

Everyone here was someone who preferred to sit in a corner, with a back to their wall, and you could tell. Even after years (or more like a month) of travel together, everyone was cagey. No sets of fingers and eyes rested easy, everyone sizing each other up. I had gotten over that paranoid shit long, long, long ago. I just sighed and leaned up against the nearest wall, nodding at the Captain as I did.

"Thank you for joining us, Private." Captain said, smiling sardonically. "Do we have your permission to begin?"

Everyone snickered, especially the Rat.

"At 07:00, Yesterday morning we received a subcontract from upstairs. This isn't a freight contract. It's a Hazmat job. It'll take at least 4 Biomat Certified Technicians, and 2 Hazmat Certified Haulers."

He pauses for a moment.

"Raise your hand if you are Biomat Certified."

I raise my hand, a waifish fellow with long soft arms raises one of them, and so does my beloved... My one and only;

Minerva.

She stood at around 5'8, with milk tallow pale skin and black hair. Gleaming blue eyes; literally neon blue LEDs. She was my white whale. I would never get to her because she wasn't human. She was an android. Soft, plastic soft, skin like pleather seat cushions or latex condoms. Her blood was milk white, which for some reason did things to me.

"Great, so we're short a Biomat."

I think for a moment, then raise my hand.

"Second Private?"

"Dr. Leerson is Biomat Certified." I say, and a few people in the room whistle.

The captain ignores it. As long as the trains arrive on time, so to speak, he could care less what we get up to. I watch him think for a moment, star maps, navigation routes, and fuel costs flashing behind his eyes. Weighing the pros and cons, like he always did. After a moment, he nods.

"It'll save us a trip or two, then." says the Captain after a moment. I let myself feel a little proud and useful for a moment, before the feeling fades. Rapidly.

"And I believe most of the rest of you are Hazmat certified." A few murmurs of assent. A couple of nods. 

"So. Onto the next thing..."

The rest of the briefing passes by normally. Captain reiterating that, yes, we will be rationing our food and other supplies until we touch down after the Hazmat job, and the usual groans that accompany that.

Only Minerva, me, and a couple of other old star-dogs don't complain. You'd think after the first dozen or so wake up cycles they'd learn, but, apparently not. I couldn't help but get a little nostalgic- or was that the right word?- had I been so slow to learn, too? So terrestrial? 

Terrestrial was an odd word these days. It meant a lot of things. It was used to describe everything from nostalgia, familiarity, immaturity, primal emotions, and a lack of space legs. People had a lot of complicated feelings about where we'd started. 

The homeworld, Earth, had been lost for ages now. No one knew for how long, or exactly when it had happened, just that one day, Earth was gone. Not destroyed, or crumbled, or uninhabitable, but actually lost. Amongst bureaucracy and papers and legalities and name changes; we couldn't find the birthplace of our species anymore. Among all other stars, planets, satellites, moons, and generation ships-

Earth was lost. 

At least, that's how it was phrased. That's how people interpreted it, and I couldn't blame them. When you'd never even seen the damn thing, never felt fresh green grass between your toes or breathed in oxygen that wasn't filtered, well, it was no wonder they didn't realize the truth. That it wasn't Earth that had strayed too far from the porch and gotten lost in that deep, dark forest, never to return.

It was humans. They simply lost themselves.

One day, thousands and thousands of years after we scattered our terraformers across the stars, we built our cities. We turned the void of nothing between stars into our freeways.

Then, that old house Earth simply disappeared into that cosmic infrastructure. A grain of sand in a silo of gravel. Surely, it was out there, and there are even a few theories of which planet it could be, or where it went. 

One day nobody knew where Earth was. It only existed in stories. Very, very few had ever been there and known it. 

Anyway, I got over that existentialism a while ago. Personally, I'm grinning like an idiot with my dick bulging out as I stare at Leerson.

Debrief was simple.

It was a biological sampling, taken from a jungle planet that was only a 2 month detour from our route. And right now, with how much it paid; we could eat all this random beef byproduct and pay back the Krueger Deli Co with plenty to spare. I'm talking retirement money. Go get on a tropical island planet and jack off into a coconut all day money. Or, whatever rich people do.

Leerson came back with two mugs of coffee, ceramic and plain, with the company's logo on the side. Terrestrial. Quaint.

She sidled up next to me and passed me one without saying anything, a cream and three sugars in it without me having to ask her. Leerson could be a real sweetheart when she wanted to.

"You're Biomat Technician certified?" the Captain asked, eyeing the cup of coffee jealously. Everyone on this ship subsisted fairly heavily on the cafeteria coffee, and the Captain was one of the worst caffeine addicts aboard. Coffee beans were one of the few things we were allowed to be liberal with.

"Yessir." she replied, smiling politely. I scowled back at all jealous glares I was getting as I sipped my delicious fucking coffee.

"We'll go over what you missed later." Cap grumbled. "For now, the usual game plan goes: repairs and maintenance. I want extra effort out of all of you, too. We're adding an extra 2 months to our route and I don't want any busted filters or malfunctioning rods, am I clear?"

"Yes, sir," came the weary reply from the crew. The Captain's eyebrow twitched.

"Say it like you fucking mean it."

"Yes, sir!"

The captain smiled, just a little. 

"Dismissed." He said, and everyone made a beeline for the cafeteria. After a moment of storming footsteps, it was just me and Leerson left in command. Sipping our coffees in tandem. She took hers black with a lot of sugar. 

More on some days, less on others. I smiled at her, but I had to mostly force it.

"What's all the commotion, then?" She asked, a Neuvian accent. Neuvian sounded like old world British, with a slowness and methodicalness that sounded almost Japanese in nature. 

The only reason I have any context to old-world accents is because of the stash of Westerns and Samurai movies the captain kept on-board. Old-world media is always in high demand; and companies make billions simply finding and restoring old vinyls.

"Some new contract sent down from management. Biological sampling. Hazardous materials, so it's pay is insane. I'm sure cap will give you a cut for helping out."

I say, trying to delay another sip of the bitter coffee. It was so dark today. She's grinning and munching on a tin-foil wrapped coffee cake. I wanted to taste her coffee breath in that moment.

"Oooh, exciting. Think it's an alien?" She said, giggling. Uhg. I wanted to swim laps in her. She was fucked the second we docked somewhere.

"No, probably just a bio-weapon or Malaria or something."

I take a long sip of the warm coffee.

I am a comms technician, besides just being a hauler and a decent repairman. So, today, my jobs included sending out our status report, getting in contact with the jungle planet's SatComms, to establish a timeline, and hopefully getting head from Leerson under my desk at some point.

I'm writing up the first status report when Minerva enters the room. She has that pleasant grin, like a cat's or a crocodile's. Always sly and a little smug. She knows something you don't.

"Good evening, beautiful." I say as she steps in, squeezing in a few looks over her amazing frame between looking at the screen I'm typing on. It was all analog here. Digital wasted too much power. Digital wishes it could have double-D tits on a shortstack body. 

She laughs gently, covering her grin with a dainty hand, before carrying over manifests and maintenance reports to my desk to be bounce-faxed.

"Here you go, Camuth. Those reports that you requested."

"Thank you, ma'am."

"Please, Minerva will do fine."

"What about goddess?"

She lets out a long, playful sigh.

"It's flattering, sweetheart. I'm not that kinda synth though." She says shaking her heard slightly.

"When we touch down, can I buy you dinner sometime?"

"When we get back, I will be put back into company assets."

"Can't have shit in space." I whisper to myself.

She rolls her glowing eyes, turning on her heel and honest-to-god sashaying away. I could swear she's putting extra swing into her hips just to fuck with me. 

I sigh and roll my eyes towards the ceiling. 

She could crush my skull like a fucking melon and I'd tell her thanks. 

Or I'd try to. It'd probably sound more like "hoouggchhh" to be honest.

"Such a greedy little thing," said Leerson between sips of coffee. 

I had almost forgot she followed me to my office.

"The heart wants what the heart wants, honey." I said.

"And the cock wants what the cock wants." She said, voice flat. She let a manicured hand rest on my inner thigh. Leerson had long, sturdy arms that let her reach over counters and on top of high shelves. They were just a little too long for her body, which did something for me. She took another long drink of her coffee, not breaking eye contact.

"That too, yes." My voice came a little hushed.

Siiiip...

"You always go still." She sets the coffee down behind her without looking. Ka-thunk. "Like you're waiting for a storm to pass."

"I'm just... taking it in." I say. My eyes dance over her. Her lips, her eyes, the zipper that's starting to undo itself from her tit's sheer mass. Lord. 

"I think... you're just," Leerson steps into my space, facing me, pressing me up against the desk I'm half sat on and staring at me.

"A scared little creature..." 

I lick my lips.

"Like... a squirrel?"

Her eyes curl into a look of confusion, and she giggles before she pounces on me. Lips and tongue way too eager, parting mine, spreading me open, invading me. Her teeth scrape, not sure if she's just that reckless or if she has to draw blood every time we make out. A fistful of my hair and my jumpsuit.

"I dreamed about this in cryo," she pants, wrenching my hair back so she can breathe into my ear. I stare at the floor and rut my cock against the tight spot in her jumpsuit between her legs, growing tighter as I get close to fucking her, abusing the plyable space-suit.

"Y-You can't dream in cryo, your brain-" I start to speak.

She kisses me again, filling my mouth with her spit.

I can't really recall what happened next. At one point she was licking the inside of my ear. She made me say "I'm your dog." over and over again, until she punched me in the stomach. Before I knew it, I was laid out across my desk, with my head awkwardly pressed against the terminal that was hard-wired in.

We both moan as I enter her slightly, her hips working as she stands above me and the desk. She had just finished sucking my dick; biting my thighs and ass hard enough that I'm sure I'll be bruised.

My cock twitches, and Lord, I'm about to ruin both of our suits and really give the Captain something to bitch about when-

She throws my head and body back, away from her, by the tangled grips of hair and fabric she was just holding onto like a lifeline. My head bangs against the wall, my breath coming in quick and panicked, and she unsheaths herself from me. My ears are still ringing by the time her jumpsuit is back on. I didn't cum. She might have.

Dr. Leerson smiles at me, spit still glistening around her mouth, hair messed up. 

"See you later," she wiggles her fingers, and turns to go. But not before I catch a glimpse of how soaked through the crotch of her jumpsuit is. Lord. She turns and leaves, walking almost as magnificently as Minerva had just a few moments ago.

She's a memory, just the smell of sex in the air and your dick still refusing to give up. She was going to walk all the way to her lab like that too, the absolute animal. She's lucky everyone knows what I'd do to em' if they even looked at her funny.

I lean my head on my desk for a second to re-cooperate myself. She was absolutely hungry, absolutely cruel. Nothing but absolutes with this girl. No middle sliders. I've shared bunk with a pantheon of freight-hiking hobos and hippies, lots of girls of the night and girls of the street and girls of the whatever the fuck else. 

No one had ever been nearly as insatiable as Dr. Amelia Leerson.

I think I'm in love. Or pregnant, I don't know, anyway, I scoop myself up off the desk and try to focus on the papers. Try is the keyword, because I have to shamefully jerk off twice to even muster half focus; after all of that.

Our next destination is nicknamed Osiris. It's designation is P-333, and It's Planetary consultant sounds half drunk when I call.

"Calling 16-43, This is Starfreight Demeter."

"Mmm what?"

I sigh.

"Starfreight Demeter, Calling in a land notice for... 43 days from now. Do you copy?"

"Copy... Watch out around landing time. That's monsoon season."

I yawn, this man's exhausted energy like a contagious flu.

"Copy, Thank you PlaCo."

Next, is to bounce-fax our reports to central command, or CeCo if you are feeling frisky. To bounce a fax is to send it careening through a semi-privatized string of local satellites until it reaches it's destination. You "bounce" it from satellite to satellite. It takes a while, but is incredibly cheap. 

After that, I smoke a cigarette while reading the last chapter of some fantasy novel. The dragon was actually the wizard all along, by the way. 

After that, When its around 14:23, thats Camuth's Special Hour. I setup my vinyl player, and plug it into the mic port. It plays it over the intercom. I keep all my old world vinyls under my desk. Today, I'm playing Talking Heads: 77 by Talking Heads, then it's The Doors by The Doors. Old worlders were incredibly creative when naming records.

After that I turn on 10 minutes of Thelonius Monk, and then I finish it with Califronia Uber Alles by Dead Kennedys, and then some old nations national anthem. The American One, not the canadian one; although that was equally funny.

Halfway through, I take a coffee and smoke break in the cafeteria.

"You're such a freak," said a voice from one of central's many, many entrances.

I turned in time to see a pale figure dragging a chair towards me. It was Sierpinski, one of the clones on crew. They were lanky, pale, with clear signs of clone degeneration tearing through them.

Besides the normal space-freighter paleness, Sierpinski was albino, with long fine hair, almost no body hair, and wine colored eyes that shined red when a bright light was near. They never removed their helmet on sunny planets. 

Sierpinski, who didn't have a first name, had dodged the worst of the potential degenerative cloning symptoms. Excessive or misplaced facial hair. Various types of baldness. Increased risk of cancer, which Sierpinski did have, but at least they weren't sprouting tumors yet. 

All things considered, Sier looked more like a beautiful wax figure than a half-baked copy of some old fuck's genetic code, sold off to a company for half price and high profits. Now, like most sold-off clones, they were used for dangerous and cheap labor, usually doing the jobs that were deemed too risky for normal workers.

"You ever gonna play normal music for us one day, Cam?" asked Sier, sitting backwards in the chair and grinning cock-eyed at me.

"You call that corpo synthesized trash you play 'normal'?" I grin back, and we trade a little handshake we made up together. Just a short thing. Sierpinski is one of my few other friends on this ship, and the only one of those that I hadn't fucked.

"At least the rest of the crew doesn't want to, uh, dig my eyes out with a spork."

"And how long you think that'll last when you keep hanging out with my ass, hmm?" 

"Hopefully not much longer," Sier's grin turned positively shit eating. "I'm getting tired of visiting you." 

We both chuckled as Sier rested their cheek on top of their arms, on the back of their chair, looking at me. 

"So... whatcha think about this hazmat job?" They asked after a second, faux casual.

"It's weird, so I'm leaning towards military subcontracting. If I cared I would research the corpo that handed it down the line to us, but I don't. Jobs a job."

They sigh a little, and look over their shoulder for prying eyes.

"Listen, I got something I need to show you."

"Oh yeah?" I ask.

They sigh.

"Alright so I'm a bit of an eavesdropper right?"

They hand over a small camera. Mini-digi. About as small as a digital camera could get, and it was still viewfinder sized. I look into it's port at the loaded picture. It's of a monitor, in Minerva's lab. That lab doubled as Leermans at the moment. The screen was a readout, order from command that Synths practically absorb like scripture. It simply read;

PROTECT CARGO AT ALL COSTS

ALL OTHER PRIORITIES WAIVERED

CREW EXPENDABLE

"Huh."

That's all that leaves my lips as I stare at the picture in mild bemusement. 

No. Befuddlement.

"Weird right?"

"I'm sure it's fine. The contract is bloody expensive." 

Long sip of coffee. Pause. Both of us ponder the other alternatives.

"So why is it Biomat and Hazmat?"

"What do you mean?"

They sat upright in the chair, stashing the camera away in a satchel.

"Thirteen parsecs ago, a few crews before this one. I ran a militarized virus cargo. We only needed Hazmats. Biomat is usually reserved for..."

They sip their coffee, puff on a cigarette.

"Live Animals." I finish for them, realizing what they were panicking about.

"Okay, that one is pretty weird. Maybe the virus is in a monkey." I say, laughing a bit.

They smile, but it's weak. Wracked with concern.

"Something else." They say, Cylav accent shining like an old 80s communist bad guy.

"Uhuh."

"On the Buzzers. Talking with loved ones. I tell them 'we're going to Osiris.' They think it's strange."

"Why's that?"

"Osiris has been under quarantine for the past six months. They refused emergency landing to three separate vessels. That's illegal." They say.

"Huh..." 

"So you see where I'm going with this?"

"Yeah, it's sketchy, but-" 

"But what? We cannot take on this job." 

"Oh, so what, we just quit?" I felt my eyebrow twitch in frustration. Sierpinski had a nasty habit of thinking they were always fucking right. 

"We just go home, yeah? Take one of the shuttles and a paycut to fuel it and call it a day, yeah? Maybe we can share one and split the costs."

"Fuck you." Sier sighs, leaning away from me and sitting up straight in their stupid wide legged stance, the back of the chair like a wall between us.

"C'mon, Cam, you've been around longer than any of us. Even longer than Cap, depending on how you count it. You know this isn't right. I can see it in your eyes." Sierpinski sounds defeated. They stare at the floor.

"And what do you want me to do, Sier? You're my friend, but we're powerless here. You know that too."

"Sure, but we could talk to the Capt-"

"Who would say exactly what I'm saying. And then if- if we got him on side, what would he do? Talk to some lackey of the boards, and up and up and up-"

I sigh. 

"It's too late. We'll never climb that ladder in time. Don't you see?"

I wait for Sier to look me in the eyes again before I finish. 

"It's already too late."

...

"So we may as well do damn good job of it, yeah?" I propose.

"Yeah," Sier sighs, not meeting my gaze anymore.

"Listen," I grab their knee, my squeeze going straight from gentle and reassuring to manic and panicked. "It's just a hazmat. We follow protocol, we play it careful, and we're fine. Like any other job." 

Sier stood up and left in a hurry, pausing once they hit the entrance to the nearest hallway.

"Our job," they said the word like a swear, "has a 63.9% mortality rate. That's not even counting the clones."

And then they were gone, and I was alone again.

------------------------------------------------------------

Me and Leerson bang a few times, dinner, sleep, breakfast; maintenance, and then after dinner that night, we all toast with some of the last vodka we have onboard.

Дай Боже! God help us.

We all get drunk, and myself and Leerson sloppily give each other head in the cryo room ten minutes before nap time.

Then, we all lay down. We all sleep. The big sleep. 

....

Two months later, the routine happens. This time, I get the bad pod. Or I'm just hungover, because when I wake up my brain is broiling practically. I groan loudly. You weren't supposed to get in these things drunk. 

Something Something average freezing point of your blood. Something Something brain damage. 

Whatever, I'd done it plenty of times.

And I was perfectly fine.

Coffee, Even Cap is quiet as we all shuffle to the main quarters. The center table is a circle, a huge one that fits all 26 crew members. Leerson practically sitting on my lap as we both chug coffee and eat tin-foil wrapped cornbread. She snuck Elysian Honey in her carryon. 

Having a huge dick really has it's perks. Like honey on cornbread.

I'm putting on a pressure suit; Replacing an antennae.

Something dinked us while we were asleep and almost gave center command a heart attack. Leerson corners me in the airlock bay and kisses me deeply; before plugging in my larynx-chord, and helping me with my helmet. 

"Stay safe out there."

"Oh honey, don't worry ... ... ... Done thousands of these." I say, through the oxygen injector cutting my sentence in half and forcing my breath back down my throat.

She nods, and I step into the airlock. She closes the door, and suddenly in my ear, I hear Sier's voice.

"Alright, let's do this nice and safe today, ja?"

"Who let an alcholic cloned ... ... commie monkey ... ... operate CommSat?"

"Eat shit,  Cammy."

"No thank you, but ... ... ...  maybe piss if I'm drunk enough."

This makes them laugh. The suspense of the wait. You gotta time things well in these suits.

The airlock depressurizes, and suddenly I'm living life in a ziplock bag. Void pinching around me.

I actually love this feeling, once my eyes and the rest of my body adjust and I can stop squinting. 

Spacewalks were peaceful, to me. I didn't really fear for my life or get wildly anxious about falling out into space like some of the more terrestrial crew members. It was like any other job. Just do it right, and you don't get any problems. 

And there was the tether besides. Motherfuckers always forgot the tether.

So yeah, Cap usually gave me this job, which suited everyone just fine. The rest of the crew probably would have drawn and quartered me by now if I wasn't the designated Space Walker™.

I take a deep breath of filtered air, my favorite, and let my gaze sweep out over the fields of stars. There was nothing out here, no suns close enough to hurt my eyes through my horrifically thick and deeply tinted helmet visor.

I turned- the automatic air jets in my suit activating in tune with my muscle movements and responding to me, allowing me to move in Zero G. 

I'd used far, far clunkier suits, heavy things that controlled more like tanks with too much momentum and often led to first time space walkers splattering themselves on the hulls of their ships. 

Even though the suits were far sleeker and almost completely automated these days, that imagery had never left. People still had images of splintered bones and mangled metal, burst O2 canisters sending tiny beads of blood out, out, into space, forever drifting with the inertia of a wasted death.

Couldn't be me. Skill issue to be honest.

There, past the helm of the ship, was one star that was maybe five times larger than the pinpricks around it. A small ink blot of white light that shone through the darkness like a beacon. Our job lay there, more or less.

I whistle a workman tune, comedically interjected with the oxygen tubes forcing my lungs to expand, while I kneel in position, starting to unscrew the original antennae, and getting the new one ready. The old one's tip is broken off and melty. Poor thing. 

I tuck the scrap metal into my pack, and then get to work rewiring it's base, making sure everything is still steady. 

I could practically tap dance out here if I wanted to. The artificial gravity always made these things a cake walk. Just don't be an idiot. 

And pray a meteor too small for your radar to pickup doesn't come.

"Hey, Cam, You hear the Ceruvian Civil War ended?"

"No shit?"

"Mhm, The rebels won too. Silicosteel Corp made some deal with them and now have mineral rights."

"Huh. Well ... ... ... I guess it's better than ... ... ...nothing."

I'm stepping back to the hull but... I turn back and look at the ink blots. I grab my view finder and look out. At the speed we were going, we'd be arriving in 26 hours. I zoom in.

Osiris. The planet is covered in dense storm clouds. It sits grey. It looks sickly. Doesn't help the pit in your stomach as you watch hurricane clouds swarm and swirl.

"Cam?"

I jump and little, and grip hard on the viewfinder.

"Everything good?"

"Yeah, sorry, I was... starspotting."

"Mhm, well c'mon cowgirl, you are wasting o2."

The airlock hisses and pressurizes behind you. The room fills with matter. You swim in it again as you start to twist your helmet off. 

On the other side is a short, tiny femboy. 

He would punch you if he heard you say that, but he was. Cricket is what everyone called him. Everyone also made him clean the vents for that reason. He was holding a clip board, and looking up at me.

"Hey, cutie."

"Don't."

I snicker, and start to zip off the pressure suit. Cricket was the ship's Nutrition Officer. Basically, he handled the food, cooked and freeze dried everything between wake-ups. 

He actually wakes up three days before us to make sure all of our food is up to code. Which is why he always looked exhausted. 

One time he had fallen asleep on my chest while we were watching some alien movie on the television.

To over exert my point, Cricket had never even let our hands touch when he handed me food. Still, he worked harder than most of us.

"I need you to authorize the credit charges for rations."

"Oh, ... ... ...  and what if I don't?" I ask, and then finally rip the tubes out of my nostrils, with an unflattering gag.

"Then I'll feed you the leaking xerox gel out of the radiator."

I laugh, and took his papers. End of shuttle shit. Everyone for the next few weeks was going to need their papers signed and faxed. Papers they were supposed to do months ago.

"Okay honey."

"Thanks." He said, eye twitching ever so slightly. 

I couldn't help it, really. It was compulsive. I'd told him so before. 

He'd said I should kill myself about it. Once, he'd threatened to call HR on me. I just laughed and told him to go ahead. 

I laughed even harder when the Captain told Cricket to, and I quote: "Suck it up." 

So good.

I looked down at the shortstack and smiled my best crocodile smile. The one that drove him crazy. Cricket's nose wrinkled and he made a noise of disgust. 

"You are an animal, you know that?" 

"We're all animals baby," I replied, leaning forward. "Lemme show you what animals do-"

WHAP

Cricket slapped me in the face. Full palm, hard. Hard enough that I knew my face would be red for a few minutes after. I blinked in shock and rocked back on my heels. 

Ah, my old friend... 'Did I just get hit?'

Cricket is already stomping away in his chunky space boots by the time I'm back to my senses. I let out a low whistle. 

"What a woman," I say to no one in particular.

"That 'woman' is a 5'4" man who could kill you with his bare hands if he wanted to."

I jump, forgetting that my headset isn't attached to my spacer helmet.

"I'd rather he break my neck with those thighs of his. Mmmh." I pause after a moment. 

"So you heard that, huh?"

"Ooh yes. A real solid one, eh? Your mic peaked." Sierpinski replies.

"I think I'm in love."

"I will never understand you."

"He has hips that make me wanna get him pregnant. Simple biological urges, Sier."

"You are a fucking idiot."

"I know, I know. You better not be recording this session."

"I already deleted the archive."

I grin and put a cigarette to my lips. Face still stinging. I'm about to go rail Leerson over her little research table, maybe even make Minerva watch for as long as it takes her to leave the room. But then;

"Second Private Syntrax, Please report to garden bay for rewiring duty."

I grit my teeth. That's Nutritional Officer grounds. I bet Cricket was thrilled to hear that announcement. 

I have one of those changes of hearts that come with really not wanting to push someone to the actual point of murder. Last couple of jumps. Then we're all home. 

I pickup a toolbox on the way over, and slap Jameson's ass as I walk past him. He's one of two physicians onboard. He laughs, and points a meaty finger at me.

"See you on the court tonight, bitch." He says.

"You'll wish you hadn't when I'm done porking your shit."

I turn the corner and the shit eating grin turns sour. 

I punch in access to the greenhouse. This part of the ship was very important. So, I get misted with sterilizing agent and then step through a tent flap, after putting on a clear plastic body suit. I have to put all the tools through a wash too.

Cricket is sitting in the corner, by a access panel next to a display.

"Hey, I wanted to apologi-"

"No." He says.

Cricket sighs, and shakes their head. Speaking delicately and angrily in a way that made my head spin.

"No, just... I shouldn't of laid hands on you. It was unprofessional." He says, crossing his arms.

I shrug, sorting my toolbox back together as they all come out of the sterilizer.

"No, It's okay, I get it. I've been chasing you for a while now, you are straight and I'm sure i-"

"What? I am not straight." He says.

A moment of quiet sits between us as I move closer to the wiring. 

"Why do you hate me so much then?"

"Because you are persistent and annoying. And greasy. and an alcoholic. Not to mention, even if I were straight, you are a girl, no?"

"Well... You got me there." I say, sighing. We both sit in silence for a second.

"I'm... I'm sorry. This detour has just got me all frazzled. We were barely gonna pull through our original course there, with half rations. We're going to be down to... Spirulina pucks and Protein paste, disgusting." He says, sighing.

I'm disconnecting some faulty wires, and reattaching new wires while I listen.

"You are a really good chef. I'm sure you'll figure something out." I say, absent mindedly as I work.

He sighs a little, and looks up at the UV lights that were currently awake.

"Why did you start working freight?" He asks.

"Paying for my surgeries and hormones. After my first few runs all my friends were dead. Figured I just keep doing this."

I spark a soldering iron a few times, testing it's battery pack, before sitting back and looking at the wires as if they were a beautiful art piece.

"What about you?" I ask.

"It started with a way to see the worlds. See other culture's cuisines. But... I don't really even know anymore. At a certain point it just became cornbread and diet schedules..."

He laughed a little, but it's sour. A heavy silence. I close the panel, and stand upright.

"We still have all that synthyolk from that misdelivery right?"

"Mhm, Why?" He asks.

"And plenty of flour, right?"

"Always."

We step into the sterile-locker room and put our used jumpsuits in the dirty bins.

"Well... Maybe tonight you could whip up a pasta. Watch one of those Ceruvian monster movies you like so much?" I ask.

He's quiet, thinking as we walk out of the green house together.

"Leerson stowed away some Elysian Prawns in the freezer. I think she forgot about them." I say, maybe sweetening the deal.

"You aren't going to try to fuck me the whole time?"

I scoff a little.

"I'll do my best not to be a horny weirdo."

He grins a little.

"It's a date then." He says, squeezing my hand. I can still feel the outline of his slap and for some reason those two combined stimuli make my dick throb.

"You sure you wanna use that word with me?" I raise an eyebrow.

Cricket half shrugs, clearly trying not to get pissed at me again already. 

"Just be good. Please?"

"Oh, I'll be sooo good."

Cricket drops my hand like a sack of bricks and walks away. Not quite storming off. 

Me and my big fucking mouth. But hey, I still had a date for tonight. His words, not mine. I try to muster up the energy to feel bad about it and find myself coming up short. Oh well.

Right before the short... man? walks out of sight, he turns back around, face is that familiar annoyed mask that I'm used to again. He opens his mouth once, twice, then closes it again.

"I'll see you later," he says finally, and leaves.

I sigh, and barely have enough time to oogle him before I'm tightening connector-pins again.

[yourlocalmerchgirl]

Love and Beskar- Part One

Din Djarin x ADHD/anxious F!reader

Summary: Its been 6 months since Din saved you when he was on a hunt but the longer you're with him he starts to wonder if maybe it was you that saved him.

Soft! Din Djarin x ADHD/anxious F!reader

Warnings: soft Din , concerned Din, protective Din, Din falling in love, ADHD and anxious reader.

A/N: I hope you all love this new multi part journey I've been working on as much as I do! I'm extremely proud of this story.

Din often heard the light sounds of your feet padding against the cool steel floor of the razor crest at night. Seeming almost restless in nature most nights, shuffling around the bottom of the ship checking to make sure things were locked, walking over to check on Grogu. It was almost like clockwork your movements, as if you’re waiting until you thought he was asleep. Din hasn’t told you but hes gotten used to your sounds, your presence on the ship with him and Grogu, that on the rare nights that he doesnt hear you at night he gets up and quietly checks on you in your quarters. Sometimes he finds you and Grogu curled up and fast asleep together, the bond the two of you had almost immediately reminded him of the two of them.

—————————————————————-

The older you’ve gotten, the more sleep alludes you most nights. It’s when your intrusive repetitive thoughts, your unwanted inner monologue hits you like a freight train. Replaying the things you’ve said from today, yesterday and 10 years ago that could have bothered someone. That could have been the final straw in them wanting to be around you and what you would have or should have said. When you would endlessly think about if the doors were locked or if certain items were shut off. So you’d find your self getting up in the middle of the night, shuffling around to check the invisible list of items on your mind that night, trying to placate your mind enough for the sleep to take over. You always tried to be quiet when doing so never wanting to bother Din or Grogu with your neurosis. Sometimes though Grogu would wake up sensing you were in distress and want to snuggle so you would take him into your quarters and the both of you would drift off to sleep.

Lately your mind races about the incident with Din. You had started making good headway with yourself and with Din. The two of you getting used to each others presence, both letting each other into the fortresses you have around yourselves. You were starting to feel less in the way and more comfortable talking with him. But you HAD to go and fuck it up, figuring it was only a matter of time before you talked to much, asked too many questions, pushed too hard to connect.

You kept replaying it in your head, the way he said Stop, enough questions in a tone you hadn’t heard him use with you. You wanted to fix it, to make things better but you didn’t know how so you did the only thing you knew how to do to protect yourself. You withdrew into yourself, becoming quiet, and making yourself as small as possible.

————————————————————-

You can feel the Razor Crest touching down as you’re laying in your quarters with Grogu. You can tell buy the way the ship is landing that it’s not an emergency or Immediate danger so you stay there.

Knock, knock

“Come in” you say your voice meek and defeated.

Din slides the door to you quarters open to see you curled up in bed reading, Grogu happily babbling in your lap.

“We’re docked in Mos Eisley. I’m going to have Peli refuel and do a tune up on the ship. We can go into town to stock up on things for the ship at the market.”

“I don’t really feel up to it, I think I’ll just stay here and nap.”

“I’ll be gone for a couple hours, will you be alright?”

“I’ll be fine, I’m just feeling off. I have my coms, if I need anything I’ll let you know or I’ll find Peli.”

“Should I take Grogu?”

“Grogu, do you want to go with dad or stay here?”

Grogu looked up at you, over to Din and then back at you before he lays back on you.

“When you’re done napping, if you’re up to it, go out, I bet Peli would like to see you” Din says with hesitation. He doesn’t want to leave you for that long. He knows somethings off, that you’re sad.

“Well look at that, it’s my favorite tin man, where are my friends the kid and the girl? You didn’t ditch them did you?”

“They’re napping so make sure the droids don’t bother them”

“You hear that boys? Don’t bother them, because you won’t like tin man when he’s angry”

“You still have a speeder I can borrow?”

“It’s gonna cost you extra” Peli says with a smirk

“I’ll be gone a couple of hours, is it ok if they stay here? I’m sure they will come out and visit”

“Yea that’s alright, they’re lucky I like them” Peli chuckles.

And with that Din headed off to the market. He’s unable to shake how you’ve been the last week, he knows he’s the result of the problem but he doesn’t know how to fix it.

Din is making quick work of the market when he accidentally hears you on the coms talking to Grogu.

“Oh little buddy what am I going to do? I like your dad but I know I upset him and I don’t know how to fix it”

*Grogu cooing”

“I know it doesn’t matter, because he’d never feel the same. I know I’m just in the way but I like being with you two.”

*Grogu babbling and laughing happily*

“Its hard to be sad around you little buddy, thanks for always listening to me”

Din stops in his tracks, his whole body burning under his armor as the feeling that’s been gnawing at him creeps back in. He has been trying to convince himself that he didn’t have feelings for you, that in the 6 months you’d been with him and Grogu had been the happiest he’s been in his life. Trying to push the feeling away telling himself, there’s no way you’d share the same feelings for him, a bounty hunter and a man you could not see. But as he hears you telling Grogu that you like him, emotions flood his every sense momentarily. He realized that in the action of trying to deal with his own feelings, he was pushing you away. He had become short and agitated with you causing him to hurt you. Din thinks back to the night he snapped at you as he stops at a shop in the market that sells books. How he’s become completely overwhelmed by the fact that you seemed to care about him, that you cared to ask questions about the Razor Crest and about his life as a Mandalorian and his childhood, that it became to much for him to bare, causing him to lash out.

Din can’t help but smile when he enters the shop because it makes him think of you. He knew how much you loved books and when the credits allowed he would get you new books but usually you guys could only afford to get you one every so often. The shop owner looks at Din as if he should need help at any moment but Din knows what he’s looking for. When it came to you he was scary good at remembering the little details. He knew the kind of books you liked, the snacks that you loved, even the types of fabrics that irritated your skin, priding himself in remembering every detail he could about you no matter how big or small it was. One of Din’s favorite things was performing acts of services for you from something as big as protecting you from unsavory characters to hiding little gifts in your bunk for you to find. The way he could hear your excitement echoing through out the ship when you found the item he hid that time.

Din finished at the shop packed up the speeder bike and made his way back to Peli’s hanger. When he arrived he saw you sitting outside on the ramp to the Razor Crest while you watched Peli playing with Grogu, giving him a warm smile as he walked up you three.

“Come on little guy, let’s get you all situated and strapped in while your dad loads the ship up.” You say taking Grogu from Peli and saying your goodbyes.

Din loads the ship up and places the new books in your bunk for you to find later, before he joins you two in the cockpit. He can’t help but notice the way you rolled your head back to look at him as he approached his chair, a lightless to your smile that hadn’t been there in a couple weeks.

“What?” He chuckled as he starts warming the ship up.

“Oh sorry, it’s nothing… I’m just happy to see you”

“Oh, I’m happy to see you too” Din says a hint of surprises in my modulated tone. Though you couldn’t see him he was smiling at your comment under his helmet.

He sets the the course and the three of you take off.

“We should be in a good place now to rest for a bit, I’ve set the coordinates, it will be a couple days journey”

“Ok, I’ll go rest then, have a good night Din”

You make way down the ladder and to your bunk when you notice a bundled up gift on your bed.

Din hears you gasp in excitement as you’re door slides closed as he’s coming down the ladder. He can’t help but smile as he pictures your excitement , your surprise when you find not one, not two but three new books bundled up. One of Din’s favorite things to do is watching you pick out books, the way you trace your fingers long the letters and designs of the covers. Feeling every dip, every groove, every texture change. The way your eyes soften and the corners of your mouth turn up into a smile while when you’re reading a overview that you like.

—————————————————————

You breath in deeply, letting the steam fill your lungs as the hot water beads down over your body, tapping against the shower floor as it falls. You allow yourself to fully check out, allowing the sound of the shower to consume you finally quieting your mind. The heat of the shower hugs your body, sometimes it provides the only relief you feel in the day.

After drying your hair and getting dressed you make your way out to the main part of the ship, still needing to quiet your mind if you’d have any chance at sleeping tonight.

Going over to trunk of extra blankets and pillows, you load a bunch up in a net, going back to your bunk you grab one of your new books and a lamp. Making your way up the ladder into the cockpit you spread out the blankets and pillows making yourself a cozy little nest under the stars.

On his way back from using the privy Din notices the door to your bunk is open but it’s empty. That’s when he hears it, the faintest sound of you humming, the same little hum you make when you’re reading. Din slowly climbs the ladder to see you curled up.

“Is.. everything ok?”

You turn around to see him coming up the ladder.

“Yea…sorry everything’s alright, I just come up here and read under the stars sometimes when I’m restless and can’t sleep.”

As you turn to speak to him, Din notices you’re already reading one of the new books he got you.

“Is it ok to sit with you? I won’t bother you, I just can’t sleep either.”

“Sure, I’m almost done reading this part” you reply as your turn back around to continue.

You put down the book and lay back into the blankets only to jolt back up just as quickly when you lay back onto Dins leg accidentally.

“ oh good I’m so sorry I wasn’t paying attention” you say as you whip around embarrassed.

Something ignited inside of Din in that moment. A desperation to feel close to you, to be able to sooth you and quiet your mind in the same way you did for him when you were around.

“No no, it’s ok… you can lay back like that if you want”

“Really?…” you say, your voice dripping with confusion, your mind not sure what to do.

“Here, hold on one second” he says before you hear a snap and the delicate sound of metal on metal. You look back over your shoulder to see Din removed the piece of beskar armor that covers his thigh before dragging your eyes up to meet his visor.

You give him a warm smile but you body stays motionless, you’re sure your misunderstanding the situation.

“It’s ok, here let me help guide you” Din says as he ghosts his hand up your spin to help steady you as you lay back.

Your whole body feels like it’s been set ablaze as you settle back with you head nestled on his thigh. You look up to find his gaze is already on you.

“Is…is this ok?” You Ask nervously

“This is ok. Are you ok?” Din ask, intently watching you through his visor trying to read any discomfort in your body langue.

“Yes, im ok. This is…this is actually nice” you say as you smile up at him, a sense of calmness washing over you.

“Are the books I picked out ok?”

“They’re perfect, I love them. You really didn’t have to get me so many. Thank you so much”

“ You deserved them, you work really hard helping me care for Grogu and I know things havn’t been the easiest between us. I couldn’t pass up finding several I thought you’d like.”

“Im also very sorry that I hurt you… I didn’t mean to snap at you, it’s just hard getting used to having someone around that cares and actually wants to know me. What I do for work, being a bounty hunter is a lonely and at times violent job. It’s been a adjustment having you and Grogu around but I like it, I just got overwhelmed.”

“It’s ok Din, I’m sorry if at any point I’m talking to much or asking to many question. I just feel comfortable talking to you but can get a little awkward when it comes to making conversation.”

Din can’t help but notice how at ease you look snuggled up to him, the smile never leaving your lips since you first laid down. You couldn’t see but he hadn’t stopped smiling either underneath his helmet. He doesn’t want this moment to end, he’ll lay with you like this as long as you’d let him. Din puts his arm around you, gently resting his hand on your stomach.

“I didn’t like being away from you today” you say softy your eyes closed.

“I didn’t like being away from you today either” Din can’t believe what he’s hearing. He hating being away from you for part of the day today, but never thought you’d share that sentiment.

You can feel yourself start to drift off to sleep as you reach up cupping you’re hand over Dins.

Tag List:

@alyhull @frecklefacelm @dins-riduur-anthe @ranahx @willowthegremlin @luz-introvertida @jellybeanxc @blushinblossom @starstruckfluff @lhumminglbird @prince-of-hyrule @oxkikixo @maddsunn @whatsthecolourofasmile @magicalcowgirl @myst3batz @homiesexual-or-homosexual @abandonedstairwell @tenebrouspterodactyl @fandomsohmyohmy @none-of-this-makes-any-sense @vee-bees-blog @cheese-bot @dionysusinparis @amyispxnk @morgaussy @goldenhxurs @alongfortheridereader @lovelyladiess @its-dee-lovely @pascal-is-punk @sailorsophiee @kalllistos @ilovefluffyfanfixs

[alexanderwales]

Game Review: Factorio: Space Age (pt 1)

Factorio is my favorite game of all time. I played it very early on, then periodically after that. When I started, the graphics were much uglier, there was no nuclear power, biters dropped little purple orbs you needed to use in science, ninety percent of the current QoL was missing, and it was still one of my favorite games.

Before the Space Age expansion, I had ~1200 hours in the game, partly because it was my go-to game when I was a stay-at-home dad and my son was napping beside me on the couch. I've played not only vanilla Factorio, but a lot of overhaul and other mods. These are the overhaul mods that I've finished:

Bobs

Bobs + Angels

128k

Krastorio 2

Space Exploration

Exotic Industries

Freight Forwarding

Additionally, I made it to the terraforming stage of Nullius and py science 2 of Pyanodon's, but didn't finish either of them. This is all for context, where I'm coming from in this review. I have no idea what it's like for a new player, but my guess is that it feels complex as all hell.

The Space Age expansion expands the game by adding in 4.5 new planets (Vulcanus, Fulgora, Gleba, Aquilo, and space itself) as well as a major-but-optional mechanic, quality. I'm dividing up this review along those lines, which is the natural way to do it, but in theory all these things are meant to work in harmony with each other, so I'll be trying to take that into consideration. Spoilers will follow in each section, but the Factoriopedia has everything right from the start, and the devs consider it a game that does not actually have spoilers, so take that as you will.

In my opinion, the real spoilers are the designs for things you build along the way, but there will also be some screenshots of those.

The Same Old Early Game

You start on Nauvis with a crashed ship, a pickaxe, and abundant mineral deposits. If you're new to the game, red science and green science can easily take 20 hours to figure out, particularly if you're playing with biters on. For me, it was about two hours to build designs that I have built maybe dozens of times before. The basic furnace stack that handles incoming iron, copper, and stone has not changed, and will not change.

If I consider the basic gameplay of Factorio to be the design and decision process, then there's no gameplay here. Each entity needs to be placed by hand, and you can make rows of things by running up and down, but still ... it felt like a slog to me, and this is the first ~4 hours of Space Age, assuming you're going moderately fast and making a beeline to bots.

Once you have bots, it gets much less tedious, and you can start slapping down blueprints, expanding the base as rapidly as the machines can turn raw materials into finished buildings. There are a few differences from the base game, including terrain generation, some stuff with trains, science checkpointing ... but it'll all be well familiar to veterans, and in my opinion, is pretty skippable. I set up walls to keep the biters out, trains to supply the variety of turrets on the wall, solar and nuclear, and outposts for as much resources as I would need for the next few dozen hours, then made my first space platform and began the actual expansion stuff.

Space!

Space platforms are created by launching a starter pack up, which you can then send materials to. Bots aren't allowed in space, and your character isn't either, and it seems to me that a lot of the game design was built around wanting the player to grab resources from out of space and do some complicated belting to keep everything organized and prevent it from locking up. There are no chests allowed in space, and the only thing that acts as a container is the central hub of the platform, of which you can have only one. This means that if you want storage, you have to route everything through this big warehouse, and it gets complicated the more you have items going in and out.

I would say that generally I think this works from a gameplay perspective, but there are a few things that are needlessly obtuse or unfriendly, getting in the way of the platform design stuff that's supposed to be the star of the show. One of them is definitely "automatically request materials for construction", which will send up an entire stack of something you only need one of. This is an issue in the early game, assuming you didn't overprepare on Nauvis to have a base with ~20 rockets per minute. Frontloading this difficulty, which becomes less serious later, is bad design, and you end up having to manually go through rocket loading to not waste enormous amounts of resources.

(The easiest way I've found to do this is to make a blueprint of the ship, click "add section" on logistics to make it a logistics group, set a requester chest to that logistics group, then unselect that logistics group once everything is there, then use an inserter to feed that stuff into a rocket and manually launch it every time it's full, and even that sort of sucks, because the blueprint makes a logistics group that will have the hub and extra platform in it, and holy hell is none of this intuitive or friendly, why could they not just have coded it so that rockets would auto-combine things into groups?)

Going slightly out of sequence here, but I'll talk about the space stuff all at once here. Over the course of normal play, I think the intent is that you design approximately five ships:

A space science ship that sits in orbit, collecting materials from asteroids and doing bare minimum processing on them to turn them into space science, which gets sent back down to the labs. I made one very early on and then didn't ever have much cause to touch it again, except to send up some better assemblers and slightly expand it with no major changes.

An inner planets ship with chemical plants, engines, furnaces, and an ammo assembler that feeds turrets to shoot down asteroids, which the grabber arms then take chunks of for the materials to run the chemical plants and be made into ammo. (I dubbed this the Dart-class, pictured below is the SS Christopher Wren.)

An Aquilo ship with rocket turrets to shoot down the larger asteroids that the normal turrets have problems with. This requires advanced asteroid processing to get sulfur and coal synthesis to make coal, which gets made into explosives to make rockets. Probably at the same time you're switching over to advanced fuel processing with calcite. (I dubbed this the Jacknape-class, pictured below is the SS John Napier.)

An outside the system ship with rail guns to shoot down the largest asteroids. This requires making rail gun ammo, which needs steel and copper wire, and to power all that you're probably not going to use solar, which gets much worse out at the edge, so likely you'll be doing nuclear or fusion. (I used a lightly modified Jacknape-class for this, though it would have been better to do a full redesign.)

A shattered planet ship that is capable of harvesting promethium, which I have not actually made yet, but requires scaling up even more.

Overall, I found the increasing complexity of designs to be very pleasing, even if it sometimes felt a little bit forced. Not having bots I can maybe understand, but not having chests felt like a very blatant design decision rather than something that came about naturally from considering space and what it means, especially since the belts still work. Designing the SS John Napier was one of my favorite parts of the entirety of Space Age, partly because it was so constrained, and I knew that my individual decisions were creating individual problems of my own making.

I will say that space is where Factorio shows its limitations far more than elsewhere. In programming terms, Factorio uses something called a "surface", and each planet is its own surface, as is each ship. Surfaces cannot interact with each other, and in the mods I've tried where they do (more than just hooking up inputs and outputs) it's always been a bit jank. Still, this means that there are a lot of things that cannot be done:

Docking one ship to another

Having a ship land on a planet

Having a ship have any verticality to it

The ships also look a little ... well, bad. They look like a bunch of things have been placed on a flat slab, especially when they get larger. This can be helped a little bit by adding walls around the ship, but it doesn't help much, and there's no aerodynamic consideration, so the ideal design is probably a big box of some kind, and the space platform that everything is built on looks even less ship-like than everything else. The exception is the engines, which look awesome, but I don't think having one element look really cool makes up for the rest looking a bit weird.

Funny enough, the Space Exploration mod actually does do some of the things that these ships don't do, like docking, landing on a planet, etc. It was a bit jank there too, but it did kind of sort of work. And those ships needed to take aerodynamics into consideration, though I can't remember what the formula was like, and it was pretty opaque.

I do not need to have the entirety of Kerbal Space Program inside of Factorio, but I do think there are a lot of things that are neat about space that they just decided not to touch. The planets are in static positions, always the same distance from each other, and there's no need to worry about launch windows or delta-V or gravity slingshots or light-speed communication delays any of the other cool rocketry things. Some of that would be a nightmare to implement, other things would probably not be very fun, but it feels like there was a lot left on the floor.

It's interesting that spaceships in this game are self-sufficient by nature, gathering materials from asteroids and never needing resupply. It's also interesting that there are two basic modes for ships, in-flight and in-orbit, with different considerations for defense and production, though I don't think they ended up doing all that much with this distinction. If spaceships could land on planets, you could have three distinctions, and if they could be flying through interstellar asteroid-less space you could have four, and I think that would be cool, but the focus of Space Age is mostly on the new planets, not on the spaceships.

It's at this point that I've realized that this review is going to be very long, so I'm splitting it into parts. The four planets will be the next part, but before I wrap this up, I can talk about one of the other things that came with the expansion: quality.

What Quality is Quality?

I would say that of the 140 hours that Space Age took me, about 30 hours were spent messing around with the "quality" mechanic, and of those, most were "wasted" in the sense that they did not meaningfully make a better factory, even if I enjoyed the process.

Quality divides almost everything in the game into tiers, with higher tiers having better features, which depend on the specific building or product. Resource extractors do less resource drain. Production buildings get better crafting speed. Weapons get better range. Some things get faster and require more power for that speed, while others get speed without needing more power.

There are a few sticking points with quality.

One of them is that machines cannot use a quality product if they're not set for a recipe that requires it, meaning that an "uncommon" gear cannot take the place of a common gear. I assume that this was either an engine limitation or a deliberate challenge for the players, but either way, I don't like it. Quality does kind of make sense, since it's something that exists within real world manufacturing, where parts need to be within certain tolerances, but it wouldn't be the case that a gear that's inside a narrower band couldn't be used for purpose that's in a wider band. Factorio is the wrong game to be making real world comparisons for, but the argument is that an uncommon gear shouldn't be enough to gum up the works.

One of my plans for quality was to "skim" quality parts. The last machines in a stack of assemblers would be given quality modules, and of the thousands that they made, a few would be high enough quality that they could go into a chest, and that chest would be used for making personal equipment and spaceship parts, where they potentially make the most difference. At a certain point, I misconfigured one of these setups, and some quality gears got on the belt, which gummed up the entire factory and required me to clean several lines and restart a bunch of processing. This is a skill issue, yes, but it's an unpleasant complication of quality generally.

Quality comes from quality modules, and in general, the modules are a matter of trade-offs, whether you want more speed, more efficiency, or to make the most of materials. Quality ... well, quality is an enormous complication. You can't simply put in machines. You need entirely new setups for it, and even skimming feels like kind of a weird and gross way of doing things.

Here's how I wish it worked: You put quality modules into machines, and they can make quality things at a set chance. Those products can go down the line and be used in any recipe that requires lower or equal quality. Uncommon gears and chips would get consumed by machines that make normal quality engines or whatever. This would instantly solve at least half of my frustrations, but it would also be simpler, and not so much of a challenge.

How it works now is that you either silo away all qualities from each other, or you engage some kind of recyclotron that attempts a craft and instantly junks it if it's not quality. This is one of my tileabale parameterized recyclotrons:

Blue chests request normal quality materials, machines make the base product, anything not at the desired quality gets recycled, materials go on the belt to be made into more of the desired thing. There are some circuit conditions set up, one to shut down the machines if the desired number of quality machines have been made, and another to set the inserters to only pull from the chest if there are no materials on the sushi belt.

I think this is interesting, but if this is all quality is, then the juice isn't worth the squeeze.

Before building my final ship, I set up full quality on Fulgora, at a place isolated from the main base. It separated out every item at every tier, then used roboports to put things together. It was more interesting than the recyclotron, with better/faster/cheaper results, but still kind of meh, and I kept wondering why I was spending all this time trying to make a chemical plant that was twice as good when I could have built a second chemical plant for half the cost.

My other major gripe with quality is that it makes blueprinting a pain in the butt. First, because the speeds of machines are different, which throws off ratios, but second, because if I want my machines to be of the best quality available, there's no way to easily do that. What I want is to have a tool where I drag across a bunch of machines and say "upgrade these in accordance with the highest quality in the logistics network", but what I have to do instead is count the number of each type of machine, then manually go through and replace them, and if I do this, then I have to manually go upgrade machines as more become available, and this means that I can't just copy sections of the factory to duplicate them, because they'll be at a mishmash of quality on buildings. I spent a lot of time fiddling with the upgrade planner, which I didn't enjoy.

The Fulgora setup, at endgame, is currently making the legendary quality modules necessary to make the legendary quality modules necessary to make legendary quality buildings of all kinds. I think pouring enormous resources into that makes for a megabase, but mixed quality faces lots of usability concerns, and I think of all the approaches (skimming, recyclotron, mass sorting) the recyclotron is the one that I'm most likely to end up actually using in future playthroughs.

Which is to say that I think quality as a mechanic is one or two steps away from being good, as much as the rewards do often feel worthwhile. The puzzle of quality has not, for me, been a highlight.

In the next part of the review: the four planets.