The group had been separated fairly quickly after being led from the pinnace flight deck.  Aurora had never been aboard an Imperial Navy vessel before and the experience was impressive.  Every area and surface was clean.  Every crewman she encountered as she was led through the various passages and lifts seemed impeccably groomed and alert.  This was no subsector navy ship or merchant marine crew.  These were high-end professionals.

Instead of a holding cell, Aurora ended up in a small room that looked like one of the many multifunctional spaces aboard a vessel of this size.  The bulkheads were plain and unadorned and the only furnishings were an elongated oval table with two chairs.  One of them was occupied.

The woman looked young but wore an officer's uniform, ensign rank if Aurora's memory served.  Her red hair was pulled back tightly into a bun in the typical military style.  When she rose upon Aurora's entrance, the Erisian judged her to be roughly five and a half feet tall and of fairly average weight for that size.

The woman looked Aurora over once and then turned to the guard who had delivered her.  "You can wait outside, thank you."

"Good evening," she offered to Aurora pleasantly yet with that professional tone.  "I'm Ensign Sliwa.  I'll be conducting your debrief."

"Please have a seat," she requested as she took her own and fiddled with a tablet computer she had in front of her on the table.

Aurora glanced once, warily, at the door before sitting, sliding the chair back noisily till the back rested against the bulkhead.

"Hi."  she replied, shortly, wearing a guarded expression as she looked about the small room.   The claustraphobic nature of ship-side life did not bother her but the sense of genuine confinement, on an unknown and possibly hostile vessel, raised still raw memories to the surface of her consciousness.  Was this to be an interrogation? How much did they know?  She observed the young woman, waiting to see what her approach would be and resisting the urge to smile at her callow appearance.  Ensign Silwa would reveal her nature soon enough.
 
"Have you ever given an official debrief before?" Sliwa asked once she was through making notes.

Aurora had decided she would play a passanger on the rosy boat of ignorance until such time as in became untenable.  Still, the question made her edgy, even though she realised it was directed to her as a Civilian.  Judged by her recent actions, the Imperial Ident amongst her possessions clearly belonged to someone matching a very different profile to herself, so she decided to play up her other adopted pseudonym.  She gave the ensign a blank & sheepish look.  
   
"No... I mean, I normally just report directly to my clients.  Once the business is done, theres not usually much else to say, is there? Though I guess I hate loose-ends as much as you guys..."

Sliwa studied Aurora with a much more active and intelligent gaze than she was perhaps prepared for at that very moment.  The officer placed a finger on the table and opened her mouth to speak, but hesitated for just a moment as if to give additional thought to her words.

"Ms. Valence, I'd like you to understand something that hopefully will make this go a whole lot easier.  You probably won't believe this right off the bat and that would be perfectly understandable, but I think it's important to get this out there and get you thinking about it anyway."

Sliwa slid her tablet aside and leaned forward on her elbows to speak very earnestly.  "Nothing you've dione from this moment back is of any interest to me except what happened on Overnale Prime.  And when I say 'nothing', I mean 'nothing'." 

She nodded her head as if agreeing with what might be going through Aurora's mind. "That's right - clean slate.  I don't know and I don't care."  She checked herself with a gesture and then added, "Well, I do know, but I really don't care and I'm fully prepared to pretend I don't know if it helps you to relax and remember every last detail you can provide about the past seventy-two hours."

Aurora hesitated for a moment, regarding the ensign with a guarded, calculating look.  After a brief silence, she averted her penetrating stare, smirking slightly as she looked down at the scuffed, gun-metal floor, as if laughing at some private joke.
She lifted her head, suddenly stern, leaning forward and resting her chin in her arms upon the edge of the table.

"Ok, Ensign, here's the deal,  I've endured more than you can even begin to imagine and heard a cluster-load of pretty convincing lies, just in order to get information from me, so don't even begin to think I'm a soft touch.."  there was a note of tension in her voice but she calmed herself and smiled again, tightly.  "Still, given that you already have what you came for, that Adam will doubtless have spilled his guts the moment he was allowed to open his mouth and, as I actually kinda like you anyway, I'll make this easy."  

Aurora let out a theraputic-sounding sigh, leaning back in the chair, putting her feet up on the edge of the desk and crossing her legs as she did so.

"Three days ago, at about eleven or twelve hundred hours - I'm guessing, I was pretty hung over - some creep started trailing me from the Automat of The Salutation Hotel..."

She recounted pretty much everything, down-playing her knowledge of the illegality of the situation.   From Kundra's proposal, to the altercation with their own agent,  to her uncoventional pursuit and, eventually, to the brief conflict with the Zhodani spy. The only thing she neglected to mention was anything she had learned from Teagan.  She knew they had sussed the girl, probably she would never see her again, but Aurora refused to say anything that might be detrimental to the Ice-girl's well being.

The ensign asked a lot of good questions.  Many of them were obvious fact checks that would be used to cross-reference their stories for accuracy.  Some of them, however, became unexpectedly personal.  

"After Honey Rose departed the hotel room you continued to pursue her," the Ensign asked.  "Why?  You had fulfilled your obligations to Mr. Kudra and had your fee, cash in hand.  Why chase after such an obviously dangerous person at that point?"

Aurora looked vaguely uncomfortable at this question, avoiding the ensign's probing gaze and focussing on the scuffed toe of her boots.

 "I...made a mistake.  I got a feeling I should've got rid of Honey as soon as I saw her in that room, call it instinct, I guess."  She looked fiercely back up at Sliwa, suddenly angry at the presumption of character that her question seemed to imply.  "I ignored that feeling and things quickly got way too complicated.   I don't like loose ends.  If you ignore things like that, it tends to come back to nuke you later.  I've made way too many mistakes before."

Sliwa only nodded neutrally and made more notes.  when she was done, she asked, "Where'd you get the gauss pistol?  That's not very easy to come by."

"I was lucky, I had expenses... Overnale is a pretty busy port, even if it is a backwater, and money keeps the Imperium moving...."  she said, with a trace of sarcasm.  "I like Gauss weapons, they're quiet and efficiant."  She added, more seriously.

"Sure, but maintaining and finding ammunition for an illegal weapon like that makes it much less practical, no?"

"Is this part of the Debrief, or are you just makin' conversation now?"   Aurora asked, sharply.  "I don't see what my choice of armaments has to do with anything..."

The ensign leaned back, not taken aback by Aurora's tone.  "Everything's important," she explained.  "Do you have any brothers?"

"No.  No brothers or sisters."  She replied without emotion adding, with a sideways smile, "No parents."
She started to wonder about Aunt Beshba.  Was she still alive?  She was old, but she was also from an old Vilani family and Vilani lived long lives...  What ever the truth, she knew she could find out through the Erisian network, once she was able to contact them.

"So no family," Sliwa confirmed, "yet you came up with a brother-sister cover on the spot at the sporting goods store.  That's odd."

"Just because you don't have them, doesn't mean you don't want them..."  Aurora leaned back, unconsciously mirroring the ensign's posture.  "Family is important, I grew up one one ship or another.  I'm sure you know, Ensign, once you've spent any real time in the big black, your crew becomes like your family." 

"Is that how you think about the others?" Sliwa asked.  "Like family?"

"In a way.  I hardly know them but I suppose I believe necessity will tend to breed co-operation or conflict.  When someone's safety becomes your concern, you cant help but feel a bit protective, I guess.  They're your people, you can't allow them to get hurt."

If the ensign agreed or not she didn't reveal it.  She only continued making notes on her pad.  After a moment, however, she brought out a PDA from her pants pocket and placed it on the table - Aurora's PDA.

"Your PDA shows that you took scans of all EMS transmissions right before your transport docked.  What did you learn?"

"Nothing incriminating, if thats what you mean."  She chuckled.  "It was all encrypted, of course, useless.  I was able to find our relative position in-system when we docked with the Nostromo, which was all I really wanted to know.  A girl gets curious, and no-one was telling me anything."

Sliwa shrugged.  "Let's say you were in a position where the intercepted information was vital.  What would you do?"

"I've done most jobs shipside, I can handle comms.  Given time, I could break a code.  If it was blocked by interference shielding or something... well, I know a few tricks and hacks, but I'd like to think I'd have better techies on board than me..."  

"What if you weren't on a ship?" the ensign asked.  "Let's say you were back on Overnale Prime and needed to know what was on here.  What would you do then?"

Aurora sighed, becoming tired of the endless hypothetical questions.

"Well in that case your options are broader.  Planetary networks are usually filled with hackers and crackers more than willing to help out, even on a potato-planet like Overnale Prime.  If it takes too long, well its easy to hire cook-time on a large server.  All this depends how cautious you want to be and how much you want to spend, a few credits goes a long way, but it wont necessarily buy you secrecy."  

Sliwa nodded.  "How'd you get that scar?" 

Aurora had come to expect the question, but it still cut deep.  She closed her eyes, an unconscious tilt of the head and her fringe hung down, veiling the damaged left-side of her face.  In the darkness she saw explosions of riotous, flickering colours and growing in her minds eye, that smoldering, sulpherous orb.

"I fell."

Ensign Sliwa stared at Aurora for several moments, and when it was clear that was all she was going to get she looked down and made another brief notation on her pad. 

They'd been at it for a few hours between Aurora's retelling of the events on Overnale Prime and Sliwa's dissection of it, followed byt he odd hypothetical and personal inquiries.  Sliwa stretched her arms over her head and held it with a stacatto grunt.

"How are you doing?" she asked Aurora with what seemed like sincere interest.  "Need a break?"

"Seems like you wouldn't mind either. Yeah, okay, a few minutes.   Just, lets get this over with, yeah?"

"We're almost done," the ensign answered.  A pitcher of water and two glasses were brought into the room by a crewman and set on the table.  Sliwa stood to pour.

"You said you didn't have any family," she said as she filled one glass.  "But is there anyone out there we should try to reach, to let them know you're ok?"

"Even if there were, I'd have no idea where to find them, but..."  Aurora gave Sliwa a calculating look, trying to assess the risk involved.  "...I once crewed on an Armed Merchantman, the 'Full Cargo, Empty Dreams.'  It ran a lot of routes in the 'Marches.  A heads-up to any BB based on major waystations should find them eventually... if they are still trading."   She took a drink of water before adding, "Thanks" with a considerate smile.

"You're welcome," Sliwa replied, smiling herself, as she filled her own glass.  "I'll see what I can do.  Is there anyone in particular I should try to contact?"

"The crew was always shifting... If my name is on the message and there's anyone that still cares, I'm guessing I'll get a response sooner or later."  

Aurora knew that secrecy was vital.  She was never registered as an Imperial Citizen, but if they wanted to dig deeper, they could.  It was a risk letting them put the call out, but if Besh was out there she knew she would respond with appropriate caution.  An acknowledgement, a place or method of contact... She hoped they would both find out that the other still lived but for now that was all she dared to hope for.

Sliwa's pad beeped once and she attended to it for a moment.  Afterward, she said, "I'm afraid I'm going to have to cut this short.  I think we've covered everything we need to for now, though."

She stood and offered her hand to Aurora.  "It was a pleasure to meet you, Ms. Valence."

Aurora looked at the hand dumbly for a moment, then shook it cautiously with a polite smile as she got to her feet.

"Thanks, Stay safe."
 
A marine arrived to escort Aurora back to her quarters and afterwards Ensign Sliwa tapped her fingers upon her tablet.

**Sig-com.**

"This is Ensign Sliwa.  I need an L&M issued for independent trading vessel Full Cargo, Empty Dreams, no registry, Marches only."

**Marches only, aye.  It'll go out with the fifteen hundred blast, Ensign.**

"Thanks," Sliwa replied.  With a smile, she added.  "Also, tell Chief Sato that he owes me ten credits.  Sliwa out."