“Hey John! It's good to see you," she said, smiling up at him when he arrived at her side.

John leaned down to kiss her and she returned it ardently. "There, that's a better hello," he said as he finally pulled away, leaving Calara to sigh happily.

“So Lieutenant, what are you occupying yourself with at the moment?" he asked her playfully.

“Well, Commander..." The gorgeous Latina replied, grinning up at him.

“I'm currently studying the long range scans."

“Have you found anything interesting so far?" John asked, genuinely curious.

“Yes, actually I have," Calara replied, hitting a few buttons on her console. The sector map suddenly reappeared in a much Larger hologram in the centre of the bridge.

"I studied these systems on our way to Karron from Olympus, and I noticed we were picking up a lot of wrecks on the long range scans,“ she explained animatedly. "I studied the incident reports for each of those wrecks and most of them occurred between Port Heracles and Karron, and were Logged as pirate attacks."

“Sounds Like pirates must have been operating there for a while," John said, looking thoughtful.

“The Corvette Griffon had been sent out to patrol the area and see if we could find the source of the attacks, but we only investigated a couple of wrecks before we were ambushed..." Calara paused a moment, looking sombre.

“You know what happened next," she added sadly, looking up at him.

"Yes, we rescued you. One of the best things I've done in my life," John said sincerely.

Calara rose from her chair, and John enfolded her in his arms protectively. They stood for a long while and he held her reassuringly as she leaned against him, stroking her lustrous brown hair comfortingly.

“I'm sorry," the lovely brunette apologised, as she wiped a few rogue tears from her eyes, feeling embarrassed.

"You have nothing to apologise for, honey. Let's talk about something less painful instead," he suggested caringly.

“No, I'm ok," Calara insisted. "Besides, this is important. I think I might have found where the pirate attacks are coming from."

John released her from his embrace, and the beautiful Latina walked back to her console and hit a few more buttons.

“If you look here, here, and here," she said, circling the areas that had been attacked on her map in a bright green, "the pirates seem to be hitting three main shipping Lanes."

"I've been studying the dates and times of each attack, and compared the ships’ logs from the victims and it Looks like the pirates are operating several fleets, and are using this system as a base," Calara said, and then pressed a couple more buttons so that the system map moved to focus on a star called Chendar.

“This is excellent work Lieutenant!" John said genuinely impressed, as he fell naturally back into military parlance with the girl.

“Thank you, Sir!" Calara said, proud to have pleased her commanding officer.

John studied the system map closely, noting that there were two Gas giants, several smaller planetoids, and an asteroid belt orbiting Chendar. He noticed amongst the installations listed in the system, that one of the Gas giants was host to an abandoned Gas mining facility. This wasn't uncommon, as mining bases were commonly stripped and deserted when the resources they were mining were fully tapped out.