Cygi blinked into holographic existence beside Jocasta. The AI was standing in an old fashioned bath tub scrubbing herself with a wooden handled brush that artfuly avoided dislodging the strategically placed bubbles. Jocasta glanced at the main terminal read out to observe that Cygi was in the process of a system defrag.


“Oh look at that Shark Gunboat, isn’t it handsome?! I bet he has a huge di…”


“Cygi,” Jocasta chastened, following the AI’s outstretched arm to a squat powerful ship that rested on one of the cracked concrete pads. It looked weathered and was best by the trade mark rocket magazines which extended above a long ventral fin like giant eyes.


“A huge director control computer,” Cygi finished before flickering into the uniform a Union admiral complete with swagger stick. Apparently this was for the purpose of performing an inspection of the other ship because data began to flow into Jocasta’s implants, as a courtesy she projected it holographically on one of the screens.  Records logged it as the X-21, owner unknown, home port unknown, which was far from helpful. Jocasta mentally shrugged whoever the ship belonged to was welcome to their business as far as she was concerned. 


“The port authority is attempting to enter my systems!” Cygi gasped, suddenly wearing the overly innocent garb of a pin up girl,  complete with rogued cheeks which she was fanning furiously.


“Let them into one of the fakes, just to make them feel superior,” Jocasta directed. Cygi snapped a salute, now wearing a leather flying cap dating to the time before space flight.


“Yes Ma’am!” she barked and then vanished to her own amusements. Dirk made an articulate grunt. The Dragonfly had been designed for a crew of a dozen and was far too much for Jocasta to handle alone. The solution had been to turn the signals intelligence AI loose. Partially because a decryption module was not supposed to run a ship, and partially because the only model it had was Jocasta, Cygi was a little erratic.


“Anything to worry about?” Dirk asked without much interest.

“All good in the fume hood,” Jocasta replied. She picked up her jacket, a white synthetic leather piece with cheerful green and gold checkered panels and pulled it on. Now that she was reasonably certain Dirk wasn’t going to try to kill her, she left her capacitor pistol behind, tucking an elegant little beamer into a holster sewn into the inside. Several little dragonfly drones zipped from various perches around the bridge, disappearing up sleeves, into pockets and in one case, settling into her hair to pretend to be jewelry. 


“Shall we take a walk?” she asked sweetly.