"I dunno. Are you?" She gestures towards the guitar, offering him a chance to open it up and take a look.

Well, alright. He crosses the room and pulls it up onto the bed, cracking the case open to take a look at the guitar inside.

Then he looks over at her, then back at the guitar. Then back at her.

"Hang on- your ID said Fairchild, but-"

"Family name. Took on Fray because my mum would die and start rolling around in her grave if I went public as Jocelyn Fairchild. Plus I just like it."

He visibly controls his reaction.

"I, uh. Like your stuff."

She laughs at his reaction. Or non-reaction. "I like our stuff too. Too bad you missed out on meeting the others. The boys always love meeting fans."

"They're back there too? What's Reaver doing on a nowhere colony?"

She sits down on the bed and pulls up one leg. "Like I said, we came here on a gig. Cheer up the backwater crowd. But me 'n Paris went a bit overboard and trashed the venue. Got caught in a contact to pay it off, and then stayed around after. It's not so bad. Pete's off somewhere on Earth now and Luke's up on the Citadel, but Bran is still around."

"Huh. Is the band broken up, then?"

"Never. They're just not too keen on merc work. Bran's been working on something. We meet back up every other month to move that along together."

"Glad to hear it."

The tone of the ship changes under them, subtly. Alex glances out the cabin window, then flicks his fingers for the time.

"They're unhitching now. Gotta head up to the bridge." He steps back from the bed, lowering the guitar lid and re-securing the latches. "Talk to you later, yeah?"

"Hooch and tunes?"

Snort, "Looking forward to it."

Out he goes, the cabin door closing behind him.

She waits until she can no longer hear his footsteps. Then she engages the privacy screen, shielding all light and sound.

"Uncloak now. We don't want to run the battery down too much."

The corner shimmers and she appears. She doesn't unball herself and keeps still, holding tight to her knees.

"Can I go online now?"

"No. Keep offline and out of the system. We don't know what sort of security they have and we're not going to risk it."

"Jax got through them easy. He hardly even touched the locks and they opened for us."

"Even so. Stay offline. You remember what your father said."

She does. She doesn't want to. She wants him here and Joss to be elsewhere and for this not to be happening.

The box on the shelf unfolds a little, revealing a small lens in its side. A projection flickers out of it: a young boy in full colour, seated at the bottom of Joss' bed.

"You can still talk to me Sephie," he reminds her. "Father said she should go online through me a few times a week, just to make sure no one notices her gone," he adds to Joss.