"Hóu yīnjīng de xīshǔn jìnǚ!" Rollie thought better of walking into the tight, confined space of the power and motor control room for the ship's dorsal railgun turret when he heard that particular curse (Monkey cock-sucking whore!) from its current occupant. He chose to wait patiently out in the rather narrow, but uncluttered, service corridor instead; remembering the last time he had tried to offer advice on the crisis of the moment, and the rather spectacular end result. He knew offering to help would just get Dirk's hackles up; he was constitutionally incapable of asking for help with anything, and any offer was likely to be rejected. Rollie reflected that it was more than ironically hypocritical that he would be hurt if you tried the same thing with him.
Dirk had come aboard the Jester over two years ago as a rating, less than a month after his discharge from the Alliance Marine Corps. He was a veteran with a relatively clean record, and he seemed willing to do whatever work came along. Captain Marshall had soon found out he had done two years as a weapons technician with a Fleet Marine detachment, as well as three ground combat tours in the Sigma Draconis system, and he put Dirk to work as his primary weapons tech and gunner. That had been a very good decision, as it turned out, because they had nearly gotten jumped by a renegade privateer after coming out of FTL on the outskirts of the Jefferson colony's system. There had been no warning, much less any time to power up the FTL drive for an emergency jump out of the system. Dirk's quick thinking had resulted in the taking of their would-be attackers' ship as a prize and having it condemned by the local government; not that the prize money had been particularly high (at just three percent of the lowest possible assessment, the Jefferson authorities would never be noted for their generosity), but good enough to leave some extra spending money in the crew's pockets. All of which had made Dirk a very popular man indeed.
There was one last grunt of massive effort from the power room and the sound of the high pressure cooling system's pumps spinning up at their lowest setting. This sound was followed within seconds by a loud bang and the unmistakable sound of liquid under pressure leaking in very large quantities. The string of curses that followed could only be described as eclectic, coming as they did in at least a half a dozen languages; of which Mandarin, Alliance Standard English, and Gaelic were the only three which Rollie recognized. Not that he could understand more than AS English, but he knew what he was hearing. He once had the desire to ask him how he came to learn Gaelic, but the answer had been rather more enigmatic than revealing: "My father insisted, I felt obligated" was all he had said before walking away. Rollie got the immediate sense that this topic of conversation was not one reopening would be looked upon favourably, so he decided to drop it, shrugged his shoulders and moved on.
Rollie's musing was abruptly cut off by Dirk's sudden appearance in the corridor, looking for all the worlds like he had just bathed in a vat of the thick, viscous coolant fluid used to control heat buildup in the railguns' superconducting magnets; which only became truly liquid except at high pressure, and at temperatures high enough to cook a large turnip in less than a couple of minutes. All of this was bad enough, but the bright pinkish colour of the slimy goop was an obvious cosmic insult, added to the sense of injury Dirk was displaying when he saw Rollie standing there, clearly trying not to laugh, and said: "One word. Not. One. Word.", before storming off down the corridor toward the emergency burn shower where he promptly stepped in and hit the controls setting the water mist and ultrasonics running in an effort to clean off the worst of the ooze covering over half of his body.
"You gonna want clean clothes?" Rollie yelled over the sounds of water misting from the 8 nozzles in the shower and the high pitched buzz of the ultrasonic sound waves breaking up the gunk stuck to Dirk's exposed skin.
Rollie didn't get an answer before the com-badge on his shipsuit collar started chirping with the sound of an incoming call. He answered it with a drawling "Yeah?" that managed to come out as "Ee-yea-uh?"
Gandu Mkaba, the ship's Executive Officer, spoke in a lilting, musical Swahili accent: "What in punda shetani is going on up there? I have at least three alarms going off on the bridge right now! Who has activated the chem-burn shower?"
Rollie decided on brevity over detail: "Dirk's inna shower. Number one turret had a malfunction, an' he got covered in coolant goo. Prob'ly figured there was no sense trackin' it all over the ship."
There was an uncomfortably long pause, and Rollie could just imagine Gandu standing to his full 193cm height trying to scowl down at him through the damage control station com panel on the bridge.
"I am sending Jinx and Erwin to you, and they will -" Dirk reached out of the shower and grabbed Rollie's com-badge, cutting him off.
"I don't need a medic or engineer, Gandu, I need a clean-up crew, a real shower, and new SPC lines for the cooling system." Dirk's voice carried a tone of exaggerated patience that was sure to rub the XO the wrong way, but he kept going. "I warned you and the Captain that those so-called 'factory rebuilt' Mark 31 coolant lines you got for a 'great deal' were no good, and I was right; they didn't even make it past the low pressure test before popping."
Rollie was sure he could hear the XO's teeth grinding over the com when Jinx and Erwin came around the corner. Jinx took one look at Dirk and she laughed reflexively, not even trying to hide it, while simultaneously checking her datapad's link to the shower's limited medical sensors to be sure that Dirk wasn't seriously injured. Erwin Koch looked as stern as he always did, and headed toward the turret room muttering something under his breath in German.
"Thanks." said Dirk as he tossed Rollie's badge back to him and stepped out of the shower, his clothes soaking wet, but no longer covered in super pressure coolant.
"Cap'n's gonna have some sharp words for ya over that chat y'just had with the XO, y'know." stated Rollie with a rare note of genuine authority.
"Better that he read me out, than end up in a tight spot with his guns out of action. Worst he can do is beach me, maybe try to have me blacklisted, but I won't let that stop me from telling him he was wrong to ignore me when I told him those units were junk." replied Dirk confidently.
Rollie gave that statement a remarkably fatalistic shrug of the shoulders, and said "Just sayin' is all."
Jinx had finally gotten her laughing fit under control enough to ask questions. "Other than your pride, are there any injuries you want to tell me about? The chem-burn shower's sensors have limited capacity, but they tell me you are just wet. Do you wish to go to the medical bay?"
"Bù, Xièxiè, Jin-Xie. Wǒ hěn hǎo." Dirk replied in fluent Mandarin, 'No, thanks, Jinx. I'm good.' Jinx gave Dirk a respectful nod of the head and turned back down the corridor toward the crew area without further query or comment.
Rollie watched her go, his wistful gaze firmly locked on Jinx's backside until she was out of sight. Jin-Xie Kang, or 'Jinx' to the crew, was in his opinion, the best looking woman on the ship by a country mile (whatever a country mile was; it sounded big). Her features combined the fine boned delicacy of a native Minotauran's upbringing in lower than normal gravity, with a pure Han Chinese ancestry; tall and lean, with curves in all the right places, hair so black that it shone blue under the right lighting, and that rarest of features for someone of Chinese descent: Green eyes. He wondered, and not for the first time, what a woman like her was doing on a ship like the Jester; as a nurse and sick bay attendant, no less. Privateer ships tended to collect odd specimens of humanity (Rollie being no exception), but if she had a storied history, she wasn't letting on. It just seemed weird to him that a girl that good-looking - and smart - wasn't a famous celebrity somewhere.
Rollie's daydreaming was cut short by the far less pleasant sight of Second Engineer Erwin Koch coming back from the power and motor control room, covered from fingertips to his elbows in slimy pink SPC fluid, and looking grimmer than normal. He appeared to be thinking very hard as he approached the shower station where Dirk was dripping dry.
"Ve haff a big problem mitt ze guns, I think, Ja?" Erwin Koch spoke with a German accent that was thick enough to stop bullets.
"No kidding," Dirk replied dryly "I'd say the captain got royally screwed buying those Mark 31 SPC lines, no matter how little he paid for them. Hell, even free they'd still be less than useless, which is why the Alliance Navy scrapped them to begin with. 'Factory rebuilt' my ass. Did we keep the old Mark 27s?" This last was addressed to Rollie, who could be relied upon for just about any mundane information regarding the movement of goods on, or off, the Jester.
"Nope, they went out as soon as the new ones came aboard; sold 'em to the captain of a tramp freighter named Sarpedon; and before you ask - they hit the FTL locus to Dar Ash'Sham over 12 hours ago. Sorry big guy." He patted Dirk companionably on the shoulder, his face a mask of companionable regret.
Dirk had come aboard the Jester over two years ago as a rating, less than a month after his discharge from the Alliance Marine Corps. He was a veteran with a relatively clean record, and he seemed willing to do whatever work came along. Captain Marshall had soon found out he had done two years as a weapons technician with a Fleet Marine detachment, as well as three ground combat tours in the Sigma Draconis system, and he put Dirk to work as his primary weapons tech and gunner. That had been a very good decision, as it turned out, because they had nearly gotten jumped by a renegade privateer after coming out of FTL on the outskirts of the Jefferson colony's system. There had been no warning, much less any time to power up the FTL drive for an emergency jump out of the system. Dirk's quick thinking had resulted in the taking of their would-be attackers' ship as a prize and having it condemned by the local government; not that the prize money had been particularly high (at just three percent of the lowest possible assessment, the Jefferson authorities would never be noted for their generosity), but good enough to leave some extra spending money in the crew's pockets. All of which had made Dirk a very popular man indeed.
There was one last grunt of massive effort from the power room and the sound of the high pressure cooling system's pumps spinning up at their lowest setting. This sound was followed within seconds by a loud bang and the unmistakable sound of liquid under pressure leaking in very large quantities. The string of curses that followed could only be described as eclectic, coming as they did in at least a half a dozen languages; of which Mandarin, Alliance Standard English, and Gaelic were the only three which Rollie recognized. Not that he could understand more than AS English, but he knew what he was hearing. He once had the desire to ask him how he came to learn Gaelic, but the answer had been rather more enigmatic than revealing: "My father insisted, I felt obligated" was all he had said before walking away. Rollie got the immediate sense that this topic of conversation was not one reopening would be looked upon favourably, so he decided to drop it, shrugged his shoulders and moved on.
Rollie's musing was abruptly cut off by Dirk's sudden appearance in the corridor, looking for all the worlds like he had just bathed in a vat of the thick, viscous coolant fluid used to control heat buildup in the railguns' superconducting magnets; which only became truly liquid except at high pressure, and at temperatures high enough to cook a large turnip in less than a couple of minutes. All of this was bad enough, but the bright pinkish colour of the slimy goop was an obvious cosmic insult, added to the sense of injury Dirk was displaying when he saw Rollie standing there, clearly trying not to laugh, and said: "One word. Not. One. Word.", before storming off down the corridor toward the emergency burn shower where he promptly stepped in and hit the controls setting the water mist and ultrasonics running in an effort to clean off the worst of the ooze covering over half of his body.
"You gonna want clean clothes?" Rollie yelled over the sounds of water misting from the 8 nozzles in the shower and the high pitched buzz of the ultrasonic sound waves breaking up the gunk stuck to Dirk's exposed skin.
Rollie didn't get an answer before the com-badge on his shipsuit collar started chirping with the sound of an incoming call. He answered it with a drawling "Yeah?" that managed to come out as "Ee-yea-uh?"
Gandu Mkaba, the ship's Executive Officer, spoke in a lilting, musical Swahili accent: "What in punda shetani is going on up there? I have at least three alarms going off on the bridge right now! Who has activated the chem-burn shower?"
Rollie decided on brevity over detail: "Dirk's inna shower. Number one turret had a malfunction, an' he got covered in coolant goo. Prob'ly figured there was no sense trackin' it all over the ship."
There was an uncomfortably long pause, and Rollie could just imagine Gandu standing to his full 193cm height trying to scowl down at him through the damage control station com panel on the bridge.
"I am sending Jinx and Erwin to you, and they will -" Dirk reached out of the shower and grabbed Rollie's com-badge, cutting him off.
"I don't need a medic or engineer, Gandu, I need a clean-up crew, a real shower, and new SPC lines for the cooling system." Dirk's voice carried a tone of exaggerated patience that was sure to rub the XO the wrong way, but he kept going. "I warned you and the Captain that those so-called 'factory rebuilt' Mark 31 coolant lines you got for a 'great deal' were no good, and I was right; they didn't even make it past the low pressure test before popping."
Rollie was sure he could hear the XO's teeth grinding over the com when Jinx and Erwin came around the corner. Jinx took one look at Dirk and she laughed reflexively, not even trying to hide it, while simultaneously checking her datapad's link to the shower's limited medical sensors to be sure that Dirk wasn't seriously injured. Erwin Koch looked as stern as he always did, and headed toward the turret room muttering something under his breath in German.
"Thanks." said Dirk as he tossed Rollie's badge back to him and stepped out of the shower, his clothes soaking wet, but no longer covered in super pressure coolant.
"Cap'n's gonna have some sharp words for ya over that chat y'just had with the XO, y'know." stated Rollie with a rare note of genuine authority.
"Better that he read me out, than end up in a tight spot with his guns out of action. Worst he can do is beach me, maybe try to have me blacklisted, but I won't let that stop me from telling him he was wrong to ignore me when I told him those units were junk." replied Dirk confidently.
Rollie gave that statement a remarkably fatalistic shrug of the shoulders, and said "Just sayin' is all."
Jinx had finally gotten her laughing fit under control enough to ask questions. "Other than your pride, are there any injuries you want to tell me about? The chem-burn shower's sensors have limited capacity, but they tell me you are just wet. Do you wish to go to the medical bay?"
"Bù, Xièxiè, Jin-Xie. Wǒ hěn hǎo." Dirk replied in fluent Mandarin, 'No, thanks, Jinx. I'm good.' Jinx gave Dirk a respectful nod of the head and turned back down the corridor toward the crew area without further query or comment.
Rollie watched her go, his wistful gaze firmly locked on Jinx's backside until she was out of sight. Jin-Xie Kang, or 'Jinx' to the crew, was in his opinion, the best looking woman on the ship by a country mile (whatever a country mile was; it sounded big). Her features combined the fine boned delicacy of a native Minotauran's upbringing in lower than normal gravity, with a pure Han Chinese ancestry; tall and lean, with curves in all the right places, hair so black that it shone blue under the right lighting, and that rarest of features for someone of Chinese descent: Green eyes. He wondered, and not for the first time, what a woman like her was doing on a ship like the Jester; as a nurse and sick bay attendant, no less. Privateer ships tended to collect odd specimens of humanity (Rollie being no exception), but if she had a storied history, she wasn't letting on. It just seemed weird to him that a girl that good-looking - and smart - wasn't a famous celebrity somewhere.
Rollie's daydreaming was cut short by the far less pleasant sight of Second Engineer Erwin Koch coming back from the power and motor control room, covered from fingertips to his elbows in slimy pink SPC fluid, and looking grimmer than normal. He appeared to be thinking very hard as he approached the shower station where Dirk was dripping dry.
"Ve haff a big problem mitt ze guns, I think, Ja?" Erwin Koch spoke with a German accent that was thick enough to stop bullets.
"No kidding," Dirk replied dryly "I'd say the captain got royally screwed buying those Mark 31 SPC lines, no matter how little he paid for them. Hell, even free they'd still be less than useless, which is why the Alliance Navy scrapped them to begin with. 'Factory rebuilt' my ass. Did we keep the old Mark 27s?" This last was addressed to Rollie, who could be relied upon for just about any mundane information regarding the movement of goods on, or off, the Jester.
"Nope, they went out as soon as the new ones came aboard; sold 'em to the captain of a tramp freighter named Sarpedon; and before you ask - they hit the FTL locus to Dar Ash'Sham over 12 hours ago. Sorry big guy." He patted Dirk companionably on the shoulder, his face a mask of companionable regret.
No comments:
Post a Comment