Navel gazing and confrontation

Who: Cassandra, Jay
Where: Blue Dwarf Hangar B
When: Three days ago

<snip>
"Look, sorry again for going into 'boss mode'. It's just, I wanna keep you ...er, I mean, everyone safe."
Cass held back a smile as she brushed past him. "And bringing him aboard will do that will it?" she nodded at the alien.
"Don't worry about him" Jay said. "One wrong move, and he dies. I won't let anything happen to yo... anyone."
"Whatever Sparky" Cass said, and turned away.
</snip>

Walking back towards the starbug, Cass shyly allowed a smile to creep onto her lips
Not one, but two little Freudian slips!
She glanced back over her shoulder to watch Jay leading the Malodorian out of the hangar, only finally turning away as the airlock doors slid closed behind him and leaving her on her own, for what must have been the first time since she had emerged from stasis

Determined to take advantage of her unexpected solitude, she strolled back up the access ramp and into the Starbug, pursing her lips against her smile, which refused to be suppressed, and finally broke though again to light her face up with delight, as she walked back into the gloomy interior of the Starbug

As she meandered through the ship towards the bridge, she began mentally dissecting the conversation she had just had
Two little slips like that had to mean something, didn't it?
That... Jay liked her?
Or perhaps, he was just cynically manipulating her feelings, to recruit an ally for whatever mission it was that the STCP had actually sent him here for?
Frowning at this, Cass paused at the door to the bridge, to thumb the access panel
Maybe she ought to see if Jay would consent to that Trawl she had mentioned to him the other day, so she could see if the STCP had engineered any false memories or artificial thought processes, and help allay the niggling suspicions she had about his allegedly former employers

As she stepped through the open door onto the bridge, it occurred to her that in the light of the recent revelations about Brittany, it was a hell of an odd coincidence, Jay turning up again, scant hours after she, the one person in the universe with the most insight into Brittany's motivations, had emerged from three million years of stasis
Could it be that he was only here at the STCP's behest, after information about Brittany and that ten thousand year temporal dead zone, that Cass was in no doubt had been purposefully engineered to prevent any meddling in the Queen's affairs?
“Aw, for smeg's sake...” she muttered, her brow furrowing unhappily

What that it!?
Was that all that this was?

Cass looked around the silent, dimly lit bridge and miserably blew out a sigh; her earlier elation merely a memory
“Smeg's sake” she repeated, rubbing her face with her hands
Why the hell did she have to think like this, and assume that absolutely everyone was going to screw her over!?
Wasn't it enough that a guy she had liked for ages might conceivably feel the same about her?
Wasn't it!?
Wiping her nose on the back of her hand and sniffing a little, she struggled to regain her composure
Maybe she should just ask him?
That would probably be the best thing to do, but the main thing that put her off this idea was that if Jay really did like her and wasn't still in the employ of the STCP, she'd just come across as some sort of paranoid psycho-bitch – which was something, in her experience, that guys tended not to find attractive in a woman

She slipped into her chair behind the science desk and idly flicked the terminal on, using it to access the local net and to attempt to pull the Slave system's schematics up; only belatedly remembering that the damned thing had disappeared at some point over the last three million years, and so slumped back into her chair to ponder her situation...
It was possible that Jay wasn't here at the behest of the STCP, she realised, and as such, his arrival might just have been a massive coincidence - after all, if you analysed anything long enough, you'd always see the subtle hand of fate at work, somewhere behind the scenes
Boy meets girl?
Sperm meets egg?
Trillions of humans, all coincidentally lucky to be alive, and all finally whittled down to these luckiest of the lucky - The handful left alive and cast adrift in space, here on the 'Dwarf?
Coincidence after coincidence?
Maybe she was reading too much into this
She should just ask Jay - he was a nice guy after all!
Even if he didn't agree to having his mind trawled, he might let her investigate the processes that were apparently enabling his eternal youth (If you could call appearing to be in your thirties 'youthful', of course!) - That would at least allay some of her suspicions that he was simply plucked from his death on the Hymenoptera homeworld, primed with six hundred years worth of fake memories and simply thrown into her path
Or was longevity the control mechanism the STCP used to keep their agents in line?
Was he here, threatened with the withdrawal of whatever was keeping him alive unless he delivered, or had Jay given much more up than than just a job when he announced that he had quit, and the clock was once more ticking on his lifespan?
Or was he immortal?
If that were the case, and she did get something going with Jay, Cass mused, how long might it last? Until her looks began to fade, while he remained ever ageless?
Would she be able to replicate whatever the processes were that kept him going and apply them to herself?
And, after that: What then?
Closing her eyes and shaking her head, she mentally chided herself for thinking like some love struck teenager - not that she'd ever had the chance to indulge in such things when she actually was a teen, she reflected bitterly
What should she do?
The number of times she had met a guy she had connected with and actually liked had, depressingly, only happened few times in her entire life, and as a result, she really didn't want to smeg this up (especially given the tiny handful of available humans, this side of three million years out from the rest of humanity), but there were so many unknown variables with Jay
She rubbed her face with her hands before letting them fall limply into her lap
What the smeg was she going to do!?
“Ah, there you are!” White Wolf called from the doorway behind her “Holly said you were in here!”
Cass spun her chair around to silently regard him
“C'mon” the hamster grinned “You're on food scavenging detail with me”
“Smeg it” she sighed, heaving herself up out of her chair “Ok, I'm with you"
Perhaps she'd just take the traditional British approach with Jay, and get violently drunk together and wake up next to him in the morning...

Who: Cass, Jay, et al.
Where: The deep space trading post
When: Right now

<snip>
The Maldorians turned and began walking back to their ship and vanished through the cargo bay doors.
"Right.." said Jay, wheeling around "It won't be long before they figure out they've been had, but that should have bought us some time...let's arm ourselves and get ready to defend the cargo!"
</snip>

“Hey guys!” Davie called, pulling a couple of assault rifles out of a packing crate “Look what I just found! There's an absolute ton of hardware in here!”
“Oh, fantastic!” Seymour squealed with delight, having opened another crate “Magnolia paint!”

The weaponry was passed around with Cass winding up with some sort of energy weapon; a bulky, snub nosed rifle of some description, that was almost as long as she was tall
She hefted the thing uneasily on its shoulder sling, experimentally targeting the cargo bay doors across the room
“Smeg's sake” she muttered to herself “I can't believe we're fighting over canned goods...”
“Cass!” Jay called “You're far too exposed there! Get over here!”
“Huh, I can't remember the last time a guy said that to me” Cass drawled, nonchalantly strolling over into cover behind a couple of crates with Jay “Makes a change...”
“Yeah, well...” Jay winked “Can't have you getting killed, can we?”
“Nice of you to care” Cass smiled wanly
“I... Yeah, of course I care”
Crouching down behind the crates and training their weapons on the hangar doors, they lapsed into a watchful silence

“Jay...?” Cass asked in a low voice after a moment, still watching the hangar doors “What's with this appointing a leader stuff? I thought we had already been here and covered this?”
"Yeah" Jay grunted "But we didn't get a result, did we?"
"Or at least not the one you wanted, right?" Cass glanced at him out of the corner of her eye, trying to gauge his reaction to this provocative statement
"Cass, this really isn't the time for this" Jay sighed “We need someone in charge - Someone's got to call the shots and assume responsibility for all the tough choices facing us; we just can't carry on running things by committee like we have been doing”
Cass glanced away from the hangar doors to stare at him
"Why?" she asked “There's only a handful of us and the committee approach, from my point of view, has been working fine so far! - And as for being at each others throats, it's the cut and thrust of lively debate that keeps you on your toes with me!”
"It's not that..." Jay started
"Well, how about you telling me what it is then!?" Cass smoothly interrupted, trying to maintain as even a tone as she was able to muster "You're the one pushing for this Jay, and yet: You know as well as I do, that the job's more or less in the bag for you"
"Not necessarily" Jay replied coolly "It's an open contest, and anyone can nominate themselves - You could too, if you wanted to!"
"Bollocks" Cass retorted bluntly "Look at the choices here: Seymour's just a petty wanker with less spine than a jellyfish, Phi's bonkers, White Wolf, as nice a guy as he is, is an ancient hamster, and hardly representative of the rest of us, Davie's almost as loose a cannon as I am, and even if I were interested in the job, nobody's going to want to take orders from the girl they all remember getting her tits out for a living; so pretty much: Yeah! It's a choice between either you, or you!"
"I... hadn't looked at it like that" Jay admitted with a sigh "Perhaps someone else will come forward..."
"I wouldn’t bank on it Sparky - you've got previous form as a decent captain"
Cass took a breath
“...but maybe it would be best if they did?”
Jay stiffened
“Oh?”
"What I'm trying to to say” Cass soothed “Is that as much as I... I trust you Jay, I don't trust your ex-employers – I mean: Can you categorically say that the STCP haven't smegged with your head in some way?”
“This again?” Jay began "They wouldn’t..."
“You wouldn’t even know it if they had!” Cass interrupted gently “Or do you actually still work for them!? And what is it that keeps you alive after six hundred years!?”
“Bloody hell” Jay sighed “As much as I like you Cass, you don’t half pick your smegging moments!”
“The feeling's mutual” she smiled “But there's a lot we don't know about you Mr. Chrysler, so forgive me if I ask what everyone else should be asking, but are too dumb to do so”
Jay regarded her for a moment with an unreadable half-smile playing across his lips
“Incoming!” Davie bellowed as a rocket propelled grenade streaked overhead, detonating on the far side of the hangar
“Oh, god!" Seymour wailed "My magnolia!”

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