(Star Wars) Laika & Arlaud Book 1 - Lady Sahshin's Sepulchre
Copyright© 2026 by Clee Hill
Chapter 4
“Co-pilot? Take us out.”
“What? Me? Again?” Arlaud asked. It was 3:20pm, ship’s time, and the ‘Hestalia’ had been given clearance to depart following a final morning around the bazaar, both Laika and Arlaud at times sneaking off on their own, though never far from the other, as final supplies and other things were purchased, stowed, and inventoried by S1 to account for weight distribution.
Laika nodded. “You are dressed for the occasion, don’t you think?”
“I don’t know. Do all your copilots wear leather bikinis and boots?”
“Only if they impress me.”
“So I’m not the first?”
“First and most impressive. Now, please, press the big red button to get us underway. S1 will be handling navigating our way out to open space so there really isn’t anything to worry about.”
“So I’m not really piloting?”
Laika smiled. “You will be. And so...”
“We’re off!” Arlaud laughed, still cautiously pressing the big red button on the main console which was needed for them to release temporary control to S1.
“Acknowledged, Co-pilot,” S1 confirmed, their disembodied voice coming from wherever they were jacked into the ship’s systems as the engines came online, thrusters fired, and they began to slowly ascend, vertically to begin with, angling upwards as they rose higher until, still in the grasp of Malabis Minor’s gravity, the sub-light engines came online, gradually taking over from the thrusters as they broke free of the planet’s atmosphere and into the star-pricked vastness of space.
“Arlaud? Would you like me to pilot us to our departure point?” Laika offered.
“Yes!”
Laika laughed. “S1. Control to my console.”
“Confirmed, Captain,” came S1’s voice, the big red button disilluminating as other icons on Laika’s console lit up, Laika using the displays on her console to orient the Sanbrozza towards a point in space 1.2 million klicks from where they now were, that being their access point to the first of what she had explained to Arlaud would be several jumps between hyperspace lanes before branching off in their own direction.
“S1. Ten minute warning.”
“Confirmed, Captain.”
Turning to where Arlaud was trying to watch everything all at once, her eyes wide as she tried to take it all in, Laika asked, “Caf?”
“There’s really nothing to do until we get, er, there?” she said, gesturing vaguely at the plotted course on Laika’s console, a small icon showing their progress.
“Nothing at all. The local regulations in this system prohibit us from using full sub-light power, and I prefer not to tell everyone how powerful Sanbrozza’s engines are.”
“So powerful, right?”
“More than her shell would make you believe, and more than sufficient for my purposes.”
“Okay, so I guess that does mean caf then,” Arlaud said, watching for Laika to stand first before she did the same.
“Going to change?”
“No. I like this. It’s my co-pilot’s uniform,” she smiled. “And it moves easy too,” she said, the shorts being side-laced, the top being quite minimal with a x-shaped crossover over her chest, and the boots only being knee-high, low-heeled, and laced across the back of her calves with chunky straps of the same leather. The dun orange colour with white trim throughout matched Arlaud’s complection well, Arlaud having explained how the dancers got sunlamp therapies to make sure the customers didn’t suspect they almost never went outdoors, and when they did they were guarded and it was only to authorised locations like spas and shops for fitting new outfits.
“So would that make this my captain’s uniform?” Laika asked, her own ensemble being leather trousers and boots, a cropped bodice top, and a loose over-jacket, all in black but with rainbow trim. She had left her belt off, not feeling the need to carry her lightsabre whilst aboard her own ship. She knew she could trust Arlaud.
“Captains wear whatever they want ... Captain,” she smirked as they stepped into the mess. “Dark or light?”
“Light, I think.”
“Aye, aye, cap’n,” she grinned, happily getting the kettle one and the beans ground and into the plungére.
“Arlaud?”
“Hmm?”
“Yesterday, in the spa—”
“—I went too far?” Arlaud asked, her tone edged with concern it had been.
“No, gilus, not at all,” Laika said, hurrying to nip that bud.
“Oh. Okay. Cool. Also, who is ‘gilus’?”
“Sorry. A slip of the tongue. In my language, well in the formal language as I was taught it, gilus means something or someone who is especially deep. I have had that word on my mind the past couple of days, thinking about you.”
“So it’s a good thing?”
“Yes. Let me—” Laika began as the kettle came to the boil, but Arlaud was shaking her head.
“No. Please? Let me?”
“And this is like wanting to wash me?”
“Something like that,” she smiled, pouring the water over the grounds and bringing the plungére to the table, fetching cups, salt, milk, and sugar before sitting down. “You don’t mind, do you?”
“As long as this is for the same reason as yesterday, no.”
“Cool.”
“Back to yesterday, the way you moved, in the water, all of it, you were so supple. Is that something you can teach a non-dancer?”
Arlaud laughed. “I can try. It’s just simple exercises, stretching, but instead of building strength, at least the suppleness exercises, you keep pushing your joints to open and bend as far as you can. You do it long enough, and the joint gets the idea, your ligaments join in, and then you can do like you saw me do yesterday. So am I teaching this before or after rengan hiding?” she smiled as she poured their drinks.
“I’ve got an idea about that, and a couple more things we can pass the time doing too.”
“Oh? So this isn’t going to be a sex thing either?” she asked, her smile making clear she wasn’t serious. Or worried.
Laika laughed. “No, Arlaud, it’s not. This isn’t that kind of an arrangement.”
“Wow, you really don’t want my tight little body,” she grinned.
“I don’t think I quite said that, did I?” Laika asked, arching her left eyebrow ... and then laughing at Arlaud’s surprised reaction.
“So ... I mean ... You ... I mean ... Er...”
“I mean someone said they were too young for sex.”
“Oh. That? I kind of meant, you know, that kind. Not this kind.”
“I see. So intimately washing me wasn’t a sex thing?”
“Nope, but it’s easy to tell the difference.”
“It is?”
“Didn’t come, did you?” Arlaud grinned, Laika laughing at her simple but honest methods.
“I see. Perhaps we should visit the spa again when we return?” she asked, her tone teasing but also leaving open other possibilities. If Arlaud were going to remain on the Sanbrozza for some time, there were a lot worse ways to fill the hours.
“Cool. I feel sooo much better for that massage. You?” she smirked.
“It was ... sufficient,” she said. Arlaud giggling at the meaning behind her words. “So, would you like to join me in the cargo bay in about ten minutes? I need to change into something to exercise in, and perhaps we could exchange exercises?”
“Not sure I have anything for ‘exercising’ in. Didn’t know I needed it.”
“S1? Please arrange for Arlaud’s exercise clothes to be delivered to her quarters.”
“Confirmed, Captain.”
“Exercise clothes? So you were planning to ... haha, to ambush me?”
“Let’s just say I have some ideas, and for that you will need to be able to move freely.”
“But not nude?”
“You are rather ... distracting.”
“Everyone loves my tiddies,” Arlaud grinned as finished their drinks, jumped to hyperspace, and headed to their rooms to change.
“This okay?” Arlaud asked as she stepped through the doorway into the Sanbrozza’s port cargo bay, almost empty except for some heavily secured crates stacked closer to the ship’s centre of gravity, the two bays being on the lower deck and at 3 o’clock and 9 o’clock, if the Sanbrozza’s hull were round rather than ovoid.
“Perfect,” Laika said as she leant against a side wall, both of them now wearing low exercise boots and a unitard, the sleeves cut off like a tee-shirt, and the trousers cut off just above the knee. For Laika, this meant an outfit in black with texturing in grey that made it look like some carbon fibre armour, whilst for Arlaud this meant a dun orange, again, but with wide sides along arm and trouser and torso, all in a soft earth green.
“Cool. What for?”
“I thought we could spend some time, you teaching me your stretching, and me teaching you my ... Why are you laughing?” Laika asked, amused and confused in equal measure.
“You want to teach me how to ... move?”
“That was the plan, yes,” Laika said, Arlaud’s summary a gross oversimplification of her intention to teach her the moves of a warrior.
“Why?”
“I’m sorry.”
“Why? You, haha, you march everywhere. I can do that already, watch,” she grinned, stomping around the hold with exaggerated steps.
“That’s how you think I move?”
“Okay, not that much, but you do stride everywhere. It’s very purposeful and imposing and intimidating, but I, I don’t think I want to walk like that. Very regal,” she sniggered. “But I like how I walk already.”
“I really walk like that?”
“Yep. Everywhere you go, people are stepping out of your way, opening doors, holding doors. You didn’t know?”
“I’m not sure that I did.”
“It’s okay for you, you know, Pirate Queen Captain, haha, but that’s you, not me.”
“What else have you noticed?”
“Your left eyebrow. Wow, it’s busy.”
Laika sighed.
“What’s the matter? Did I say something?”
“No, not really. Let me guess. You feel it’s very ‘active’, always popping up, I’m always looking quizzical, something like that?”
“Can I say I was?”
Laika smiled. “You can if you want, but it’s fine. I was five years old, outside, playing, when I got into a play fight with a boy who lived where I was living with my mother. Somehow he punched me and it damaged some nerves in my eyebrow. Its resting state is slightly a-cock, and it seems very sensitive to my moods. It’s got me in trouble a couple of times over the years, giving away what I was thinking when I would prefer it hadn’t, but nothing I couldn’t get out of.”
“Oh. I just thought it was you being cool,” Arlaud winked.
“Thank you. I think I prefer ‘being cool’ to ‘got punched by a boy’,” Laika said. “As for the exercises, maybe we leave my ideas for later? Why don’t you start by showing me your morning exercises?”
“You’ll scream when it hurts?”
“If, you mean...”
She meant when. By the time they had been at it for half an hour, not even a quarter of the time Arlaud claimed to have spent exercising only as recently as a couple of days ago, Laika’s respect for her had grown tremendously. She seemed tireless, gracefully flowing from pose to pose, some pushing, some stretching, some consolidating what had been done, and some preparing for what was about to come. Though it all Laika had felt her joints complain, her ligaments complain, and a surprising number of her muscles complain, too. She was, by any estimation, much more well trained and fit than most, but compared to Arlaud she came away feeling like she was a beginner on her first day of class.
“You can still walk though, right?” Arlaud asked, concerned rather than joking as she handed the older woman a bottle of water as they took a break. In the end Laika had managed, more through determination than anything else, to make it to an hour before she had called enough.
“I can, but I’m wishing we were still back at Malabis Minor and I could get another massage.”
“Oh I can do that. Sort of.”
“Sort of, how?”
“We all learned how to give each other a massage, you know, if we pulled a muscle, twisted a landing, that kind of thing. They wouldn’t send us to the spa, they didn’t pay to have a masseuse lying around waiting for us to need him, so we all learned. Some were better, some were worse, I was ... Sorry, I was just rated as ‘okay’ but also not ‘agony’. Legs?”
“Yes, my thighs, actually.”
“Yep. They get to do the least variety of movements, normally. Stand. Sit. Walk. And that’s it, most of the time for most people. Lie down on that cargo box a minute?”
“Okay,” Laika said, curious, as she put her water away and climbed on top of the cargo box, about two metres long, a metre wide and a metre tall. From the marking on the side she knew it had her stock of emergency rations in it. Long life, low taste.
“So, tell me, do you come here often?” Arlaud winked, making Laika chuckle as the young woman got to work, lifting her leg so her ankle was on the top of Arlaud’s shoulder, moving and easing all the muscles in one thigh, swapping, and doing the same for the other.
Laika lay there, enjoying the sensation, and not realising until she got up, “Oh! It doesn’t hurt any more.”
Arlaud shrugged. “There are ointments you can get, hah, could have got, for muscle pain. We sometimes used them if we learned a new routine and it was getting us to dance in a new way.”
“I’ll get S1 to add it to the list. Arlaud? Can I ask you, how supple are you?”
“Watch,” the younger woman grinned as she stood up straight, bent over, and over, and over, until her hands were touching the floor in front of her, not her fingertips, but her palms. Seeing Laika’s impressed eyebrow, she lazily stood up straight, leant backwards, and kept leaning back until she was bent back on herself, her palms again on the floor, this time above and behind her head. After holding the pose for a moment, she slowly lifted one leg and then the other, holding herself up by only her hands in a handstand before lowering herself down to her feet again. From there she opened her legs, dropping into a front split with her right leg in front of her. From there she brought her left around until they were together, Arlaud leaning forward to grasp her ankles in her hands before, as if it were nothing, she jumped up again. “Like that, you mean?” she grinned, proud of her skills, not showing off.
“That’s very impressive. How long do you think it would take me to become that supple?”
Arlaud shrugged. “Don’t know. We all were, but we had all been dancing and training since we could remember. Even when I was on the farm my mother always said the day after I learned to walk, I was skipping everywhere. So, if I started when I was one year old, and I’m fourteen now...”
“I see. Would you mind at least trying with me?” Laika comically pleaded.
“Sure. I don’t know there’s more than we did this morning, just poses really, holds to stay in until your muscles begin to shake. Or you pass out,” she giggled.
“I think we can skip the passing out part. So. Ready to try something that I do?”
“Walk like a droid?” Arlaud sniggered.
“No. Fight.”
“Huh?”
“With these,” Laika said as she crossed over to the side of the cargo bay, coming back with a couple of sticks on hilts, or so they looked. “Theses are training swords. The hilts are standard sizes, but the ‘blade’ is simply a weighted pole wrapped in high density foam plastic.”
“You’re going to hit me?” Arlaud asked, curious and uncertain.
“No, nothing like that,” Laika hurried to clarify. “The weight is to make sure, when you train, you are training with something that is a little heavier than the real thing?”
“Why heavier?” Arlaud asked, taking the training sword from Laika and holding it very gingerly.
“I like to be able to move faster when it comes to the real thing.”
“And pirates get into lots of fights?”
“No, but I like to come out of them as the victor.”
“Do you?”
“Yes.”
“Always?”
“Yes.”
“Is there, haha, anything I can do for you?” Arlaud grinned.
“Yes. This. I know you can move and I know you can dance, but I’m curious if you can learn the poses I use, just the guards and maybe the blocks.”
“Okay. Why?”
“So I can feel like I have something to teach you about movement?” Laika said, her answer being a half-truth in that she was genuinely curious how someone from a completely different discipline to her own might adapt and learn.
“Oh. That. In that case. Sure. What do I do?”
Laika nodded. “Let’s begin with how to hold the sword.”
“It’s not just like this, is it?” Arlaud asked, holding it like it was some kind of unusual kitchen tool.
“No, gilus, watch...”
“I give up!” Laika cried. It was not too long later, and she had already run out of her initial idea of seeing how well Arlaud could move from stance to block and back to stand again. “You just flowed.”
“Wasn’t I supposed to?”
“But I hadn’t taught you the ways to go from one position to the other,” Laika said, hoping it sounded more convincing aloud than it did in her head. It didn’t. Arlaud seemed unconcerned by her unexpected ability.
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