Kendra stared at her captain as the latter reached out to stroke a red fox-like creature. The ship's menagerie was an impressive amount of open space for a liner. Most Enterprises used the space for a starlit lounge or restaurant, but Breezewood instead carried a little slice of planet Gaia wherever it went. Even the trees in the center of the area were real (though the ones on the edges were fiberglass). Their roots had a nasty habit of working their way past the isolation barriers, and Kendra's engineers had spent many a night tracking down leaking irrigation water. There was something oddly nostalgic about patching leaks on a starship, harking back to the golden age of terrestrial cruise ships on Old Earth. Provided someone else had to be the one who shimmied up the access duct with a calk gun to plug it, of course.
"No joke, a honest to goodness Gaian wants to help us upgrade our menagerie." The fox warily accepted a brush or two on the head before scurrying back into the canopy. Kendra noted that it darted into the artificial section of the forest. Now where the hell is he hiding? Those claws are for burrowing into wood, not steel she thought to herself before coming back to the task at hand. "I would have thought that radical environmentalists would want nothing to do with our little zoo here."
"And initially, she didn't, except to 'liberate' our permanent passengers. My first offer was to donate to her cause and put out materials for some of the more ecologically minded passengers to peruse. Ms. Velasquez's counter-offer was to inspect our vessel, confiscate our wildlife, and then fine us for the privilege."
"Ever the savvy negotiators."
"The Gaians or the two of us?"
"Yes."
Seabourne smiled. He always enjoyed when Kendra's dry humor slipped into her professional demeanor. Deep down, he knew that his first officer found as much joy in the Breezewood as he did, but she most certainly hid it well at times. "What was your counter to her counter?" she continued. "It's not like we really need their blessing to do what we do. They've been pretty well smashed since they chose poorly in the War."
"A golden opportunity missed for them. They should have worked with the crown as a ready-made insurgency in the taus. Instead, they threw in with his majesty. Say what you will, Gaia is truly a unique gem. Even old Terra doesn't compare to that world. It should be protected. And now it's being strip mined, the short-sighted bastards."
"Focus, captain. I take it this was when they offered to install their equipment and staff it to take care of our on-board creatures?"
"Bingo."
"And being the politically astute Captain you are, you immediately said no to filling your ship with a dozen known terrorists hauling in tons of mysterious equipment?"
"I immediately said 'maybe" to filling my ship with ten known terrorists hauling in tons of well vetted equipment. Or are you not up to the task of detecting a booby-trap?"
"Hardware I know," replied the Breezewood's head of engineering. "It's the code side of things that scares me. Mactan can cram an awful lot of nastiness into a thumb drive, let alone a piece of machinery that size."
"I know there's risk," said Seabourne, "but I'm trying to build some bridges here. Kendra, we've lost liners to the Gaians in the past, but if we can work with the Gallics, I imagine we can find some common ground to work with this lot as well."
"And if it goes south?"
"Well, then hopefully they don't shoot me before you get a chance to say, 'I told you so'."
