Dan looked back at his interactions with Corgan. Even though the old islander seemed easygoing and quite approachable, he didn't feel as simple as an old man from an isolated island might be. The woman who seemed to always be next to him was a bit weird too.

  Dan guessed that the old man might not have been just a member of the village as he had mentioned. He might have held quite the position there, but having no way to prove it for now he just let it be.

  "Okay," he nodded slowly, "Keep an eye on them then."

  Old Raily just grumbled at that, but Dan knew that he already had his mind on it. He was coming to know that the old man was quite dependable when it came to it. Who would have thought that the jolly old man who was spending his retirement on a cruise ship with his wife had this side to him?

  "Oh, by the way," He turned to the man as he remembered what they had talked about on the bridge, "We have already decided on a course of action for the dropping of our current passengers. We will deal with them tonight."

  Dan then went and explained what they were going to do. From using the tenders to drop the passengers a bit away from the village, to going down themselves some other night to gather some info. The old man just listened silently and took it all in. Once Dan was done talking, he just nodded and said,

  "Noted, we will be ready." After that, he went silent for a moment before continuing, "What about the islanders' request? What are you going to do about that?"

  Dan sighed at the question, he wasn't ready to deal with that even though there wasn't much time before they had to drop them. He made a mental note about discussing the matter with Robert and the others later before returning to the present and answering Old Raily,

  "Honestly, I feel that it's too much for just me to decide. Keeping them here would be too much of a risk. We don't know how dangerous they are, and we would have to divert some of our members to keep an eye on them. Not to mention food and water while they are here. That's why I'll most likely tell everyone about this and ask for a vote or something like that. We'll see what's going to happen then.

  "For now, plan for both cases. Either we are going to drop them all in the same place at once, or we are going to keep the islanders here, while we are dropping the others down."

  "Okay, I will talk to Marcus about that. If we are leaving them, we would need some of the guards here to keep an eye on them while sending the others away."

  "Thanks a lot," Dan thanked him.

  He then made his way back to the bridge, his mind wandering and his hand dragging on the wall next to him. It would be lying to say that he didn't feel as if he was out of his depth. Once something was dealt with, another would rear its head, and as he tried to deal with that another would appear again. In just a day he felt that he had years' worth of problems to deal with.

  This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.

  Shaking his head of those thoughts, he entered the bridge and once again talked to the people there about what Corgan had asked of him. He laid it just as he did with Old Raily, keeping nothing hidden from them. Explaining all the disadvantages of keeping the islanders there, while also telling them about what might happen to them if they dropped them along with the other passengers.

  After explaining it as it was, Dan asked for a vote on how to deal with the old man and his people.

  If it was up to him, he would have agreed to keeping them on the ship for a little while longer, at least till they found somewhere safer to drop them at, or till they returned from their information gathering trip. But it wasn't, and he was going to respect the choices of his people.

  Fortunately, he didn't have to worry about it because, in the end, they chose to keep them. The vote was close but a win was a win.

  With the vote complete, Dan turned to Nik, Nancy and Raymond, the provision master, the executive chef and the cook respectively. The three people responsible for their food supplies and said,

  "Nik, Nancy and Raymond can I speak to you for a moment?"

  The three nodded and made their way towards him.

  "Robert told me that he talked to you about the ready-cooked foods we had. How is that going?" he asked once they came closer.

  "We took some of the people with us and hit all the restaurants and food locations to gather what we could." It was Nik, the provision master who answered first, "We used the refrigerators on each of those to keep the food there."

  "Are all the refrigerators operational?" Dan asked.

  "Yes," Nancy nodded, before shrugging as she explained what had happened, "We thought about taking it all and putting it into one refrigerator, turning the others off to save power and fuel, but carrying the food around from all over the ship would have taken us ages with how little manpower we have. This will have to do for now."

  "It's alright," Raymond interjected before Dan could comment on that, "we are probably going to go through it fast enough. Then we will turn those off to save power."

  "That's what I wanted to talk to you about," Dan nodded, "We will be dropping most of the passengers soon, so it's not much of a problem. But the islanders are still going to remain here with us for a while, so be ready to prepare their meals after we drop the others off. Use the portions that might go bad the fastest, nothing should go to waste."

  "Aye captain," they nodded.

  They talked some more about the finer details before the three left to deal with what he had asked of them.

  Dan remained at the bridge. At the moment, they were making their way slowly to a location that would put them parallel to the village where they would drop their cargo.

  They still wouldn't get too close to the shore though, they didn't want to risk being spotted by anyone on land. That's why they timed their mission to start late at night. Having reached this new world a bit before midday, night was quite close.

  Dan would be lying if he said that he didn't need a rest, but he knew that he couldn't leave to catch a breath while this mess was still ongoing. He would allow himself a bit of reprieve once they dropped the first batch of passengers, but before that, he still had a lot to do. Just being there and making himself available to his crew would set them at ease, he knew that well.

  Once night fell, giving Dan one of the most beautiful sunsets he had ever seen, Dan ordered the ship's electrician Dex, to turn off all the external lights that would make it easier for people to notice the Voyager. Cruise ships were some of the brightest ships at sea if they wanted to be, and Dan wanted none of that attention at the moment.

  Waiting a few hours after sunset, Dan finally gave the go for the ship to get closer to the shore. He also had Old Raily and Marcus prepare the people on their side.

  A scheduled chapter, hopefully would have got my net before you see this and change it, if not, than you know how it is XD

  My net got fixed! Finally can just focus on writing

  BONUS CHAPTERS incoming!