"What I'm looking for, Antoine," Abby said with a wide, easy smile, the one that crinkled the corners of her ice blue eyes, "Is [i]exactly[/i] that." 

Without the least self-consciousness about being alone with a strange man in his room, she settled easily onto the offered bed mattress, leaning back on her hands, one booted foot hiked over the other as she stretched her legs out. Her knees popped audibly, and Abby sighed just a little as she winced. That sparring session of a workout with Sczruba left her aching – a pleasant ache for the most part, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t feel the bruise beginning to spread across one shoulder blade.

“Let me put this to you as succinctly as possible: there is no doubt that Sylus Adams did exactly what he did to that young woman who survived. By extension, it’s no great stretch of the imagination to guess he killed all those people before her too, all the ones who seemed to have simply ‘died in their cryosleep.’”

Abby shrugged one shoulder, her gaze flicking to the sleeping cat beside her. [i]’Cat!? Guy’s got a damned ocelot on his bed!’[/i] She didn’t mind cats. Not at all really, and she had a special fondness for the little puff balls with the stiff little tails and their funny gait and enormous fuzzy heads that were known as “kittens.” But she was really more of a dog person at heart, and the sheer unnatural size of what she supposed was meant to pass for some mutated house cat or whatever was daunting, to say the least. She still worked up the courage though, to at least pat its enormous, sleeping head, very, very lightly and praying under her breath it wouldn’t wake up and try to eviscerate her.

She’d hate to have to shoot this guy’s cat, right here in his own room.

Fortunately, the only thing that happened was the peeling open of one golden eye, as an irritated and toothy yawn was tossed her way, before the beast curled itself back into its warm, gargantuan ball of spotted fur.

“I know nothing about the systems, but I don’t really need to. What I want to know, is if you have any idea how he did it. You’re the first among equals Antoine, or at least the only one with the [i]cajones[/i] to speak up at the briefing this morning. So yes, tell me the safeguards, the checks and the monitoring, but most importantly – tell me if you know how the hell he got to them, repeatedly, without anyone anywhere ever the wiser - until he was finally caught red-handed.”

[center]**********[/center]

“We were somewhere between the virtues of gummy bears, musical accompaniment and things that go [i]‘boom!’[/i]” Pauline grinned. “Or at least, it was somewhere about there – an almost perfect triangulation of the utterly random, although… “

The young woman chuckled softly to herself, as close to an evil giggle as she was likely to ever get as she pulled the tablet from her pocket, lighting up the screen with a flick of her finger. She peered up at Mike from the corners of her eyes, a devilish gleam in her gaze. “So a rocket was it, into a Chinese… Tank, yes? You’re not particular about the type of rocket I’m guessing, just something with enough firepower to be… Anti-tank? I know we’ve got a few stored out there in the Hangar… For blasting errant asteroids out of the trajectory lane… “

Her agile fingers flew over the virtual keyboard, crunching in the designators for the modified VT-12 rocket – and then, its target. Her ‘library’ contained the shapes and chemical and physical composition of thousands upon thousands of different asteroids, and it wasn’t too far a stretch for Pauline to combine a few of the rocks just so… And then shave a few angles just so… Just like that! And rife with sulfurous compounds… 

She set the tablet flat on Deli’s desk, taking a step back as she waved the Marine and the explosive’s expert a little closer. “And this is what I do,” she said softly as the holographic projection began to take shape. There, floating in the vast emptiness of a star-studded outer space, was a yellow gummy bear of epic proportions.

“Sulfur compounds,” Pauline whispered to Deli, “Couldn’t let it be a green one, you know… “

And from the corner of the projection, the unmistakable shape of the VT-12 rocket hurtled into the single most unique asteroid in all the known universe. There was no fiery explosions of course without any kind of atmosphere, but the brittle, super-cooled piece of once-jiggly candy goodness shattered like broken glass in all directions, a brilliant golden blast bright as fireworks against the endless night.

Pauline nodded her own approval at the little light show on Deli's desk, though her smile remained a touch tentative as she looked up to Mike, surprising even herself when she realized just how much she hoped he'd like her small piece of light mathematical silliness. "Deli's the one with the real pyrotechnics, the expert who makes things explode exactly as they should. I just write the training programs that [i]hopefully[/i] give us an idea how that's going to happen, what with different payloads and different asteroid compositions."

"And in my downtime, I blow up candy." She shrugged, her grin just a touch sheepish as she looked from Deli to Mike. "Don't judge. Everyone's got to have a hobby... "