"We get out of here and falsify the logs to suggest that we left yesterday," says Isabella, plopping into the pilot's chair and punching up impulse power.

"Sounds good to me," says Lalita. He leans over her chair and kisses the top of her head.

"Ooh, pretty nebulas. They're pretty," he says sagely.

"Why yes, they are! We can take some pictures and use them as PADD wallpaper," laughs Isabella.

He giggles and leans over the back of her chair again to hug her.

Hugs! Isabella likes hugs. She likes having company. This was a good idea.

They are presently out of the system and warping along to the next. Isabella falsifies her records. "...Say, do you want to double-check my track-covering? No one's actually dug suspiciously around in my travel logs so I don't know if I'm doing a competent job at making it look like I wasn't around when 'warp was discovered' in the relevant systems."

"Sure," he says, and plops down in the copilot's chair and starts nosing around on the computer system.

Isabella's logs show - at least to casual inspection - that while she has visited all the systems that have mysteriously acquired warp (except for El'el Prime, which acquired warp while she was active but is not listed at all), it was never at the right time (except once when it was; it would not do to always be slightly off). Sometimes she finishes her surveys of those systems a week before, sometimes a month later.

"You should probably arrange to not have visited more of them," he comments. "Even with shifting the timing, it's a pattern, and it's not like there's a crowd of other ships visiting these systems that you can get lost in. There's the problem of refueling history, but I'm sure we can figure out a way around that if we try."

"All right," says Isabella. "I'll turn off logging for more places. Money would be tighter, if I turned in fewer logs - but I have you along to mitigate that, now, don't I."

"Yes you do!" he says, grinning.

"Aren't you convenient!"

"I'm so convenient," he agrees. "And now I think I'm going to go make convenient dinner."

"Mmm, dinner. What's for dinner?"

"I don't know yet!" he says serenely. "I'll think of something. Any preferences?"

"It's a special occasion," she says, referring to the warp drop. "Let's un-vacuum-seal a steak. I'm sure you'll do something marvelous with it."

"I absolutely will," he says, and kisses her, and wanders off to the kitchen.

Isabella puts on a Klingon opera soundtrack and reads along in the libretto as best she can. She's getting better!

From the kitchen, Lalita is singing along.

This is cute and he is cute!

And soon he is also bringing her steak!

Mmmmm steak. "Oh my. What did you do to it, this is really good - did you break into the bayleaves...? Mmmm."