The lieutenant shook the thought aside and ejected the clearance chip from his notepad. He held it out to the captain, then extended his hand.
"It's been a pleasure, Captain Mainwaring. I wish every ship I inspected were as shipshape as yours. I hope you do well in our area."
"Thank you, Lieutenant." Mainwaring clasped his hand firmly, and for just an instant, he seemed to feel an odd, hard angularity in her palm, but the sensation vanished. A moment later, he didn't even remember having felt it. "I hope we run into one another again," the captain continued.
"Maybe we will." Giolitti released her hand and stood back, then raised an admonishing finger. "Remember, any of your people who come dirtside will be subject to individual med-scans to confirm their certification."
"Don't worry, Lieutenant." Mainwaring's rather amused smile made him feel even younger. "I don't expect we'll be here long enough for liberty—in fact, most of my people are going to be busy running maintenance checks on the Fasset drive before we pull out—but we'll check in with the medics if we are."
"Thank you, Captain," Giolitti gave her a crisp salute. "In that case, allow me to extend an official welcome to MaGuire and bid you good bye."
Mainwaring returned his salute, and the lieutenant headed back for his shuttle. He had two more inspections to make by shift end, and he wished, more wistfully than hopefully, that they might go as smoothly.
-=0=-***-=0=
Alicia let herself sag against the bulkhead and sucked in a deep, lung-stretching breath. Dear God, she'd known Tisiphone was good, but the Fury's performance had surpassed her most extravagant hopes. She doubted they were likely to meet a brighter, more conscientious customs inspector than young Lieutenant Giolitti, and she no longer doubted their ability to razzle-dazzle him if they did. It had been unnerving enough to watch him "search" her quarters five separate times, but that had been nothing compared to watching him walk right past the feed tubes from the main missile magazine without even batting an eye. He'd had to climb a ladder to cross one of them, yet it simply hadn't been there for him, and neither had the energy batteries or the armory. He'd seemed perfectly content with his "inspection" of the control room, as well, though only an idiot—or someone under Tisiphone's spell—could have looked at those blank gray walls and the alpha link headset without realizing what he was seeing.
"Of course he did not," Tisiphone observed. "You are correct about his intelligence—a very bright young man, indeed—yet it is far simpler to suggest things to intelligent people, for they have the wit to add the details with little prompting. And," she added graciously, "you and Megarea were wise to suggest that we create your "crew's" personalities in such detail. It allowed me to project personalities with much greater depth."
"Yeah." Alicia drew another breath and straightened. "Still, you seemed to be concentrating pretty hard. Could you have handled more people?"
"I believe so, yes. Numbers of minds are not the difficulty, Little One, but rather the detail of the illusion I provide them with. Of course, it would be wise, in the event that we must deal with several people at once, to include a disinclination to discuss their inspection at a later date lest they discover too great a degree of similarity among their recollections."
"You're probably right," Megarea put in, "but unless there's a glitch in the documentation, one-man teams are the rule out here."
"I know." Alicia stepped back into the lift and punched for the flight deck. "Are we clear on our docking and service fees, Megarea?"
"Sure. Tis cooked the books just fine when she dropped our flight log on them, and Ms. Tanner took care of the bookkeeping while Captain Mainwaring was showing Lieutenant Giolitti around. We've covered all our fees out of her bogus credit transfer with a balance of eighty thousand credits left."
"What about service personnel?"
"No sweat. Lieutenant Chisholm dealt with them, and they'll be waiting for our shuttle to pick up the consumables. We're gonna have to dump most of them in deep space, since I had to order enough for a crew of five to make it look right, but our Melville download shows a complete overhaul six months ago, so I didn't have to fudge any servicing requirements."
"You're a sweetheart," Alicia said fervently. She'd been astounded by the verisimilitude of the computer images and voices Megarea could produce. It was a good thing the AI could, too, since they had to convince anyone who got curious— No, scratch that. They had to keep anyone from getting curious, which meant they had to provide crewmen other than Captain Mainwaring in one form or another. Megarea's ability to carry on com conversations, or even several of them at once, would be invaluable in that regard.
"Thanks. You and Tis did pretty good, too."
"Yet could we have accomplished but little without you, Megarea. It is the combination of all our skills which makes us formidable."
"You got that right, Lady," Alicia agreed. "But I take it no one raised an eyebrow over your faces?"
"Nary a twitch. Wanna see my latest efforts? I finally got that lisp down pat on "Lieutenant Chisholm," you know."
"Sure." The lift slid to a halt and Alicia stepped out onto the flight deck. "Let her roll."
"Watch monitor two."
The flat screen flickered for just an instant, then cleared with the face of a thin, auburn-haired man with heavy-lidded eyes.
"How do I look, thir?" the image asked, and Alicia grinned. "I think maybe you got the lisp down a little too pat, Megarea."
"That'th eathy for you to thay," "Lieutenant Chisholm" returned aggrievedly. "You haven't been teathed about it all your life. I tell you, it'th been a real pain in the ath for me!"
"Do you say that, or do you spray it?" Alicia giggled, and the image raised a hand into the field of the pickup and made a rude gesture.
"Oh, that's perfect, Megarea! Of course, I imagine poor Chisholm won't be handling much of the com traffic, given his lisp."
"No." Chisholm's baritone was replaced by a soprano and the image changed to that of a square-faced, silver-haired woman Alicia recognized as Ruth Tanner, her purser. "Poor Andy hates it when he has to talk to strangers. That's why I usually handle the com watch when you're not aboard, ma'am."
"So I see," Alicia propped a hip against a console and grinned. The AI had outdone herself. No one who spoke to any of Megarea's talking heads would suspect there was only a single human aboard Star Runner. Coupled with the AI's ability to handle both shuttles through her telemetry links, Captain Mainwaring's crew would be very much in evidence—so much so that no one would ever realize that they'd never actually laid eyes on any of them.
"Okay, I think we're set. But if it's all the same to you two, I need a good night's sleep before I get started hunting up a cargo."
"Right." The screen blanked as Megarea returned to direct contact, and Alicia started back towards her quarters, shedding her tight jacket as she went. She tossed the garment to one of Megarea's waiting remotes, which whisked it neatly into a closet.
"Uh, say, Alley," Megarea said as she undressed, "you haven't had time to go through the full data download from the MaGuire port admiral, have you?"
"You know I haven't." Alicia paused with her blouse half off. "Why?"
"Well, I didn't want to worry you with it while Giolitti was aboard, and I wouldn't want to give you bad dreams or anything, but we're in it."
"What do you mean, 'we'?"
"I mean the "we" that stole me from Soissons orbit. Specifically, Captain Alicia DeVries and the illegally obtained alpha synth starship Hull Number Seven-Niner-One-One-Four."