RP: The Fringe [Prologue] (M)Eager Beginnings

Sienna couldn't help but grin a little at Oreza's reply. She wondered for a moment, watching his eager facial expression, how much of it stemmed from desperate boredom at staying put for too long, and how much of it came from some sense of guilt she had unearthed in their conversation earlier that day. Turning her face back towards Amelia, the grin faded slightly. "Well, if you ain't busy, I've got a navcomp that needs looking at," she told her, once more looking down her nose over the dark-haired woman critically. "Board's brand new, but the ship's computers and firewalls are old as dirt, and interfacing them's been a bitch." She motioned with a flick of her wrist towards the spot where Amelia had stashed her Datajockey. "But if you're as good with mix-and-match tech as you are with the flashy new stuff, shouldn't be too tough. And if so, I might have a job for you." She hooked each of her thumbs into a belt loop on the front of her pants, hanging her arms by them as she shifted her weight casually, as if barely interested in Amelia's answer. "You up for it?"

Amelia couldn't hide how her own expression lightened up when she was offered another job. She didn't know the condition that the ship was in, but jobless as she was the raven-haired woman would've worked even in a rust-bucket, both to get out of that station and to do something productive with her life. Besides, it wasn't like she had nothing more to do than slowly burn away her savings and burn homeless people with hot food anyway.

"Hey, as long as I'm getting paid." She said to Sienna. Depending on the state of the computer it would've been a piece of cake, maybe all it took was a simple reset instead of a more in-depth maintenance, like it was the case nine times out of ten, which made Amelia just happier.

"Well yeah," Sienna replied nonchalantly. "Otherwise, what's the point?"

After a single, out-of-place tug at the tail of her tank top, Sienna lifted her left wrist and looked at the wristwatch-like object banded around it. With a flick her right index finger over its surface it sprang to life, projecting a miniaturized volumetric interface hovering above her arm. "Bay 9, slip 31," she continued as she interactively punched, moved, and pinched the holographic display. "Meet me there in two hours. I'll stick you on my registry so security don't go asking you questions when they see you poking around." She looked up at her from beneath her brow, without tilting her head much from where it was. "Say your full name for me, then wave your hand here," she added, waggling the computer on her wrist, and swiped another of the hovering controls. A portion of the virtual console turned blue and a quiet tone sounded, indicating it was listening for a voice sample.

"Sure, I'll be there in two hours." The shorter woman replied. Standing there as she watched Sienna use the PHC, Amelia eventually removed the glove on her right hand when the holographic screen was presented to her. "Amelia Stroud." the raven-haired woman said, 'pressing' her palm against the holographic screen with some familiarity with the electronic and waiting until the computer took a 'print' of it before she put the glove back on.

She waited a couple of moments until she was sure that there was nothing else going to be said before starting leave. "Later, then." Amelia said, with a crisp wave as she turned around and made her way back into the crowd.

Sienna watched silently as Amelia performed the quick registration, never taking her eyes from the dark-haired young woman. Once the process was complete, she lowered her wrist without bothering to dismiss the volumetric display, nodding with a questionably sincere, plastic-looking smirk back at her. "See ya there," she replied, and looked on as she pushed back out into the concourse, swallowed by the crowd.

Clearing her throat and breathing a quick sigh, Sienna glanced over at Oreza. "Well, at least we got someone to double-check the interfacing," she said, "long as she knows what she's doing."

Lifting the PHC back in front of her, she nudged the visual representations of the newly-recorded biometric scan to the side, and punched up a text comm channel to Docking Security. Writing a quick message to the clearance address, she informed them that she would be on her way back in twenty minutes, and that she would have company. With one final punch of an imaginary button, the message was sent, and she pulled up the biometrics again. One corner of her lips turned upward slyly as she shook her head with a sigh. Whoever had heard of a private ship owner handing the security measures on a port's behalf? The dock's ingress checkpoints had their own registration system, naturally, and they would keep track of everyone who entered and left, as well as where they went and how long they spent there. They wouldn't have any use for any recordings she took on her own.

A few more flicks of her fingers later, and Amelia's biometric scan and voice pattern was stored to her PHC's database. Another swipe of her hand made the display vanish back into the compact device. Trusting someone she'd just met was far from a wise idea in Sienna's book, and she always made sure that her backside was covered.

With a glance and a self-satisfied smirk at Oreza, she nodded her head towards the concourse. "Well?" she asked the big man. "Time to get back to work, huh?"

-----

Docking Bay 9, Slip 31 - Two Hours Later

"No, damn it, the negative coupling is outta alignment!" a female voice sharply echoed from within the dismantled bowels of the Concordia Veil's aft end. As before, an upper section of the hull was removed, and parts and tools were strewn about atop the ship and on the ground. The station's docking bay was just as bustling and littered with sporadic traffic as it was before, and Slip 31 was looking like a small war zone once again even after the last bin load of discarded refuse and scrap.

A J2-E3402 maintenance drone clicked and whirred as its treads balanced it on top of the hull, next to the opening, where Sienna's back and backside were visible jutting out. "NEGATIVE, MISS SHELTON," the robot droned in a heavily digitized voice. "QUERY WITH SHIP'S COMPUTER CONFIRMS REALIGNMENT OF POSITIVE ION LINK NECESSARY."

Sienna's head and shoulders popped out from the gaping hole in the hull, the exposed skin on her face and shoulders smudged with dirty grease. Resting her arms on the edge of the hull, standing chest-deep in the hole created in the engineering section of the ship, she rapped a socket wrench on the metal with a gloved hand, glaring at the drone. "I don't give a rat's ass what that computer says," she snapped at the drone. "Quit second-guessing me. That thing is still so fracked up it's amazing it can even boot up. It wouldn't know the ship's water system from a fire hose if you asked it. So quit plugging into it, and bring me the god damn bridges already."

The drone's servos and motors whined a bit more, and after a pause it spun its treads, turning a one-eighty, and traversed the hull back to one of several tool boxes that lay open atop the ship.

Sienna snorted and ducked back into the exposed engineering section. "Frackin' complimentary maintenance drone my ass," she grumbled. The thing argued with her so much it was a small wonder she hadn't deactivated it and salvaged it for parts just out of spite. Resetting her footing in the awkward, precarious position she was braced in, she reached back into a jam-tight mess of rigid conduits and cable with the wrench, going back to making the adjustments. It was getting late in the day, and she hadn't nearly gotten as much done as she'd hoped to by now. Frankly she had been ready to start sleeping aboard her new ship days ago, if for no reason other than saving money on accommodations. But with the ship dismantled the way it was, all of the ship's power and plumbing offline, and no means of securing it against intrusion, such a prospect was impractical.

Her PHC sounded a tone at her, and with her arms still entangled in the conduits, she shook her wrist twice, calling up the display. It sprang to life and showed her the time, as well as the reminder she'd set for herself to expect Amelia.

The Spider bot shifted slightly as it came back up to full operational status. it's new hourly self and environment scans had brought it up to life again. Slowly it moved about in it's soft cotton and silk formed nest, trying to pin point where the heat sources were coming from. Every so slowly it move from it's cave and started hunting the ship. Though powered by a minor atomic pellet reactor, it still went after rodents to help fuel it's secondary reactor.

It made it's way along the insides of the ship until it got close enough to Sienna to realize what she was. It's processors started running at full speed. The software deep with in the bot started cussing. Bits of code started showing twos and even rare threes in it's binary. it's home was just raided and he didn't know by whom or what just yet. With a non-verbal data growl it turned and scurried back to it's nest.

Stopping only once to splice a cable into the Ship's main computer lines deep in a hard to reach area, it bedded back down into it's nest. it wasn't long be for it had over ridden the ship's computer and hi-jacked it's on-board sensors.

The two hour interval had given Amelia enough time to go back to the room she was renting on one of the upper pylons, grab everything she needed, then burn hour by sitting around on the small room and messing around with her Datajockey before she used the remainder of the time to make her way to the designated bay. It wasn't like there was much that the raven-haired woman could do anyway, hard-pressed for money the way she was as she watched her savings tickle slowly.

Arriving at the appointed bay and being cleared by the security, Amelia casually crossed the catwalk and made her way towards the ship, or what at least looked like one from a distance. The woman raised her left arm closer to her face, checking what looked like to be a watch on her wrist, but upon closer inspection it was actually another PHC like Sienna had. She was also dressed the same way from her first encounter with the ship-owner, although, like with the 'wristwatch', she had also worn her Dusk suit under it; Not that she expected getting shot, but she had more than enough reason to warrant herself the extra protection.

Once she was clear of the catwalk, Amelia came to a stop, standing at the front of the ship and examining it further, as she shifted her weight from one foot to another. First and foremost, she noticed how old the ship looked, it didn't even take someone that was familiar with spacecraft to know that this particular ship was looking so old that it made her wonder if it had created roots and fixed itself against the bay's deck. Still, she had a job to do, so she took her mind off that train of thought and focused on what mattered as she waited for Sienna to show up.

To say the ship before Amelia was a used one would be akin to calling a star "hot." She was standing astern of the ship, looking at the massive engine jutting out between the two cargo bay "fins" that swept back from the otherwise discus-shaped craft. The vivisected engine appeared almost like a surgery patient, whole sections of its upper and lower portions cut away, exposing its inner machinery. The ship's patchy-looking hull was marred with splotches of discoloration and neglect toward the bow, but closer to the stern, it blended into newer, polished plating, obviously having been replaced once repairs and refits had been completed on them. It was quite apparent that the ship had been sitting here for some time, but judging by the extent and nature of the work that Sienna was performing on it, its owner had grand visions of making it respectably spaceworthy once again.

In the engineering section, hidden from Amelia's view, Sienna wriggled free of her precariously awkward perch amongst the mess of conduits. Standing up and taking care to watch her head as it poked above the removed section of hull once more, she placed the palms of her hands flat on the dorsal side of the ship, and with a soft grunt, hoisted herself up and onto it, the slender muscles in her arms pulling visibly taut with the effort. Slithering onto her tummy, she swung on leg up and climbed up the rest of the way, eventually rising to her feet atop the ship, and looked towards the stationward bulkhead of the berth. She wasn't sure exactly where Oreza was busying himself at the moment, but she didn't have to look very long to see Amelia standing off to the starboard side of the ship, just behind the engine, gazing at the ship. A muted look of pleasant surprise crossed her face for half a second; the tech was right on time. That was a good sign for a good start.

"Hey, up here," Sienna called down to her from where she stood, nearly twenty feet above Amelia, waving one arm to attract her attention. When Amelia noticed her, she made a sweeping circle with the same arm, toward the engine and back around to the opposite side of the landed ship. "Loading ramp's that way," she called. "I'll meet you over there."

Once she was satisfied she'd made herself clear, Sienna walked along the upper hull to the center of the ship, to the open dorsal hatch, and descended the ladder into the cylindrical central airlock. Passing through the similarly ajar inner lock, she made a left turn and walked along the weathered, but rock-steady metal grating of the ship's main corridor to meet Amelia at the ramp.

Giving a casual thumbs up that she understood other woman's message, Amelia made her way towards the ship, walking around the hull and towards the loading ramp. The woman also noticed the disparity between the hull on the bow and stern, idly running a gloved hand on the metallic hull as she approached the ramp; Then she knew that Sienna was very serious about making that ship spaceworthy.

"Cozy." Amelia said once she encountered Sienna after walking up the ramp, taking her time to examine the insides of the ship more closely as she rubbed her two gloved hands together. It was clear that the ship was old and, without the reforms, falling apart, but to Amelia it had the same appeal of an old house, comfortable and simple if one didn't mind the ghosts.

By the time Amelia ascended the ramp, Sienna was at the top, about to descend when she seemed to decide instead to wait up there for her. Now that she was closer, the smudges of grease, dirt, and grime on her tank top and exposed skin were much more apparent. Her thick pants were likewise smeared, and a wrench hung by a loop on the side of her left thigh. The self-proclaimed ship captain was pulling a pair of work gloves off as she watched Amelia walked between the two heavyset hydraulic pistons that had lowered it to the ground on her way up the ramp and into the ship.

"That's one way to put it," Sienna replied with half of a smirk, shoving her gloves into one pocket. Lifting her PHC again, she made a few gestures in the air above it with the opposite hand, calling up a slowly rotating holographic representation of a maintenance drone with a command interface alongside it. Tapping the air around it, she gave the unit several remote instructions, then closed the display and looked back at Amelia. "This way," she told her, nodding over her right shoulder, and led her into the ship.

The pair walked through the inner airlock door at the top of the ramp and into a circular corridor, their boots clanking loudly on the metal plated floor. At regular intervals around each wall of the passageway, simple metal rungs were affixed as handholds, presumably for use in a zero-G scenario. Insulated cables and conduits ran along the walls semi-regularly, as if they had been hung as an afterthought by someone with better things to do. Set in the ceiling were nondescript lamps protected by sturdy-looking metal cages. Some of the light fixtures gave off a strong white light, others more of a tired yellowish color. A few of them flickered occasionally, indicating an electrical fault or a dying light source. In many ways, the interior felt more like an abandoned bomb shelter or derelict industrial building than a starship.

They followed the circular hallway just a few feet to the left from cresting the ramp, where the bulkhead toward the forward section of the ship opened up, revealing a curiously shaped hallway expanding off of the main corridor. A row of six seats, their upholstry stained and cracked with age but their attached safety bars and restraints in suprisingly decent condition, lined the right-hand wall, fastened securely to the floor. A nearly semicircular segment of the wall on the left jutted out three or four feet, set in the center by what appeared to be another airlock door with a control panel alongside it. Judging from the fact that the panel appeared completely deactivated, there was no power to that section of the ship. The letters "ESC PE OD" were stencilled above the door in Nepleslian, worn away by the relentless passage of time. On the far wall a short flight of three steps led up to a windowed hatch, set above the other visible doors by at least three feet. One could catch a glimpse of an exterior canopy through the window on the hatch, indicating it led to the cockpit, which was confirmed by a similarly faded stencilled label next to it reading as such. In the corner just to the right of that hatch was another one in the right wall, with no window, although another stencilling said "F RW D AINEN ANCE."

"Cockpit's through here," Sienna said, climbing the steps and twisting a metal handle set in the wall next to the hatch on the forward wall. With a loud clank, the locking mechanism released, and the door retracted to the side with a whoosh. "Ship's computer is in there," she added, pointing to her right towards the other door nearby, "but most of the connections you'll need you can access from here." Stepping into the cockpit area, she beckoned Amelia to follow.

Just inside the door the women were beset on all sides by computer consoles, exposed insulated wires, and display screens, most of them two-dimensional monitors. The floor was elevated high enough so that Sienna had to crouch to fit inside. Just to the left of the door, in the floor, a circular panel was pulled out and set aside, exposing a cluttered array of connections and blinking lights, their wiry tendrils plugged into everything in each other, running to and fro and out of sight in all directions. Forward from the elevated platform, an armored bubble canopy provided them with a panoramic view of the station's docking bay, its "nose" roughly eight feet from the cockpit entrance. Two command couches sat below the platform, depressed back down about three feet from where they stood, far enough down that climbing in and out of them would apparently require the use of a handrail set in the ceiling right where the platform dropped off. Each of the couches were claustrophobically pinned in by volumetric and monitor deisplays, all powered and in diagnostic mode, while a large three-dimensional astrogation projector loomed between the two. What appeared to be flight controls were set around the seat on the right, and much of the comms and navigational equipment was concentrated to the left.

"This ship's computer is an ancient piece of crap," Sienna continued. "I don't even recognize the manufacturer, so good luck finding any specs or anything useful. You'll just have to figure it out, and the damn thing is wonky as all hell." She snorted and wiped her nose with the back of her hand. "I can't figure out what the hell is wrong with it; it keeps rebooting itself, shutting down sections of ths ship, or tripping diagnostic alarms when there ain't nothin' wrong. The equpiment up here is mostly new, though," she added, motioning towards the control couches up front, as well as the monitoring stations around them. "Almost all of it is Origin and Emrys tech, less than a couple years old. I've got too much on my plate to keep fightin' with this junk, so if you can take a crack at it, it'd save me a lot of headache."

The sound of approaching treads on metal could be heard out in the main corridor as Sienna squatted down in front of the circular access panel. "Most of your relays go through here," she explained, waving towards the access hatch with a limp flick of her wrist. "Anywhere you want to tweak or test the interfaces, this is the place to start." She craned her neck to see out into the hallway, towards the origin of the sound. The maintenance drone had rolled up to the bottom of the stairs, grinding to a stop, and began to softly beep at a regular tempo. Sienna turned her eyes back to Amelia. "That drone can give you another set of hands in the computer room if you need it," she concluded. "It responds to verbal commands, so just talk to it like you would anyone else, except maybe use smaller words. And it's gonna tell you some inane stuff, because it takes everything this ship's POS computer tells it literally. Got any questions?"

Taking her time to scan around the cockpit, Amelia examined the room with a clearly visible interest. Sure, it was cramped, but it was designed in a way to be entirely functional, spartan even, and undoubtedly a welcome sight for her. Not wanting to waste any more time with that, the raven-haired woman gave Sienna a nod and set her backpack down on the floor, pulling her own Datajockey from inside along with a cable that would allow her to plug it to the ship's computer, then set about to work

Plugging her Datajockey in, she started to work with practiced familiarity, running the basic checks before moving to the more complex ones, although her expression changed once she started to run into the first problems, brow furrowing and eyes narrowing as she concentrated further. Whenever she tried to access the more vital functions of the computer, it shut her down, seemingly actively. At first she thought it was some problem with the socket, but after plugging the cable on another one the same thing happened. Sighing, Amelia scratched her somewhat messy hair and kept at it, 'Time to get serious, then', she thought, the problem wasn't as simple as she had thought.

She sat down on the metal floor with her back towards Sienna for more comfort and then started to work again.


Amelia turned towards Sienna from where she sat, staring at the other woman. "Is your other friend also working on the computer?" She asked the auburn-haired woman with a quizzical look, raising the Datajockey and showing what was on the screen.

The date stream slowed a fraction. it wasn't hard to see why, somebody else was trying to access the same system. The spiderbot's resident quickly ghosted their signal and cloaked themselves from the 001 user. It took it only a few moments to do it all but the Main computer system appeared to rebooted.

With it's patinces of a machine it was easy to wait for the system to boot back up with the new protocols and the Spiderbot's resident now added in as it's main OS. With a chime and a new splash screen of a pair of pink panties rotating over a blue screen, it fulling logged.


If the spiderbot's controller had a mouth it would have been smiling mischievously.

"Nah," Sienna replied as she rose from her kneeling position, placing one hand on the ceiling as if to cushion her from hitting her head, and nodded her head in the general direction of the ship's stern. "I think he's working in the cargo bay." She smirked. "Ship's last owner thought it would make a pretty fish tank, but by the time I came along it was just a big algae dump." Suddenly she shook her head, almost like she was scolding herself for getting off-topic. "Anyway, he's aboard somewhere. I'll be back in the aft engineering again, but I won't be where I can get to you easily, so don't bug me unless it's an emergency."

Rapping her knuckles on the ceiling with a nod of finality, she squeezed up against the wall around Amelia and moved to step out of the cockpit. "I'll leave you to it, then," she said, but before she stepped through the hatch to descend the steps, she paused, looking back over her shoulder. "Oh, one more thing," she added. "The drone out here will be monitoring what you do with the computer, just so you know. So if you're thinking of doing anything 'creative' with my ship, you should think twice." The dry smirk on her lips was cool and devoid of much real feeling, and the look in her eyes made her message quite clear. She wouldn't tolerate any sabotage attempts.

"Right," she said after a long pause, and tapped the door frame with the flats of her fingers twice. "Have fun." With that, she stepped out, the sounds of her boots fading as she walked back to the central airlock, and ascended back up to the dorsal hull.

Amelia raised an eyebrow in surprise, her lips quivering as she did a poor job to stifle the grin that tried to form on her face. Turning the cargo bay into a fish tank was both incredibly funny and stupid, at least to her. She saw that as some sort of dark humor, whereas she assumed that Sienna just saw that like the works of an insane mind; She couldn't blame the other woman, though, space was full of all kinds of crazy people. The raven-haired woman nodded towards Sienna, both when she mentioned that she would be elsewhere but the cockpit wouldn't be left un-monitored.

"Don't worry, from what you said the previous owner already had more than his share of 'creative'." Amelia said, she was in someone else's turf, and was a complete stranger at that, so the precaution was more than warranted. She turned her attention back to her datajockey once the other woman had left, but unlike last time, she couldn't stifle the grin once she saw the OS's splash screen and made a sound akin to someone choking, taking her some seconds to put her attention back on her original task.


Amelia also noticed how everything seemed to be running completely smoothly after the computer had rebooted yet again, and how other mysterious user had disappeared. She initially ruled that out as simply the system being too old, like Sienna had said, but the more skeptical part of her kept nagging how it was too easy that the computer would simply be working normally after all that, it was just too easy.

When Amelia entered the diagnostic command, the screen initially showed no response, as if it didn't recognize that there had been an input at all. Then the screen flickered a few times, followed by a sudden dump of thousands of nonsensical alphanumeric characters and symbols. The display scrolled automatically as the computer returned line after line of jibberish, scrolling upwards much too fast for the young woman to read any of it. After three or four seconds, it suddenly paused, followed by another few dozen lines, coming in groups of two to ten at completely erratic intervals.

Finally a line break appeared, and a string of error messages displayed at three second intervals, each one punctuated by a growing string of ellipses every second.


There was another pause, and then the screen flickered once again, clearing itself, then displayed original greeting as single line of text, devoid of any splash screen or any other graphic.

It could feel the original OS trying to come back to life. With a few pulses of commands It put the OS back into it's locked box deep in the system. If it could chuckle it would, especially since the command for a diagnostics came up.

With a few beeps and one dangerous sounding grinding sound the screen changed to one of a progress bar slowly working its way to the right. with each jump in the progress the Panties in the back ground danced about a little.


It was hoping the user wouldn't think to hard about these fixes, allowing It more control over it's environment.

Amelia tapped the Datajockey's screen, then scratched her head in puzzlement again as she read what was in it and whatever fixation with panties the computer seemed to have. She didn't take what it was telling her literally, but instead chose to think that it was the previous owner's own sick way of making a 'funny' OS for the ship, if the language being used by the interface was any clue about it, and the fact that the simple 'interfacing' problem was starting to look like it was something much more complicated than that started to worry her.

Still, she had a job to do, and she would follow through it, even if it meant installing a new OS altogether which was preferable to bandaging the large problem with minor fixes. She didn't exactly ask permission to erase the current one and start from scratch, but she was sure no one would object getting rid of the current buggy interface, and she could easily install the base interface again.


She punched the simple command and sent it. The rest was just a matter of waiting until the computers installed the new OS.

Oreza strode across the massive space of the main hangar. After helping out some more with the ship he had gone back to his apartment to grab his things. He had tools and a few leftover spare parts from his old ship that would be useful for getting Sienna's ship up and running. That and he figured he may as well pack up his few meager belongings and bring them along since he was going to be leaving the station, most likely for good.

So he arrived back at the landing platform, a well stuffed backpack on, a large sea bag full of the rest of his things. All in all Oreza did not own much. Clothes, a couple of coats, including his old navy overcoat. A couple hats, a few odds and ends he had picked up on his travels and while in the military and his pipes.

He approached the boarding ramp and stopped, setting his sea bag down and stretching his arms for a moment. "Ahoy!" he called to Sienna inside. "Permission to come aboard?"

Cockpit

After the format command was given, it began a long and laborious process of going line by line through unending strings of garbled code and various control matrices as the computer was set to the task of starting itself over from scratch. Amelia's input was required from time to time as the corrupted systems were purged of years upon years of increasing disorganization, amateur modifications, and broken programming, but it quickly became apparent that getting everything back to fresh working order was going to take days.

Outside the Ship - Aft

As Oreza approached the ship, he could see bright flashes of light emanating from the dismantled stern above the gutted engine, as well as the sounds of sparks and torch-cutting. When he called out, the sounds stopped a second later, and Sienna's head and shoulders popped up from the opening, her face concealed by an opaque black face shield. Cutting off the plasma torch in her hand, she flipped the face shield up, looking back down at him with an expression that suggested she was slightly annoyed at the interruption, but smirked casually nonetheless. "Thought you were still inside," she called back down, leaning her elbows on exposed plates and piping on either side of her. Her grin widened slightly when she noticed he had his belongings in tow. "Get on aboard, soldier," she continued, tossing her head back towards the loading ramp across the ship. "I need a hand here."

Cockpit

Amelia punched yet another command as the computer kept doing on its process of reinstallation, it was just a matter of patience while the machine did almost all the process by itself. She got up instead and stretched herself out, standing on the tip of her toes and touching the low ceiling behind the operator's seat as she raised her hands and arched her back before examining the cockpit closer. Her eyes inevitably darted towards the navigator cockpit, making she walk closer to it to stare at the station below her.

'Touch nothing and keep your hands in your pockets', She thought as she gave a sideways glance to the maintenance drone, sure that it was recording her every move. Still, Amelia crouched again, leaning closer to the seat so that she could examine.