1: Breaking the Surface

Sharma nods and clunks over to the ladder in her boots, climbing downwards towards the re-processor on engineering where the dozen corpses of the crew are waiting; a mercy that they’re now wrapped in biodegradable body bags, their features obscured. Claire’s body awaits in a special compartment up a level in the med bay.

Diana nods and follows Lobos.

"Putting me to work right away. I can respect that," Diana says, deadpan.

"And please, fire away. I’ll answer what I can, you’ll excuse me if I’m cagey around some subjects. I am out here on business."

She takes the bags without complaint and follows him up two levels into the crew quarters. They head into the first room, which was reserved for the first mate and a couple of her partners, since this is one of the two rooms connected to a head. There’s not much as far as personal items, a few small items tucked away in padded storage beneath the bed. Some makeup, small pieces of jewelry, the occasional bottle of booze, or uppers, or downers.

"You’d be surprised, Captain," Diana says as she places a cracked handheld from a compartment into her storage bag.

Diana is good, clearly used to dealing with people who accept her at face value. Lobos is better than that.

She has combat training, Lobos can recognize it in her muscles as they subtly play across her lean body in movement, even through her clothes, and in the way she carries herself. She’s physically fit, and there’s a tension he knows all too well. Vigilance. He can tell that the "naval investigation" comment doesn’t bother her at all. In fact, he senses amusement in her tone. That could mean she’s a naval "contractor", or a UN asset, or else she just isn’t intimidated by the idea of a brush with naval intelligence.

They move to the next room, one of the two corner rooms, a wedge between its two neighbors, one of the three rooms with eight bunk compartments. This one was clearly filled with crewmembers, there are a few extra personal touches, some minor graffiti, digital posters of Belter musicians.

"While our circumstances are drastically different, I’m here for the same reason as you," she continues as they go through the compartments. "I occasionally worked with Captain O’Rourke, usually she would pass along information for a decent fee if it proved useful. I was not involved in the unfortunate circumstances that led to the Bounty’s destruction. A mess like that invites questions. That was clumsy of whoever her client was."

Lobos can tell she genuinely believes this as a point of pride. From her tone, Diana considers the orders to destroy the Bounty amateurish.

"My client–who I am not free to disclose, before you ask–is interested in what brought us both to Prometheus. The silicate material that you, Mr. Hinkley and your first mate extracted from that ice chunk. It’s called ‘protomolecule.’ You may not have heard the term yet, but you will very soon, on every network in the solar system. Captain O’Rourke passed along word, she knew I was collecting information on the protomolecule. The fact that I had just arrived on Prometheus, following up on a lead, was lucky. Hector Cruz, he claimed to have a sample. I suppose he was a little premature in that estimation."

Lobos doesn’t pick up on any body language or facial expressions that betray lies. He gets the sense that she’s sharing what she can to avoid the things she won’t talk about. She's not behaving maliciously, she clearly deals in information.

Diana fixes her hair and turns to the camera seriously.

"My name is Diana Honoridez, independent investigator in the Outer Planets, statement at the request of Captain Lobos," she says, speaking directly to the camera, unphased by being recorded. "The protomolecule. What I know is mostly hearsay, but it’s believed the protomolecule is connected to both Phoebe Station, the destroyed Martian research facility and whatever happened on Eros. It’s believed to be a bioweapon, although how it took a station of one and a half million people offline in a matter of hours with not a single survivor begs a lot of questions. Then there’s the whole… Eros crashing into Venus thing, I bet that one’s got some people scratching their heads. The only credible thing I know for certain is from a UN intelligence briefing that links Phoebe with an Earth-based corporation called Protogen. Intercepted communications with the Krystal Kleer Water Company placed a silicate material that matches the protomolecule profile on the destroyed ice hauler the Abzu’s Bounty just before it’s destruction. I followed that sample to Prometheus where it was taken, don’t know who by or where to. That about sums it up. For the record."

Diana Honoridez, independent investigator, is serious and direct, no nonsense, a straight shooter. She’s a character, likely as real as mononym Diana.

They head into the final room, the second two-bunker connected to the second head. Both bunks are currently occupied, Cas is strapped into the bottom bunk, Hinkley in the top. Neither of them rouse in the slightest; sleep aids.

Diana takes Lobos hand, nodding with an enigmatic smile, "Thank you, Captain Lobos."

*

After the hours-long laborious process of committing the dozen former crew to the reprocessor–the only one left is Claire in the morgue compartment in the small med bay–Lobos and Sharma join a rested Hinkley on ops. The deck is arranged around four flight chairs in a rough cross pattern facing operations terminals, the ladder to the lower levels at the center of the deck. Between the six and nine o’clock chairs is a steep, narrow metal grate staircase that leads up to the flight deck, with two pilot chairs facing starboard… such as there are shipboard directions out in the black. Zaki glances down through the metal grate of the flight deck, curled up in a ball in the right hand pilot’s chair.

Diana’s changed into some comfortable daywear, loose-fitting athletic clothes, and is hunched over the transponder system inset into one of the walls, a couple of wires connected to her handheld as she walks the crew through giving the freighter new codes. Sharma shoots Lobos a wary look, they both know that changing transponder codes on the fly requires high-level military grade software, and Diana acts like it’s easy as replacing an air filter.

"Alright Captain," Diana nods at the closest terminal. "All that’s left is the rechristening."

Hinkley laughs to himself and shakes his head in amusement when Lobos inputs "Devil’s Dance". Sharma hands out glasses of honest to God Irish whiskey–Gideon sticks to water–and the five raise their glasses.

"To Captain O’Rourke and the crew of the Anne Bonny."

*

Zaki keeps the Devil’s Dance at a steady clip just under a full G. He plots an optimal course, assuming they don’t run into any trouble, that will put them at Mars after ten days. Although assuming they won’t run into any trouble seems increasingly unlikely.

Skirmishes between Mars and the Belt and the chaos that follows; the Canterbury, the Donnager, the Xinglong, the Abzu’s Bounty, a couple dozen modified rockhoppers turned guerilla OPA fleet; Phoebe, Eros sailing through the system at an impossible speed on a direct course for Earth just before zipping past and crashing into Venus… and now Deimos.

Earth had stayed neutral up until a message by the now system-wide infamous James Holden revealed the ships that destroyed the Martian flagship Donnager were authorized for construction by the United Nations. The UN responded by burning to Mars and traded Phoebe for Deimos as a show of force. Martian military facilities and a deep radar station, thousands more lives gone with the push of a button. Sharma is obviously disturbed by the development. A Martian moon reduced to a ring of dust.

Despite the chaos throughout the system, life aboard the Dance takes on a strangely easy routine as Zaki and Lobos set up a duty rotation. Diana takes some cleaning duties and makes a decent mushroom almost-risotto when it's her turn to cook. Zaki is quickly taken out of kitchen duty for good–nobody asks for seconds of his bizarre concoction of Cup Noodles, watery tomato soup and diced protein rations. Cas doesn’t take any duties, Zaki is the only one who can even coax him to eat or wash. Hinkley does his best to make himself useful anywhere he can, and does his best to keep Cas functional. Sharma handles comms and delivers regular reports on local traffic, but otherwise spends her time tending to the walls of devil’s ivy in the galley. Zaki leaves the bridge only to check on Cas and get a few hours of sleep, otherwise he’s in the right hand pilot chair listening to inscrutable Belter rock.

Diana makes good on her promise, the transponder codes mean the Grendel-class freighter receives regular patrol hails to the Devil’s Dance, and the clean bill of health, a legitimate flight plan and transport charter mean the pirate vessel continues on its way.