The woman led me off to one of the doors into a habitation complex, and into a maze of hallways. We had a tail, initially. (Well, two. But mine doesn't count.) One of the security goons - Joss - had left his little team to pursue us. We turned a corner quickly, before he could follow us, and she suddenly pushed me into a storage closet with her hand over my mouth. My eyes went wide with fear for a moment as the idea that she was about to do something worse than talk to me flashed through my mind, before she shushed my panicked but muffled yelp.

After a few moments with her pressing me against the wall, hand over my mouth, the door rattled slightly. The lady had ensured it was locked, and the guard continued on. The pilot let out a sigh, before releasing me and stepping back.

“Alright, doggy, we can talk now.” The lady said, looking me over carefully, “You said your name was Kaela, right?”

“Yeah…” I murmured, slowly nodding in agreement.

“Right. Well, I’m Jen. I’m the shift lead of the pilots out here,” she explained with a vague gesture at the base around us, “You said you were looking into the incidents? What did you want to know?”

“Y-yeah, we are…” I stammered out, “I wanted to ask about your procedures…” I trailed off as she frowned at me.

“You coulda just asked one of the execs if you wanted our procedure book.” Jen stated plainly, glaring at me.

“Well… Yeah…” I muttered back, feeling the anxiety building inside me as she stared at me. I looked away, trying to pretend her gaze wasn’t on me so I could try and level out my voice. “I just… I figured that the pilots would have a better idea of what procedures are actually followed, and if there was anything weird up with the pilots of the destroyed shuttles…”

“And why do you figure that?” Jen demanded, barely a low growl in the small quiet room she had me trapped in. “Trying to find a failure on our part to blame us? Make sure that-”

“W-what?” I asked, turning back to her with wide eyes. She thought I’d do that? I suppose it made sense, bringing in outside people to axe a bunch of employees for failures as a scapegoat. “No! No, of course not! I just saw you were flying older Scout 34Ts, and I know that they don’t make standard parts for them anymore… I just figured that the procedures and stuff wouldn’t take any of that into account, not that you weren’t doing your job right!”

That seemed to catch Jen off guard, her ire fading for a moment as she gave me another reassessing look. “You recognized the model of shuttle we were using?”

“Well, yeah… The 34Ts are older, but I’ve seen them turned into just about every kind of utility ship… I’ve even seen people strap some lasers to them and turn them into makeshift defence ships…” I replied, as the tension in our conversation ebbed away.

“Same.” Jen agreed, sighing as her posture changed to a more relaxed stance as she leaned back against the cleaning shelf behind her. “You do actually have some experience then.” She muttered to herself.

“Y-yeah… I used to fly alone for a while…” I explained quietly, my tail curling around my leg for comfort. I reached down, slowly stroking its plush white fur as we talked.

“I see. Well… To answer your question then, yeah. We don’t exactly follow standard procedures. Every shuttle is unique at this point, with how much we’ve had to replace in each of them.” Jen replied, “We had a bunch of newer ones, Scout 55Es, transferred in at one point but… Those were all destroyed in the incidents. We’ve been extremely suspicious about that, but corporate refuses to acknowledge there was a difference.”

I tilted my head to the side slightly as I thought. The Scout 34Ts and 55Es were pretty similar craft, both having the same basic frame and only minor cosmetic appearances, but they were also very different in their capabilities. There had been a lot of complaints about the 55As, an earlier model of the 55Es. Faulty engine couplings, bad seals on the fuel systems, unreliable RCS nozzles, the list went on. But those were all recalled nearly two decades ago, and the 55E variants were supposed to have all those issues fixed.

“Something isn’t adding up…” I muttered as I thought the problem over quietly. There wasn’t any reason that only the 55Es would’ve been destroyed, but the older and arguably less safe 34Ts were still fine.

“Agreed,” Jen nodded. “But we’ve been barred from talking about it. Anyone who mentions the incidents or the shuttles that got destroyed is liable to have their pay docked or be fired.”

“Have they cleaned up the wreckage of the shuttles yet?” I asked, as an idea started to form.

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Jen sighed, “Yeah, most of it. There’s one of them still floating out there. It’s between two fast-spinning asteroids, and corporate deemed that it’s too close to try and recover. They said it’s probably going to be crushed soon, so there’s no point.”

“I want to go see it.” I said, swallowing. That had come out more confidently than I had meant it too, but I was certain I wanted to see it. There was something off about the idea that these were 55E models that just wasn’t sitting right with me.

“Good luck with that. None of us can take you out there.” Jen said, “And even if we could, corporate isn’t wrong about the asteroids for once. They are dangerously close and spinning way too quickly.”

“I’ll… Figure something out.” I nodded back. I wanted to talk to Lea. She would be able to help me start confirming my suspicions, and maybe offer other evidence if I really wasn’t able to get out to the wreckage. “Thank you, Jen.”

“No worries, doggy. Let's get back. I’ll let my guys know you are cool. I think we can trust you not to fuck us over on this.” Jen replied, unlocking the door.

“Thank you… I promise you, I won’t.” I smiled back in reply, flicking my tail slightly. That had gone better than I expected! Once we had started talking about shuttles and specifics, my brain was too distracted by the information to get too anxious. We slipped out of the closet and were soon walking back to the group of other pilots and Alex. As we approached, we could hear laughter coming from the pilots. Alex had a satisfied grin on his face, which became wider when he saw us approaching.

“Ah, Miss Kaela, welcome back.” Alex said as he turned to face us. “Did your talk go well?”

----------------------------------------

I sighed as I settled back into my chair in the conference room on the Vagabond. We had spent a few more hours getting testimonies from the pilots, and then arguing with security to try and get a look at one of the sensor suites the shuttles used. Alex was polite through the whole thing, despite how frustrated I was getting at their stonewalling us. Security kept all just saying that the sensors were ‘proprietary technology’ and we weren’t allowed to look at them without the OK from the executives. Which, of course, wouldn't happen with Soren keeping them distracted in the corporate offices.

Lea and Autumn looked as frustrated as I felt as they joined us, with Alex still calmly smiling the entire time. He’d been extremely level headed through the whole process, keeping me from saying something when my anger overgrew my anxiety. He explained that he had been figuring out the body language from my ears and tail, and was able to predict when I was getting fed up. He’d taken to gently scritching behind my ears when it was overwhelming, which had helped keep me a lot calmer.

Soren walked in after we’d been waiting for a few minutes, clapping once as he did. “Alright team! So, let's review and figure out our next steps!” He said as he stepped up to the head of the table, Koal taking a seat next to Autumn. The catboy looked frazzled, staring up at Soren with wide eyes as he just shook his head.

“Nothing helpful from our end.” Lea grumbled from where she sat. “Security stonewalled us the entire time, and kept intervening when we tried to talk to the technicians in the shuttle hangers. The miners avoided us entirely too.”

“They’ve been threatened with docked pay if they talk to us.” Alex explained, folding his hands calmly on his lap. “I suspect that the executives are hoping we find nothing, and accept their explanations for what happened just so we get paid.”

“They gave me that impression too,” Soren agreed, nodding. “It took longer than usual for them to open up to me when we were in the boardroom.”

Koal groaned, pinching the bridge of his nose. “You mean open the liquor cabinet, Captain?”

“Tomatoes, potatoes!” Soren grinned right back at the exasperated catboy. “They were a lot more pleasant after that, weren’t they?”

“They were definitely distracted.” Was all that Koal agreed to, rolling his eyes and grumbling at Soren’s bluster. “How are you even still sober?”

“He keeps pills for that in all his jackets.” Lea replied, snorting in amusement at her brother. “This is a pretty common tactic for him.”

Koal chuckled dryly at that, “Of course it is…”

“I think I have a hunch I want to follow up on…” I murmured as the others fell quiet. All eyes turned to me, and I gulped. “Jen, the pilot I talked to, said that all the shuttles involved in the accident were a type called the Scout 55E. It’s a modernization of a classic, but early production variants had some serious flaws.”

“What are you thinking?” Soren asked, crossing his arms as a rare serious look came over his face.

I took a deep breath, my hand once again running down my tail for comfort as I spoke, “I don’t trust that they were actually the E variant. If they were older A variants, that could explain the secrecy around them, and maybe even how they were lost. There’s still some wreckage out there that I want to investigate, but I’d need a shuttle of our own.”

“Lea, what do you think?” The captain said, turning to his sister. She was playing with her sidecut hair distractedly, thinking over what I said.

“I’ve heard the same thing about that model of shuttle somewhere too. I think it’s worth looking into at least. I can probably find the blueprints on the Union network somewhere, and we can verify if we are out at the wreckage. At the very least, we might be able to figure out part of the reason why only these shuttles were lost.” Lea replied after a moment, looking over at me.

“The executives said that the shuttle’s wreck was in between two dangerous asteroids,” Soren said, turning his gaze back to me. “Are you sure you can get in there safely?”

I nodded. “I’ve… threaded some very dangerous needles before, I’m confident that I can get us there if I have a small ship.”

“Well, you are in luck then.” Soren said as a grin spread across his face. “We have our very own shuttle on board!”

“We do? Where?” I asked as my eyes went wide. I was thinking I’d need to convince Jen to take me out, or even just ‘borrow’ one of their shuttles.

“There’s a small hanger just behind the engineering section. You can take the shuttle in there.” The short man replied, his grin not leaving his face.

Lea sighed, but grinned at me too. “I hope you aren’t claustrophobic, Kae.”

I gulped slightly. Just what kind of shuttle was this?