Conjecture and rumour

<ooc>
This is a backpost, detailing what Cass and Jay were really chatting about before Seymour interrupted them
</ooc>

<snip>
"I had no idea they were here, our sensors can't detect them. Truth is they'd have probably left us alone had we not pulled up in a mining ship..."
</snip>

Cass raised her eyebrows, silently looking Jay up and down; her coolly appraisive gaze belatedly reminding him that he was still only dressed in his shorts after his time spent splashing around in the surf with Davie
"How the hell would they know we have a mining ship?" she asked "And how do creatures the size of small islands move around the universe and seed themselves on so many worlds?"
"I've no idea" Jay admitted, glancing back over his shoulder at the geologically massive creature still glowering at them beyond the Starbug's open hatch "But I'll tell you more about them once we get airborne; I promised it we'd leave, remember?"
"Yeah, I heard that" Cass wrinkled her nose in distaste at the idea "But we can't... Not now! I found something while I was out exploring earlier; I think it might be related to Queen Brittany"
Jay's eyes widened in shock before his expression quickly darkened
"In that case there's an even greater need for us to get the hell off this smegging planet, right now!"
He pushed past her and slapped the door's control panel, sealing the hatch
"What the smeg!?" Cass snapped indignantly "Why!? Other than the massive, irritable island, that is..."
Ignoring her, Jay thumbed the controls on the door's comm panel
"Get us out of here Jones!" he shouted, only finally turning his attention back to Cassandra once Davie had responded in affirmative
"Right" he ordered "I need to know what you found, and what if anything happened!"
Cass glowered at him as the engines howled distantly to life and the ship began its juddering ascent
"You know what?” she snapped “I've about had enough of you thinking you can speak to me like I'm a member of your smegging crew"
"First you endanger the life of every woman, and who knows, maybe if you're lucky: every man as well, by bringing that vile, stinking pervert onboard"
"Then you dismiss me with your oh so commanding and stern 'Not now' shit" she continued, slowly closing the distance between the two of them, until barely more than forty or so centimetres separated them
"And now you think you can get away with speaking to me like I'm yours to just order around!? Again!?"
She poked him in his chest with a finger, making him flinch in surprise
"Six hundred years spent dicking about with the time continuum doesn't make you any better than me in the slightest!" she poked him again "...and the sooner you realise that the better!"
"Smeg's sake woman!" Jay snapped, irritably waving her hand away "You don't understand! Just tell me what you found!"
"Well, if I don't understand, why don't you smegging well explain it!?"
Jay threw his hands up in frustration
"Give me strength" he snarled through gritted teeth "Alright, have it your way: Brittany is bad news, ok!? Very, very bad news! You don’t want to go messing!"
Cass pursed her lips, staring unflinchingly into his eyes
"Why?" she demanded
"Anecdotal evidence and conjecture" Jay shook his head dismissively, breaking eye contact first as he crossed his arms defensively in front of himself "I'll tell you what I know, but you've got to tell me what you found - our lives might depend on the information!"
"Really?" Cass frowned, backing away out of his personal space a little
"Yeah: Really!" Jay nodded, assuming a more reasonable tone "Now, what was it you found?"
"It... A tall, black, square based column with the union flag traced on it"
"Cold nearby?"
"Yeah, freezing..."
"Any other decoration?"
"No. Nothing"
"That sounds like it might have been one of the category seven artefacts" Jay blew out his cheeks in relief "Those aren't too bad, although it's a good thing you didn't touch it; we wouldn't even be having this conversation if you had... You didn’t touch it did you?"
"No..." Cass affirmed with a half-hearted shake of her head, frowning as she remembered the blue lights that had blossomed around her fingertips when she had touched the column "Are these artefacts common?"
"Thankfully not" Jay shook his head "And before you ask: No, I've no idea what they are for; nobody does – especially given that most of the people who develop an interest in such things tend to disappear or wind up dead!"
"Sounds like I had a worryingly close call without even realising it" Cass murmured, lapsing into silence for a moment before she spoke again
"Sorry for snapping" she said quietly
"Yeah, I'm sorry too" Jay began "It's just that sometimes, as Captain, you need information or have to make snap decisions, and you don't expect or need to have anyone questioning your motivations"
"You got the apology, so don't push it by trying to prove yourself right as well" Cass smiled "And besides: I was never military, and you, believe it or not, aren't Captain anymore; nobody is!"
"Yeah, well..." Jay looked a little bashful
"So what actually happened with Brittany?" Cass asked, quickly changing the subject before either of them had to get too effusive with their self-criticism
"Well, like I said..." Jay frowned "It's all conjecture; even the STCP aren't entirely sure what happened, what with that whole epoch being cloaked by a ten thousand year dead zone"
“What's one of those?”
“Dead zones? They're anomalies; pockets of time that you can't travel into or out of. For the most part they're usually the result of a paradox, and generally only last a few centuries at the most before they fade, but the one beginning around Brittany's second reign is unusual in that it lasts so long and that nothing the STCP have tried, has yielded any information about what’s actually going on in that period of history”
"So, was it Brittany that caused it?"
"The STCP are pretty sure she did" Jay nodded "But I'd say it's inconclusive as to whether it's a natural phenomena or something that she or someone else somehow managed to achieve"
"Fascinating" Cass smiled, intrigued “So what about the artefacts, where did they come from?”
“Again, no-one knows” Jay was beginning to warm to his subject “Other than the Union flag, which a sizeable number of them don't actually have, there's not much to actually connect them with Brittany other than circumstantial conjecture and the fact that they're there after the dead zone and not before it...”
"Surely the history books after the dead zone must detail something about them or her?"
"Nope - That period's one of humanities dark ages; ancient information about some long dead monarch is kinda hard to come by at that point, but STCP archaeological research seems to indicate that Brittany probably began her second reign by committing genocide, and eradicating the Molopods with some sort of tailored bio-terminator, before, we suspect, returning to Earth to establish some sort of global authoritarian technocracy"
"Wow, who would have thought she had it in her?" Cass grinned, secretly pleased to hear that her former self had gone on to achieve so much
"Yeah" Jay agreed grimly "Hard to believe isn't it? The STCP have tried to kill her dozens of times in the time lines leading up to the start of her second reign, but she simply won't die – it's weird"
Cass was about to ask another question, when they were interrupted by Seymour appearing in the doorway between the cockpit and the access gantry.
<snip>
“Had a good chat did you?”
“Yeah I just explained to Cass...”
</snip>