Thread: Interstellar Flight (Mr. M & missedstations)

Ilena Kostukova had been born to the space faring aristocracy, and it showed. She sat on a chair with her spine rigidly straight, as if she did not know the meaning of the word 'relax' and with her face arranged in a careful mask of non-interest. She was, of course, classically beautiful in the way her people liked to be. Even if she hadn't been born that way, she would have had surgery to make it so. An ancient goddess, lost in the emptiness of space, and lonely on a dust world? That was what her husband had liked to say about her. His silver tongue had charmed her, and she would have followed him to the edges of existence. She had neither been born on Ekkar's Jewel, nor she had ever loved it. She had settled there to manage her own wealth she did not believe in managers and go-betweens. Mineral extraction was prosperous business here, and she had accumulated enough so that she could probably start her own clan, should she have ever wished. Her money had made her existence comfortable, and she was so surprised at the public habitat. Such filth and misery! Her own private one was on the other side of the moon, with comfortable gardens and perfectly mimicking the green planet she had come from. Ilena had decided that it was best to leave her home for this job. It was, she thought, best to do things herself. Her family had not been too disappointed when she married a trader. He took her name, and she gave him a veneer of respectability. Although she knew that before he had been little better than a pirate, she still loved him in some obtuse and arrogant way. Because she could, she would. It was her money, she could spend it on what she liked. If she had chosen to keep forty concubines no one would have blinked twice one did not question her kind. Aristos, they were all insane. And on the frontier worlds, one could buy anything. Ah, there was the man she had paid. She rose from her chair in a single smooth movement, keeping her hands folded at her front. 'Mr. Taggart?' Her dark red hair was pulled into a severe knot at the back, and her green eyes were framed by a line of eyeliner probably the permanent kind, she didn't look like the type to put on makeup every morning and her lips were a slightly darker red that was natural. She was dressed as she always did for business. Flat soled boots of some smooth leather that went up to her knees, then loose dark grey pants tucked into those, and over that a floor-long grey gown that was slashed at the front and lined with dark red, but buttoned up from the waist to the top of her neck. The sleeves were long and loose, hiding the long metal bracers that she always wore around her forearms. And then, of course, over her slender hands she wore equally grey gloves. From that dull non-colour, the white skin of her face made an interesting contrast. The outfit screamed money, especially since it was so obviously made from a material that dust did not stick to while her boots showed traces that she had been in the street, nothing else about her did. There was a suitcase at her feet that she was not willing to part with, and behind her chair stood a masked man provided by the hotel. She had dismissed her own bodyguards, but the hotel manager was far too horrified by the idea that a woman like her would be in a city like this all alone. She had spent a long time pointedly ignoring that man. 'I am Ilena Kostukova,' she informed Taggart, holding out her hand in a way so that it was quite hard to tell whether she expected it to be kissed or shaken.