“You’re the pilot? Not first officer, or second?” Jayda shifted her gaze from the woman to Dolan, her own cheeks starting to burn.
Breeze shifted her eyes between Jayda and Dolan, a squint forming. “I’m captain of the Dolan 4. My second took the shuttle.” In her clarification she’d put a few inches between herself and Dolan. She stepped forward, offering her hand. “I apologize for not introducing myself earlier, but…”
“We can hold the introductions until later.” Dolan interrupted. “For the time being act like you know each other.”
“Yes, sir!” Breeze moved to the side of Jayda’s chair. “I’m ready.”
Jayda nodded, opening the line, feeling her lips pressed tight against her teeth. A flip of the switch reopened the audio line. “Tessling, this is the Sienna. The captain of Dolan 4 has joined us.”
“Yes, this is Capt. Breeze. Sorry for the delay. I was checking on some damages.” She hesitated a moment. “Excuse me, Tessling, can we open a video line?”
“Certainly, I was going to suggest that earlier.” Of course he was, but Jayda had cut him off, intentionally.
A video signal came through. Breeze sat down on the arm of the chair. Jayda resisted the urge to cringe. Dolan wanted them to look friendly.
A face appeared on the other end, an older man, clean shaven, including his head. In contrast to Breeze, either he hadn’t seen real sunlight in ages or he was deficient in melanin. His skin was pale, almost translucent. “To complete the introductions, I am Capt. Snead. How may I be of assistance?”
“Guess that depends on what your ship is capable of. You’re a research vessel?” Breeze took the lead. “The Interstellar Alliance transit base sent a tow vehicle, but we have wounded. We sent the worst patients out on our shuttle, but we have a lot more in need of attention. How far out are you?”
Jayda watched Snead as Breeze painted a picture of multiple wounded crew, as Breeze described damages to their ship, leaving out the particle storm and blaming it on a defective energy cell exploding, causing a cascade failure and hull breach.
She nearly jumped when Snead turned to her, asking her status. “Oh, oh, the station got a bit dinged up when the Dolan drifted into me, but nothing my bots can’t fix up later. Big concern here is the Dolan and her crew. How long before you can get here? At the very least you can take some of our wounded while we wait for the Alliance. Every day cut off their transit to an Alliance hospital, the better.”
“Well, according to coordinates, eighteen hours. I’m sure we have room to take patients, but we can discuss details when we dock.”
“Great, we’ll see you then. Thank you for responding, Capt. Snead.” Jayda terminated the link, shutting down her comm completely to avoid any back-feed signals.
Breeze noticed. “You don’t trust him?”
“Better safe than sorry.” Jayda fidgeted, having controlled her anti-social itch for as long as she could. “Something was wrong, but I’m not sure what, yet.”
“Hmmm…” Dolan moved away, pacing a few steps before turning back. “So far you’ve been right, so maybe we should run with your hunches, until we have more to go on with these people.”
“So, what do we do?” Breeze slipped herself off the arm of Jayda’s chair.
“Play along. We need to make the ship look like an internal explosion caused the damage. Suggestions?” He looked from one woman to the next.
Jayda looked up at Breeze, then to Dolan. “The engines really were damaged, so I imagine you’ve sealed off the engine room to avoid anyone being further injured by leaking energy cells.” Breeze nodded. “Okay, so just dress up the outside to support the story. Paneling to seal the ship over real and supposed hull breaches.”
“Materials.”
“My junk pile.”
Dolan shook his head. “Your what?”
“Platform S-8, used storage containers. Between my bots and your crew, you can weld them over sections of the ship to make it look even worse than it is.”
There was the smile. “You heard the woman, dress up the ship.”
Breeze gave a nod. “Been wanting to play cowgirl on a bot.” She headed out.
Jayda glared at Dolan as he came towards her. “No! Go with her!”
“Annnd she’s back!”
CHAPTER TEN
“Alright, here’s what we got. Tessling GR 8541.” A hologram came up as Dolan spoke. “It’s a standard research ship, reported to be working this sector’s outskirts. There is a Capt. Snead, but we can’t contact anyone for verification. They might be monitoring transmissions from the area.”
Jayda squirmed in her chair, surrounded by Dolan, Breeze and three other officers.
Her discomfort didn’t go unnoticed. “Dr. Maldonado isn’t confident they are who they say. Would you like to explain, Doctor?”
He said it with a sharpness she hadn’t heard before. She avoided looking at him. “Well, as you probably all know by now, I don’t like people, in general.” She didn’t try to hold in her contempt. “Some even less.”
“We’ve all picked up on that, Doctor. We’re talking about Snead.”
She saw his crew tensing. “Yes, Capt. Snead. I replayed the communication and besides being creepy looking, he twitched every time we mentioned the Alliance.”
“He did?” Breeze looked to the holo-image of Snead. “I get creepy, but I didn’t see twitching. Can we replay the conversation?”
With a sigh Jayda ran the recording forward, past the introductions, stopping at the point where Breeze explained the situation, bringing the focus in closer on the man’s face. Hearing it would take another week for the Alliance tow, she saw it again, as well as a shift of his eyes. “Right there.”
Breeze shook her head. “Don’t see it.”
Jayda replayed it, but everyone gave her a look of doubt. “Really, you don’t see it?” She quick scanned Snead’s reactions, their stares growing more incredulous. “You saw it now, didn’t you?”
“I did.” Dolan had her replay it, leaning forward to point at the man’s left cheek. “You either have
