Stocky spent the next few days with a special team with Garvey, Soliman, and Moussa, verifying that the ship could be compartmentalized per the Paramount. They pressure tested thousands of ventilation ducts and conduit and piping bulkhead penetration assemblies. He knew the work would take longer than it should. Humans don’t do well with tedious work.
And then Zhu pulled Garvey off the team for another job. He naturally got assigned the responsibility of completing Garvey’s portion. Of course, a good ENG must pick the best person for a job. He couldn’t fault Zhu for that.
They met in Aux. Systems Two and discussed the sign offs for Sci-Med’s isolations. The Gate possessed dedicated airlocks instead of just a pressure door because it was designed to contain dangerous substances. Any technology or life found in unexplored systems had to be assumed to be a potential hazard to Earth based life until properly analyzed. And their target had to be treated as potentially dangerous.
They passed through the accessway and opened the door on Aux Sys Two side. The lights for “airlock in use” illuminated as expected. Moussa opened the door on the other side and they were immediately overcome by the flashing red alarms and the screaming siren of quarantine failure. Stocky shut the door behind them and Moussa ordered TURING to acknowledge the test and deactivate the alarm.
Satisfied that the alarm and indication system worked properly upon improper operation, they went through the airlock. And they would reinstall the interlocks preventing opening both doors simultaneously after obtaining the sign off for the alarm system.
Sci-Med was designed for easy sterilization. The Gate was divided into three decks, each with highly polished surfaces with few seams. The top deck was equipped for the containment and study of dangerous substances. And the lower decks were each isolable, as was the entire Gate, to prevent any spread. Stocky had kept a shine on the Gate’s surfaces since reporting aboard.
“Let’s find the queen,” Moussa said.
Stocky liked the thought of working late with Patterson. He fantasized that their time earlier in Green and Farm had been a date. It had been just the two of them and it was recreation. They shared a meal and a movie in the dark. His focus was on her the whole way through, and some of hers was on him. The present assignment was work, for sure, and he knew he needed to focus on that. But if he struck a friendship with her then he might get another date.
“I hope she’s ready,” Soliman said. “I’d really like it if others would start working to our schedule.”
“She’ll make time,” Moussa said. “She knows we’re on a clock.” He seemed confident in his statement. He set the nearby comms box for her and said, “Patterson, the team is ready for your inspection.”
“Come up to reception,” she said.
They made the short trip down the main hall to the reception lounge and sat down. Stocky watched their blurred reflections in the mirror polished surfaces in the Gate. Sci-Med was designed for cleanliness, and he proudly kept it at its best. He also breathed in the air. It was sterile and filtered – ship’s air. Her scent wasn’t there. Why did you want us to come here? He entered reception and waited by the door.
Soliman wound up a very old music box on the table and it played a mechanized version of Girls Just Wanna Have Fun. Stocky watched the characters on the top of the box go through their simple motions. Most seemed pretty ordinary – several men and women in retro style attire. The large dive suit equipped with a drill on one arm and the mechanized bird likely held some significance, but it was a mystery to him.
“My shift ends in a couple hours, Chief,” Soliman said.
“Yeah, okay,” Moussa said.
You should have crushed him, Chief. The ship comes first.
“Hey, Patterson,” Moussa said over comms. “Where are you? I really would like to start.”
“I’m in Animal Care. Come through Reception and Administration if you can’t wait.”
“Great. Be there in a moment.”
They passed through Sci-Med as directed. Stocky breathed in the air and her scent filled him with tense energy. She was working alone, although Chandna had recently been with her, and she was tending to her lab animals. He smelled the monkey Zira and the mouse Algernon, among other animals. Zira and Algernon were almost pets. Patterson called them staff. They were just a little less family than Ghost.
“Hey Patterson,” Moussa said as soon as they entered Animal Care, “we’re ready for you to put your royal seal of approval on our work. The ship checked out in top shape. We didn’t have to rework any of the dampers or penseals (bulkhead penetration seals).”
Royal seal of approval. There was a certain element of truth in those words. When operating outside of any of the human states, there were only two laws in effect: Admiralty Law and the Paramount. Ship captains could command their vessels as they pleased under Admiralty Law so long as they never violated the Paramount. And, as the Senior Sci-Med officer, Patterson was the voice of the Paramount. She was sort of a queen.
The team spread out in the room to avoid congesting the doorway. Zira howled as if disturbed by his presence. He kept some distance from the frightened chimpanzee. He knew it was uncomfortable being near him. Replicants weren’t truly from Earth and animals seemed to know it.
Patterson turned to face Moussa. “Yeah, I can start it now.”
“Good,” Moussa said. “I’m going to leave you with Stocky, if you don’t mind. I need to check on the other teams and I have another job for Soliman.”
You should have crushed him. Stocky liked Moussa but he sometimes thought that he might make a better Chief. Humans were too soft.
“Okay. Try to keep Zhu off everyone’s back.”
“Try to?” he asked.
“Well,” she said, “the crew is happier when you perform the direct oversight. Given the uncertainty we face, this could be a high-stress assignment. I’d like to keep things cool until the rendezvous.”
Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.
Moussa chuckled and turned to Stocky. “Don’t go too fast, but don’t go too slow either. You know what I mean?”
He nodded. He knew – properly show her everything but be productive with their time. And he would do that – but for Patterson’s benefit and not so some lazy engineering hand could slack off.
Moussa then said, “Also, if she thinks anything isn’t right, call me first to look at it. Then we’ll call Zhu.”
“Sure, Chief,” he said. Moussa and Soliman then turned to leave.
She looked at him. “You’re ready to go right now?”
“Whenever you are.”
Patterson locked up her animals. Zira put up some defiance and continued to fuss. It did not want to be trapped in a cage with Stocky near. She told her to shush. “Sorry about this,” Patterson said, “she’s still getting used to you and Chandna.”
“I wonder why she would act differently to us?”
Patterson passed him a curious glance but said nothing. Figure it out, my dear. Maybe she was too trusting. He watched her as she silently worked on her PDA for a few seconds. He looked over her body, instinctively at first. Then he consciously realized it yet had to keep doing it. He could hear Moussa and Soliman talking in the far distance.
“You think those two will be okay together?” Soliman asked.
“She’s a good Christian and plenty smart. It’ll be fine.” Moussa said.
“I’m just not sure…”
“We all had to get used to Patterson. It’ll be fine. Sometimes I think she likes it.”
Why are they concerned? She’ll do her job and I’ll do mine. I’ve done jobs that I know you wouldn’t touch.
He looked at her, trying to ignore their talk, while she made logs on her PDA. She had her hair pulled back into a ponytail now, and it didn’t capture the light like before. Her green shirt clung to her body and he noted the contours made by her breasts, captivatingly thin waist, and wide hips. He longed to free her hair (he liked it better flowing) and hold her in his arms. He wanted skin on skin. I understand. I can’t let her distract me.
He focused his mind on work. Mainly just walking around and watching ops checks because the craft work was done. “This will take more than a shift.”
She walked up to him while fingering her tablet. “I know. I’ll jump on your schedule. When you need to catch some Z’s we’ll break. Then we’ll pick up the rest.”
He wouldn’t trust that promise to be met with any other human. “I’d like to get it all done at once, if it’s alright by you Ma’am.”
She ditched her lab coat and slipped on a Company jacket. Then she turned to a mirror and quickly checked her hair. He imagined that she was daintying herself for their date.
“If that’s how you want to do it,” she said as they began to leave. “Will Soliman be taking any portion of this after his other job?”
He let her lead ahead and he followed behind, glancing down at her butt. “I doubt that. But I don’t need the help.” It’s better when it’s just you and me.
She silently glanced back at him with displeasure. “Don’t let Zhu talk you into feeling the need to do some superman performance. He and Moussa have to find the best way to distribute the work.”
He looked at her funny. “Alright.” Maybe you don’t understand? “You do realize they are my bosses?”
“Which means it’s their job to figure things out with regards to a proper schedule,” Patterson said. “And I’m your boss too. You’ve had some experience with the Paramount?”
“We had to establish all the required isolations for our initial development program when I was mining. We never found any dangerous organisms or nanites though. The controls were then relaxed to speed up the mining operations. We kept the main isolation bulkheads intact, and it was good we did. We had a decompression event from a hull penetration.”
“Was it bad?”
“No, not for us. But I suppose that depends on how capable you are with damage control. There’s only around eleven pounds of pressure differential for most starships and asteroid habs. A hab dome on an asteroid mining operation I was on got punched through with a four-centimeter nut.”
She looked at him strangely.
“One of our supply ships, apparently. They were all that came around besides our ore carriers – which got inspected by us. One didn’t report an incident. Nobody ever owned up to it.
Anyways, it produces a nice wind, if for some reason you don’t hear the decompression alarms. The emergency compressed air system started a bleed and that kept the pressure from dropping too fast. We didn’t need to waste time to suit up. And we found the breech quick because a puff of aerosol floats right towards it. We stuffed it and then we got in our suits and properly patched the damage.
Smaller holes are harder to find but they give you more time to work. I know that what we’re doing has to do with contaminant isolation more than the risk of a hull breech, but it’s all the same. We must mitigate all risks – a decompression just happens to be the one I’ve seen. Have you ever been through a decompression event?”
“No, not an actual emergency. We’ve done several drills.”
He wondered if any of them had experienced a decompression. By far, the most important thing to do was to not panic and search for the source with a sound mind. Hopefully their pretend drills conditioned them well enough, but he wanted to stress to her the need to keep a level head. And he also hoped to gain more information about the job. “Don’t worry much about it. Unless we hit something large it won’t be that bad… immediately. We just need to avoid large pieces of this derelict. The Captain and NAV should be able to handle that.”
“I have no doubts there. The Captain won’t make an approach until we have the debris field modeled and a safe path which permits an EVA.”
“Sounds good. So the object is a wreck.”
She glanced back at him with a sly grin. “Smart.”
“I won’t talk about it. I know my orders. It’s just nice to know what we’re getting into. And, honestly, I’m only worried about when we’re doing the EVA. A hole in the hull can get patched without much fuss. A hole in a person is a different story. I know you can fix that - usually. Better to avoid it though.”
She stopped and turned toward him. “You’re going to be on the away team. You know that, right?
“Sure. The Company wouldn’t have put me here otherwise.” He knew exactly what he was here for - to do the tasks that the humans couldn't do or were afraid to do.
“And you’re fine with that?”
“I’ll do what I’m ordered.”
She looked irritated. “I don’t know how it was on the Abydos, but De Silva is always going to want to know personal preferences. That’s why you were asked about a name again. And you will be again. Yes, the Captain will make the final decisions because he must. But he likes to consider preference in assignments whenever he can. And he grants compensation, time off and such, when someone must get the short stick.”
“Okay, I’ll think more about things in the future. I can’t really have a preference about being on the boarding party though because it’s an alien ship. I don’t know what to expect.” He looked into her eyes, intending for only a glance but it became a captured gaze.
Her eyes met his and then darted away. “Fair enough. Just consider preference in the future.” Her lips curled up in a grin.
He would do that for her. But he really didn’t know what to expect with an alien ship. He had seen some movies about aliens before and they and their technology had often been depicted as strange, mysterious, and incomprehensible. If they were like that then maybe none of them would know what to do.
It took one and a half shifts to demonstrate the ship’s capability for isolation, only breaking once to eat. But it was a nice meal alone with her, a time where he could see her without the veneer she had to maintain as an Officer. And he hoped he would have more such opportunities.
They had one other meal, but that was a working lunch. Patterson often prepared specialty shakes for each of them. She said they optimized their metabolism to better accommodate for the fact that they made proteins that the others didn’t. He liked to think that he had a lot in common with her.
She seemed pleased with the demonstration and signed off on the inspection. She then instructed him to get some rest. He reminded her that Zhu had urgent work.
“He’ll have to find another way,” she said. She would inform Moussa and Zhu that she was placing him off duty for a full shift.
He gave in to her directive. He still felt fit and energetic. He felt too energetic for sleep because her presence always filled him with a nervous tension. But she was an Officer and had to be obeyed. He went to his bunk, prayed, and then imagined her with him as he lay in his bed. It wasn’t a date but it was good.
He needed to make an impression on the away team.