Blip was gazing absently at her reader, nursing a bowl of hot cereal and some tea. She didn't really feel like starting the day. The weather was a bit gloomy and so was she.

The "colony" DPIP told her she'd be managing turned out to be a somewhat rudimentary and ill-stocked outpost with, at the moment, a single colonist. Rashi was a tsabhua, and was clever and curious and eager to research. But she was also apparently ill-liked at the station for being a bit oblivious, relentlessly enthusiastic, reckless, and inclined to ignore orders if she didn't agree with them. Blip actually rather liked Rashi, but she wasn't easy to motivate towards the DPIP's goals, being much more focused on her own areas of interest.

Not that it really mattered, in the end. They'd both been sent here to get them out of the way, she was sure of it. She'd made the move from Mothership 7 to the Star 99 station, thinking it would be good for her career, but the team there was tight-knit and disinclined to admit a newcomer into their social group. In spite of serving there for six months, she was a relative unknown and deemed expendable.

She'd wanted to come out to a colony and manage a research team, but she didn't think she'd be sent to the podunks as a throwaway effort to find a use for the inconvenient staff. The planet was pretty enough, and in spite of herself she found Rashi's little projects quite interesting, but she always had hoped to contribute something to knowledge and higher learning and she felt like she was being told without being told that her efforts toward that noble goal were best left to more experienced members of the team, and upstart Vicham need not apply. Her planet was small but they were still a member in good standing of the Collective, blast it!

Sometimes, she worried that the two of them might at some point simply be abandoned here, with DPIP and greater space in general simply ceasing all correspondence and not collecting their research materials anymore. Alone, to fend for themselves... they were largely self sufficient, it was true (and Rashi was always tinkering little improvements) but their ability to perform anything necessary medically was primitive at best, and what if Blip wanted to move back to Vicha? Or just... experience civilization again? There were other colonies they could appeal to for help or to contact someone, of course, but these were relatively far away, and in an emergency it'd be dicey at best. DPIP had essentially dropped them on a cliff with a home base little better than a dwelling that was slightly more upscale than a fancy campsite, and a small lab with little beyond the most basic equipment. The cabin was built into the cliff itself, giving it a rustic cabin-cum-cave feel that was admittedly charming, but the facilities were basic and could only accommodate 10 colonists, so if they met locals, got more misfits sent to them, or had immigrants apply to pad out their number they'd have to expand things themselves if the colony grew to any kind of size that would make things livable if they WERE eventually partially or wholly abandoned.

She had never voiced any of these concerns to Rashi. She was meant to be the leader of this expedition and as such she felt the tsabhua under her charge, though she was much smaller and weaker in body than her companion. It seemed irresponsible not to present a strong front for her and frankly, she'd never seen her comrade daunted or worried and didn't want to know what that would be like. If Rashi was inclined to be reactive there was very little Blip could feasibly do to curb whatever action she took.

Hearing a faint whirr, she glanced up to see another drone sweep overhead. That was the third one today. Normally, they were lucky if they saw one in a week. What was going on? What was even more odd was that none of them had tried to make contact with herself or Rashi as yet. Why else would they need to send a scouting unit here? Were they going to expand this colony after all?

Rashi interrupted her musings, waving her smaller front arms to catch Blip's attention as she ran up the path and skidded to a halt in front of the picnic table where the Vicham sat prodding at her congealing breakfast.

"Miss Blip-" -Rashi always addressed her with this formality, no matter how many times she was told not to- "Miss Blip! I got a message from DPIP, about the drones!"

Interest piqued, Blip leaned forward, shoving away her bowl. "What's going on?"

"It's mega shady, is what," Rashi answered, passing the message pod to her to read. When she finished, she glanced up to see she was making what Blip thought of as her Research Face- the light of academic battle was in her eyes and she was about to do something reckless in pursuit of some rare sample, or to access somewhere she wanted to explore.

"I think we should find these messages they're talking about," Rashi continued. "And open them ourselves."

"No way!" Blip immediately countered. "If you're discovered we could both get in real trouble! I don't want you to come up against disciplinary action over something so stupid. Let them have their secrets or whatever. What if there's some kind of, I don't know, war subterfuge in all this?"

"All the more reason," scoffed Rashi. "We haven't had war among the Collective for ages, if they think they're going to start now in the middle of our camp practically, I wanna know about it."

Blip's mouth was tight. She wasn't pleased.

"I won't tell you not to, Rashi," she said at last. "But I really wish you wouldn't. And if it's what you're going to do anyway because I know it's what you're going to do anyway--- just, be careful."

"It's the right thing," said her companion. "And it's going to be okay." Flashing a grin, she turned and disappeared down the path. Blip decided she had had enough breakfast, and further, that she was holing up in her bunk with her reader and taking a personal day. She wasn't waiting in case Rashi came back and needed to be patched up, or to hide something dangerous. She just... was in too bad a mood to study crystals today. Needed some time to herself. That was it.

Rashi was using all her powers of stealth. She didn't have many, to be perfectly honest, as tsabhuas aren't necessarily built for stealth, but if she heard or saw a drone she ducked behind a rock or into the sparse brush. DPIP might have drones, but she'd been living and exploring here and they hadn't. She knew where the tides washed things up on the craggy, rocky shores, and how to traverse the caves and paths among the sheer cliffside.

Eventually, she hit the jackpot. A wayward message pod, tap, tap, tapping against a rock as the waves alternately pushed it into the outcrop and pulled it back into the swells. She only had to get a little bit wet to snatch it, and she immediately tucked it into her pouch and booked it back to the base.

Blip was going to fret, she knew. But Rashi was beginning to feel like DPIP really didn't respect what they were doing out here anyway, and she didn't particularly see any reason to proffer respect that wasn't reciprocal.

She was going to find out what was going on.