Snippet #2261237

“I’ve never played chess, so maybe you can teach and beat me” Saein said when Tom admitted he wasn’t very good at chess.

"How do I connect to the rest of the crew's datapads?" Tom asked.

“This is my own datapad, I’m not sure where some of the crew got their official Nightwing ones,” Saein replied, “but MAK just connected to it when I brought it on the ship and from then on everything worked automagically. So I guess you should ask MAK, maybe get a software update or something.”

Instead of making more chess pieces, Saein thought she’d see what the end result would look like. She cut squares of metal tape and stuck them to the bottom of her empty black tin of candy to make a board. “Meh, looks boring. Let me show you a fun way to paint... just stay here...” She ran off, placed the tin and the second knight on the ground a hundred meters away, walked back, dropped to her stomach, carefully aimed, and shot at the tin. It made a loud “DING” noise when the ball of hot ionized gas hit it. A second shot made the chess piece bounce away.

After retrieving the tin and the knight, Saein showed them to Tom. The metal tape was now shining in lots of colors in a random pattern, the same had happened to the knight. “A fun way to paint, but it does involve lots of walking.” She wiped the sand off her clothes, took the first knight back from Tom, dipped it in one of the chemicals she had bought, and heated it. A few seconds later it was covered in a thin layer of black plastic.

Saein placed the two finished pieces on the chess board on the ground. “What do you think?”