One Plus One Equals Three

Posted on Wed Oct 7th, 2020 @ 5:50pm by Lieutenant Leah Bailey & Lieutenant Ausra Danton & Jerant van Rijn

Mission: The Shadow of Arachne
Location: Science Labs
Timeline: MD-03
749 words - 1.5 OF Standard Post Measure

"Sure Captain tight pants, right away Captain tight pants. Save the ship, make it look easy. Of course I can do that! I've just been sitting on my ass . . . ."Ausra suddenly stopped when she realized her rant was being overheard by someone just behind her. "Uhhhh, you didn't hear that from me." At least it wasn't the chief counselor, only an assistant of his.

"Captain tight pants?" Jerant chuckled, "are you alright ma'am, you look a little high strung."

"Ugh, don't call me ma'am, that makes me feel worse. And I'm fine, I just have to save the ship with no time and little resources. What could go wrong? I don't suppose you know much about nebulae?"

"Not a lot unless they suddenly developed a language of their own?" Jerant cast her a sheepish smile. "Are you finally getting along with Sheba or is she still being a hellfire?" He frowned. "And why do you need to save the ship? Isn't that more a security thing?"

"Security only know how to shoot things and blow them up," Leah said, peeking her head in from the adjacent room. "We're the brains, right, boss?" she smiled at Ausra.

"Sheba is fine, she likes me. And uh, we need to find a way to get us away from the Breen, into a nebula possibly or make us invisible or distract them long enough for us to get the nebula. You know, no big stuff or anything," Ausra glanced at the other two. "Any suggestions?"

"Is there no way we can talk to them?" Jerant asked, looking from one woman to the other. "I'm just a simple linguist, and while I don't speak Breen I'm sure I can learn?"

"Somehow I think the exploding starship and message of impending doom was the only thing they wanted to say," Leah replied. She looked to Ausra again. "We're surrounded by plasma storms, proto-star systems, a lot of exotic matter. Are we looking for somewhere to hide?"

"Yeah. It beats getting blown to little bits. The only trouble is we have to get to them before the Breen. Or distract them somehow so that they don't notice us moving?" Ausra said that last bit as if she wasn't really sure but was thinking about it.

"Can't we use those storms against them? Surely our sensors are better than theirs, is there no pattern in them that we can navigate?" He offered a small smile. "Everything has a language, we just need to learn to understand the storms?"

Ausra raised her eyebrows at such a thing. "Well . . . I don't know about a language but patterns I understand. Care to join me in a little bit of map making?"

"Sure." Jerant smiled. "Ma'am... do you know if nebulae make sound?"

"Uh no, I've never studied such a thing. And stop calling me Ma'am. It's Ausra or if you absolutely have to, Lieutenant. Ma'am sounds like a grandmother that would whack you on the back of the head if you didn't show the proper respect."

"My grandmother would do exactly that if I didn't call a lady such," Jerant chuckled, "she's old fashioned like that, believe it or not."

"Grandma..." Leah mumbled, something clicking in her head. "Hey, I got an idea. When I was little, my grandmother used to have problems with foxes trying to get into her chicken coop. After trying a few different things, she eventually came up with a neat little trick involving her friend's pet dog. Turns out the foxes didn't much like the smell of the dogs, so she managed to synthesise some dog scent and sprayed it around the chicken coop to trick the foxes." She looked at the other two. "Maybe we can try to trick the Breen into thinking the dogs are sniffing around?"

"Interesting, that's more inline with what I was thinking earlier, but I was thinking more visually. But the scent could be as simple as the right type of ion trail . . ." Ausra seemed lost in thought for a moment.

"Who let the dogs out," Jerant hummed to himself, "so are we going to make ourselves smell like Breen?"

"No," Ausra said patiently. We're going to make them think the dogs have found their trail. What are the Breen afraid of?"

"People knowing what's under that armour of theirs?" Jerant asked rethorically. "I don't know, what are they afraid of?"

"Losing," Ausra said as she hurried off toward the science labs and beckoned the others to follow her.