Change of Plan [https://i.imgur.com/yyrLhbF.png]

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The doctor had been less than courteous when she awoke to discover that all the data, her life’s research, was missing, lost in the Concord’s explosion, and that the small group of colleagues held hostage with her for weeks by the pirates had not been known to Melissa and her crew. Presumably, they had either perished in the blast, been catapulted into space by the blast, or been smuggled away to worse fates on board the smattering of pirate vessels that escaped the nuclear annihilation. Melissa tried to argue that they had done all they could—cautiously pushing Dirk’s existence from her own mind as she spoke—and that the pirates were now down a stolen vessel at least.

The doctor had nonetheless screamed Melissa out of the medical bay, and that was that.

“There were more on board?” Dante said, passing Melissa a cup of what he called coffee and she called mud.

“Apparently. Ungrateful bitch,” Melissa said.

“Well, dispatch only mentioned one person… and her data.”

Dirk cast his eyes away from Dante as the man stared directly at him. “Don’t look at me.”

“No, I am looking at you. I’m looking right at you, man. You couldn’t be more looked at.”

“Oh, enough,” Melissa said, trying to stomach her cup of bean-mud. “They’ve been raiding with Concord for months. It’s done. Finished.”

Dante raised his cup. “Amen.”

Rosie nodded his way, the pilot returning the minutest grin, and turned to her left. “What next, commander?”

“It’s been a week.” Melissa rolled her head across the back of her chair. “You can stop calling me that now.”

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“What next… uh, Mel.”

Melissa’s eyes snapped open and she slowly sat up straight to glare at Dante, who hid behind his cup with a sarcastic, discipline-worthy, and entirely slappable grin. “Uh, the doctor needs to be offloaded next time we make port—anywhere, I don’t care. Somewhere with a bar.”

Dante nodded.

“We don’t need to transfer any data because we don’t have any data,” Melissa continued, though Dirk was too lost in his thinking to notice the barb. “And I need to send a report to the commander. That should be fine. Mission was successful as far as he’s concerned.”

Rosie pursed her lips. “So, do we just… relax for a bit?”

“Mercenary life’s a quiet life, except when it’s not,” Dante said, refilling his cup at the counter. The mess hall wasn’t really a proper one—the Kestrel was large, but not that large—but it served well enough with its big, circular table and assortment of mismatched stools and chairs. Melissa would very occasionally cook enough chilli for the rest of them to share, as Rosie discovered on her first day. She had also discovered the commander liked hers scorchingly hot, and that the rest of the crew had simply acclimatised to it instead of protesting. Being able to put up with the people stuck in the same space-faring tin can as you was a paragon of being a mercenary.

“Actually—Dante, what is the nearest port?” Melissa asked, resting her head on a finger.

“Kessie, display co-ordinates,” he said.

Rosie turned to Melissa and mouthed the nickname with some surprise, but the commander just waved her off with a little shrug.

The fluorescents dimmed with a whine and the emitter in the table’s centre flickered on, displaying its ever-present holographic face. “The nearest freeport is Bolus Station,” the ship said, addressing Melissa directly. “We are eighteen hours away at current speed.”

The hologram shifted to reveal a star chart that repeated what the ship had just said, but this time with dotted trajectory lines and approximations of gravity that only Dante could read—indeed, that only Dante could find interesting.

“The current engine configuration makes them unstable,” the ship continued, the star chart fading away. “And two of the four drives have suffered irreparable thermal damage from the Concord’s detonation.”

Melissa exhaled. “Will we make it?”

“We should,” the ship said.

“You don’t sound very convinced.”

The holographic face shrank and drew level with Melissa’s eyeline. “Shall I estimate the probabilities involved—”

She held up her hands in defeat. “No, no. It’s fine.”

“As I thought,” the ship said, before the hologram vanished completely and the fluorescents snapped back to full brightness. “Maintaining course to Bolus Station.”

Dante was smiling again, behind his cup.