“Navigation shows nominal drift. Secondary stability thrusters offline for diagnostic checks and port main thruster is showing a variable reading on heat sensor two. Decker is enroute to bay 4 to for EVA and I’m awaiting his signal to cut all power to the port main thruster so we don’t accidentally cook our engineer. Sneed reports that armory inventory is complete, and on your desk, and Rocker units are showing green across the board. Comms reports no abnormal chatter on the commercial and civie channels and no pings within range. Oh, and dipshit is waiting in your briefing room.” XO McGrath gave her report. Captain Page lifted his eyebrow at his second.
“Dipshit, huh? Is this his official title or an informal designation?”
“I’ll submit the paperwork to make it official, Captain.”
Page snorted and lifted his coffee cup to his lips, draining the cold contents in one pull. With a grimace at the taste, he rose from his chair. “Bridge is yours XO. I’ll go see what Dipshit wants.”
“XO has the bridge. Be sure to send him my love, cap.” The XO gave the briefest of smiles before turning back to the various read-out monitors.
Captain Page lowered himself down the drop ladder from the upper bridge and made his way to the starboard doorway, which lead to a small briefing room which, in an emergency, could act as a secondary CIC. It was a cramped and awkward room, but Page irrationally loved it. It was one of the few rooms he could find some privacy in and enjoy some peace, as the rest of the crew refused to go in it unless captain called a formal briefing. Page frowned at realizing that peace would be hard to find today as the door silently slid open at his approach.
At the briefing table sat a steel-grey haired gentleman in poorly fitting civilian free-float wear. His tanned skin and perfect white teeth spoke to cosmetic enhancements that likely cost more than most of the crew would see in a year. As the captain entered, the man stood and turned. Page noted that the man’s grey-blue eyes flashed anger, but the man quickly tried to hide it in a smile. “Captain Page! Glad you could spare a moment! I was just enjoying the quiet of your briefing room to gather my thoughts.” The guy’s voice was slightly muffled, likely due to the bandaging across his nose. Soon after embarking with the Dauntless, the man had made a rather regrettable decision to make a pass at the XO and hadn’t taken no for an answer. The XO had broken his nose with a rather restrained elbow. It had taken a couple weeks and repeated conversations to unruffle feathers, but the captain had brokered a peace and, now, the two avoided each other at all costs. Dipshit really is an apt title for this greasy prick the captain thought as he nodded and moved to his customary seat.
“I just wanted a moment of your time to confirm that we are on schedule and that everything is proceeding per the plan my employers had laid out.” Dipshit continued, using his hands for emphasis in ways only a planet-side native would. Spacers had their own gestures and non-verbal communications, which took account of times of no working radios and the risk of sending yourself for a spin in zero-g with a wrong move. “…and, perhaps, a bonus?” Dipshit was staring at the captain. Page realized he must have zoned out what the man was saying, distracted by his hand movements. Maybe the XO was right, I need some down time after this run. Page cleared his throat. “I’m sorry, Mr. Clements, run that last part by me again? Still have a bit of a whine in my ear from doing the retrofits to meet the specs your team forwarded us.”
Dipshit's smile never faltered. “My employer has empowered me to offer a completion bonus if we’re able to recover the specimen and deliver it to a given set of coordinates without any, lets call them, unnecessary complications from various local legal entities.” The captain snorted. Legal entities in this backwater part of space ranged from actual Planetary Systems patrols on deep-space recon to local militia units to corporate security stationed at one of the dozen or so “secret” facilities everyone knew was out here. “We generally keep to ourselves and have a good reputation with most of the ships we’re likely to cross out here, so you can let your employers know that bonus or not, the Dauntless runs quiet and discreet.” Page just gave the man a look that let him know that the offer of the bonus was a bit insulting, but the captain was too polite to say so. It was a look he had, annoyingly, had to perfect. “My crew know what they are doing. Is that all, Mr. Clements?” without waiting for a response, Page stood and made his way to the door. “Not at this time, Captain. Thank you.” The door slid close behind Page and he mentally counted to three before moving on. Talking to that man always left the captain a bit off-put. There was just something about him that set people on edge and the captain found he needed a moment afterwards to mentally wash the man from his mind or he’d be in a mood for the rest of his shift. He cut through the lower bridge to the main door, a heavy blastdoor that could, in an emergency, isolate the bridge from the rest of the ship and maintain atmosphere nearly indefinitely. They normally stood wide open and, in Dauntless’ time in service, had never had to be closed for anything other than Decker, the ships engineer, running his annual inspections. Page kissed his knuckle and pressed it to the heavy steel as he passed through, a ritual for luck he’d picked up from the previous captain. He moved slowly through the ship, listening to the hum of the engines and then their sudden shift in tone as the XO took the port main thruster systems offline. Decker must be outside and ready to check the dodgy sensor. Page flipped a comm blister on the wall as he passed, keying bridge comms to the ship-wide array. He always preferred having the whole crew ears-on when anyone was EVA, because if anything went wrong then seconds would count. Plus, Decker was always good for morale when he went EVA.
The little speaker blisters along the wall squawked to life. “…and then the fucker, all eight feet of him, came running at me across the bar. How was I supposed to know she was his bonded partner, she’d had a hand…or foot…or something, on my waist the whole night!” Deckers Venusian lilt filled the decks of the Dauntless. Page reached out and keyed the comm again. “Decker, comms are all-access and your debauchery is echoing across my halls. Cut the chatter and try to pretend like you're a professional. Captain out.” Page kept his voice stern, but it had no edge to it.
Decker was one of the finest engineers he'd had the pleasure of working with and he hadn’t come to the Dauntless from any military background. Instead, Decker had been part of a salvage crew that the Dauntless had rescued when their life support systems failed and left them on the drift. In the after action report, his then engineer had been mystified by how the system had been jury-rigged to even hold out as long as it had and swore that what “that junker scav-rat” had done was impossible and it was only luck that he hadn’t killed them all. When Page had set down with Decker to ask him about his modifications, not only had Decker been able to walk him through what he had done, but had also offered a number of improvements he’d install to make future emergency repairs easier. That interview turned into a regular meeting in the ship cantina as the ship made its way back to a civilian outpost to drop off the salvage crew, with the both of them finding they enjoyed shooting the breeze with the other more and more. When the Dauntless put in to dock, the captain had learned about the dissolution of his colony, its navy included. Much of the crew disembarked, eager to catch a civilian transport directly back to the colony, now under Directorate control, and get to enjoying civilian life again. The ship itself was slated for decommission and salvage, but the Directorate team responsible for taking care of that wasn’t due to come collect for another 9 months.
Page had made a decision then and there and, using most of his savings, purchased the salvage rights from the Directorate and had the title signed over to him personally. Decker had been the first to volunteer to be part of his new crew and had been with him ever since.
“Oui captain, clean and crisp and on the bounce, that’s me.” Deckers response reverberated through the ship and Page had to smile, knowing Decker was sketching out a mock salute even out on his EVA while saying this. The air filled with the normal patter that goes on during a repair EVA.
“Mag lock is green green. Moving to port thruster main housing.”
“Roger, read is green green. Mark minus 5 for next mag lock check.” The XOs voice answered back.
“Port thruster main housing open and board 4462 dash S-E-N extracted. Immediate note that there is scoring around secondary sensor chip array. Beginning chip extraction and replacement…”
Page shifted his focus and the back and forth faded into the background. If anything of importance happened, he’d be able to immediately act on it, but for now he was content to let it join the rest of the white noise of the ship under drift.
Page continued walking down the hall, passing the open arch to engineering, the closed hatch of armory, and finally ending in the open bay of the cantina. Originally a troop transport bay, it had long ago been converted to a mess for the naval crew and the original mess had been removed to increase the holds capacity. Bolted bunks still lined the sides, but clusters of tables and chairs filled the floor space which was dominated by a u-shaped serving unit in the middle. The serving unit was part food storage, part cook, and part overly fussy dietitian. Page walked up to the unit and tapped out his selected combo from the menu, then tapped through the warning the system popped up telling him he needed to reduce his sugar intake and that his sodium intake was starting to climb, then the unit played a jaunty tune as it hummed to life turning protein and vegetable fiber goo into a passable chicken and rice under gravy dish. Page took his plate and sat to eat, enjoying the first bite while continuing to let the hum and bustle of his ship wash over him.
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