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‘Meredith, Meredith…’ the voice of Johan tentatively announced as he called to the back of the small ship, he at last decided to break from the urgently flashing console and go to look for her, most of the lights were off, he liked to maintain a definite day night cycle aboard the craft, he found that his natural rhythms could not be fobbed off by switching the lights off when he wanted to sleep.

As he approached the doors to the little engine room he thought he could hear movement, ‘Meredith?’ he called again. She was always playing with the engines, he walked into the brightly lit room, and sure enough she had her head underneath one of the display panels, with a blind hand trying to locate the required tool amongst the cluster at her side. ‘There you are. You must come quickly. Something’s come up’

There was an annoyed grunt from under the flickering display, and a second later her body extracted itself from the small gap.

‘What?’ she accused, staring up at him from the floor with her right hand clutching a blunt implement.

‘You are not going to believe this, we have a rather important call coming through in a few minutes.’

‘This better be genuine, if this some kind of joke… well it will go hard for you’ she got to her feet, kicked aside the tools to the hole she was just working in and pulled some of the creases out of her work clothes

‘Come on, last time I checked we had about two minutes’

‘You mean you were watching the time count down on it?’

‘Well it came as a bit of a shock, I mean you don’t expect to get a big flashy sign saying you are about to be called by the top echelon of fleet intelligence…’

‘You were watching the time count down, on a fleet intelligence message’

‘As I say, came as a bit of a shock’

The two of them hurried through into the flight deck, Meredith being rather insensitive, put an end to the half-light immediately, and the cluttered and untidy flight deck was revealed under powerful strong lights.

‘We’ve got a little more than a minute, why do you think they gave us a five minute warning? Part from to allow you to worry about it.’ Meredith asked.

‘Must be important, they obviously want to get through to a person, and not just send a message.’

‘Well they’ve got both of us now, is the channel two-way audio-visual?’

‘Yes, and well you should see-’

‘You mean they can see this mess? Thirty seconds’ said Meredith interrupting.

‘Ah well, its not strictly a federation fleet vessel, its on loan from a university’s cartography institute’ he said as he was tucking his shirt in while simultaneously trying to clear some plates.

‘Ah so its ok then is it?’ Meredith replied sarcastically

‘Shut up we’re going to be on in a second, it makes you wish they just used audio.’