It took twenty-four hours after the pirate attack for Mimi and Damien to start feeling normal again.
During that time, the couple didn't accomplish much. All Mimi and Damien did was eat, sleep, and fuck as their ship hurtled around the orbit of planet AWZ-281: a desert planet so devoid of life or anything else interesting the space captain who'd discovered it hadn't even bothered to give it a proper name. That didn't matter though because, despite the fact they were on an exploratory mission, neither Mimi nor Damien were up for much sightseeing. Instead, they indulged in pure, lazy, absolute gluttony they rarely afforded themselves; especially while out in the black. Mostly because they really couldn't afford or risk it.
"Starships," it was often said among space hands. "Do not like to sit in stir."
The likelihood of attack was low considering they were, what space hands call, silent running. Flying a spaceship in combat isn't much different than sailing a submarine. Just how a sub can disappear into the depths of the ocean, it's almost impossible to track other spaceships in the never ending vastness of space: not without advanced technology. The suite of ship-tracking equipment aboard starships was frequently called radar, even though it far exceeded that old world relic. Like a submarine, starships leave a sort of wake behind them. True, they are totally silent outside their hull, since sound does not travel in a vacuum, but there are still many ways to track a ship: such as heat radiating off the hull. The most common way to track a ship, however, was with a transponder, intentionally broadcasting their location. Ship tracking devices were intended mostly as a safety measure. Space, somehow, wasn't massive enough. Without the electronic assistance and carefully plotted flight paths, midair collisions were much more common than one might think: especially in busy areas, such as around star ports.
While these tracking systems were legally mandated on every spaceship in the name of safety, they did open space hands to a type of danger. Ne'er-do-wells, such as the pirates who attacked them the day before, used these ship tracking aids to assist in their never-ending hunt for fresh meat: hence silent running. Silent running, much like an old submarine movie, meant being as still as possible. Everything but essential life sustaining equipment was shut off to minimize heat and their magnetic waves. Their transponder was, of course, shut off, and they hid in the lee of a planet's orbit. Using the massive desert rock below them as a blind from the more sensitive ship tracking equipment that might manage to draw a bead on them, even while silent running.
While silent running, anyone who meant them harm would need to have line of sight on their vessel to find them. Finding a tiny bright dot to the naked eye in a sea of billions of tiny bright dots with the naked eye? Forget 'finding a needle in a haystack', locating their vessel would be like trying to find a grain of sand in all the world's beaches. Still, a million or even billion to one odds, it was still an extremely dangerous bet to lose. Should a ship happen to spot them and attack, or something such as an asteroid strike the ship, they would be completely vulnerable to defend themselves.
Besides the risk, it was also expensive! Mimi and Damien were consuming provisions at a frightening place: fuel, oxygen, food, and perhaps most sparse of all time. Every twenty-four hours the BW-69 spent in the black was approximately a million credits. On the razor thin margins Mimi and Damien lived in, they did not have that kind of money.
So, what they were doing was a bad idea: yet, they couldn't avoid it. As expensive as it was, they required the time to look after themselves after their life or death encounter: it was as if they had to stop and affirm they were alive. Taking joy in the simple pleasures in life such as food, drink, and of course making love. The folf needed the time in particular, as he had the most blood on his paws and was taking the life or death fight the hardest to heart. In the aftermath of the incident, Damien spent long chunks of time in thoughtful silence. He thought over the encounter, and the moments leading up to it, over and over: wondering if there was anything he could have done differently. In Damiens darkest moments during that long and depressing day, he even wondered if he'd actually done the right thing. Mimi would intermittently attempt giving her mate a pep talk, reminding him how hard he worked to avoid violence and how the other men had made the furtive move. She knew, as much as she would have liked to alleviate the folf's emotional pain, it was the sort of wounds only time could heal, and largely allowed the folf the time and space he needed to decompress. Eventually, Damien would have to dust himself off and keep going.
Thankfully, time did help and coupled with some 'sexual healing' his broken heart did start to mend. That night, after twenty-four hours of moping around, they agreed it was time to move on. They set their alarm for eight hours to catch up on some sleep and would get back underway when they awoke.
Or that was their plan at least.
Terms like 'morning' don't really exist out in the black. Of course, there are people who live on planets or space stations that try to simulate a day/night cycle. But when you travel around with any regularity, like Mimi and Damien? Well... if you thought time zones on earth were bad! Still, waking up with the sun shining through the big glass window sure did make it feel like morning. And an hour and a half before the alarm was supposed to go off, Mimi found herself waking up with a loud yawn and a big stretch. She was ready to roll, but decided she'd let her folf have the full eight hours of rest they agreed to... until Mimi glanced over and noticed her mate soundly sleeping. He looked so adorable, snoring so softly it felt silly to call it snoring at all! As Mimi watched him sleep, the tigress realized that she wanted something more before they went under way. She reached over her bedside to grab what might be the strangest sex toy ever found in a bedroom: a long, thick rubber hose that was hooked up to the ship's compressed air.
