[*]“Communications, give her a step-by-step way to send over the ship logs. We need more information.”

  “On it, ma’am.”

  She was somewhat surprised she wasn’t more panicked. Maybe it was because she really couldn’t internalize how out of her depth she was, but she had expected to be a gibbering mess on the floor by now.

  Or maybe that was the command training kicking in for once.

  “Navigation, I want you to route all jumps well away from that area. I don’t want anything remotely close to that ship until we can get it powered down.”

  Maybe, just maybe, they could get through this without mass casualties. The ship was far enough out from the station that it wasn’t a threat to regur traffic and it was big enough they didn’t need to worry about miners or haulers from the various belts running near it. The rger the ship the farther they tended to stay away from possible collision fields.

  “Ma’am, initial logs are transmitting. We should know something in a moment.”

  Initial logs? She had never heard that term used, it had always just been ‘logs’.

  “Expin, what are initial logs?”

  “Yes, Ma’am. They are normally just called logs and are all that are requested in normal circumstances. For something like this, we will probably need extended or full logs, which should have the full ship history. Normally too much to bother with, takes a lot of time.”

  Ah, that expins why she had never heard of them. Time was resources and no one wanted to wait around for a data transfer just so they could unload their cargo. The stations administrators could handle paperwork like that while the ships were exchanging cargo and supplies. The only thing she cared about was not letting the station get attacked. A quick credentials check was more than enough for that.

  In most cases at least.

  “I don’t much care for their history Communications, I just want those weapons powered down. Get only what you need for that and let the data-junkies handle the rest.”

  “Yes, ma’am.

  “Transmitted logs indicate that the ship is a deep space explorer. Human make. The name didn’t make it, it was jumbled. The transmission wasn’t fully stable.”

  That expined the size and weapons. The only ones foolish enough to personally venture into deep space for years on end were humans. Everyone else just used probes and jump gates. They were very inefficient, but much much safer. Even most pirates avoided going beyond the edge systems. For the most part, deep space explorers were considered suicide ships, as they didn’t make it back more often than not. The humans always insisted that the big weapons increased the odds.

  They also insisted a fraction of a percent was an increase, so she didn’t believe a word of it.

  She had a perfect example right in front of her as well.

  “I don’t care one bit about a name, deep space vessels are a nightmare regardless of what they are called. Find out what happened and get me an operations manual for that ship. We need to make it safe.”

  “Ma’am. The logs are indicating a quarantine was called on the ship!”

  She was in a nightmare, she had to be. Not only did she have to deal with a deep space vessel, she had to deal with the maniacs that flew it. And now she was being told they had found something that had forced those maniacs to call a quarantine?! They tossed themselves into deep space, what could possibly be bad enough to call something like a quarantine!

  ‘No calm down. There are obviously people alive over there, they are talking to us. It might be nothing. Some big discovery they are bringing back but are being cautious. Nothing to worry about, just get them the fuel and supplies in a disposable jumper and send them on their way.’

  “Communications, make sure their intent. We can get them whatever they need if they have the credits, but they aren’t getting any closer with that quarantine up.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  Alright, this probably wasn’t as bad as she thought. Of course the human ship had weapons on standby, that was just humans. Of course the ship was nearly half the size of the station, it was a deep space vessel. The quarantine was a bit strange, but again, deep space vessel. Strange was standard for them. The ck of communications was probably just….. just…

  She started to feel the tension rise again. She couldn’t come up with a good reason for that.

  “Ma’am, I think you should handle this. I am not sure I am qualified.”

  Oh, there it was. What was the human saying, the other shoe?

  “What do you mean your not qualified!? Patch it through.

  “Unidentified ship, please state your intentions and the reason for quarantine.”

  She waited, the tension in her legs rising as the static crackled back to life.

  “Um, I don’t know anything about a quarantine. Uh, intentions? Um, food maybe?”

  Food maybe? What kind of intentions were ‘food maybe’. Not to mention glossing over a quarantine. Whole pnets got shut down for a quarantine. It’s not something to just ‘not know’!

  “Uh, Ma’am? I have been going though some of the logs. It seems like the quarantine was contained by the automated system and a distress signal was turned off. They might not be original owners.”

  Oh good. Someone crazier than humans had cimed salvage on a quarantined deep space vessel.

  She didn’t think that level of insane existed. She might get a scientific achievement for this.

  “Am I right in assuming the quarantine is contained then?”

  “Sort of ma’am. Not so much contained as ‘purged with extreme measures’. But it has been dealt with.”

  That sounded ominous.

  “Is there any more detail?”

  “Yes ma’am. The logs we can read are mostly thorough. Suffice to say they did pretty much everything short of irradiating the entire ship. I am actually curious how anything is supposed to survive something like this.”

  The implication being that they didn’t. Hence the distress call.

  “Protocol still says we need to personally inspect and certify the ship is clean before it can interact with any gactic citizen. We can’t just take the word of an automated system. Unfortunately, that means getting close. Do we still have nothing we can do about those weapons?”

  “No, ma’am. No change there.”

  She sighed.

  “Unidentified ship. Your logs indicate a quarantine. Your ship needs to be inspected before any further interaction. Please power down your weaponry so we can approach or indicate your preferred jump window.”

  She could always hope they just left, right?

  “Um, I don’t know what you need to inspect, since it’s all metal. The water, I guess? Um, I don’t know anything about the weapons, can you show me how?”

  Why did she even get out of bed today?

  [C]She was beginning to think she didn’t have a new master.

  When she had failed to receive another order, she had begun her stay here with just following the female around. She had thought that it was a type of orientation at first. A way to get her used to the ship and what her duties would be.

  Her confidence in that path started to wane after the female had spent the entire day bothering the male. The female had done no work and provided no service. At least not one she could see. She had really started to despair that she was being led astray.

  Then the female had shooed her away.

  Had that been it, had she misinterpreted her orders? Was she only supposed to follow that one time? Her hopes buoyed again at the prospect it had been her fault and not deliberate sabotage, she had instead sought out the male. She had seen him doing things that were recognizable work.

  That….. had been a mistake.

  The male still terrified her. The female was small enough that she was simple very big. A very big person that didn’t really watch out for others and probably wouldn’t do well on a station. Definitely wouldn’t do well on a smaller ship. She could understand everything the female did. She had seen other women across her life that acted like the female. Not exactly and not all of them, but there were enough simirities that she recognized the ‘why’. She could safely put the female into the ‘big person’ category and move on. Even if her particur mix of simirities was quite strange.

  The male? He was like nothing she had ever seen before.

  The endurance was the first thing she found, after his height of course. The male just didn’t seem to need rest like everyone else she had met. She had dismissed that as a function of his species fairly quickly, as the female seemed to tend more towards the male in endurance than towards other people she had known. But even so, she would have said it impossible had she not seen it for herself. It almost seemed as if he never stopped.

  The thing that scared her the most though was the sheer number of things the male could do.

  She had worried she was being shunned when there had been no one else around for the first few days of her time here. There was nothing harder than a ship where she had no one to ask for advice. No advice always led to more mistakes and mistakes meant punishment. The days simply went faster when she wasn’t noticed. Being ignored by everything was taking that a bit too far though.

  When she had finally broken down enough to ask the female where everyone was, the response she got was…. shocking. And very odd. The female had pestered the male and he had taken them to a rge secure area. When the security door had opened, the female led her to a rge tank, pointed and said ‘there’.

  How was she supposed to interpret that?

  She had quietly followed the male after that. She didn’t want to know what the female had done to everyone and getting on her bad side seemed a fast way to find out. That had brought her face to face with all the things the male did in his seemingly endless day. Not only did he seem to be a pilot, he was a navigator, a drone operator, an engineer, a cook and seemingly whatever else needed doing around the ship. It seemed like the female barely even cleaned herself, using the male as a scrub.

  With something like that happening, she didn’t need to wonder how the ship was still working. If the male could just keep going forever and could do everything the ship needed, what was the point of having a crew? Even if she waited for whoever was in charge, with the female seemingly doing nothing and the male handling everything important, what was left for her?

  ‘At least I got something to wear.’

  She had stopped wearing the clothes she had gotten pretty fast.

  The living area where everyone ate and slept was far too warm for clothing. She always ended up a sweaty mess just attempting to keep up with the other two. As she was the only one with clothing and washing multiple sets to have enough to wear was a chore, she had simply gone the easiest path and not worn anything. It had earned her a strange look from the male, but as she wasn’t using chemicals and it was a pain to wear anyways, she felt it was a fair solution.

  It kept her fur from matting due to sweat as well. Not having a brush was hard work.

  She had found something she could do. So many days idle and watching the other two had driven her mad. She itched for a new order, something she could do. She found it when she followed the male to the cleaning area. He had taken all the bedding and washed it all at once. He didn’t even use the right settings. If he hadn’t been so massive and imposing, she would have batted his hand away and done it herself.

  The misuse offended her very spirit.

  She couldn’t take everything at once like the male could of course, but as she had nothing to do, taking bedding in small batches and making sure there were fresh sheets in the room helped sooth her hands that itched for work. If she could do it in such a way that the male never touched the area again, she would avenge all the abused bedding that had passed through the area.

  Unfortunately, her bout of madness had led to two unexpected outcomes. The first was that the small taste of work was only enough to whet her appetite. It barely took up any of her time. If she had washed her clothing as well it might have taken up more time, but it just became tedium at that point. She also didn’t want to use up all the cleanser on herself, her clothes taking significantly more than the bedding. All that extra time meant she often found herself sitting near the male, as he seemed to do the most anything, wishing that there was more she could do.

  That led directly to the second outcome. The male had given her head a quick pat and rumbled when she had done the undry. It had taken hours for the fluttery feeling in her gut and the heat in her face to fade away.

  She understood why the female used him as a scrub now.

  Her curiosity got the better of her and her need to find out exactly what it was like found her waiting for the male to be alone on the bridge, where he spent a lot of time. If the female was around, she pretty much demanded full attention.

  When she finally got her chance, she had to quietly squat on the floor near the male. He seemed to have used pillows to make the small stool like chairs more able to fit him. It was a good thing the armrests could move all the way out or he never would have been able to sit down. As she felt his hand settle and his fingers start to brush her scalp, she started to feel a little disappointed.

  ‘Was that it?’

  It was nice, but it was nothing like her reaction earlier. What had changed? There had to be more to it if the female was so adamant about it and her reaction wasn’t a hallucination. She let things continue. Maybe the answer would come if she let things happen. She clearly didn’t have enough experience yet.

  When the brushing fingers touched her ear and her heart leapt into her throat and her stomach got all fuzzy, she had to acknowledge that she may have spoken far too soon. Unfortunately, the male stopped as soon as her ear moved.

  ‘Why did it have to move. How am I supposed to know what happens if he stops?’