Another few days passed, putting Cait’s Chariot about a quarter of the way along the projected route through the affectionately named dead zone. Tensions between Cait and Rhys had eased and their working rapport had reverted to a casual ease where they were able to talk freely with no lingering unease about their fraternisation. Maybe it was knowing that he could approach her that made him less prone to frustration, or maybe he had just been having a bad day that day when she’d let him masturbate onto her. In any case, they were both able to get on with their actual duties, as often monotonous as they might be, without getting on each other’s nerves.

So far nothing had turned up on the sensors with respect to the missing vessel. No sign of the vessel or any debris or chemical compositions that would suggest explosions or escape of gases. For all Cait knew the vessel had simply emerged from the zone late and was back en route, and she had no way of knowing. In the interim she kept diligently performing regular sensor sweeps, which at least gave her something to do besides read or watch movies or exercise in the ship’s tiny gym. Unfortunately, the fact it wasn’t leading to anything interesting did generate some disappointment.

“What’s new?” Rhys asked sarcastically as he drifted into the bridge and peered through the viewport to survey the stars. “I see the constellations are all right where I left them.”

“Hmph.” Cait gave a half-hearted chuckle at the weak joke as she stretched, arching her back and shoulders after floating in one position for too long.

“No news on the other ship?” Rhys continued.

“Nothing. Not even regular radio broadcasts. They’d be old, but they’d at least give us an idea if they were in trouble.”

“You get so into the mindset that your comms are useless that you don’t even think about transmitting a distress signal to anyone who might hear it and at least report that you’re dead.”

“Christ, that’s morbid.”

“That’s the dead zone.” Rhys shrugged.

“So what’ve you been up to?”

“Trying to trick the predictive maintenance algorithms to detect problems that don’t exist.”

“What?” Cait asked incredulously.

“What I do is manually introduce issues into the engineering environment. A temperature spike here, an intake restriction there, and see what diagnoses it suggests to optimise performance again.”

“And?”

“Well, the computer correctly identified the zone the issues were occurring in and then suggested potential remedies and preventative maintenance to stop it happening again. It’s quite robust, though it’s not programmed to say things like ‘remove blowtorch from coolant line three’.”

“You didn’t!” Cait exclaimed, shocked.

“Only for a minute. Don’t worry, the torch wasn’t hot enough to do anything to the conduit.”

“But the coolant…”

“…is specifically for the purpose of dissipating heat.”

“I will give you that, but please don’t introduce fire to any other parts of my ship, please.”

“Aye, Captain.”

There was a moment of silence as the conversation lulled and they listened to the incessant hum of the ship operating, a noise they usually tuned out. The silence grew longer and Cait predicted what Rhys was about to say.

“So…” Rhys said, always the least casual way to introduce a sensitive topic of conversation. Cait tilted her head and regarded him placidly, challenging him to continue.

“I know this might be a little sooner than you expected, but I wanted to feel out how we were going in terms of revisiting your standing offer.” Rhys said, about as smoothly as 60 grit sandpaper.

“I have to confess, I’m slightly sceptical as to how urgent your needs are.”

“Admittedly, the situation is not dire.