Lying on her back with her head resting against a heavy backpack, T.A focused on the data pad in her hands showing a small brown planet. “Ok Yarra, turn on those gravity drives,” she ordered, her husky old voice managing to sound excited. “The point is to bring the planet into your orbit and then drag it to the Goldilocks Zone.”
“Is it going to work?” Yarra asked, her beautiful light voice whispered, mirroring T.A’s excitement.
“It’s a sound theory,” she said with a shrug. “I don’t see how else we are getting the planet back into the life belt after the Krib knocked it out.” T.A’s eyes opened wide, “Man you should have felt the shockwave off that hit!”
“How many times must I tell you that I hate your old war stories?” Yarra asked angrily making T.A frown.
“What is a Goldilocks anyway?” T.A asked.
“It is the circumstellar habitable zone or the region around a star within which a planetary-mass objects with sufficient atmospheric pressure can support liquid water on their surfaces.”
“Gee, thanks for reading the data stream on life belt for me. I know what that is. I want to know what a Goldilocks is and why we call the band of life the Goldilocks Zone.” She tapped the distance counter on the data pad as if trying to make it move.
“Unclear,” Yarra replied making T.A grin.
“It’s got to hurt when the stupid ex-soldier stumps the all knowledgeable Yarra.”
“I’ll have you know…”
“Move! Move! Move!” T.A shouted, as the tiny planet loomed huge on the data pad.
“On it,” Yarra replied sounding shaken.
“Almost there…” T.A stalled, “Kill the drive!”
“Just one more…” Yarra stalled and then the planet started shrinking away on the display again.
“Report!” T.A scowled as she slid the data pad into her worn old pilot jacket and sat up. She slid the backpack on and then grabbed the forearm crutches that were beside her. She slid her right hand through the band and grabbed the handle to push herself onto her feet before situating the left crutch and swinging her way toward a dome-shaped drone hovering nearby.
“It will… uh… be a little hotter than normal, but the planet is well within acceptable parameters and has settled back into orbit just as it once was,” Yarra reported. T.A scowled at the news as she stopped at the drone. It was a pretty emerald green with black dappled pattern across it, just like everything else around her. She took up the harness attached to the ten-foot-long drone and put it on. “You could just fly out, you know,” Yarra continued.
“I am flying out,” T.A muttered, “So get me down to the planet already,” she ordered.
“In-flight now,” Yarra replied, sounding repentant. “I just meant on the planet. You don’t have to lug that thing around. I can drop you closer.”

“Thanks for the mothering, really, but this old soldier needs to feel the ground and see the sky.”

“How’s it feel?” Yarra asked, sounding a little scratchy now that she was in T.A’s earpiece and not present, but no less excited.
“Windy,” T.A. replied as the harsh winds tore at her short hair. Her voice was muffled by the facemask that brought her fresh air and protected her eyes. “Desolate,” she sighed as she looked into the brown haze of the air, scanning the flat landscape until she saw a hill and then she moved toward it. The drone followed along behind her like a balloon, despite the fact it weighed more than a few tons.
The hill turned out to be the broken face of a building. “Damn Krib,” T.A. cursed.
“What?” Yarra asked excitedly, “What do you see?”
“Old war stuff, Yarra,” T.A. replied with a deep hate-filled scowl etching the skin around her eyes as she moved over to the fallen buildings, burnt and decrepit. White bones jutted out of the red soil as if grasping for help. The wind now sounded like the shriek of a million voices calling out from the grave.

T.A kneeled down to pick up an old toy and dusted off the fuzzy face of a Gry doll. The haggard old soldier rubbed it against her cheek before tossing it back down. “You will live here again my friends,” she promised the wind.

“Please T.A, please hire help,” Yarra begged.
“I’m fine,” T.A grunted. The drone was open and ground camera’s laid so the image of T.A struggling on useless legs to set up machinery far bigger than she, was being relayed back to Yarra. Her strong arms were nothing without leverage and she had none on her crutches.
Unable to complete the task, T.A. took a step back, panting and sweating as she rested on her crutches and looked up at the equipment with a critical eye. A flash of light in the sky distracted her. Even through the thick haze, more flashes of light could be seen.
“Report,” she ordered.
“Report?” Yarra was confused. “On what?”
“Take your sensors off this spot and look into space,” T.A. ordered, sounding furious.
“Pirates!” Yarra shrieked.
“Send me a fighter drone,” T.A. demanded.
“Incoming,” Yarra sounded terrified.
“What’s their target?” T.A. asked.
“Target?” Yarra squeaked.
“Maybe we do need help.”
“T.A., I’m sorry. I just didn’t think…”
“I’m aware,” T.A. shielded her eyes and watched the sky until the fighter was in sight, like a barb of darkness against the bright sun. She gauged its landing zone and crutched to that spot. Yarra cried out in pain. “Yarra! Are you alright?” she demanded.
“Just a scratch, nothing, just… I’ve never been in a fight before.”
“I’m coming Yarra. You were made to be a battleship. Defend yourself if you have to!”
The battle drone settled quietly by her, its sharp nose and turrets looking more like a barbed plant than a spacecraft. She took one deep, calming breath and then got on board.
Inside was the same green and black skin with only a reclined chair in the center. She put her crutches in a little groove on the side of the chair and then fell heavily into it. Softly, she sank into the chair, and it molded around her to keep her in place as metal bands situated themselves at her temples. She felt the odd twinge of electricity and felt the darkness taking over her.

She gasped and her eyes flew open but then she settled and let the darkness come. It took a few moments, but soon enough she and the ship were one entity. Only one in ten billion had the strength of mind to become a ship, and she was one of them. Her crippled body became the memory core for a fighting machine. She though. It acted.

T.A. jumped off the planet with force and flew directly to Yarra. Three ships were skimming close to her, one evading the two trailing ships that were firing on the first. Yarra took another hit and cried out again, but she was not the target. The beautifully dangerous human ship barely leading the pirates was the target. Yarra was just in the way.
T.A. bore down on them and they had no chance of seeing her coming out of the sunlight. She fired on one in the first pass. Her missile connected heavily with a pirate ship, knocking it off course and attaching itself to the ship. Looking blacker in space, the greenish projectile grew along the side of the ship, eating its way through the pirate insignia and then the hull to infest the ship, damaging everything.
The second pirate wavered, unsure of a target but the lead ship was wavering too, equally distracted by T.A’s presence. Seeing it’s pray distracted, the pirate chose his target and fired on it, landing a direct hit before breaking off to engage T.A.
The beautiful ship took the hit but seemed to have a force field protecting it for it skewered off course but was not destroyed as it nosedived toward the planet.
“Track it,” T.A. ordered with a strange buzzing in her voice like she was a hornet on the attack and not a human. She hated the sound but banked around for the second pirate, leading him away from Yarra and the planet before turning to engage him head on.
He fired erratically, unable to lock and hoping sheer numbers would catch her, but she danced easily through the barrage and shot a projectile right across its face. The projectile grew and disabled the ship with ease.
“I’ve never actually fired one of these things,” T.A. realized, “What do they do once they have eaten the ship?”
“They bring it back to me,” Yarra replied proudly. “It becomes fertilizer. Waste nothing, lack nothing the KringJow used to say.”
“Now that I like.” T.A. circled back towards the planet. “Show me where to go?” She asked, reveling in the freedom of movement the battle drone provided.

She saw a blue path materialized in an arc from her location to a spot on the planet. She wasted no time getting down to it, though she did spiral and flirt around the path as she went.

The human ship looked intact, just oddly parked with smoke billowing from it. T.A touched down as close as she could and then released her connection to the battle drone.
Disorientation met her and then the pain that was her body. The pain helped her remember how to navigate her own body but it hurt more mentally to take the crutches back and hobble out of the ship.
A human form was struggling to get out of the downed craft, a hand grasping for something to pull it free. T.A. hurried over, tossed a crutch, and grabbed for the hand. The hand clutched hers, eager to have help escaping the smoke-filled cockpit.
“Fires out!” the pilot reported.
T.A. glared at him, for it was a him, a gorgeously chiseled human him that was lithe and perfect. “Smoke too thick though,” he said casually before passing out.
“I’ll send a drone!” Yarra offered.

“No time,” T.A put a lot of weight on her left crutch as she pulled the man up and half carried, half drug him back to the battle drone. Through sheer will she got him into the ship but pain etched heavily into her expression as she fell into the chair to get them back to Yarra.

“You don’t have to take him all the way!” Yarra wailed.
The man was on a hover sled now so T.A could drag him down the hall in harness, just as she had with the drone.

“Smoke inhalation is no joke. He can’t wait.” She glanced back to the gray pallor of his face and knew it might already be too late.

The infirmary was just another green black room, this time with cubbies in the wall at bed height, just big enough for a person. T.A got down on the ground, abandoned her crutches and grabbed the man to roll him over, off the sled and onto her and then up into a cubby.

“I’ve got him,” Yarra said as the cubby receded into the wall and disappeared. “Now you.” Legs completely useless, T.A drug herself to another cubby and crawled in, panting hard from pain and exhaustion. “I’ve got you. I’ve got you,” Yarra purred as T.A was engulfed.

“What are you going to do with him?” Yarra asked excitedly.
“Take him to the nearest spaceport and dump him,” she replied as she crutched into the infirmary. The cubby was open and the man in plain view. He looked peaceful and perfect in slumber and only a little singed.
She sat down on the floor next to him, set aside her crutches and pulled a pack off her back. She looked back to a hundred percent, but that was only because she had gotten really good at ignoring the constant pain. “He going to wake up?” she asked.
“Soon,” Yarra giggled, “You could always play with him. That might wake him up.”
“What now?” the man sat straight up and looked around quickly. “Humm, I expected two people.” He rubbed his head.
“Why don’t you quit playing dead and eat?” T.A. asked, not being friendly at all as she pulled a tray out of her pack and shoved the tray into his hands. He took it willingly and opened it. His eyes opened wide and he tossed the lid so he could immediately start eating the replicated meal hungrily.
“No seriously, where is the other voice?” he asked, mouth partially full as he looked down to where T.A. was sitting. “She sounded beautiful.”
“It’s just me and the ship.” T.A. jerked a thumb at the ceiling.
“And I am everywhere,” Yarra quipped.
He chewed a moment, as if chewing over the information as well. “So you look beautiful and she sounds beautiful,” he asked T.A before chewing some more. “I thought a cripple saved me.”
“She did,” T.A. picked up her crutches and got to her feet so that she could look down on him.
“Ahh,” he nodded and looked away from her dismissively.
“He should show more respect,” Yarra commented, “Should I just keep him in the wall until we get to the nearest spaceport?”

The man yelped and stood up as the cubby receded into the wall.
T. A rolled her eyes, “Beats looking at his self centered face,” she crutched away.
“Oh hey now,” he hurriedly got up to follow, bringing his tray with so he could continue eating, “Just not used to being saved by a gorgeous cripple is all. It’s disorienting.”
“Umm… hum,” T.A muttered as she continued out the door and down the hall.
“So uh, about this spaceport… Can I get passage for me and my ship?”
“He asks with his mouth full,” Yarra narrated condescendingly.
“You get my terraforming platform running, and I’ll take you and your ship to the best repair hub onthis side of the United Front.”
“Terraforming? This is a terraforming outfit?”
“What else is a planet sized ship and an old cripple going to do with their time? Now, you going to be my little grunt for a day and buy your ticket out or what?”
“Oh man we got off on the wrong foot. Look, my name is Zig,” he dusted his hand off on his torn uniform and held it out to her. T.A paused and looked back at the hand before sighing and accepting the human custom.
“I’m T.A.,” she replied and then pointed to the ceiling, “and that’s Yarra.” She turned back and continued on, “Don’t get comfortable.”
“I’m eating and jogging down a hall to keep up with a cripple. Nothing about this day has been comfortable.” Zig laughed and then shoved his mouth full of food, “but seriously, I don’t mind working for passage. My ship is my life, you know. If we could just pick it up first, I’d be happy to help.”
“No,” T.A. replied, “Work first, and then we’ll get your precious ship, but don’t fret. I sent drones out there already. They will do what they can to care for your ship.”
“Oh man, that’s awesome. They repair drones?”
“Sort of,” she shrugged.
“Sort of?” he demanded, running to catch up.
“They heal living ships, don’t they Yarra?” T.A asked, as she ran a trailing finger along the walls making Yarra giggle, before grasping the crutch and continuing on, “They will clear the smoke at least and make sure it is safe from fire and the elements until we are ready to go.”
“And when will that be?” he asked nervously.
“Whenever she wants!” Yarra cut in, “If she hadn’t moved so fast you’d be space trash!”
“Hey now! I was going to slingshot this rock and dust those pirates. If you hadn’t gotten in the way,” he looked up to the ceiling to raise a fist so he didn’t notice T.A. come back. She punched him on the shoulder. “Hey!” He complained as he rolled his shoulder around. “That hurt. You cripples are tough.”
“The military hardware helps,” she shrugged.
“Military hardware?” Zig swallowed hard, “You’re an ex-soldier! That’s why you have a planet-class ship and can wail on pirates!”
“Yup. Now, please move,” she turned and continued on her way. “I would like to clear this up and jump you back to civilization before the next solar cycle.”
“You can do that?” Zig’s jaw dropped, and he froze in place.
“Actually… no,” Yarra commented.
“What do you mean, no?” T.A. demanded, stopping as well.
“I don’t think I can jump right now. Those pirates hurt me pretty bad.”
“You said the drones had it taken care of,” her voice brooked on anger, making it even huskier. “You said it was nothing.”
“Well, I thought not but then…” She trailed off. T.A. moved to the wall and put her head against it to sigh.
“So we can take our time and have a decent meal first?” Zig asked hopefully.
T.A. turned and crutched away.

“That a no?” Zig asked.

“You’re a slave driver!” Zig laughed as they reached the drone and machinery she couldn’t budge. “I mean, who trudges all over a planet in this age?” They were both covered in the dust of the planet and the wind was tearing his muffled voice away as he easily reached the control switch, slammed down the accelerator and turned on the equipment.
Large pegs shot deep into the ground making a platform base for a drill that started chewing up the soil beneath it.
“What now?” he asked.
“Now we get off planet before the volcano starts,” T.A commented.
“Before the what?” he demanded.
“How else do you think atmospheres are fixed? Anyway, just a little volcano, more ash and soot than lava, this planet doesn’t need any more catastrophes.”
“We just made a volcano?”
T.A. crutched up to him and patted him on the shoulder as if he were a toddler, “Yes, my slow-brained, little man. We made a volcano. Now, can we please leave before it erupts?”
“Awesome!” He whooped, “Can we watch?”
“If we don’t stay here and die in it, sure, we can watch. I’ll dust the planet with seeds and fertilizer while you watch. Then maybe I can get something accomplished.”
“Besides making a volcano?” he laughed and then yelled challengingly into the wind.
“Wow, what a simple little mind. I wish I could be half as entertained by something.” T.A. rolled her eyes. The ground rumbled and shook. “That enough incentive for you?” she asked. “Can we go now?”

“Yup,” he shut up and moved so fast she had trouble keeping up.

His face was glued to the transparent shell of the observation drone as ash poured into the sky from the budding volcano while lava bombs launched from the fiery cone.
“How’s this terraforming again?” he asked.
“That’s far above this old grunt. Something about particulate matter and outgassing,” she was laid back in the control chair, barely interested as she maneuvered the drone back and forth to cover the ground with seeds, minerals and insect larvae so the ground would be ready to bloom again once the heat returned. “I just find the best spot for a volcano to form and drop the platform on it.”
“Cool job,” he muttered.
“I like to think so,” she muttered back.
“What would you have done if the volcano thing didn’t work?”
“Yarra would have bombed the planet,” she sighed, “Krib bombardment made the atmosphere of Linus 9 so thick ships couldn’t get through it.”

Zig looked back at her quickly to note the sad, wistful look on her normally hard face. It made her look young and vulnerable.

“So, we started a volcano and planted the seeds of life. Now what?” he asked eagerly.
“Now we eat and sleep while Yarra gets us to the closest star dock at whatever speed she can manage,” T.A replied as she threw the heavy backpack off and ambled out of the observation drone into the hanger deck.
“Ahh, come on, that’s no fun. Can’t we do some more terraforming stuff?”
“You really like it?” she asked in surprise as she slowly crutched over.
“Are you kidding? Who gets to see a real live volcano? Most day’s I don’t even get to see a planet!”
“I really miss being a kid,” she sighed and hobbled slowly out of the deck.
“I’m twenty-five. I ain’t no kid and you don’t look more than thirty.”
“Twenty-seven,” she muttered wearily, “Twenty-seven is when I joined. Military upgrades stop the aging process so I could stay in peak physical form until destruction.”
“So then how are you a cripple?”
“I was destroyed,” She sighed, “A driver through my backbone made upgrading my hardware impossible so they tossed me out. I can still feel the rusting Krib metal grating on my spine.”
“Come on T.A,” Yarra cut in, her voice encouraging and strong. “I’ll take care of you.”
Zig moved to follow T.A. but a curtain slammed between them. “A woman must have her privacy,” Yarra giggled, “But come with me, and I’ll see you are cared for.”
“Come with you?” he asked, but then saw tiny lights glow on the ceiling, leading him away, “Oh, sure,” he shrugged and followed the lights. It was quite a long walk, and he saw many passages leading nowhere before a huge cavern opened on either side of the path. The left side was mountains of gold and silver; the right side was an indoor lake, complete with a bioluminescent ceiling that mimicked the stars. “Oh my,” he said in awe as he listened to crickets and watched fireflies on the surface.
“T.A. loves to come here and unwind. You can swim in that old rag or take it off, and I’ll have T.A bring you some clean clothes when she’s finished.”
“You want me to hang around naked until she shows up?” he asked doubtfully.
“T.A. was a soldier for hundreds of years. There is nothing you have that she has not seen before.”
“Hundreds of years,” he scoffed, but he couldn’t take his eyes off the lake. “Alright, I haven’t been in real water for years.”
“T.A. says it’s much better than dust baths or molecular cleansing. Just don’t drown,” she teased.

“I won’t. I’m no stranger to the water.” He turned from the lake to see the faint shimmering of precious metals as he dropped his filthy and tattered space jumper. “My, my T.A., but don’t you have it all?” he whispered to himself before turning and entering the water. Large fish darted away from him. “What luxury,” he muttered as he moved to deeper waters, swimming gracefully.

“Yarra charted our slow rout to Krighton,” T.A. tapped her data pad showing Zig the rout.
“That’s days out,” he looked at her curiously, “Your planet going to be ok that long on its own? How touchy is this terraforming gig?”
“Not very at this phase,” Yarra answered for her. “Volcanoes can erupt for that long, sometimes longer. Oooo! Water!”
“What?” T.A snapped.
“We are approaching a water cloud!” her voice trembled with excitement.
“Ok, but don’t soak too long.” T.A muttered, then turned to Zig, “Terraforming needs lots of water and Yarra is plant based technology. She needs water to stay healthy, so we fill up whenever we can.”
“It’s by a sun!” Yarra sang.
“Oh god. We are never going to get there,” T.A. wilted. “Water and sun… Yarra’s best friends.”
“We’ll play on your dusty rock soon enough,” Yarra argued, “For now, its my play time!”
“We could have some play time,” Zig offered T.A.
“Your dreaming, pirate bate,” she said and then sighed, “but a swim sounds nice.”
“It sure does,” Zig agreed.
“Come on then,” T.A. got to her feet and crutched away.
They went down the hall with T.A in front and Zig following. He slowed just a little and looked around. The hall tightened down but then opened out making it a beautiful choke point.
He dropped his head and glared at T.A before running at her and jumping on her back, slamming her to the ground.
“What are you doing?!” T.A demanded, as she rolled to the side, trying to get him off of her but her hands were tangled in her crutches.
“I’m hijacking your ship while Yarra is distracted. I saw your mountains of gold. They will be mine!” He got his muscular elbow under her chin and squeezed. He was sitting across her back, pulling her head upwards.
“You’re the pirate!” she wheezed.
“Got that right. Fool wingmen thought they were going to get a cut of the score. Weren’t they pissed when I rabbited with it?”
An angry growl came out of T.A. as she untangled her right arm, reached back over her head and then his to grab the base of his neck, four fingers on the huge muscle by his spine while her thumb jerked over his collar bone around to the front of his neck and deep into the soft spot where the jugular and trachea are close together.
As her thumb pressure increased his head swam. He yelped in surprise of how efficiently her thumb was cutting blood flow to his brain. Letting go of her neck he pushed up with his knees, gouging them into her back as he pushed out of her hold. He shook his head to clear his mind, but the world still swam a little and his left arm tingled.
His right arm still worked and he used that to punch her. She rolled under him, grabbed her crutch and slammed it into his face. He reeled back but she grabbed his shirtfront with her left hand so she could hold him in place and pummel him with her right fist.
He broke her hold and went to hit her but she blocked with her elbow knocking his fist away and bashing his chin with her other fist in the same move.
“That ore is for the Gry to rebuild their lives,” she punched him so hard he was knocked off of her. “No fool pirate is going to ruin the lives of millions for his own foolish pleasure.”
Zig threw a punch and managed to connect with her cheek before she propped herself up with her left arm and began beating him again. He tried to punch again but she pushed off with her left arm to dodge, landed on her right hand and began pummeling with her left fist.
Realizing she had full advantage on the ground he forced himself up and stood over her, kicking her side once before she recovered a crutch and jammed it straight into his throat. He dropped to his knees holding his neck. Recovering her other crutch she got to her feet.

“Hijack my ship he says,” she loomed over him. “As if you could ever get Yarra to do your bidding.” He leapt for her but she only turned aside so that he slammed into the wall and crumpled to the ground. “Kids.” She looked up and shook her head.

Back in the fighter drone, T.A. sat over the slumped form of Zig, running gentle fingers over his muscular arm. He was far from perfect, and his face was bruised from the fight.
“I won,” she whispered.
“You are not as useless as you think you are,” Yarra commented softly.
Waking with a start Zig jumped away from her but she didn’t attack so he paused to stare at her.
“The military kicked you out?” he demanded.
“They said I made them look weak,” she said with a shrug.
“They missed a huge opportunity,” he changed to an announcer’s voice, “Don’t mess with the United Front. Even our cripples can kick your ass!”
She chuckled.
“Hey look, a smile, it is possible!” he said and grinned hopefully, “So… not killing me then?”
“Not yet,” she smiled.
“Then what?”
“We’re at Krighton. They are unloading your ship from another drone as we speak.”
“I thought Yarra was broken and swimming near a sun?”
“Yah, that’s what I thought too. The swimming part was real, but apparently, there was never anything wrong with her,” she scowled.
“She shamming so you would have a chance to make a friend?” he asked, trying not to laugh. “Oh, Yarra, you are so sneaky.”
“She’s been alone longer than you’ve been alive. I thought it was time she met someone,” Yarra said airily.
“Too bad you have no skill at picking men,” T.A. rolled her eyes.
“Ha ha, now get him out before I smother him for hurting you.”
“Hurting her?” he demanded, though he did reach out for the cut on T.A.’s cheek from where he had punched her. She stood up and motioned him to precede her out.
“After all that you are going to let me go?”
“The military will catch you sooner or later, and you’ll make a damn fine soldier if you can keep yourself alive.”
“Like they caught you?” he asked, surprised and curious.
“For stealing a cred chit and jumping planets,” she smiled fondly at the memory.
“But no ones done that since the wars began! It’s an old myth! You can’t be thousands of years old. Even military hardware doesn’t grant immortality.”
“The old myth is that it stopped when the wars started, like it happened all at once on all the planets. If the Krib had a force big enough to attack all at once, we never would have won. As it was, the Krib took many planets before anyone cared. We humans stayed out of it until they were on our doorstep. That’s about when I was pressed into service. Now, get out!”
Nodding he got up and went to the door. Using a crutch, she shoved him out the door.
“Too bad,” T.A. muttered, “I could have used a brother to push around.” Zig regained his footing and turned back to her.
“Brother, not lover?” he asked, arching a brow.
“Maybe a friend with benefits, but never anything more,” she shrugged and turned away, the doorway closing behind leaving no visual sign to its existence.

“Yah, that really is too bad,” he turned and sprinted off as the battle drone took off.

“The communications array is pulsing,” Yarra mentioned in surprise.
“Ya, so?” T.A. was on her back with her head on another heavy pack, focused intently on the data pad showing the volcano was still smoking but a carpet of green was gathering around it. “It rained while we were gone. Maybe moving it closer to the sun was a good idea after all. What the…” the image of the planet fuzzed out, she smacked the data pad.
“The pulse is jamming our receivers.”
“You’re being jammed?” T.A. sat up, “You’re a military-encrypted planet!”
“Well, gee, I’m not all powerful,” Yarra snapped.
“That encryption was hot fifty years ago. You really need an upgrade,” Zig said, his face taking over the screen of her data pad.
“You let a pirate jack your system?” T.A. demanded and then laughed.
“Now. if you’re looking for fair-priced system upgrades…” Zig continued.
“From you? I’d hate to see how many back doors it had.”
“You got me there, anyway, a little birdy said you might want someone to talk to.”
“I’ll just bet she did.” T.A. sighed but couldn’t resist a smile too.