The Inscrutable Visages of the Sowmyatha
Lu McNair longed to put on her mouse-ear headset even though her drone swarm was not sending her any auditory input, anything to drown out the low-level murmur of chat the other three were incapable of not generating, even when working. But she couldn't do that. She was supposed to be bonding with her fellow cadets, and tuning them out wasn't going to get that done.
Survey shuttles were the smallest shuttles in the fleet, far too small for the standard crew of six they were designed for. The acoustics inside the shuttle body were bad, amplifying the chatter of three women to sound like thirty. It was no wonder the pilot and copilot kept to themselves in the front end, seldom opening the hatch between the two areas. This was McNair's first assignme
