Fold your hands Child played softly through through the space ship when Laika woke. The city had been awake for some time and the ruckus from the surrounding factories was what woke Laika. She blinked sleepily and slowly and stared at her clock while her brain struggled to make the connections. She jumped out her make-shift bed hastily as she realised she was close to being late for work. After she leaped to her feet she was suprised to find herself on the floor again: that night she had slept on her wing and now the lifeless limb hung numb by her side. She cursed and using her other 5 limbs to balance out the weight of her one inactive limb she staggered to coffee-making machine at the back of the ship. While the water boiled she yanked on an old stained pair of nylon pants and her usual leather crop top.
Before she could slurp up the coffee she reached for the large tin container next to the tiny fridge and scooped out a teaspoonful of orange pugent powder and stirred it into her coffee. All the liquids on this planet did not have the right chemical balance for her body to process it so weekly she mixed the powder into every drink and sprinkled it on every meal before consumption so she digest it comfortably.
Then she slammed the filthy mug down and grabbed a bag on the floor as she ran out the old raggedy ship. Once in the parking lot she broke immediately into a sprint and beat her large wings one-two-THREE-one-two-three-FOUR-one-two-THREE-one-two-three-FOUR and she was in the air beating hard to gain altitude and speed. Turning in a tight circle over the factory she checked no-one was entering the warehouse where she hid her ship and angled her course for the down town ghettos.
Some pink alien with slimy skin, an overly big and overly wet tongue and small beady eyes gurgled at her from the behind the counter to which she responded in the same wet-croaky language. She stashed her bag in a compartment and pulled on a lumo yellow apron. Behind the building was a large scrapyard filled with rusting ships, cars, boats and a few androids in various sizes. The newest addition to the mass of metal was a new ship painted blue with green smoke erupting from the engine. After putting a code into the box on the side of the ship a large panel opened up and revealed the engine room. A large box filled with wires, pipes and metal boxes. After quick inspection Laika took down a list of parts in the notebook in her apron pocket. Then she jogged off the ship and into the forest of rusty metal. She had to scratch through several Hector-500 car models to get the correct pipping, and took apart a Venus-6.1 to get to the shield mechanism. And dropped all the parts outside the ship in one pile. Then she sat down with a scrubbing brush and a bottle of spray paint to de-rust the parts before taking out the broken and replacing the ship's parts with newly cleaned second hand parts.
When she finished she was given permission to take the ship for a test spin. Laika shut herself in the cockpit and woke the computer system, with a hum the metal monster woke and they shot off into the cosmos. For the size of the ship it had very little power and Tayla really had to push the ship to reach 2000 km/p/s. After a disappointing sprint through the cosmos she turned around and turned the ship back for the mechanics shop back on the dusty grey moon it came from.
She gave the keys back to the disgusting pink slob and he spittled more instructions at her. As she turned to go back to the scrap yard the little creature reached out one large slimy paw and ran it up her leg. Laika tuned around and with a crack raked her fingernails up the creatures arm drawing a thin line of blood. "What about your wife Herman, it would be an awful shame if she found out your filthy habits again wouldn't it?" The blob drew back into his chair and faced the door of the shop, his cut slowly oozing clear blood. She sat against the wall just inside the scrap yard and listened for when the next customer came. Across the yard two thorn-birds scratched in the dirt, their high pitched clucks filling the yard. And she cursed Gortex once again, for the countless time, she cursed him.