Ysh'vanna is getting nervous.
Nervous, because she doesn't know where she's meant to hand in the test tube sample. IRC missions have never asked for samples before, let alone through an anonymous and ominous message left on their ship mid-mission. In fact, she's pretty sure that their most recent mission hadn't been an IRC regulated mission at all, meaning that they've been had—and that they've just lost thousands of credits in fuel with no income to make up for it.
Guilt gnaws at her stomach, and she wraps an arm over her lower gut. What a time to be clinically anxious.
Ysh'vanna looks up at the screen, watching the boxes flicker and flash in and out of existence. The anonymous message had told her to wait at the mission board, but there's no one else here. She should've known to call everyone back from the moment she'd received that notification, but they'd been separated for five days without contact—five days! For nothing!
Maybe it's time she handed over her captain's qualifications over to Auren and called it a day. At least he's got everything under control. No, scratch that. Ysh'vanna shakes her head. That’s the problem: he's got so many things under that thumb of his to the point where he could be a control freak at best, or a slave driver at worst. Both variants make for shitty captains.
Take now, for instance. Auren's just sent her a text regarding Avett's auxiliary expenditures on hard liquor. She doesn't even care about liquor—on the contrary, she loves it. But they're not supposed to let Avett get drunk all that often anymore, because the last time they'd given him some leeway, he'd taken Lili drinking with him.
Which is… not the worst outcome. It's certainly not as bad as the ten thousand other scenarios that she'd mused and ruminated over a mug of hot water back in her seat in navigation. Ysh'vanna would kill to see someone like Lili drunk. The problem lied in the fact that he'd taken her to a bar during her most important hours prior to the frontliner exam. They're lucky that Lili had managed to pull through, though maybe this is a given; they seem to be more lucky than skillful these days anyway.
It's been ten minutes and there's still no sign of anyone. Thoroughly defeated, she makes for the door. What should she tell Auren? What type of insurance applies to a situation such as this one? Fraud? Self-inflicted stupidity? Neither? And what should she do with this sample now that she's got it?
She raises the tube to the fluorescent light strips. The liquid inside stays black, neither reflecting nor accepting the light. They can't dispose of this normally. There's no way they can just dump this in any old bin. Stars, what a waste of their time.
And then she stops in her tracks. There’s a figure in the doorway. He’s not too tall—nothing on the ears either, and his skin has a noticeably peachy undertone to it that marks him as plainfully Human.
He reaches forward, his hand pushing away the edges of his tattered cloak and turning his wrist so that his palm faces the ceiling. The entire process of movement is methodical, slow, and not entirely Human at all. He's requesting for something. Her sample.
With a tone that reminds Ysh'vanna of the sound of gravel on gravel, he says, "You would be handing that over to me, Captain O'Raal."