Rebecca Hicks had been shocked when, for no apparent reason, Dirk had simply bolted out of the Crypt, and left her to do the prep of the vacsuits and EVA gear by herself. He hadn't said a word, but she had gotten the impression from his facial expression that something had been very wrong, She had just decided to tap into the ship's internal communications, when Rollie had come back through the hatch and yelled, "Hicks! Damage control stations, now!" Startled by his barking voice, she had assumed at first that it was another of their sophomoric jokes, and turned to say something offensive, but had stopped cold when she saw the look on his face. She had dropped everything in her hands and sprinted to her assigned damage control station in Engineering.
The engineering section had a realtime feed directly from the bridge, and Hicks was able to watch in horror, as they came within a few millimeters of the Jester being hulled. The chief engineer, Brostowski, had shown her where the last missile would've hit them, had it not been intercepted. She had quickly walked to the head, and promptly vomited after realizing that the engineering bay in which she was standing would have been completely destroyed. Hicks was beginning to suspect that she had been more than slightly foolish to take this job, but she had been thinking with her wallet instead of her brains, and the idea of a big salvage bonus had tipped the scales. Now, she just hoped that she got out alive.
Once the immediate crisis had passed, there was work to do, and she headed back to the Crypt to finish preparing the EVA gear for when they located the ship they'd come to find.
Dirk didn't show up until two days later, when the Captain announced that they had - finally - positively identified the colony ship drifting along in the space between the Omega locus, which it turned out, had been along their own vector, and was being heavily guarded by remote AADS units. The one that had fired on them had been closest to their flight path, and if they had altered course in the opposite direction, they would likely have been fired upon by as many as five of them. The ship was almost directly between the locus and the planet, and appeared to be dead in space; emissions were limited to a slightly elevated rad count from the main drive, but at a level that suggested the ship had been dormant for some time.
"So what do you think happened, Sinclair? A whole colony ship, lost in space, and no one comes looking? That doesn't seem weird to you?" She asked Dirk, as he was prepping his exo for the work ahead.
"Yeah, I admit, it's more than passing strange, but companies the size of ARA Corp can trip over their own dong just like we can. Resodyne bought them out, and they're even bigger, so the scale of any potential screwup increases as well. This is just an example of a bureaucratic fuck-up of epic proportions. Try not to obsess about it. I sure as hell don't." He replied, without taking his eyes off of what he was doing.
"OK, I get that it doesn't worry you, but seriously, what do you think happened?" Hicks repeated, insistently.
He set down the diagnostic testing equipment and turned to face her before speaking, and the look on his face was hard.
"Let me be clear: The fact that a colony ship slipped through the cracks is immensely worrying to me. Those colonists must have had families who would eventually have wondered why they never heard from them. More than that, is the location of this system; we are at least a dozen light years beyond the edge of the Known Sphere, and there's got to be better systems closer to the core. Believe me when I say: I'm worried. And I'm worried because I have no clue what happened, but I won't let that distract me from what needs to be done. Now, if you plan to hang around, then make yourself useful, I got work to do." He answered, with an edge of hostility to his voice.
His answer gave her mind something new to consider that she'd not thought of before: Families. They would have come looking for answers eventually, and no company, even one as large as Resodyne, wanted the kind of public exposure that inability to answer those questions brought. She decided that further information on the ARA Corp/Resodyne merger might hold answers, so she picked up her personal tablet and left the Crypt. She went up to the crew lounge, and used its wireless network to access the ship's internal server, looking for any information on Resodyne's acquisition of ARA Corp.
There wasn't much. The ship's computer had one digipedia entry which contained little more than the contents of a corporate brochure. The lack of information was galling, but not entirely unexpected, and she tried to take Dirk's advice, and not get obsessed. She was just starting to think some impure thoughts vis-à-vis Mr Sinclair, when Alex happened to walk into the room. She saw Hicks sitting alone, walked over to the couch, and dropped right next to her. Alex was looking at her with a knowing grin; she made herself comfortable, propping her feet on the edge of the coffee table, and let out a long breath.
"Chased you out of the Crypt already, did he?" She asked, still smiling. "Try not to take it personally; he likes to work on his exo alone. Says it's a Zen thing. He's the same way with the ship's weapon systems."
Hicks knew the type, and she was the same way in most respects, but at least she could carry on a conversation while working.
"Zen, huh? No offense, but I don't know what you see in that guy. How did the two of you hook up, anyways?" She asked, without really expecting an answer.
Alex looked at her with obvious incredulity, then laughed so hard that tears were running down her cheeks before she got herself under control. Hicks didn't get the joke, and was about to get up and leave, when Alex grabbed her arm and pulled her back down.
"Whew! Sorry, you just caught me off guard, there. I wasn't laughing at you, exactly, but the first thing you said was - word for word - what Cam asked me when we had our recent blowup. Actually, I tried to jump him his first day aboard, but he wouldn't be caught. I was 17 at the time, and DJ's got some really strict ideas. I had to wait almost six months, and I wasn't 18 a day when I finally nailed him down." Alex said, without modesty.
"So, love at first sight, or just six months of celibacy catching up with you?" She inquired with a theatrical wink and a nudge.
"Oh, it was pure lust at first, and I mean Lust, but I realized that I'd made an emotional commitment after it was too late, so I just decided to roll with it." Alex shrugged.
Best of luck with that. Hicks thought to herself.
"So what's your take on this job we're doing? I tried asking DJ, and ended up with more questions, not less." She asked Alex, with a mild note of frustration.
"In all honesty, I find the idea of a colony ship just getting lost, without anyone saying a word, to be more than slightly nuts. The really bizarre thing, though, is the fact that it seems to have been drifting in space for several years now. Years. You'd think someone would have come and take a look. If it turns out to be loaded, then we're going to make a fortune, but even empty, there will be enough to make the crew very happy. Hell, the bounty on that thing's FTL drive from DTI alone, would take care of our fuel costs for the next year." Voicing an opinion that Hicks hadn't contemplated.
Hicks was considering what she'd just heard, and she couldn't find any fault with the young woman's logic regarding the probable windfall regarding DTI's standing bounty on its FTL drive technology. It was the seeming indifference on Resodyne's part to the loss of an asset whose value had to be in nine figures, easy. Likely more; a lot more. There was something strange going on that she simply couldn't verbalize, but it was there; hanging on the periphery of her thoughts, like a sort of mental hangnail.
"I hate to sound like I'm not thrilled with the idea of a fat payday, but I just can't shake the feeling that this whole enterprise is gonna go sideways in particularly gruesome fashion." She said, ominously.
"Oh, come on! You need to relax, girl." Alex popped up off the couch and smiled down at her. "It just so happens, I have a copy of the key to the liquor cabinet, so why don't I fix us both a couple of stiff drinks, and we can talk about all of the fun stuff we'll spend a ton of money on, when we make it back to civilization."
Hicks found that the offer met with her approval, and she grinned appreciatively.
"Now you're talking."
The engineering section had a realtime feed directly from the bridge, and Hicks was able to watch in horror, as they came within a few millimeters of the Jester being hulled. The chief engineer, Brostowski, had shown her where the last missile would've hit them, had it not been intercepted. She had quickly walked to the head, and promptly vomited after realizing that the engineering bay in which she was standing would have been completely destroyed. Hicks was beginning to suspect that she had been more than slightly foolish to take this job, but she had been thinking with her wallet instead of her brains, and the idea of a big salvage bonus had tipped the scales. Now, she just hoped that she got out alive.
Once the immediate crisis had passed, there was work to do, and she headed back to the Crypt to finish preparing the EVA gear for when they located the ship they'd come to find.
Dirk didn't show up until two days later, when the Captain announced that they had - finally - positively identified the colony ship drifting along in the space between the Omega locus, which it turned out, had been along their own vector, and was being heavily guarded by remote AADS units. The one that had fired on them had been closest to their flight path, and if they had altered course in the opposite direction, they would likely have been fired upon by as many as five of them. The ship was almost directly between the locus and the planet, and appeared to be dead in space; emissions were limited to a slightly elevated rad count from the main drive, but at a level that suggested the ship had been dormant for some time.
"So what do you think happened, Sinclair? A whole colony ship, lost in space, and no one comes looking? That doesn't seem weird to you?" She asked Dirk, as he was prepping his exo for the work ahead.
"Yeah, I admit, it's more than passing strange, but companies the size of ARA Corp can trip over their own dong just like we can. Resodyne bought them out, and they're even bigger, so the scale of any potential screwup increases as well. This is just an example of a bureaucratic fuck-up of epic proportions. Try not to obsess about it. I sure as hell don't." He replied, without taking his eyes off of what he was doing.
"OK, I get that it doesn't worry you, but seriously, what do you think happened?" Hicks repeated, insistently.
He set down the diagnostic testing equipment and turned to face her before speaking, and the look on his face was hard.
"Let me be clear: The fact that a colony ship slipped through the cracks is immensely worrying to me. Those colonists must have had families who would eventually have wondered why they never heard from them. More than that, is the location of this system; we are at least a dozen light years beyond the edge of the Known Sphere, and there's got to be better systems closer to the core. Believe me when I say: I'm worried. And I'm worried because I have no clue what happened, but I won't let that distract me from what needs to be done. Now, if you plan to hang around, then make yourself useful, I got work to do." He answered, with an edge of hostility to his voice.
His answer gave her mind something new to consider that she'd not thought of before: Families. They would have come looking for answers eventually, and no company, even one as large as Resodyne, wanted the kind of public exposure that inability to answer those questions brought. She decided that further information on the ARA Corp/Resodyne merger might hold answers, so she picked up her personal tablet and left the Crypt. She went up to the crew lounge, and used its wireless network to access the ship's internal server, looking for any information on Resodyne's acquisition of ARA Corp.
There wasn't much. The ship's computer had one digipedia entry which contained little more than the contents of a corporate brochure. The lack of information was galling, but not entirely unexpected, and she tried to take Dirk's advice, and not get obsessed. She was just starting to think some impure thoughts vis-à-vis Mr Sinclair, when Alex happened to walk into the room. She saw Hicks sitting alone, walked over to the couch, and dropped right next to her. Alex was looking at her with a knowing grin; she made herself comfortable, propping her feet on the edge of the coffee table, and let out a long breath.
"Chased you out of the Crypt already, did he?" She asked, still smiling. "Try not to take it personally; he likes to work on his exo alone. Says it's a Zen thing. He's the same way with the ship's weapon systems."
Hicks knew the type, and she was the same way in most respects, but at least she could carry on a conversation while working.
"Zen, huh? No offense, but I don't know what you see in that guy. How did the two of you hook up, anyways?" She asked, without really expecting an answer.
Alex looked at her with obvious incredulity, then laughed so hard that tears were running down her cheeks before she got herself under control. Hicks didn't get the joke, and was about to get up and leave, when Alex grabbed her arm and pulled her back down.
"Whew! Sorry, you just caught me off guard, there. I wasn't laughing at you, exactly, but the first thing you said was - word for word - what Cam asked me when we had our recent blowup. Actually, I tried to jump him his first day aboard, but he wouldn't be caught. I was 17 at the time, and DJ's got some really strict ideas. I had to wait almost six months, and I wasn't 18 a day when I finally nailed him down." Alex said, without modesty.
"So, love at first sight, or just six months of celibacy catching up with you?" She inquired with a theatrical wink and a nudge.
"Oh, it was pure lust at first, and I mean Lust, but I realized that I'd made an emotional commitment after it was too late, so I just decided to roll with it." Alex shrugged.
Best of luck with that. Hicks thought to herself.
"So what's your take on this job we're doing? I tried asking DJ, and ended up with more questions, not less." She asked Alex, with a mild note of frustration.
"In all honesty, I find the idea of a colony ship just getting lost, without anyone saying a word, to be more than slightly nuts. The really bizarre thing, though, is the fact that it seems to have been drifting in space for several years now. Years. You'd think someone would have come and take a look. If it turns out to be loaded, then we're going to make a fortune, but even empty, there will be enough to make the crew very happy. Hell, the bounty on that thing's FTL drive from DTI alone, would take care of our fuel costs for the next year." Voicing an opinion that Hicks hadn't contemplated.
Hicks was considering what she'd just heard, and she couldn't find any fault with the young woman's logic regarding the probable windfall regarding DTI's standing bounty on its FTL drive technology. It was the seeming indifference on Resodyne's part to the loss of an asset whose value had to be in nine figures, easy. Likely more; a lot more. There was something strange going on that she simply couldn't verbalize, but it was there; hanging on the periphery of her thoughts, like a sort of mental hangnail.
"I hate to sound like I'm not thrilled with the idea of a fat payday, but I just can't shake the feeling that this whole enterprise is gonna go sideways in particularly gruesome fashion." She said, ominously.
"Oh, come on! You need to relax, girl." Alex popped up off the couch and smiled down at her. "It just so happens, I have a copy of the key to the liquor cabinet, so why don't I fix us both a couple of stiff drinks, and we can talk about all of the fun stuff we'll spend a ton of money on, when we make it back to civilization."
Hicks found that the offer met with her approval, and she grinned appreciatively.
"Now you're talking."
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