Chapter 410
Darius looked over at Thorne with a grin. “Hey, since you’re here, why don’t you stick around and join the fun for a bit?”
Thorne shrugged, smiling. “Sure, why not?”
After a bit of small talk between them, Darius turned back to Hickey, Stewart, and the rest. “Now, where were we before?”
Stewart picked up the thread. “We were just discussing what we should do if we catch a foreign probe wandering into our airspace. What’s the best way to handle that?”
Vesta, overhearing, started thinking it over for herself.
Darius chuckled and turned to Charlene. “What about you? Any thoughts, Charlene?”
Stewart and Charlene hadn’t had a chance to weigh in before Thorne and Vesta had arrived. Now, with Darius prompting, both of them fell silent for a moment.
Vesta’s attention drifted. Darius sure sounded friendly when he said Charlene’s name. And the way he looked at her, there was a genuine warmth there, maybe even a hint of admiration. Vesta frowned, feeling a little unsettled.
Just then, Charlene spoke up. “Well, I’d say we take over the probe’s controls, just to prove we can, and then hand it right back to them.”
The moment she finished, Darius and Abelard burst out laughing.
Stewart’s eyes lit up in sudden realization, and he shot Charlene a big thumbs-up.
Darius, still smiling, didn’t say whether it was good or bad. He just asked gently, “That confident in your tech skills, huh?”
Charlene hesitated, then shrugged. “Shouldn’t be too hard, I guess?”
Hickey grinned. “Talk is cheap, but when can someone actually walk the talk? Now that’s real confidence.”
Darius nodded in agreement. “Absolutely.”.
“Our country’s always preferred to keep things neighborly,” he went on. “We try to keep good relations with everyone. If someone else’s probe, whether they meant it or not, ends up in our backyard, well, it’s only fair to give it back. No need to start a fuss over it.”
“But,” he added, “doing it this way is kind of a flex. If we can hack their probe without them even noticing, it says a lot. It means we’re way ahead, technically speaking.”
“If the other side finds out, they’ll probably be pissed maybe even a little scared of us.”
At first, Vesta didn’t get what was so clever about Charlene’s answer. But as she listened to Darius and the others talk shop, it finally clicked. Charlene’s approach wasn’t just polite, it was a subtle way to show off their technical edge.
She’d never even considered that.
Suddenly, Vesta felt her cheeks grow warm. Was Charlene really up to the challenge, or was this just bravado? Maybe she was starting to believe the hype from all the glowing reviews of her research online.
Just then, she caught Thorne glancing at Charlene with a hint of a smile, like he was impressed, too.
Wait, does he really believe Charlene can pull this off?
Abelard cut in, turning to Thorne. “Thorne, sounds like you’re on the same page as Charlene?”
Thorne nodded. “Yeah, I am.”
Before Vesta could process that, Abelard pressed on. “So what’s the advantage to handling it this way?”
Thorne broke it down, explaining the subtleties.
As he talked, Vesta realized there was way more to this than just the technical side. There were strategic and diplomatic angles she hadn’t even considered. Stewart, Darius even Thorne seemed to have caught on right away when Charlene first spoke. Vesta only got the full picture after Thorne spelled it out. She was still mulling it over when she noticed Abelard looking at her with a friendly smile. “Ms. Hawkins, you’ve been frowning this whole time. Is something still unclear?”
He probably meant well, but Vesta’s face flushed with embarrassment. Still, she pulled herself together and admitted, “Yeah, I just caught up to where you all are. Thanks for explaining.”