Sandy said. She yawned before she could stop herself. “Get some rest, then we’ll report to Captain Goerlich. Independence will take us to Dawson.” She opened the hatch and stepped out into the passageway, thinking hard. They'd have to come up with a record that gave a believable reason they’d been marooned, rather than simply put out the airlock. Even the Colonial Militia took a dim view of some offences ... and it would have to seem bad enough to merit recruitment into the raiders. Cursing, she headed towards her cabin. They had a day to come up with a record that would ensure the only offers they received were illegitimate. That shouldn’t be too hard. *** “So our benefactor has money,” Dana said, as the shuttle drifted towards Ford’s starship. “It's always nice to see proof.” Jason scowled. The encounter with the Federation starship had gone about as well as could be expected, but it had unsettled some of his crew. Who would have thought that the Federation Navy would risk itself to protect colonials? Jason knew better, but colonial propaganda was insidious. After all, they had been abandoned by the Federation Navy during the war. He studied Ford’s starship curiously. It looked like an older Federation Navy battlecruiser, a long dagger-shape bristling with weapons and sensor nodes. Jason was experienced enough to tell the subtle signs that indicated that it was actually a fast freighter built on a battlecruiser hull, a design created by a shipping corporation hoping to deter pirates from raiding its vessels. The design had proven popular enough to be duplicated by other companies, although it was actually quite inefficient. There was no way that the ‘battlecruiser’ could be unloaded as quickly as a regular freighter. “I bet some of those fake nodes are actually real,”
