Five.

“Hey, Silver?”

“What is it now?”

“Someone's approaching. Someone on a pretty messed-up ship. Looks like they're coming straight for us.”

Jane Silver spun around in her seat. “Customers, is it? Interesting.”

She pressed her palms together, a sinister look passing over her face. The white light of the control room reflected in her glasses, as she leaned over to press a few buttons. “Let's see what they want, shall we? Put them on screen.”

Her companion did so. An extremely blurry picture came on, full of interference: Jane could see two people, a man and a woman. The man was remarkably short, somewhat eccentrically dressed and serious-looking; by contrast, the woman was tall, sharply dressed with a brown coat and brown trousers, but with a peculiar, exaggerated grin on her face. It very quickly vanished from her face.

“Sorry, I thought you were someone else.” the tall woman said apologetically. “We're here to see the owner. She knows we're coming, I sent her a message.”

Jane adjusted her glasses.

“Rita isn't here right now. My assistant whats-her-face is running the show around here in her absence.”

Both of the strangers looked disheartened at these news. “Any chance she's left any messages concerning us? I'm Andromeda, this here's Maximus. We're old friends of Rita. Our nav disc is broken, we could really use a replacement.”

Jane considered. In all likelihood, these two people wouldn't be able to cover the cost of a nav disc. Then again... maybe they could come in handy.

“Either of you know anything about hologram technology?” she asked.

“Pretty much everything there is to know.” said the other woman.

“You can dock at airlock three. Over and out.”