Chapter 9
The AI's voice is loud, almost unbearably loud. "WARNING Environmental contamination. Don emergency suits immediately. Repeat, WARNING Environmental contamination. Don emergency suits immediately. This is a drill. Repeat, this is a drill."
Adair yelps as they jump up from the bed, and in their underwear, race for the nearest emergency location for e-suits. Quickly, their training kicks in as they throw the suit on in almost one smooth movement. After checking to ensure the seal is tight, and oxygen levels are good, they raise their arm and press a button on the control module to let the captain know they are safe.
After a few minutes, the captain's voice comes through everyone's comms. "Congratulations, there were no deaths in this drill. I apologize, Adair, for doing this during your sleep time. I wanted to do one when you all weren't expecting it. Good to know the training worked. Back to what you were doing, drill over."
Adair carefully removes themself from the suit. Doing so makes the job for Rory a little easier. They pull a bright red tag out and place it back in the rack with the other emergency suits. Rory will be by later to retrieve and reset all the used ones. You did not want to get a suit without maximum oxygen levels in the event of an emergency.
They make their way back to their room, turn off the lights and settle down to sleep. After about 15 minutes of sitting there staring into space, Adair sits up. "Computer, lights to normal brightness." The lights return to the normal 70 percent warm glow Adair had set earlier. It goes well with their room decorations. They had done their room to mimic the space back on Terrene that they had shared with Brigit.
Climbing down from their bed, they look around and smile. Adair likes the party lights around the edge of the room, the orange and yellow rug, and especially the color of the walls. They are a pastel yellow, bright without being glaringly so. Since they aren't on duty, they slip on their slippers and a bright yellow robe with a stylized bee on it and heads to the kitchen to look for Cali.
Entering the kitchen, Adair finds Doc there, finishing the cleanup from dinner. "Hey, have you seen Cali?"
Doc pauses, mid wipe of the table, "She ate dinner, not sure where she went after that. May have gone to tinker..."
"Thanks," Adair says, as they grab a mug of coffee on the way to the little nook that held workbenches and supplies.
Doc gives her a puzzled look, shrugs and goes back to wiping off the table.
Padding softly down the hall, Adair can hear music playing and slows down. Creeping towards the corner, they peer around and spot Cali deep in work. Softly setting their mug of coffee down, Adair carefully and quietly makes their way into the alcove. Right when they are about to touch Cali's back to startle her, Cali spins around and grabs Adair's wrist, and gently twists. "You should know better than to try to sneak up on me."
Letting go of Adair's wrist, Cali leans back on the counter and smiles. "Welcome to the workshop. I actually could use your help. But, hey, wait, shouldn't you be sleeping?"
Adair walks back to the hall and fetches their mug before answering. "Yeah, but the drill woke me up, and I couldn't get back to sleep, so I figured I would go on a walkabout. What are you working on?" Adair leans in to get a better look and asks, "What gave me away?"
"You shouldn't have set your mug down, I heard it. It's a distinctive sound that doesn't match the music. I'm working on my wards. Remember when I told you the theory of how they could work? Well, I tested them back on Terrene in a much smaller area, and it worked. So I'm going to install one at each of the locks."
"Hmm... Interesting. How are you going to power it?" Adair asks.
Cali nods over to the MTR's that were sitting on the side of the workbench. "I've got those, and I think they'll work. I didn't want to tie into the ship's power in case an intruder somehow cut the power."
"Here is my issue I'm having right now, look." Cali maneuvers another magnifier over from the wall and makes sure the light is shining correctly on it. "This qfMRI device doesn't want to sync with the other one. I've gotten them both powered, but when I activate them, I'm getting two different images instead of one image combined and processed from the two scanners."
"What's your bridging mechanism?" Adair asks.
Cali motions to a little box on the back of the table with wires running from it to the devices and the power source. "That's just temporary while I get it set up. I plan on attaching it to one of them before installation."
Adair sets their mug down and lifts the bridging processor, examining it, turning it this way and that in their hand. Then they precisely set it down and reach over and switch off the reactor. Once it shows that they stopped the reaction, Adair slowly and carefully disconnects the wires to the bridging processor.
"What's wrong?" Cali asks with a bit of alarm in her voice at how careful Adair is being.
Adair waits to respond until they had disconnected all the wires. "No offense, but I'd like it if you leave this stuff to Rory, and I don't say that to be mean or anything; please don't take it personally. You were very fortunate, like astronomically lucky. You need to thank your Lord and Lady for protecting you. I know I will be speaking to mine."
The more that Cali listens to Adair, the more the color drains from her face.
"Let's put it like this, the way you had everything wired up, you had about an 80% chance of blowing up both of the qfMRI machines, which would have most likely taken you out and caused us not to have a suit drill but a real suit situation. That's the better of the two bad outcomes. The other is about a 19% chance to blow up the MTR. That would have taken about half the ship with it. They are incredibly safe when correctly configured, but if one were to wire them wrong, they can have a runaway reaction happen. You; you lucky, lucky person, you hit on the 1% outcome. You got the result where we're both standing here."
Overcome with the emotions of fear, gratitude, and relief, Cali hugs Adair hard. "I'm so sorry. I just wanted to get ahead of the work."
Adair rarely found themself in this sort of situation, so they gently pat Cali's head as they hug. "It's okay Cali, you're not trained in this. Don't beat yourself up over it."
Adair pulls back and takes Cali's head in their hands, and loses themself for a moment in Cali's emerald green eyes before they breathed and focused on Cali's pupils bridging the two of them. "We're okay. You're okay. Okay?"
Cali nods her head, a little tear slipping down her cheek at the thought of what she almost did. Her job is to protect the crew and she almost killed them all.
Good." Adair releases her head and stands up. "With that shot of adrenaline, I think I'm going to head to bed and see if when it wears off I can get a few hours of sleep. You might think of doing something similar, or exercise or something. You need to get out of your head." Turning to leave, Adair smiles back to Cali, "Finish my coffee for me?" And with that, they make their way back to their quarters and climb up into bed, their head still buzzing, but Adair's eyes drop as the rush of adrenaline wears off.
#
Cali stands up and wipes her face. "Get yourself together, woman." She heads to the exercise area. "Computer, lights 50% with a spot on the mat at 60%" After the lights change, Cali walks to the mat. Taking a moment to shake her arms and release some immediate tension, Cali starts the moves of Tai Chi. Her movements becoming more fluid as she begins to calm herself.
It's pretty much a fifty-fifty chance on whether her brain will either wander idly or quiet down. Currently, her mind is wandering. As she moves through the forms, she can't stop thinking about what happened. She is so grateful that Adair had decided to come and visit her. Thinking of that makes her think she wants to do something nice for Adair, and as she finished the form she is on she realizes Adair might want martial arts training.
"Maybe they'll teach me tech, and I can teach them how to defend themself..." Now that her mind had gotten that out of its own way, it quiets down, and she settles into the forms. It isn't long before she finishes, and she walks over to the punching bag, past the climbing contraption Adair had made. It has been a while since she had gone climbing and Cali makes a mental note to have someone show her how to use the climbing machine as she reaches down to pick up a pair of gloves from a small storage locker. Slipping them on, Cali starts running her fist into the bag repeatedly. It isn't long before she starts whispering, then saying, then eventually yelling "Thank You" with each hit. She is using her fists as a physical manifestation of her gratitude energy flowing forth.
After about 30 minutes, her arms are dead. After putting the gloves back in the storage locker, she straightens up and brushes both a stray strand of hair and a decent amount of sweat from her forehead. She stands there, trying to decide if she wants to just go back to her quarters and shower or have a sauna first. The thought of the relaxing warmth draws her to the sauna.
After some time in the sauna she feels the cool air of the door opening causing Cali to sit up, blinking the sleep out of her eyes. She briefly wonders how long she has been in there, before looking to see who came in.
"Anyone in here?" Doc asks as he enters.
"It's Cali, and I should probably get going. I had fallen asleep for a while there." The earlier stress, combined with her subsequent workout, has so worn her out that she doesn't even think of how she looks. Some of her auburn hair sticks to her head with sweat and steam, while the rest hangs down to the lower bench. Beads of water drip down her soft skin, emphasizing her toned physique as Doc enters.
"Oh, um..." Doc says. He stammers as he finds a seat and sits down heavily, clearly weary after the first day in space. "I'm just gonna toss this guy over my eyes, anyway." With that, he leans back against a pillow and puts a wet towel over his eyes. "So glad we have one of these. Now we just need a hot tub," He says. Doc follows that up with a little chuckle.
"Don't say that where Rory can hear you, or she'll figure out how to get one in here, whether we need it or can use it," Cali warns.
"Yeah, I guess you're right." Doc says. "Unless I WANT her to..."
Cali balls up a towel and throws it at his head. He jerks up and drops his own towel, about to spit out some irritating response to the projectile that came to rest on the deck next to him after hitting him in the head. But all he can do is stare in awe at how she looks now that she is sitting up, water slipping over her curves.
He gulps, having for a moment wholly forgotten Adair, and then he shakes his head, leans back a little too hard, knocking his head as he puts his towel back over his eyes. He is a little angry at himself for being so entirely distracted by Cali.
"Are you okay?" Cali asks as she stands and wraps a towel around herself. "That sounded hard."
"Yeah, it's fine," He waves her on with a flippant movement of his wrist. "See you."
"Yeah, okay." She frowns quizzically, not that he can see it as she is facing away from him and left--quickly going through the door, so the heat doesn't escape--almost bumping into Rory on her way through the door.
"Wow, busy spot, the sauna," Cali says as she sidled past Rory. "Don't fall asleep!" She says loudly. And then continues down the corridor.
Rory slips into the room and quickly closes the door. She takes a moment to close her eyes and inhale. She loves the smell of hot steamy air, which reminded her of home on Cat's Eye. However, this air doesn't have the salty tang to it. Opening her eyes, she takes in the wooden walls and appreciates that the Blessed Accord sprung for these kinds of niceties. They have all served on both Accord ships and other ships and so had seen how drab and grey non-Accord ships could be. And most of them didn't have relaxing equipment like this.
She offers a smile to Doc, though he can't see it as the small yellow terrycloth towel covers his eyes. "Mind if I add more water?" She asks.
At first, he thought Cali had come back in, but then he realizes that Rory must have slipped in as Cali went out as he can tell her voice from Cali's deeper voice.
"Of course, go ahead." He waves his hand dismissively. She lifts the ladle out of the water, concentrating on the smooth top of the liquid as it rises, taking a moment to thank the water and the electrically created 'fire' for helping her relax. She also throws in a moment of gratitude that she can trust Doc. There aren't many men that she can be alone with. Slowly, she pours it over the hot stones, sighing as the cloud of water spread up and around.
"I'll never tire of that." She says as she climbs the benches, laying on the whole other bench away from Doc. He answers with a slight grunt, and she thinks he might be falling asleep.
Doc jerks up, and the cloth falls off his face. Rory almost jumps off her bench. "I just remembered, I needed to talk to you!"
"Okay, maybe give a woman some warning before jumping about next time." She admonishes him, tempering it a bit with a smile.
"Oh yeah, sorry. I had a thought while shopping. I was buying fresh herbs to dry and thought, hey. We could grow herbs on the ship. Do you think that would be hard? I think the hardest part might be finding a spot to do it."
Rory leans back and closes her eyes in thought. "Hmm... They need light and that shouldn't be hard to rig up. They need containers, again, shouldn't be hard. Water, another non-issue. But where?.."
"What about down in environmental? There's already water; it's out of the way so that a plant light wouldn't annoy anyone. Unless it would annoy you?"
"I wouldn't mind much," she says. "I'll start rigging something up. Shouldn't take long, and we definitely have enough time since we need to get seeds at the next..." She stops, seeing his grin get wider. "You already bought seeds, didn't you?"
"What can I say? I'm very confident in my crew-mate's abilities." Doc says, laughing as he answers.
"Yeah, well, don't think I'm doing this all myself. You're gonna be helping me; rest assured." With that, she lays back down. "Will you be here long?"
"I wasn't planning on leaving for a while; why?" He asks.
"I may fall asleep. If I do, wake me in 15, would you?"
"Sure, sure. Not a problem," Doc waves again and places the towel back over his eyes. "Unless, of course, I fall asleep first..."
Tyche silently keeps an eye on their vitals while they doze in the hot, damp air.