I had never seen the stars look so beautiful. I had lived my whole life in space, spending more than my fair share of time gazing at them, and I had never seen them like that before. Bright, fresh, streaking by in brilliant hues. For a moment they distracted me, and I found myself at the front of the ship, gazing out.
"Beautiful, aren't they?"
I reluctantly took my gaze from the stars and placed it on her. She still sat in the pilot's seat, leaning back in the most relaxed-looking way.
"Yeah. Where are we going?" I asked warily. The sight of the stars had subdued me slightly but I was still unsure of her. I had no idea who she was. The whole thing was surreal, almost fake. Inside I felt kind of light and airy, as if someone had injected helium in my head and soon I would float upwards, bumping against the ceiling.
"Where do you want to go?" Her question only made things worse. I struggled to find the logical center of my brain, drifting through clouds of helium to get there.
"You could be dangerous, violent, wanted. Anything," I managed to get out. That a seemed fairly logical thing to say. She didn't seem to agree.
"I could also be good, kind, friendly. Anything," she told me.
"I..." I couldn't finish my sentence. She had a point. She had a way of twisting my words, my thought patterns. A way of turning them completely around on themselves and it made my brain swirl.
"You want to go...?" She was still asking where I wanted to go, waiting for me to finish the sentence. I had to focus, had to think. Should I say home? Back to the space station? Could I say home?
"What are my options?" I asked.
"Your options are whatever you want."
"That's confusing. You need to be more specific. We couldn't really go anywhere, could we? I mean this ship probably couldn't even make it out of the Ring."
She smiled. "Wanna bet?" She asked.
"Yes," I replied, "I do." I don't know what it was, I didn't normally say things like that. Maybe I thought them in my head, but I kept my thoughts to myself. At least back then I did.
Her smile grew bigger until it took up her entire face. She was grinning and it made her almost float. She sat up in her seat and leaned towards me.
"What should we bet?" She almost whispered, eyes glowing. I found myself smiling right along with her.
"Me," I said. She raised her eyebrows, but the smile never left her face.
"Oh?" She inquired.
"If I win, you take me home. If I lose, I'll stay."
"What makes you think I want you to stay?"
"What makes you think I want to go home?"
She leaned back in her seat, nodded once, and said, "You're on."

The controls for the ship looked basic at first glance, but as I watched her manipulate them I saw just how complicated they were. Her hands moved deftly across unnamed switches, pushing buttons, moving levers and entering sequences. Peering over her shoulder I asked, "Where are we going?" I was almost afraid of the answer.
"Darbour."
Darbour was a small planet in a different Ring, countless AUs away. I remembered hearing something in the feeds about Darbour recently but I couldn't remember what. I was never much of a news follower. Other than that I couldn't think of any reason she would want to go there. It was a normally uninteresting planet, used mostly for mineral mining. The towns were populated almost solely with miners, their families and the few who ran the necessary businesses. It held an important position in the Council and on the market because of the vast source of valuable minerals found below its surface, but it wasn't what anyone would call an 'exciting' planet. Unless you were a mining tycoon or a politician.
"If we can go anywhere, why Darbour?"
"You'll see," she said with a wink, then pushed one final button on the control panel.
It was unlike any space travel I'd ever experienced, or any I've experienced since then. There was a sudden lurch, turning the stars outside into a blur. My stomach felt sick and my heart flt a million miles ahead of the rest of my body. There didn't seem to be any forward motion, or even any motion at all. Then we were still, perfectly still, and as I glanced outside the window I saw we were orbiting a dark, heavily green planet. Darbour.
"Are we there? Did I miss something?" I asked. No way we had arrived so fast, so strangely.
"We are there. Did you blink? If you blinked, you may have missed something," she replied, punching in the initiation sequences to land.
"Do you even have boarding codes?" I asked. They didn't let just anyone into Darbour, they couldn't risk someone stealing mining secrets or assassinating of any of their important people. It wasn't like my station, where apparently we let just anyone dock and whisk away employees. She just laughed at my question, as if it were silly. Which, I guess at that point it was.
"XF003#70077, boarding code request." The comm fizzed to life. I looked at her as if to say, see? She just ignored me, pressing the comm button to reply.
"Code number 00000," she said, enunciating clearly. I crossed my arms, a little disappointed. This was not going to work. They were not going to let us onto Darbour with a code like that.
"XF003#70077, access granted. Dock at Landing Platform 23T."
"Thank you, Darbour," she happily replied. Releasing the comm button, she leaned back in her chair and turned to look at me. She waited expectantly.
"Fine," I conceded, "I'm sorry for doubting you." I couldn't quite keep the sarcasm out of my voice. She laughed. "Basic code. Works every time because no one would ever even try it," she told me as the ship, now controlled by Darbour's system, eased into the atmosphere and onto the docking platform. The ship hissed and locked into place with a beep. We were officially on Darbour.
"Well," she asked, "do I win?" I looked at her, then turned and walked out the ship's door.
"Not yet," I called over my shoulder.