C: Water is Life

Over the next week, everyone aboard SkyWater station was intensely busy.

Rafaela's stepsisters weren't stupid, they were just annoying, stubborn, and surprisingly ambitious when they had a goal. It didn't take them long to learn, or at least file into their memory libraries, everything that Rafaela knew about ship navigation, at least in theory. She was a careful teacher who checked her data with the SkyWater station system before passing it on, but she didn't have very much more practical experience than they did.

Rafaela had piloted local shuttles only on rare occasions, and only under her parents supervision. She had more experience with plotting routes for the automated mining drones, but those were based purely on fuel efficiency, and didn't have to limit themselves to acceleration and safety limits that fleshy humans required. She had no more experience with intersystem travel than her stepsisters. Less actually, since they had traveled between all three planets and most of the larger stations within Eks Central, even if they had never piloted anything.

Elektra kept the station's data link busy with a stream of messages to her various acquaintances back in Central, and at the end of the week, announced at breakfast, "I have arranged a teacher to meet us when we arrive at Eks Central, and a ship for each of you." Her sharp eyes slid to Rafaela and she added, "I mean for each of my daughters. Unfortunately the courier that will stop to pick us up only had room for three. But don't worry Rafaela, I signed you up for the race as well, since you have that old SkyWater ship here that just needs a few components. If you can complete the repairs and arrive at the starting point in time, you'll have your chance too."

Rafaela was honestly so startled by her stepmother's ability to arrange transportation to Central and access to two solo occupant ships for her daughters, that she responded simply, "Oh. Thanks for registering all of us."

Doris and Louise looked at her and then began to giggle and whisper to each other.

Their mother didn't scold them, even though their behavior couldn't be counted as polite by anyone's standards. Elektra merely gave Rafaela a small tight smile and a quick nod.

--

The courier ship that stopped at SkyWater station only a few days later was very nearly the sort of ship that was likely to be entered into the 'Princess Race', as everyone was calling it now. It was built to be fast instead of efficient, and it didn't require crew at all, as long as someone was there to load it when it docked.

It had the classic short finned, snub nosed, long cylindrical profile of a spacecraft straight out of a space opera. Most of that length wasn't cargo or crew space though, it was taken up by the engine and the reaction mass for the plasma drive. Despite the fins, the ship was not designed to actually enter a gravity well like the ones in a space opera. Unlike her mother's scout, with its more awkward and bulky appearance, the pretty courier ship lacked the additional chemical drive needed to escape a planet.

If Elektra had been less straight-laced, Rafaela might have wondered if she intended to steal the courier ship itself. But the idea of Lady Elektra reducing herself to piracy was ludicrous, and for perhaps that very reason, this courier ship carried a captain who looked quite fit.

As she helped load the few belongings her stepsisters were allowed to take with them, Rafaela decided that she was just as glad that she wasn't supposed to be going along. The little ship was not set up for the comfort of passengers. Far from having the centripetal crew compartments of a large ship like the SkyWater freighter, it only had a single compartment aside from its control room.

That didn't mean that they would be traveling in freefall though, because the courier would keep accelerating until it flipped to begin decelerating. Even without that added discomfort, Rafaela could still imagine the tempers that would begin to boil in the compressed area before they reached Central. She was careful to make sure that everything had a tether and that none of the two sisters' carefully hoarded cosmetics could leak or spill.

The courier Captain examined Rafaela's work and gave her a quick nod as she exited the small craft. Rafaela didn't envy the woman the rest of the trip ahead of her.

Doris and Louise had begun celebrating their return to civilization as soon as Elektra had announced that the courier would be stopping for them. Even as they bustled back and forth for one "last" forgotten "necessity", the two of them chattered excitedly about the games they intended to play and how far behind their peers their characters must be by now.

They were so energetic that they barely paid attention to Rafaela, although they had both spent the last few days coming up with extra chores that "Cinderella" was somehow responsible for completing for them. Rafaela hadn't protested any of the extra work, and had done her best to get them, and all of the things they were leaving behind to be shipped to them later, properly packed. She even wondered a little guiltily if she was actually the "cruel" stepsister, since she felt nothing but relief at their imminent departure.

Elektra carried her own two cases aboard, and then hovered in the airlock entrance to supervise, as Doris and Louise finally boarded. The small supercilious smile that Elektra gave Rafaela as the lock closed between them, made her feel cold and uncomfortable for reasons she couldn't identify.

--

The courier ship was long gone before the message from Zhou Shu arrived. Rafaela, Bellamy, and Schmidt gathered together in the bare dining compartment. Not because being face to face made the news any easier to bear, but because in the Cinder sector, people tended to gather for both meetings and partings. Sometimes it was difficult for outsiders to tell the difference between a welcome party and a funeral.

Rafaela cleared her throat, to get a run up on breaking the heavy silence. "We should have expected it," she stated almost calmly.

Vache Bellamy's tearful expression twisted as she grumbled a curse in an old language. "That woman! She is taking everything! I bet she does not even cry for him!"

Tyr Schmidt's expression was dark and solemn, and his words were heavy, but carried the same steady feeling that he always gave even though they sent a jolt through Rafaela as he said, "Donatella is right, we should have been expecting this. And we should not waste any time worrying over the lack of useless tears from our opponent. We must begin consolidating what we can in order to continue moving forward."

Rafaela's throat tightened until she could voice neither the agreement nor the protest that she needed to make.

Bellamy agreed instantly, "We will take everything that our Donatella can lay claim to!"

Rafaela cleared her throat again, more roughly, and ground out, "First, we should find out if she really registered me for that race. Then we should dr…" her voice cracked and she drew a deep breath to try again.

Tyr Schmidt nodded and said it for her, "We will drink the last toast to Corso Donatella as soon as we have determined our own course!"

Vache Bellamy reached for the small dark bottle that sat in the center of the table, and a wide grin wrinkled her old face as she added, "And don't go trying to tell us that it's not OUR course, Miss Donatella! This old MOUSE will follow whatever course you set, corporation or no corporation."

Schmidt gave her a firm nod, and held out the small empty glass in front of him. "This one too!"

Rafaela didn't argue, she nodded and set her own glass forward as she instructed the system to download all of the documents Zhou Shu had recommended, and her own Princess Race registration information.

While they waited for the request to make the long trip to Eks Central and back at the speed of light, they spoke gently of Corso Donatella, and, as though five years hadn't separated their departures, Gabriella Cardozo Donatella.

When the display screen lit up to announce the results of its long distance search, Schmidt couldn't help making one final gentle protest, "I'm a little uncomfortable basing my final farewell to someone who always made his own luck on just a few water bottles."

Rafaela grimaced and lifted her small glass. "There's nothing that can replace pure H20." It wasn't any kind of proper farewell, it was just something that her father had said, and it was on every SkyWater label.

The corners Bellamy's of mouth lifted as she raised her glass and added, "Neither tears nor sweat are ever wasted."

Schmidt nodded and raised his own small glass to meet theirs. "Water is life, life is a current, ride the waves."