Chapter Seventeen - Poster Girl

The process of undocking a ship to a station or small planet was similar, in many ways, to the process of an aircraft taking off on Earth.

That is to say, it was exceptionally complicated, and the average idiot still thought that if they were put behind the pilot's yoke, they'd manage to figure it out.

There was a knock at Ivil's door, and she glanced up from her casual reading to stare. The weight and feel of the person on the other side meant that there was really only one person it could be. Twenty-Six.

Standing, Ivil discarded the tablet she'd been picking through and moved to the door to open it. "Yes?" she asked.

Twenty-Six glanced up and met her eyes, then grinned. "Hey! Just wanted to let you know, we have permission to take off in ten."

"Oh?" Ivil asked. "Thank you for letting me know. Is there anything I should do?"

Twenty-Six nodded. "Stow away anything loose. And I do mean anything. If you need to use the washroom, now's the time. There are plenty of horror stories of someone using the head when their ship needed to go through manoeuvres. Uh, we'll also be out of Ceres' gravity well pretty soon after we leave. With our initial acceleration, you might feel like you're being pulled in two directions, so that might be a little confusing. Neither of those directions will be towards the floor, which makes it worse."

"Thank you," Ivil said. "I think I'll manage."

Twenty-Six smiled, showing off two rows of very slightly crooked teeth. "No problem. We'll be slipping out of Ceres' gravity well, then accelerating. I think the captain wants to go for a hard burn, so everyone will have to meet up in the cockpit."

Ivil nodded. A ship of this size couldn't afford multiple crash seats for everyone. In that case, it only made sense to concentrate them all in one place.

Twenty-Six squirmed a little, and Ivil paused. "Is something wrong?"

"Oh? No, I was just counting. I'm going to have to be the odd-one out."

"What do you mean?" Ivil asked.

"There are only so many seats in the cockpit, so I'll be in the engineering bay's crash seat. It's silly, but I don't like being alone for so long."

Ivil considered it. "Is it the only seat in engineering?" she asked.

"Ah, no?"

"Well then, I don't see why I can't accompany you."

This, of course, served two purposes. The first was simplest. She... wasn't enamoured with Twenty-Six, but the young woman was attractive, energetic, and definitely cute. Ivil wouldn't mind getting to know her better. The second purpose had more to do with Ivil's reaction to high-G manoeuvres. Which was to say, she didn't have one.

The kind of sudden change in movement that a ship, even the fastest of space fighters, could do was so little that it didn't really affect Ivil. She would have to make a conscious effort to pretend to be impacted.

Fewer people around would mean fewer chances that anyone would notice her if she slipped.

"I'm a little curious about this ship as well. Most of the time when conducting Astro Archeology, we work with ancient wrecks. This ship is older than some case-study vessels and yet it's still flying."

Twenty-Six's eyes lit up. "I'd love to show you around. If it's old-old stuff you want, there's a lot to show you."

Ivil smiled right back. "Let me put things away. It'll just take a moment."

It really didn't take long. She hadn't unpacked much, so all she needed to do was secure her few belongings in one of the cubbies and then she was done. "I'm all yours," she said.

Twenty-Six blinked, then laughed. "Alright. Come on! I don't think you've seen engineering yet."

They slipped out of Ivil's room, and almost immediately ran into Aurora exiting her own room. "Hello, Lady Aurora," Ivil said.

"Miss Ville," Aurora returned. She glanced over at Twenty-Six. "Miss... Six?"

"Hah! Actually, Twenty-Six is my full name. I don't really have a first or family one? Uh, but Miss Six is fine?"

"Forgive me, then," Aurora said. "I'm heading to the bridge to prep for manoeuvres. Are you doing the same?"

"We're going to crash in engineering," Twenty-Six said. "I wanted to show Evelyn some of the Held Together that no one gets to see!"

"I... see," Aurora said. She gave Ivil a look that Ivil had no hopes of deciphering. "Well, you two enjoy yourselves."

"We will!" Twenty-Six said.

Ivil slid to the side to let Aurora pass. She had the impression that there was some degree of miscommunication there that she hadn't caught on to. Ivil supposed that was the price to pay for not being as direct and concise with her wants as she usually was.

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Twenty-Six reached back and grabbed Ivil's hand before pulling her forwards. "It's this way," she said.

At the end of the corridor, towards the rearmost section of the ship, was a small ladder leading upwards with padded rungs. Twenty-Six scampered up and into a small dark passageway, with Ivil following at a more sedate pace.

"We have interior access to all three primary drive engines here, and two of the fuel bunkers," Twenty-Six said. "And I have a small engineering room, of course. It's basically where I spend most of the day."

"It's a little tight," Ivil said as she squeezed past some pipework.

"Oh, yeah. That's from the retrofit. The engines aren't designed for this kind of ship, so their access and exterior connections run right through some of the bulkheads. They're smaller than the old engines, but a lot more complicated. It means I'm never out of work to do."

"Job security by means of glaring inefficiency? I think I can sympathise."

Twenty-Six half-turned and blinked at Ivil. "Your job has that kind of problem too?"

"You'd be surprised," Ivil said.

She followed Twenty-Six up to a door. The mechanic shoved it open then froze at the threshold.

There was a room here, and it did indeed have two crash couches. One of them had its belts wrapped around a few packages, the chair was a flat surface and had therefore been turned into temporary storage, as chairs often were. The rest of the room was... a bit of a mess. Everything was shoved into grated cubbies or locked up in toolboxes, but there were still plenty of things that needed sorting. A rack at the back had weights, and there were a few tools laying on the ground.

What caught Ivil's eye the most, however, were the very many nearly-undressed women on the posters covering the rusty walls.

"One sec!" Twenty-Six said as she slipped in, then slammed the door in Ivil's face.

Ivil waited. It took considerably more than one second, but after a relatively short pause, Twenty-Six reopened the door. She was holding a small plastic bin to her side, with rolls of paper sticking out. Her face was notably red.

"What was that?"

"Nothing."

"And the things you ripped from the walls?"

"You saw that? Uh, I mean. They were... diagrams. Top secret ship diagrams. For maintenance." Twenty-Six lied.

"Diagrams of female anatomy?"

Twenty-Six's face burned hotter.

"For maintenance?" Ivil continued.

Twenty-Six's face burned so hot that it made the smattering of freckles across the bridge of her nose stand out noticeably.

"Was one of them wearing a dog collar and nothing else?" Ivil asked.

"Can... can we pretend that you didn't see?" she asked in a small voice.

"I think I can do that," Ivil said. "Though I might ask that you return the favour one day."

"With... your own posters?"

Ivil stared. "No. Not with posters of what looked like bootleg Miss Mars merchandise." Ivil didn't do posters of half-naked women. Or pornography in general. She much preferred literature of the erotic sort. That wasn't pornography.

It was art.

"A-anyway, let me clear out the second couch. It works, I promise," Twenty-Six said.

There was a two-toned noise over the ship intercoms.

"Ah, two minute warning," Twenty-Six said. "We'll probably be fine to still be standing for a while. The captain is a really good pilot. And Missy's better. She can make this old lady soar."

"Have you known the captain, and Missy, long?" Ivil asked as she watched Twenty-Six sort through her things.

"Yup! My dad knew the captain's dad, way, way back in the day. This is the first ship I've worked on, though. Uh, it's better than the stations back home. The Held Together has more charm."

"I can see that," Ivil said. This tiny engineering room, which was far too close to the engines, far too warm, and far too small, did have a lot of character, even stripped of its... more interesting artistic elements. "Was Missy with the captain already? Hawke and Donny as well?"

"Hmm? No, Donny's the newest, though he's been with us for a year or so now. Hawke was here already. And Missy... eh, she came maybe five years ago? She was..." Twenty-Six paused. "She took some time to get used to."

"I see. That's an interesting crew dynamic. Thank you."

"Is it that interesting?" Twenty-Six asked.

"Of course. All too often, in my field, all I know about a ship is what we could get from its black box. And that's often sanitised to the point of uselessness. It's interesting to see what some of those lost crews might have been like."

***