Kali, contrary to what Philip had probably thought, didn’t plan to make herself unseen. Being a complete unknown to everyone was good if no one questioned you, but as soon as someone started asking questions? The gig was up.

Her goal was to get to blend in, and she would start at the cafeteria. On the way there, she saw guards posted in a hallway that stopped people. She didn’t know what kind of check they were doing, but turning around now would be very suspicious, and she didn’t see anyone take out anything, just letting themselves be scanned.

So she steeled her nerves while her heart beat out of her chest. Walking up to them like nothing was going on wasn’t easy, but they didn’t seem to notice anything.

“Hey what’s that?” She heard someone in front of her ask.

“It’s an illusion detector, just checking you ain’t disguised… still looking for that guy Philip, so the higher ups decided we might as well set up check points in case he is stupid enough to walk around under an illusion.” Being behind them in the queue, she was happy that the checkpoint would let her pass.

As Philip had said, they weren’t actually looking for her. If they were? This would get really complicated. Luckily she managed to arrive in the cafeteria without trouble.

The cafeteria had room for about fifty to sixty people she’d guess at a glance, with around half that number actually there. It wasn’t packed, but not empty either. It was a classic queue system so she took a tray, got some ‘meh’ looking food and slowly stopped. Looking lost in the middle of the big room, turning her head like she was looking for someone.

In truth, she hoped someone with a big heart would ‘take her in’ so to speak. And from there, she made herself part of the crew. She had enough information from Philip to have a decent enough cover story for being new.

A pair of guys from behind her in the queue came up to her.

“Hey cutie, come sit with us, we don’t bite.” One of them, a karkaris, said while half looking at his friends who snickered.

A smiling lizard woman bounced over and glared smilingly at the guys. They ignored her and were on their way when she stopped in front of her.

“Hey, ignore them, they try to look tough but they are harmless. Are you new here?” She said with a cheery voice.

“Uh, yeah. I got transferred.” She lied smoothly. Of course Kali had prepared the full story beforehand.

“Oh! Come sit with us!” She said and pointed to a table with only one other girl. Human. Who was glaring at her for some reason.

Had she already done something? She had only said a few words! Suppressing the stress, Kali smiled and sat down.

“Hi, nice to meet you. I’m Kali.” She presented herself. The other woman still glared at her, but the lizard woman ignored it completely.

“Hi! I’m Lika and this is Erika.” The cheery scaly woman said as she sat down herself.

“Hi.” The woman named Erika said without stopping her glaring.

What was her problem? Had she done something? This Erika seemed to hate her already, which was strange as they didn’t know each other at all. Kali remembered the ones who had tormented her as a slave, and she hadn’t seen this Erika before.

“So, I’ve never seen you before. Are you new? Erika is new too!”

“Oh, I’m fairly new I guess, but I worked night shifts.” She explained.

“Oh.” Lika said.

“Night shift? There is no night?” It was Erika that got confused at that.

“Yeah I know, but they get called night shift even in space because, well everyone else follows the day cycle on Dust and… yeah it’s a bit stupid to call it that.” Lika shrugged. It was the kind of thing that had stuck despite not really being appropriate in a new context.

“Why did you get transfered to ‘day-shift’? Couldn’t sleep?” Lika prodded. Kali looked at her. She wasn’t sure how clueless she was, or if it was genuine curiosity.

It did seem natural, so she simply continued her plan of gathering a few people who knew her as part of the crew, just in case.

“Uh, no. Things, uh, didn’t work out.” She tried to sound embarrassed and ill at ease, but wasn’t sure how well it turned out. Even the other girl who had been mostly hostile in attitude got curious.

“Oohhh! I smell something juicy! Tell us everything.” Lika said with shining eyes. Ah, she liked gossip, perfect.

“Well, I’m not going to give you any names, because well, I’ll get in trouble after we sorted things out already…” She started, and already her audience of two was captivated.

“So I started working night shift as an engineer a few weeks back, I got on at Livipa Station.” She paused, showed a distressed emotion and went on despite it.

“It was a group of mostly men… and you know how men can be.” She simply stated.

“A cute engineer like you? I’m not surprised. How did it start? You do realize we want all the details.” Lika asked with a grin.

“Yeah, it’s just, I’m not sure where to start honestly.” She ran her fake story in her head again, making sure she wasn’t leaving any glaring holes.

“I guess it all started when, let’s call him Joe, wanted to impress some friends…”

************************************

Erika didn’t like Kali. It was hard to hate her after what she had heard, but still, she didn’t like her. There was something off about her. She had seen her fair share of fake smiles, and she seemed to fake most of it.

Well, except the part where she got abused. That, uh, had felt a tad too real. She pitied her for that, and thought that, maybe that was the reason she faked being happy and all.

Still, she didn’t like her.

And it had nothing to do with her and Lika getting along. No. Not at all.

Sighing, Erika looked at them deposit their trays while still talking together. She knew she was a bit irrational about Kali. Just because she got along so well with Lika.

It was just that Lika had been her lifeline when she got onboard, and had helped her a lot. Plus she was funny, and well, they had been like, inseparable. Always together. It had felt nice to have someone you could tell everything to and who had your back.

Now? It felt like this Kali girl was about to take it all away. Steal her best friend away. Of course she knew it wasn’t rational. But it also felt like there was something else that was slightly off about the girl.

As she got up and walked behind them, she thought about it some more. She knew that of course, she was being all dramatic about it, and that the new girl hadn’t done anything.

To her relief however, she bade them goodbye and went her own way, well, they weren’t engineers so It was only natural. Happy to be alone with Lika again, she couldn’t help but ask.

“So, what do you think about our new friend?” Lika turned to look at her with a glint in her eyes.

“Oh, I think she is going to be very interesting.” Erika raised an eyebrow at that.

“What makes you say that?” She hadn’t seemed particularly interesting to her. What had happened to her was horrible, but that didn’t make her interesting.

“Just a feeling.” Lika smiled ruefully.

************************************************

Kali walked the hallways towards engineering before turning a corner once out of sight. It didn’t feel as foreign to walk around in the open anymore now that she had met some people. Strange as technically, nothing had changed.

She would try to meet with them tomorrow again, and show her face here and there so people started recognizing her. Not too much however, and not at a time when people would ask her why she was hanging around.

Plus, she had some stuff she wanted to check out. The first was the emergency shuttles Philip had told her about.

There were many on the ship at different locations in case something went terribly wrong. One shuttle could fit about ten people, or twenty if they didn’t care about personal space, or so Philip had told her.

The issue was that she couldn’t just take a look inside.

[Level up → Infiltrator Level 7]

The system message interrupted her thoughts. Nice, but no new skill. Two whole more levels felt like a lot to her, but it was very dangerous which seemed to be an important factor of leveling.

Okay, back to checking out the emergency shuttles. She walked past some of them, and like he had told her, they were all locked. Only if an emergency was called could they be used, or if you had clearance. Which Philip had of course, and Marco.

But she was afraid that if she used his mana-card it would alert the whole ship or something.

Wait. Maybe that was it. Maybe that was how they faked his death!

Trying to suppress her wild grin, she still couldn’t help but smile at her idea. She quickly navigated the ship and walked back to their temporary room.

On the way, she went through two different checkpoints. First they had an anti illusion wand, again, The second checkpoint they didn’t even stop her for some reason. Maybe they just stood guard or something. Anyway, she soon saw the door to her room.

As she entered, she didn’t see Philip anywhere. Kali almost panicked, had he left? She knew he wasn’t exactly trustworthy, but they were each other's best shot right now. Plus, she needed his damn card.

She started looking around for him and thought they were lucky this was an older ship which didn’t register mana signatures directly and still used mana-cards. Or maybe they were just cheap, as it cost a lot more.

She looked under the bed, in the closet, toilet, shower. Everything was small and she didn’t understand where he had gone.

“Philip, where the hell are you?” She hissed mostly to herself.

Out of the closet she heard a sound. But, how? She had looked in there. Still, coming out with a smug look was Philip, he also looked a bit annoyed.

“Could you please just say it’s you when you come in? I can’t see from my hiding spot you see.” Philip said.

“Oh, sorry. Anyway, I have an idea to fake your death. At least it should take some heat off of you.” She said as she grinned. Philip looked surprised but skeptical.

“Ah?” Pray tell, he said, sounding interested despite his attitude.

“Well, I was thinking, what if we unlock a shuttle using your mana-card, send it out with like a timed bomb or something. They’ll see a shuttle and think it’s you, shoot at it, and then it’ll explode, leaving no trace of you. And even if they don’t make it explode, the bomb will go off making sure there is no traces.”

He seemed to be thinking about it for a moment. She thought it was a good enough plan. It could work. The only potential issue is if they could see that there was no one in it. But she didn’t know what the scanners were capable of.

“Well, as plans go I suppose it is not completely terrible, but I think some crucial tweeking is necessary in order to make it work.” He finally said slowly, as he was thinking at the same time.

“Let me think about it, I’ll come up with a better version that is sure to work. You should go get me some food. I’m starving over here.” He reproached her.

Sighing, she rooted in her pockets and threw him some bread and a small bag with dry foods. He missed the bag which spilled on the ground to her amusement.

He did tend to get on her nerves with his holier than thou attitude. Like he was smart or something. Jeez.

Still, she didn’t have any lead to do anything about the other recaptured slaves which annoyed her to no end. Philip hadn’t come up with anything either, despite his so-called genius.

Kali couldn’t help but hope she would come across something. Her best idea so far was to smuggle them out in small groups at the next station, which, right now, simply wasn’t feasible. She had no way to get past guards who didn’t know her, or even a reliable way to walk in the ship with a huge group behind her…

If she could manage to do it once, then the guards wouldn’t be too annoying the next time, especially if she timed it on the same guys, meaning, if she could fabricate a good enough story, maybe it wouldn’t be too far fetched to simply walk them out.

What about the way back though? If she went out with a full group and went back alone… it could work if the guards were different, and they knew a different story. But the plan was starting to look complicated, which meant, it was getting riskier and riskier to get to work.

Most probably? Something would go wrong, and then it would be all over. No. She couldn’t think like that or she wouldn’t do anything. Everything could go wrong, but so what? She had to at least try.

Still, maybe a better plan was in order…