Two days later

True to Meli’s calculations, it was a little under two days before Dustin felt confident enough in his leg to leave the sick bay. During that time he’d largely rested, although he had managed to hold an impromptu staff meeting with the three women perching on the next bed while they did so. Meli’s report to the council had gone about as well as she’d expected. “Weird stuff happens all the time, and most of the reports just get shoved into an out of the way office I suspect.” She had muttered, ears in an annoyed position as she did so. “You’d think an unknown entity attempting early colony sabotage would be worth further investigation, especially with the capability for micro weave-jumps but it appears not.”

Emely meanwhile had been more upbeat, explaining how she’d played both leaders fears against them. “It’s surprisingly easy when they already suspect sabotage to stoke those feelings into a rage against our intruder. I also ‘accidentally’ left the comms system set to plain, so half the colonists now known that there was a third party trying to stir up trouble. They’re already discussing a joint reclamation mission to get the comms station back to operational conditions, and I gather those locals who were causing problems have largely dropped out of sight. The governors know the relevant names however, and there’s always some form of penal work that can be done on early colonies.” Dustin had frowned at the blatant manipulation before shrugging. The results were positive, and it sounded like the only ones getting any kind of hard time would be the idiots that had tried to ferment interplanetary conflict.

Rye, meanwhile had slept in the next bed alongside him as per his orders before scurrying off to engineering - only pausing to retrieve a drink for Dustin from the automat and remind him that he needed to heal quickly. She had returned for the meeting, but her input was brief; the systems that had been set up before Dustin left Earth were all running fine, and she was going back over the wiring for her shield generator with a magnifying glass to make sure it wouldn’t short out at an inopportune moment. As soon as he gave her leave, the bunny girl had practically bolted back to her task; she was in full-on mechanist mode and it showed.

Once he had healed enough to walk around reasonably comfortably, Dustin made his way back to his own cabin. While Meli had arranged for a change of clothes to be brought to him, it wasn’t until he sank into his chair in his ready room that he fully felt back to normal. The thought made him grin. Back to normal - even on Earth, it’d have been a month or so for a broken leg to heal; usually, setting the bone and letting the body heal naturally was the go to for clean breaks. Out in space however, better quality medicine was used; the risks of being unable to walk again quickly were far more severe on a starship. The treatment he’d received could have been used more widely on his home world, but for the fact that there were still a large number of people who viewed a removal of “safe” risks to be a danger to humanity as a species long term. EarthGov had been arguing about it for years, Dustin knew - but at present, non-life-threatening injuries were treated with healing accelerators rather than medsprays.

In any case, he grimaced, realizing he couldn’t put off the call home any longer. Tapping a control on the table he made the request of Sola and a moment later, Axworth’s voice came from the speakers. “Ambassador! How are things?” Dustin couldn’t help but smile at the bluster from the general. “For the most part sir? Good. However, I have an incident to report. Is the line secure?” The explanation took a surprising amount of time; the officer had quizzed him on a few details before asking for a copy of the recordings to be sent across for Star Command to analyse. “Doubt we’ll find anything your AI and science officer couldn’t spot, but it’ll keep the folk over in intelligence busy for a few months at least.” Axworth had said, before turning the conversation to more general matters. “Got some positive news from home too. Remember I told you I wanted to get some wings up and running? Finally got approval. Turns out the teams over at Titan have been itching to try some custom engineering work that’s more focused than just churning out inner-system freight craft, so we should be getting delivery of the first half dozen fliers in a week or so. Been busy picking the best crews for them while waiting for your reports, keeps me busy.”

The general’s enthusiasm was contagious and Dustin found himself grinning after the call had cut off. At least he could rest easy knowing that any hostile pirates that tried to enter the human home system would now soon be being met by combat squadrons. The galactic council had said that actual conflict was essentially non-existent, but he’d already encountered both pirates and hostile saboteurs - and was now beginning to wonder if that peace was actually just the council choosing not to see what was going on around them, given their lack of reaction to Meli’s report. The general’s comment on the lack of any ideas from his AI did bother him however. “Sola, have you and Meli had any luck scanning the footage from our suits?”

It took a moment before the AI responded. “I have scanned all currently recorded species and found no matches for the entity you encountered captain. However, following a hypothesis by the chief science officer I am currently scanning historical records and have identified three potential matches among extinct species and twenty-seven potential folklore candidates for further inspection. Do you wish to review these?” Dustin shook his head. “No point. Meli’s already been working on the problem, and I doubt I’d do much better. If there’s a possible match I trust the two of you will bring it to my attention. In the meantime, would you check in with the senior staff and make sure they all know to meet up here for dinner? Especially Rye, she’ll stay in engineering if we don’t drag her out I expect.”

With that business done, Dustin began reviewing the files that he’d been working on with Meli and Rye before they’d picked up Emely. The three of them had agreed to spend some time getting used to their new crew member before adding anyone else, but the attack had left him jumpy. “Either a doctor or a security officer would be a good idea” he mused, flicking through the profiles of the other sponsors for his trip in case anything stood out to him. At last he slumped back in his chair with an exasperated sigh. “Nothing obvious, and I don’t want to rush this.” He muttered to himself as the door slid open and Emely walked in.

“Rush what, sir?” She asked, taking a seat next to him and smiling. Dustin gestured to the tablet in front of him. “Looking for our next long term destination. That attack worried me; what if the two of you had come down after us when we lost comms? We could have all ended up dead on that moon because I screwed up.” He grimaced, before feeling soft hands take his. “It’s okay, captain.” Emely said, flashing him a smile. “We’ve learned, we won’t be going anywhere like that without at least looking in the armoury in future.” Dustin was about to reply when the door opened and Meli and Rye walked in. His fiancé saw the hand holding and smiled, while Rye flopped into a seat and kicked her heels onto the table. “Don’t stop on our account.” She grinned at the pair, and Dustin could sense Emely blushing - although she didn’t let go of his hand.

Teasing aside, the four were fairly quiet as they ate their evening meal; what talk there was stuck to idle chatter about what they’d been up to that day. All three of the women had looked like they wanted to say something when Dustin had outlined his studies, but he’d waved it off. “After dinner, please. Work chat later, you all taught me that.” A comment which got a chuckle out of Rye and a smile from the other two. When at last they’d cleared the plates away, Dustin picked up his tablet and coughed. “Alright then. Emely, Rye, how much longer before we can leave the system?” The two women glanced at one another before Emely shrugged. “I’m basically done. I can do a few more bits of social networking to help gel things here faster, but I can fit that around Rye’s plans.” The Rabyth woman tapped her chin thoughtfully with a screwdriver that had materialized from one pocket or another practically the instant dinner had finished. “About another day? Say, dinner tomorrow we’ll be good to go. Could jump sooner, but…” and here Dustin could swear she glanced at him “…I’d rather not rush things.”