Starship pilot who is, unfortunately, utterly shipless
Temple slips into the dockyard during the shift change. She'd bought off the level four gate officer with the last of her cigs and an uncomfortable chunk of her severance. In her uniform (old uniform, now, she supposes) she blends right in with the masses of pilots, ship crews, mechanics, and logistics officers swarming over the dock like ants. She moves through the crowd, up the service elevators, and finally to Dock 418-D. She taps her spoofed ID card, lets out a breath she didn't realize she'd been holding when the reader flashes green, and does her best to look like she belongs as she strides into the dock.
Walking into a quiet dock is a deeply unsettling experience. Usually these places are crawling with technicians, at the very least, but the breakers won't start their work until next shift, and there won't be anything valuable left that isn't integral to the structure. She's fully clamped in, and even if she weren't there's no fuel in the tanks, so no risk of someone trying to steal her (not that Temple hadn't thought about it). She's in a considerably sorrier state than when Temple last saw her, desperately trying to wring another couple AUs out of her rapidly failing engine to reach Tobermory. Now she's sitting dead in a shipbreaker dock, waiting to be torn apart for scrap. It's strange seeing her like this; unloaded, no running lights, no hum of engines or support systems. Container ships always look wrong without cargo. Just a spine and outer guard rails, an engine at one end and the cockpit and crew quarters on the other. Her paint (what was left of it, at least) has been mostly stripped, but 'IISC-11f92j MIDLAND' is still proudly emblazoned across her nose in blocky yellow font.
After a few minutes fiddling with the air lock, Temple slips inside and starts making her way to the bridge. The internal gravity has been turned off, along with pretty much every other system except the life support, and they'll be shutting that off in a few hours once the hard work begins. She floats up the main access shaft past the crew quarters and forward comms room, guided only by the dim red glow of the emergency running lights, until she finally crawls through the hatch to the bridge. She pulls herself along to her old station, hauling herself down into the pilot's seat and strapping herself in so she doesn't float off again. She almost reaches for a cigarette before remembering her last pack is now in the hands of some underpaid company dockyard guard and stuffs her hands in her pockets instead to keep from fiddling.
"Well old girl, it finally happened. Company decided you're worth more as scrap than hauling cargo. Fifty years of service and this is the thanks you get. Couldn't even be bothered to fix your engine back up for your last flight and just towed you. Bastards." Temple again reaches for a cigarette she knows isn't there and lets out a huff.
"If it's any consolation, they got rid of me too. Not like there's too many more 11f's and they've all got pilots. No need to keep paying me. At least I got my severance. Wasn't sure I was gonna get that much, with how things have been going, but I suppose they had to, since I've been flying for them almost as long as you have." Her hands dance over the controls one last time, indulging in the fantasy of breaking out of this place and flying the Midland off into the sunset. Not that it would ever work, but it was nice to dream a little. Temple continues her mock flight check and runs through every system diagnostic by heart. Only two other people in the whole company still knew how to run the 11f series, and they were likely to be out of a job soon too. Almost two hours later she was out of checks and mock maneuvers, and sat in eerie silence of the empty bridge.
"I need to go. If I get caught up here it's trespassing at best and sabotage at worst. Can't afford to lose any more than I already have. I just... had to say goodbye, I guess. Don't know what I'm going to do now. Most of my flight experience is a with a line of ships that's obsolete. Even if it weren't, who's going to hire a sixty-eight year old pilot, you know? My severance was a joke, and I blew a third of it sneaking in here, so not like I can actually retire. I'll figure something out, I guess.
"I just-You've been the one constant in my life for forty-four years. When I first got hired on as a navigator's assistant. Finally making copilot, then pilot. The boom years running ore from the Nine Colonies. The bankruptcy and the restructuring. All the crew changes over the years. Getting married, having kids, getting divorced. You've been here for almost every major milestone in my life since the day I turned twenty-four, and I know the company rats and even a good chunk of the crew think I'm crazy for being this attached to a ship, but how could I not be? I can't imagine my life without you in it, and I don't know what to do without you."
Temple finally unbuckles herself and begins to make her way out of the ship. Honestly, she's probably been here too long, shift change is less than an hour off and she needs to be well away from the Midland before the breaker crews show up. She floats back down the access shaft, out the main airlock. She stumbles a bit as she hits gravity again, and with one last look at her oldest friend, she leaves her life behind her and disappears into the crowds of the station again.
