Star Force: Starchaser (SF69) by Aer-ki Jyr

up back by her towel, dropping to her knees in the sand
and feeling like she’d just dodged a huge bullet.
    Those commandos had saved her, and while some people
would say she needed to return the favor by helping someone else in need she
immediately disregarded that. If someone was in need she’d help them because
she could, not because she owed a favor. That was petty thinking. No. She had
been the one that was saved and the emphasis was on her, not someone else. She
may not have earned it, but she was still alive and needed to make use of the
save rather than squander it away.
    Now that her head was clear she needed to move, not
away from the resort or even this beach but internally. She needed to heal and
that fog in her head had been preventing that, but now she felt the blissful
movement inside and knew she had to act on it.
    Pulling on her clothes and grabbing her towel,
sunglasses, and slipping on her sandals, Mina walked away from the beach and
through the grounds until she got to the tunnel network that led to her
treehouse, climbing the short ladder up to the door that led to a lift chamber.
Once inside she locked the door with the keypad and the emergency barricade
slat, ensuring that no one would disturb her privacy.
    Mina walked into the lift and rode the slow ascent up
until she was standing in the middle of her treehouse quarters. Walking around
and locking every door out to the encircling balcony and closing the shutters
on every window, she sealed herself in then hopped into the shower to rinse the
sand and cold off her body. Not lingering there, she dried off after a few
minutes and pulled on some pajamas before diving under the covers of her bed
and pulling herself into a fetal position as she let herself begin to shake a
bit as the lingering paranoia worked its way out of her body and the rest of
the mental toxins she’d been accumulating did likewise.

 
 
 
    9

 
 
    When she woke up the next morning her nerves were
settled and her body was, well, more tired than when she’d went to bed the
night before, which she oddly took as a good sign. She felt alive again rather
than in a perpetual stasis, and even the fatigue was welcome so long as it was
real.
    Mina ordered room service and had a tray of food
arrive on a conveyor inside one of the cabinets within minutes. She ate a
large, warm breakfast then immediately began packing up. Whatever she was going
to make of her life going forward would be accomplished by action, not sitting
on her ass. She wasn’t going back on tour just yet, but she needed to start
recalibrating herself and that run last night had been a good first step…as
well as showing her just how out of shape she’d gotten over the past month. She
hadn’t put on any weight that she could tell, but Mina had definitely lost some
of her well maintained fitness.
      Accessing the
computer in the treehouse she booked reservations at another Australian
facility on a nearby island then called for a porter to get her bags down to
the dock where she took a private boat over to the exclusive training facility.
No one did training better than Star Force, but then again they never charged
anything for access to facilities either. Everyone could use them and was
encouraged to do so…which was a problem for people like her that needed to
avoid crowds and the attention they drew. Like everything with Australia, if
you had the credits you could buy an upgrade, and the same went with training
facilities.
    They had one reclusive one on Optimus, which serviced
not just their own small territory in the system but everyone else as well. If
you wanted to train in private, this is where you came. If you wanted to hire
specialists to put you through your own personal boot camp that was available
as well. Most people, if they wanted to advance their skills in a formalized
way, enrolled in an advanced maturia but Star Force only trained in
‘responsible’ ways and some people wanted to do something