Light didn’t reply straight away. This naive Utaysi didn’t realise just how much you [i]didn’t[/i] want to talk to these Humans about anything at all. Especially when you were carrying secret cargo for an employer who had no qualms about killing people just for discussing business to strangers. To make matters worse, Light knew they were probably capable of listening to private conversations and so couldn’t warn his assistant any further. So he remained silent, bathed in green, and looked for an opportunity to get them away.

Séverine nodded and smiled again at Senjen’s answer, as if he’d done the right thing. “You have good instincts. You should come join us in Naval Intelligence! We could use the help, in this day and age.”

Light tried to discreetly examine the metadata for this Human’s armour; there was nothing to suggest they had anything to do with a planetary government. The woman looked right at him.

“Hi there, we don’t mark our armour anymore for security reasons. Is that your ship? I admire your bravery, piloting something outside of the QV’s ken. Where did you buy it?”

Light tried to remain calm, feigning a cough so that he could obfuscate his body with the gelsuit a bit more.

“I-I bought it here. Lots of Tindrel trade ships were going cheap after they got infected with that rock fungus a few decades ago.”

Séverine nodded, pursing her lips. 

“I heard about that. Awful business…Listen, you guys seem trustworthy so I'm going to tell you a little secret. We believe that Utaysi is carrying half a master key for one of our ship Minds. With that level of access, you could convince the ship to turncoat. Or destroy a planet. The trouble is, our technology isn’t optimised for your species. If we try to find and extract this ‘file’ from our friend over there and they resist, we could destroy it by mistake. That's no good, as Minds do not like to distribute more. Worse than that, we could hurt him, and we don’t want that. So…I was wondering if I could do a test scan on you? Properly calibrate my device on someone who won’t resist, so we have the best chance of success on our friend.”

“That is very thoughtful of you, b-but we really must be going.” Light ventured.

“I promise it won’t hurt, and will take just a moment. I’ll pay you handsomely for your time, of course.”