Katie would be left with two impressions from the get-together.  First, the Naval NCOs among their passengers had lots of respect for Tucks, both as an officer and as a engineer, as opposed to Shuvillii, who was the senior officer and the troublemaking martinet.  Their general opinion of him was that he had an uncle or aunt or some sort of relative who was a flag officer somewhere, and had pulled strings to get him a commission.  And second, the senior NCO that had shared his conspiracy theory with her was thought to be a good tech, but he'd been in challenging situations--bad air, excess radiation, low pressure, high gees, etc.--one too many times, and it had left him... well...  eccentric.<br/><br/>But the passengers shooed back to their cabins without a hitch, and cleanup seemed to go fast, too, with a couple of the naval techs actually helping throw away some cups and napkins and plates before they retired to their spaces.  The flash recyclers spat out plastic cubes made from the refuse that could be returned to stores later for use as something else.<br/><br/>Everything seemed squared away, so perhaps it was time to head to the bridge?  She'd get in once she used the comm panel outside the lock, identifying herself to the Captain and the Navigator.  The hatch would open, and then the captain would gesture at the engineering console's chair (the engineering screens were dark, the console powered down and engineering control coming from the engineering spaces, apparently).  "We're about ten minutes away from jumping."  Then, he turned back to Sue, who was splitting her time between monitoring a computer program that was displaying the jump status, and a detection array that had several annotated dots of light, representing ships around them.  "Still got that shadow?"<br/><br/>Sue tapped the detection array screen.  "Seems like it.  Four-hundred tonner, paralleling our course, but at about fifty kay klicks out.  Transponder claims to be 'private vessel', but I think they misspelled that first word and added a 'V' to it accidentally on purpose.  And here in Regina.  How uncivilized."  She rolled her eyes at her own humor.