"Ninety?" She balks, almost dropping her little slice of orange into the fountain. "How do you manage that? The fuel-consumption alone— you'd need tons of it, let alone the room to keep it somewhere."

She forgets her own world will continue without her. Will advance forward through space with monopolistic limbs reaching in every feasible direction. For every source of income— alive, inanimate or otherwise. In a wake of their 'failure' to secure the alien specimen, will another ship be marooned with the same task? Same hapless crew, same salivaed-deaths. And this ship, will it be equipped with another one of him? Will he be successful in thwarting his crew's natural human propensity for survival? She's dead— at least she thinks she is. And other people will die too. Lots of people, upended in man's quest to conquer the world.

Every man is a Nostromo in the end. Too stupid to see his own death barreling toward him. And in his bravado, he races ever-toward it.

"Did," She repeats, unsurprised. "Well, it makes sense they'd be the first to go. Impossible to send aid so far into the galaxy without showing up too late."

Nor is she surprised to hear the Inner colonies— those groups privileged enough to have short-distance and availability at their disposal— relying on Outer colonies set deep within the reaches of space. The one's tasked with the hardest jobs, with presumably little pay-out.

She licks a bit of chocolate from her finger, nods in CT's direction. "Let me guess; you were Outer?"