Conference call

It took Sola’s translator systems a moment to adjust to the shouts from the two figures, but when at last it cleared up Dustin was treated to a pair of tirades largely on the topic of how you couldn’t trust the sneaky devil in the other screen. Raising his hands in what he hoped was a calming manner, he gestured to Emely. “Please, governors. We have been requested to assist you both by the council. In order to do that, we need to understand what is going on - I suggest we switch to single calls and you can air your grievances separately.” As neither of the two appeared to dissent he nodded to Emely who adjusted a control and took over discussions with the Dronth governor.

That left Dustin just dealing with a very cross looking reptilian alien, who’s mottled skin began to settle back from an angry red to a deep green now that the target of his ire had been removed. “Apologies, Ambassador, but that pompous fool has been working to sabotage the colonies here from the start.” The governor said, adding “no doubt he will say otherwise, but how else can we explain it? Sabotage both in thought and deed. Refusal of perfectly reasonable requests. Their ships trying to muscle ours out of the way. Utterly impossible.” Dustin waited until there was a lull in the explanation before nodding thoughtfully. “We did think it odd that you didn’t have a long range communicator yet. Is that something to do with the sabotage you mentioned?”

The Selssa - who at last introduced himself as Issisth - nodded and began to recant a list of real and imagined slights from his Dronth counterpart. As the explanation went on, Dustin began to get a clear picture of the recent history of the colony worlds. The two species had started out friendly enough - their initial landers had jumped in as a pair and had rapidly moved to the two planets that were earmarked for colonization. During the early days of the colony, limited inter-planetary travel was common, each species sharing what little they had to supplement the other while waiting for the next supply barge from their home worlds.

Problems had begun to arise when both species had attempted to deploy initial communication beacons in orbit around the outer planet as a precursor to a system-wide traffic control. For some reason, the satellites had failed to work for very long - sometimes due to faults, sometimes due to collisions with random space debris. Before long, the Selssa colonists - territorial as they were - were clamouring that it was a deliberate ploy on the part of the Dronth to leave them cut off from their home world and dependent on their neighbours for survival. To Dustin’s surprise, the governor was quite reasonable in his discussion of how immature his countrymen had been - he’d argued with them for a long time to have patience. But, things had come to a head when he and his opposite had proposed a solution to their issues.

Rather than building satellites, the two species would collaborate to build a communications outpost on one of the moons of the outermost planet. As a crewed station, it would need regular supplies from in system, but being grounded would hopefully not suffer the same mechanical or operator errors that the satellites had. All had gone well at first with the construction - but just as they were about to finish, a question was raised about staffing. Originally, it had been planned to handle it in shifts - but from the sound of things radical factions in both species suddenly acted to refuse the order. And of course, when you were already suspicious… It was unsurprising that the governors had finally lost patience with one another when to Issisth’s eyes his hard work at overcoming his countrymen's objections was being slapped away by the arrogance of the other colony.

Frustrated words had turned into heated words - and now both colonies were un-cooperative and the system teetered on the brink of collapse. As the explanation ended, Dustin nodded thoughtfully. “I will discuss things with my crew” he said at last “but before we speak again I think it would be prudent for us to investigate the communications outpost and the satellites.” Issisth gave a toothy grin that was quite unsettling and replied “As you wish, ambassador. Our ships have scanned the debris and the outpost thoroughly, but they are only shuttles - perhaps an ambassadorial vessel’s sensors can uncover evidence of the Dronth’s treachery our own scans overlooked.” Dustin politely signed off from the call shortly after that and sighed. To his side, Emely was just wrapping up her own call with a short bow, then the Feliax woman turned to him.

“It’s a mess, Captain.” She said, gesturing out into space. “I don’t think it’s just one problem, either. We’ve got at least two, maybe three issues here.” He nodded, indicating for her to continue. “One, the people on the colonies. Once we’ve got the comms grid working, they’ll still need talking around to trust each other again. I’m going to have to do some very delicate talking here and there to manage that unless we get really lucky. Two, what was knocking the satellites out? Once or twice I could believe was teething issues or random debris, but multiple? And rebels pipe up right as they manage to find a way to move past it? That doesn’t feel right. And then those rebels are possibly the third issue. Could be nothing, but it feels like there’s more at play here.”

In between marvelling at how clear she could be when she toned down the bubbliness of her personality for work, Dustin mused on his comms officer’s advice. Making a decision, he glanced at the view of space on the main vid screen for a moment before issuing his orders. “Sola, take us over to the area of those satellites and their comms station, and prep one of the shuttles. Emely, start working on a way to convince the good folk on those colony worlds that they’re not each other’s enemies. Meli, can you scan the debris patterns once we’re in range - look for anything odd at all, regardless of how minor.” Then, tapping a button on the arm of his chair he paged Rye. “Chief engineer, I’d like the pleasure of your company in exploring a potentially hostile or incomplete lunar outpost - suit up and meet me in the main shuttle bay.”

The Rabyth woman’s reply was a frustrated grumble that ended with the bang of a wrench being tossed aside and the sound of her heading out. The other women meanwhile were already hard at work on their own tasks, leaving Dustin to stare into space for a moment before standing and heading off to get his own space suit on. The suit was as always too hot and uncomfortable - but he was not going to risk exploring what was to all intents and purposes an abandoned station without his own portable oxygen supply. While the place was supposed to have been fine for both Selssa and Dronth life and as a result should be fine for human habitation, the possibility of sabotage hung in his mind - and loss of atmosphere early on would be a really easy way to kill a project like the outpost.