Annabelle watched the sensors as the Blarg ships retreated to the moon, where they had been hiding before this incident, with a big smile on her face.
"That was so cool. You guys totally just met a new alien species and got them drunk, and taught them the joys of eating pastries. Even on a dangerous mission to find the traces of the Klem, you still get to have more fun than the rest of us." She cheered while Max started to plot the course to their next destination.
"It's not all fun and games. If we hadn't managed to get a deal worked out with those people, there would have been a space battle. I'm sure even your hyperactive little mind knows that would be a bad thing." Nico reminded her.
"But this is a custom ship made by Lead Researcher herself for your own private use. How could a bunch of low-class nobodies damage it?" the little Innu asked, brushing off all concerns about the dangers of space battles.
Her thoughts at that moment let Max know precisely why she had broken in here. She had a severe case of hero worship and had found out that Nico had made herself a new ship, so she simply had to be the very first one to see it.
The fact that she had actually managed to break in was mostly down to her own ingenuity but partially because Nico had removed most of the security measures around the hangar because they were leaving right away.
Annabelle didn't even realize that if Nico had intended to lock down the ship, she didn't stand a chance to get in, so Max would have to do something to remind her of that fact before they got back to Absolution, where her inflated sense of skill might get her into a whole lot more trouble.
He wouldn't want to lead an otherwise good kid and promising researcher down the path of a life of crime just because he didn't warn her adequately about the misuse of her powers.
"The course is ready whenever we are," Max informed Nico, who was going over the data that they had collected from the Blarg ship while she waited for him to decide their next target.
"On it. Let's see, what sort of assignment do we have for our favourite research assistant? Oh, I have a great one. There are sixteen adjustments to our course during this next warp-speed journey. I want you to identify all of the adjustments made and the reasons why they were made." Nico decided.
Annabelle frowned. Finding the course adjustments was easy. She could get that from the computer in seconds, but as to why, that would be much harder. She didn't actually know much about warp travel, as it had only been a passing curiosity before she met Nico a few days ago and had learned about some of the amazing things that the Lead Researcher had accomplished with her mom's team and kept quiet about.
"Might I recommend a book for you? This is the introduction to celestial navigation textbook from the human Academy systems. It is age appropriate for you, and it is the very first textbook that we receive if we are going to take on the role of a ship's navigator. It is also essential to all warp technicians and ship design engineers, though they learn it a bit later." Max offered and transferred the digital book to her data tablet.
She stared at the book description in horror for a moment, then her smile turned to a devious smirk as she recalled seeing a learning device stored in the cubby beside the couches in the sitting room.
Max pretended not to notice since she was off to study so that she could answer the questions properly. Reading the actual book wasn't part of the assignment. She was only learning the basics of warp travel, and she could do that with memory transfer and a few Virtual Reality practice sessions. It would also keep her silent and still for a few minutes while her mind was busy in the simulation, trying to determine why they had made specific course corrections.
What she didn't know yet was that the assignment was a logic trap. One of the course corrections was only to confuse anyone that was following them since it would take them past a planet with an atmospheric phenomenon that looked like fireworks.
If she could get the questions correct, she could see them in the morning with her own eyes. Max assumed that would be the case, as she had been doing quite well up to this point, so he prepared a plan to stop there for a while and wait to see if anyone was following them along their route.
It didn't seem likely that anyone had managed to determine whether they were aboard the disguised ship or even that this ship wasn't part of the regular traffic, but you could never be too careful.
Once they were safely underway again, Max started looking into the data that Nico was sending him, using her skill to analyze it much faster than would normally be possible for the human mind. It really did seem to be confirmed that there were a group of Klem pods released somewhere near here and a chance that they might have been sent toward the first of the infested planets, but they still didn't have any data on where the path actually started, or how they ended up here.
What they did have was a confirmed sighting of them that they would need to analyze since it was possible that they might have been headed to one of the other planets as well.
The warp trail of the ship they followed to this point had simply vanished, but it didn't match with the ones that had come out to meet them, and it wasn't even in the same design, nor was it the same as any of the other ship signatures in the region, so Max could only hope that the trail picked up again somewhere else, or that a clue as to what happened to the ship with the fragmented warp trail could be found.
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