“I’ll run them after I’ve run our standard scans,” Coloma said.

“That’s fine,” Wilson said. “Now, about the shuttle—”

“No shuttle, no pilot,” Coloma said. “Not until after I’ve sent Abumwe to the Utche.”

Wilson shook his head. “I need the shuttle before then,” he said. “The ambassador told me to find and access the black box before she met with the Utche. She wanted to know whether there is a danger to them, not only us.”

“She doesn’t have authority on this,” Coloma said.

“But I do, ma’am, and I agree with her,” Wilson said. “We need to know everything we can before the Utche arrive. It’s going to put a damper on negotiations if one of us explodes. Especially if we could have avoided it. Ma’am.”

Coloma was silent.

“I’d like to make a suggestion,” Schmidt said, after a minute.

Coloma looked at Schmidt as if she’d forgotten that he was there. “What is it?” she asked.

“The reason we need the shuttle is to get the black box,” Schmidt said. “We don’t know if we can find the black box. If we don’t find it, we don’t need it. If we don’t find it within the first hour or so, then even if we found it we couldn’t retrieve it before the Utche show up and you would need the shuttle for Ambassador Abumwe’s team. So let’s say that we have the shuttle on standby for that first hour. If we find it by then, once you’re confident the area is secure, we’ll go out and get it. If we find it after, we wait until after you’ve delivered the ambassador’s team to the Utche.”

“I can live with that,” Wilson said. “If you’ll bump up my scans in your queue.”

“And if I don’t believe the area is secure?” Coloma said.

“I’ll still need to go get it,” Wilson said. “But if I know where it is, between autopilot and my BrainPal, I can go get it myself. You won’t have to risk your pilot.”

“Just the shuttle,” Coloma said. “Because that’s not in any way significant.”

“Sorry, ma’am,” Wilson said, and waited.

Coloma glanced at her executive officer. “Have Mr. Schmidt here get Neva your information. We have four hours to jump. Sometime in the next half hour will be fine.”

“Yes, Captain,” Wilson said. “Thank you, ma’am.” He saluted again. Coloma returned the salute this time. Wilson turned to go, Schmidt hustling by the captain to catch up with him.

“Lieutenant, one more thing,” Coloma said.

Wilson turned back to her. “Ma’am?”

“Just so you know, if you take the shuttle out, any damage you put on it, I’m taking out on you,” she said.

“I’ll treat it like it was my own car,” Wilson said.

“See that you do,” Coloma said. She turned away. Wilson took the hint.

“That was a nice touch about the car,” Schmidt said, once the two of them were off the bridge.

“As long as you don’t know about what happened to my last car, yes,” Wilson said.