Writing the closing bout of our NaNo Day 1 with the inimitable Devin Harnois at our traditional location. And it’s blue-collar multicultural space opera I’m writing, witness the following excerpt (Jehen is one of the Captains of a cybernetic starship).

***

All parties being boarded, the next midnight they did the passenger safety drill. Sirens in earsplitting bursts to wake them up, Ship’s AIs engaged to push them toward the suits.

Iric Desnaray got a demerit for failing to wear his passenger’s coverall. Yes, he was resplendent in embroidered leggings and three layers of slashed tunic, each revealing the luxurious fabric of the next layer below .

“You look quite dapper, but all of that would have been splattered across a few square meters of vacuum when the vacuum ruptured you,” Jehen said, no longer mincing words. “I am responsible for the safety of the passengers and Crew of this Ship, and I won’t have a planet-side dandy committing idiot’s suicide on my shift.”

Iric’s eyes widened in affront, and then his features crumpled as if he were a great baby about to burst into tears. 

“No one has ever taken that tone with me,” he said.

“Well, it’s time that oversight was rectified,” Jehen said. “I don’t know what your dreadfully important business is, but I’ll be hull-breached and blown to glory before I let stupidity of this magnitude loose on my ship. You will wear that passenger’s coverall, vanity be damned, or I’ll put you off the ship at the next stop.” She added, “And I’ll take a detour, if need be, to find a next stop.”

He spluttered a bit, and puffed, and towered, but when he saw that his advantage of height over Jehen availed nothing, for all the top of her head barely cleared his collarbone, he sulked and flounced off to his cabin.

But he emerged wearing the coverall, and that was good enough for Jehen. 

It was really messy cleaning vacuum-ruptured tissues off the walls, and she’d had to do that more than once.