Like most starships designed for long-range reconnaissance, the Beauregard was not somewhere most people would be happy to call home. Comfort was at a minimum except for those few luxuries deemed necessary to maintain the mental and social health of its crew. Beyond the lounge, and the recreation and meditation pods, the ship was a tangle of narrow access tubes, utilitarian corridors, claustrophobically tiny personal quarters and cramped working spaces.

Megan Jacinth was not most people. She had fond memories associated with the Beauregard, but the handing-over of all the Alliances nova-class starships to the Accord and the stringent terms of the new treaty virtually guaranteed the end of her career in piloting starships. It felt to her like a betrayal.

Even so, she had to admit to herself that there was a certain novelty to being entirely alone on board the ship, even if that was only for a little while. She took the opportunity to wander its deserted corridors and silent access tubes, staying remotely linked all the while to the control and navigation systems, fantasizing that she was marooned alone somewhere in the depths of interstellar space.

Give it up, she chided herself. The life you built here is over.

Maybe there would be other opportunities for her, other routes to the stars, but for the moment she found it impossible to envision them.

She soon retreated to the bridge and the astrogation chair, the petals once more folding up around her. She felt herself immediately relax as her machine-senses merged again with those of the surrounding ship.

When most people complained of the hardships of space travel, they tended to forget it was a natural environment for a machine-head. The physical body became a distant concern once locked in full interface. All the stresses of living in cramped conditions amongst a few dozen other human beings, of sharing their recycled water and air, tended to vanish when your senses conspired to convince you that you were floating naked in infinite space rather than sealed up within a set of steel petals.

It wasnt long before a dropship rendezvoused with the Beauregard. Megan fired an ident-request over to it, and confirmed it was carrying the unidentified passengers she had been ordered to wait for.

What she didnt expect, however, was to find that Bash was also on board the dropship. She could sense his proximity through her machine-senses as the smaller craft made to dock.

<Whats up, baby?> he responded, when she fired an immediate query at him.

<What the hell, Bash? First I get told I have to wait up here alone, and without explanation, and now I find youve got something to do with this. What exactly are you up to?>

He paused just long enough before replying for her to know he was choosing his words carefully. <Something came up,> he sent back after a few moments. <There are some people here with me from Ladested who want to talk to you.>