Cassandra: Red lights and indignation

The ship rocked violently as the plasma scorched 'Dwarf crashed through the
wormhole, internal lights across the ship momentarily flickering out, only to be
replaced seconds later by the dim red emergency lights
Cassandra snarled and looked up from her work at her terminal
"Why do smegging emergency lights always have to be red?" she snapped "I mean,
it's not like red lights use less energy or anything, and besides which: human
eyes are less sensitive to lower wavelengths so we don't see so great in red
light, which is just ideal in a smegging emergency, isn't it!?"
Mr. Butler, lounging in one of the bunks, just grunted and turned the page of
the book he was reading - Crime and Punishment, Cass had approvingly noted
earlier on
"You know...?" she continued, impulsively grabbing a wrench from the assortment
of tools on the table in front of her and standing to walk across the room
towards the dimly glowing red light.
"I bet if I..."
Cass bought the wrench up over her head and smashed it into the emergency light,
sending shards of red plastic tumbling to the ground and revealing a brightly
glowing white light beneath the ruined red shade
"Huh. Thought so"
She smiled smugly and wandered back across the room to toss the wrench back onto
the table with a clatter and snatch up a pack of fags
"At least we can see now, eh?"
Butler just grunted in a vaguely affirmative manner and turned another page
Pausing, a cig halfway towards her mouth, Cass glanced up at the room's main
monitor which was showing a view of something big and black, mottled green
"What the smeg is that?" she demanded "Hol?"
Holly shimmered into a corner of the monitor
"What's up dude?"
"What's that thing out there?"
"Looks like it might be a Hymenoptera station" Holly replied "But the honest
answer is that I haven't got a clue"
"Huh. Big bugger, isn't it?" Cass muttered, sparking the cig up "Or maybe it's
just pleased to see us..."
Holly wisely kept quiet; an IQ of over six thousand sometimes helped in spotting
the occasional rhetorical question
Cass stared pensively at the station for a moment before pulling up the current
information schematics from the Slave system and overlaying them on the screen
"Huh, look at that" she murmured "It's broadcasting that same beta wave signal
as well. So what do we have here? Some sort of central hive mind node, or is it
just a smegging big space station?"
"And what the smeg are we even doing here?" she continued, indignantly realising
that the situation was probably dangerous "Did some smartarse figure a way to
trace an omnidirectional signal to this location and think to themselves 'Hey,
let's go party with the unfriendly aliens'? Because if they did, I'd like to be
the first one in line to give them a smegging good slap!"
"Well, I'm not sure who traced the signal, but it was our current Captain, Amber
FeBuggure who gave the order to jump here" Holly volunteered helpfully
"What? Someone promoted a three year old to captain!?"
"Well, she's a bit older than that" Holly smiled "But yeah..."
Cass curled her lip, staring intently at the station and information overlaid on
the monitor
"Oh, well" she shrugged after a moment "It's a big bloody space station. It's
not attacking us or anything, and even if it was, there's smeg all I can do
about it"
She picked up her terminal and slumped back into her chair to restart her work
on the control software
"Let me know if anything changes Hol..."
<tbc/>