S1:Ep1 - Time is Flea-ting

[Lomari]

Ship Time: 1118
Location: Within range of the derelict. Ship's XO, Mechanic, Gunhand breaching the derelict's.

The Derelict:

The silence of space would have been almost unbearable inside the ship had it not been for the sounds of their suits rubbing together and filling their helmets with an almost soothing ambient noise.  Likewise, the contact they made with the walls, floor, or hand holds offered them more in the way of noise, the kind one could use to orient oneself from the deafening silence. The corridors were pitch black save for the barest hints of lights shining through rips and holes in the wreck's exterior, the Darling's lights attempting to reach its away team.

Riot slipped into the hatch behind Rian at Mona's orders, turning on her own light and looking around curiously, lips pursed in concentration. She felt frustrated, to be sure, that she was here and not on the Darling where she was needed, but Rian and the XO were right. They had a job to do.

The hall split before Rian, and while inside, it was now a little trickier to know which way led where, what with the ship spinning slowly end over end. They'd likely have to rely on their memory and the last known location of the cargo hold and the ship's nose.

One corridor led toward the bridge and was made up of a narrow walkway, debris, tools, and knickknacks floating in their path. Beyond this was the cockpit, its front windows cracked and porting a couple small holes as it looked out toward the stars slowly drifting past as the ship spun. Power had long since gone out from the backup generators and the controls themselves were useless, although some parts might have been intact in the console itself.

The other corridor widened gradually as it went on, doorways appearing on the side walls that opened into a galley, a room full of bunks, and a bit further down, an engine room. To the right, stairs led down into the darkness and presumably the cargo hold.

The Darling:

The smoke continued to rise lazily from the compressor coil, although it did seem to slowly become thicker, threatening to evolve from a small overheating hazard into a full-blown electrical fire. The sound continued to grate on those present while a new, pained thrumming began in the floor, likely due to the building lubricant pressure and the other system's displeasure with it. There was, in fact, a fire extinguisher next to the door, one that (thanks to Mona and Riot's demand for keeping these sorts of things up to date) was not expired or damaged from the years and/or disuse.

[Viktor Söderberg]

Tabby had joined him and, thankfully, she had succeeded in telling her dog to stay put. It wasn't that Viktor didn't like dogs, just that a dog would definitely be in the way in this situation. Also, he didn't really like dogs. Or, more to the point, dogs didn't really like him. Bandit and he had come to some sort of tenuious agreement a while back. They pretty much kept away from one another.

"Preacher. Smoke is probably from the compressor coil, the lubricant pressure is too high. Follow the smoke to the source. Try not to breathe it, smokin' ain't good for you. There should be a fire extinguisher-"

The shipped rolled and the preacher nearly lost his feet again, falling into the door frame and nearly smashing into a shiny red cylinder. He was sliding the extinguisher from it's frame just as Barnaby said:
"Got it. Fire extinguisher next to the door! Lemme know when it's out."

"Copy. We're on it Captain."

The smoke began to billow thicker than before. It was becoming difficult to both continue breathing and not breathe in the smoke. At least the doctor was with him if he got smoke inhalation too badly. He pulled his shirt over his nose and mouth and headed farther into the room following the growing grey cloud.
As he moved his thought to himself that there was a very good reason he wasn't a mechanic - apart from the fact he knew nothing about machines. He was lean and had no problems fitting into semi-narrow places, but his height often got the best of him in an engine room. Not that he frequented them.

He crawled under some peice of the engine or another and when he thought he was free of it moved to stand and aim the extinguisher at the worst concentration of the smoke. Instead of being that heroic douser of fire, he smacked his head quite badly on an outcropping of the section he'd just tried to crawl under. There was a gonging sound and Viktor's carrying, preacher-voice filled the room.

"Damn the Devil to Hell! Son of a Virgin, Mother Mary!" He growled deep in his chest and held on to the top of his head as though it would slide off. He took in huge lungfulls of air to counteract the pain, forgetting that the air was mostly smoke here. His voice turned less from the boom it was to something choking and thin as he coughed.
"Tabitha! You're small, get over here and man this fire extinguisher!"

[Tabitha Haemish]

As the preacher fell against the fire extinguisher, Tabitha reached her hands out to try to steady him without worrying about her own balance. Of course, she stumbled forward and narrowly missed grabbing the door frame herself, landing on her keeps outside the engine room with one hand holding the frame. A stream of gentle giggles at her own expense slipped past her lips and she wrestled with herself until the doctor was standing upright once more. By the time she slipped back into the engine room, Viktor wasn't where he'd been and the extinguisher was gone. Golden brows shot up as she looked, confused, at where he'd been standing a moment before. Lips parted and a breath slid in past them as she prepared to call out to him.

"Damn the Devil to Hell! Son of a Virgin, Mother Mary!"

Her breath caught in her throat and Tabitha stared in the direction of the colorful cursing, her body frozen in shock, lips parted and blue eyes wide. Several times she attempted to start a sentence only to fail and find herself in a continued startled silence.

"Tabitha! You're small, get over here and man this fire extinguisher!" Viktor called to her, snapping her out of her stupor.

Clearing her throat once, then twice when the first attempt didn't work, Tabby rushed forward to crawl under the bit of engine Viktor had presumably gone under himself. Passing beneath it smoothly, Tabitha stood up, her head blissfully untouched by the same metal that had attempted to brain the preacher.  With the back of one hand pressed over her nose and mouth, the doctor picked up the red cylinder and hooked her finger on the pin, eyeing Viktor dubiously.

"Preacher, Viktor, I didn't know you could do that," she told him softly, using his chest to brace herself as she leaned against him and, after lowering her hand from her mouth, aimed the nozzle. "Does God know you can do that?" she asked him as she pulled the trigger, spraying a stream of white suppressant at the smoking component with a messy 'chhhhhrrrrrttt' sound.

[Riot]

Riot breathed deeply. There was ice-water in her veins, and a burning fire in her chest that were currently fighting for control. There was a mechanical problem on the Darling, in her engine room, her home, and she could do nothing. Helpless. She hated the feeling more than just about anything. The urge to exit the derelict and jump back towards the Darling was nearly overpowering. What if its bad. What if they cant find the problem. What if they die because I'm not there. She wanted to scream. She did scream. Her face, hidden from view because Rian was facing away from her and Mona was behind her, briefly contorted in rage and helplessness. Thankfully she had the presence of mind to make sure her suits microphone was turned off, so her companions didn't hear a thing.

The scream helped. She focused. Nothing she could do from here, and jumping off a gently spinning derelict towards an unstable ship nearby was a great recipe for drifting off into space to a cold and oxygen deprived death. Barnaby knew the ship, knew her inside and out. Knew the engine room better than Riot did, probably, though her pride hated the thought. He could handle it. He would handle it. Focus on the job.

She breathed deeply.

Ice-water prevailed.

The hallway came to a split. She spoke a question. Immediately chided herself, turned her suit mic back on, and spoke again. "Where first, bridge? Cargo hold?"

[Viktor Söderberg]

“Preacher, Viktor, I didn’t know you could do that,” she told him softly, using his chest to brace herself as she leaned against him and, after lowering her hand from her mouth, aimed the nozzle. “Does God know you can do that?” she asked him as she pulled the trigger, spraying a stream of white suppressant at the smoking component with a messy ‘chhhhhrrrrrttt’ sound.

The doctor used him as leverage for her petite frame against the force of the fire extinguisher. She was so small that any other time this probably wouldn't have mattered to Viktor, but his lungs were a little compromised right now. He coughed heavily and was sure she could feel the wracking movements in her back as she braced against him. The smoke thinned out as the fire was contained. The mess of suppressant was going to be a whole other issue. He hoped Riot wouldn't be too upset. He'd probably be more upset at the fire, come to think of it.

Viktor laughed at Tabby's question. Not a condescending laugh, but one of pure amusement. Something he didn't think he'd feel in a situation such as this.

"There's not much that God doesn't know, doc. I wasn't Damning on Jesus. I come up with some creative ways to express my frustrations. I think the Big Guy understands; I'm only human after all."

From his seat on the floor, he noticed a different problem. He wasn't sure if it was new, his boots may have absorbed the floor's vibrations before.

The fire was out and the smoke was beginning to dwindle. Before Tabby could step away from him, Viktor put a hand on her right shoulder - stilling her.
"Sit down here a tick. You feel that too or did I hit my head too hard?"

His raised his other hand to his head again and then examined his fingers. No blood but he was sure he'd have a hell of a lump.

As he waited to hear her assessment, he called out
"Sir, the fire's doused, I'm sure you can still hear that terrible noise she's makin', and I've got the doc lookin' into another diagnosis right now.

[Barnaby Goodweather]

"Great work, the both of ya. Now that the fire's out, sorry to say it but you got more work ahead of ya." Barnaby reconnoitered the layout of the engine room in his head, and did some quick mechanical arithmetic.

"Next step'll be venting the smoke out of there so ya'll can get a better looksee. I'm sure you'd agree you'd like a chance to get a fresh lungful, too. Vent system is controlled by a big blue button near the door. Sorry you couldn't hit it earlier, could have taken the fire into the oxygen lines and ain't nobody want that. When that's done, you'll have to patch the lubricant pressurizer, which was what was smoking on the compressor coil. Should be a roll of tape around there abouts to do the trick. After that we can see what caused this mess and is keeping me stuck up here in this chair with us heavin' about like truffled pig."

Barnaby winced after he was done, knowing he was putting a lot into Tabby and Viktor's hands, two that were more comfortable fixing up people, body and soul respectively, than they were machines.. "Sorry, I know that's a heap of science to toss atcha, but I trust ya to get it done."

The drop in pressure on the joystick was becoming predictable now, and so the shifts in movement were less noticeable now. But it kept all of Barnaby's concentration to maintain it. Light went off, pressure drop, let go of the stick quick-like, but don't let her loose, reach up and flick that switch, catch the throttle, pull the stick, let her ride till she did it again. It wasn't easy and it prevented him from doing anything else, but it would do for now.

Leastways till the two neophytes in the engine room could fix what needed fixing. Barnaby had faith they could.

[Rian Carpenter]

It was oddly peaceful, despite what was unfolding back on the ship. Rian pressed on towards the cockpit of the derelict, it was hard not to be slightly captivated by the odd beauty of the stars shining in through the holes in the ship. He plucked a couple of the tools along the way, and tucked them into the belt of his suit. Even if he didn't rightly know what they were for. If it wasn't something you'd use on a mine, to clean a weapon, cook, or to force your way onto a vessel that doesn't want you there, the man never put his mind to learning a damn thing about it. It was beginning to be apparent to the rest of the crew he certainly wasn't a spacer due to his skills mostly relating to the world of security and culinary arts. Luckily when people are well fed they don't tend to care that much as to why. But Mona and Riot. The two people who'd given him the most sideways glances, were now stuck on a spinning corpse of a vessel with currently no firm plan as to how they were ever going to get back on the Darling. Carpenter hoped quietly to himself they figured out those mechanical problems right quick. If he had to use his last breaths on this swiss chees-ed hunk of junk explaining that he'd been lying about who he was as they waited for a choking death to come over them he might just throw himself off into the black to avoid the awkward conversation.

Just about as quick as he finished imagining that bleak scenario he got back to pretending everything was moving along as planned, and started prying at panels on the bridge, peeking through the housing at the circuit boards below. He wasn't an expert on how to use these electronics, but he recognized when they weren't fried and were in good enough condition to resell. As he started forcing the cortex panel off its frame, he grunted slightly and updated the crew.

"I'm in the cockpit... most of the electronics up here look good. We got lucky, no electrical surges when the ship went.... down."

Grunting through the last word of the sentence the cortex unit came loose and when it came loose both he and the expensive piece of hardware floated back into the ceiling and smacking into a some of the over head switches. He wasn't as embarassed by the grunting as he was them likely hearing him bounce around the cockpit like a ping-pong over comms. Rian quietly hoped there was an overabundance of gravity on the next job. At least a smidge of gravity.

"I got the cortex unit... I'm gonna see if the navcomputer's any good..."

Chafing somewhat at how easy it was to fall into hold habits, Carpenter was working his way through each component in descending order of value in the gray market.

[Tabitha Haemish]

"Sit down here a tick. You feel that too or did I hit my head too hard?" Victor requested.

Before she sat, Tabby reached up to grab his head with both hands, turning his face to the ide so she could squeeze closer to get a better look at where he'd bonked his head. A hand moved his hair this way and that to check for blood just as he had, fingertips gently probing for where he was hurt and waiting for a hiss of pain to tell her she was on the right track. Not seeing anything too nasty, the doctor pulled his whole head down, so she could kiss the wound. Finally, Tabitha released his head and turned away so she could sit down as instructed, clearly not feeling strange about kissing the Preacher's boo boo. Her findings had shown the endorphins from a little smooch went a remarkably long way in helping dull the pain of a lesser wound.

Getting comfortable on the ground, her knees pressed against her chest, Tabby placed her palms down on the floor, her head tilted like a puppy. Lips puckered, brows furrowed, and a doctorly 'hmm' slipped past her lips. "She's shaking," she confirmed, her voice carrying gently through the comms so the Captain could hear her diagnosis.

"...Vent system is controlled by a big blue button near the door. Sorry you couldn't hit it earlier, could have taken the fire into the oxygen lines and ain't nobody want that..."

At the Captain's new orders, she turned her head and smiled at Victor, "You stay here. I'll squeeze over there and vent the smoke out, you work on the...uhm..." the doctor paused to remember what the component had been called, "...pressurizer!" she exclaimed, pleased with herself. With a reassuring wink, the woman turned and squeezed through the little entryway they used to get in before rushing to the door and pressing her palm hard against said blue button. As for tape, there were actually three rolls within arm's reach of the preacher. One electrical, one aluminum, and one the almighty duct.

"Barnaby, how's the away team?" she asked, watching the smoke get sucked up into the ventilation system where it would be quickly cleaned up and the good air recycled back into the ship.

[Mona Heyerdahl]

Descending reluctantly as she felt her hopes falling in a similar fashion, Mona kept a close eye on Rian and Riot and tried not look out toward The Darling. "The mission's what's important. Just remember the mission." That voice she'd heard in her head every day, rigging explosives while avoiding Alliance gunfire or forcing herself not to think about the miners' families back on the surface as they rocked along in an attempt to expose another rich mineral deposit beneath St. Albans, assuring herself how little her own safety mattered in comparison to some ideal of freedom or of the weight so many others' lives carried against hers. One might wonder what of her upbringing made such thoughts normal, even encouraging, but Mona never really considered herself one for opening up.

"To the bridge." She commanded. Part of her wanted to assure Riot of Bandit's safety, but an iciness borne into her bones upon St Albans' chill winds stilled her tongue. If the mechanic kept her cool enough in the moment not to express such weakness, bringing the faithful wolfhound up now risked what serenity Riot possessed. Looking ahead, Mona refocused on Rian's form moving toward the direction where she hoped the bridge await them.

Floating past the debris, using the handrails of a suspended walkway void of foot traffic for some time, a glint caught Mona's eye: the light from her own helmet, reflected in a passing silver pocket watch. Never one for grave robbing, her initial instinct told her to let the item stay its course. But then she saw some inscription engraved on the timepiece's scarcely dulled surface and reached out as if it called to her. Somehow that sense of duty and purpose that drove her to recover the bodies of fallen soldiers from the field of battle rose within her again, and Mona closed her hand around it. Hoping for time to look it over later, she heard Rian's voice over her internal receivers and moved to join him on the bridge.

"Good work, Rian. If the navcomputer can be recovered, perhaps enough systems remain for us to right the ship's spin somehow."Mona held tight to one of the stationary seats, watching as the pinholes of light in the Black before her spun out slowly. The Darling's form came into the view of the shield of tempered glass before them, bringing a dryness to her throat with it as it maneuvered as unnaturally as the derelict. "At the very least, maybe we can drop the sunshield."

She slipped the pocket watch into a belt satchel attached to her suit, and rummaged around for a thin, metal object similar in size and shape to a knitting needle. Looking at the set of keys and pair of monitors at the station before her, she used the instrument to hunt-and-peck her way around in a vain hope of getting the system to come boot up. "Maybe if we're lucky, we'll find a shipping manifest so we have an idea of what to expect in the cargo."

[Viktor Söderberg]

Before complying to Viktor's request to sit and feel if the ship was honestly vibrating, she checked his head pressing in a tender spot that made him twitch and jump - though he did not make any audible sounds of discomfort. Then she pulled his head down and planted the briefest of kisses on the top of his head. In their time on the ship together he'd seen her do this once or twice and hadn't thought much of it. He didn't really think much of it now except to wonder why she did it. It neither made him feel better nor worse. It didn't make him feel anything at all really. But she seemed to think it was a nice thing to do, and wasn't making a fuss of it - so, he didn't either.

Tabby confirmed Viktor's assessment that there was a slight tremor in the boat. They had more urgent things to attend to though, the Captain giving more orders and apologizing for the excessive - for a doctor and a preacher, anyway - amount of engineering,  involved.

At the Captain's new orders, she turned her head and smiled at Victor, "You stay here. I'll squeeze over there and vent the smoke out, you work on the...uhm..." the doctor paused to remember what the component had been called, "...pressurizer!" she exclaimed and gave him a cheeky wink before scuttling off.
He was glad of the suggestion that he stay put. His head was rather aching and he wasn't sure he could get low enough to crawl back out just at this moment.

The tape for the patching work was within arms reach, but there was another problem in his path. There were three types of tape: electrical, aluminium and duct tape. He could take a guess, after all tape was tape, right? One would stick as good as the next in most situations. He knew duct tape worked just about everywhere. Somewhere from the back of his brain he remembered reading about NASA from Earth-that-was. They had used it in their ships, so it should be OK. On second thought, he'd rather not be the reason for more trouble.

"Uh, Cap," he said uncertainty making his voice waiver, "as much as I'd also like to know how the team's doin', I don't have no call to accidentally blow up this ship. Does it matter too terrible which of this tape I use? Will duck do fine or should I use electrical since it's an engine. Or aluminium, though I couldn't say if this pressurizer was aluminium or not..."

He would have continued on babbling without actually pausing for an answer from Barnaby but he heard a soft throat clearing sound from Tabby. Directed at him or not, he took the hint and shut up to wait for an answer.

[Barnaby Goodweather]

Light... Drop... Stick... Flick... Catch... Pull...
Let her ride till she did it again.

Unable (or perhaps unwilling) to spare a stray movement to switch channels and radio into the away team, Barnaby had to believe they were doing just fine. At the moment, ironically, they were far safer than those who remained on board the Darling. At least until their air supply ran out. That was a horse of another color. Also a bridge they'd cross when they got to it and plenty of other colorful metaphors that Barnaby didn't want to think about right now. Instead, he stole a glance out of the cockpit porthole, saw that the derelict was more or less how it had been since they'd arrived, and decided that was enough for him. "Right as rain, Tabby. I'll lettem know you asked." Urgency shouldn't get in the way of civility.

Light... Drop... Stick... Flick... Catch... Pull...
Let her ride till she did it again.

"Preacher. Any tape'll do. This is just a provisional fix till we get me and Riot down there to doctor it proper." Barnaby said, then quickly rethought it. Urgency shouldn't get in the way of exactitude. Aluminum wouldn't hold the seal and electric would just use up the whole roll. A deep breath in through the nose and out through the lips. "Duct. Use the duct. Hasty now. Need to uncomplicate this jumble." The Captain tried to push feelings of helplessness and despair back down, deep down, where they belonged.

Light... Drop... Stick... Flick... Catch... Pull...
Let her ride till she did it again.

"Ya'll are doin' great." He said to the crew in the engine room, and he meant it. "You're doin' great." He muttered to himself, not so sure.

[Lomari]

Ship Time: 1128
Location: Within range of the derelict. Ship’s XO, Mechanic, Gunhand inside the derelict.

The Derelict:

Most of the electrical components were in prime working condition. A few had been fried when the ship had finally burned through all emergency power, but those were few and far between and were by far the least valuable components out of all the ones Rian had pulled free. The cortex unit, although not powered, was intact and seemed to be salvageable if not holding a plethora of useful information pertaining to the ship. Likewise, the navcomputer was in tip top shape. There were a few holes in the floor and along the console from where whatever had downed the ship had ripped through in a hurry, but by the luck of the ‘Verse, they had mercifully avoided the main systems.

Despite Mona’s pecking, nothing would start up. Power had long since been drained by unnecessary systems after the panicked evacuating crew had failed to turn things off in their haste to survive. Not to mention, any juice that had been left in the systems was promptly shut off as Rian ripped components free of their housings. There was the possibility of an external power source being used, had any of them brought one.

There were some physical papers floating about near the ceiling, perhaps indicating that the captain of this particular ship had been fond of some of the old ways of doing things. Computers were great, but they required power to run. Paper did not. It was a possibility, then, that such a manifest would be located in physical form in another location on the ship. Or perhaps not. Paper, and people, were tricky and inconsistent.

[Riot]

"To the bridge." Mona said

For a moment Riot thought Mona was going to say something else, but when she didn't, Riot just nodded and floated up the corridor after Rian.

Once on the bridge she cast an appraising eye over the panels. The Nav computer that Rian was looking at looked intact. Actually most of the bridge equipment looked in pretty good shape, there were signs of burnouts here and there, but those parts were a dime a dozen anyways.

"Maybe if we're lucky, we'll find a shipping manifest so we have an idea of what to expect in the cargo."

Riots gaze shifted upwards. "Maybe those?" She said, and gently pushed off the deck and floated up to the ceiling, collecting papers as she went. She stopped herself with a hand, and then started looking through the papers as she slowly spun in place thanks to a tiny bit of leftover momentum.

[Rian Carpenter]

That pang of doubt crossed his mind. Mona meant to try and re-position them. If only he'd thought of even trying that before he started yanking components out of their mounts like the vulture he was. Working from his closest point of reference, when the Russo gang took a ship, they stripped it down to the bones, and sold the ships hull in pieces. Every part of the buffalo was used. To help line his father's pockets. But it was used. It briefly occurred to him that the only thing in this universe he could fix was dinner. Well maybe his rifle. Hopefully. The guy he took it from spent a lot of money on it.

Riot took to searching the scattered paper in the cockpit. Following her lead, the cook took a break from dismantling the ship and possibly making things worse to grab some of the loose papers. Floating slowly he grabbed one, scanned it, crumpled it up, and tossed it aside. An old pre-flight checklist.

"I may have been wasting my time with the consoles... if somebody thought it worth their dime to send us out here, there's gotta be cargo worth more than what we'd get selling this for scrap..."

He started quickly grabbing more with some urgency. Maybe the culinary and security specialist was being paranoid. If there were all going to die out here, it better have at least been for the sake of something valuable.

"Holler if you see anything useful... so far all I can find is gorram checklists.... pilot must have been an anal retentive wángbā dàn...who still uses this much paper anything?"

[Tabitha Haemish]

Once the air had been properly vented and breathing was once more on the table, Tabitha's shoulders relaxed. Barnaby's update on the crew and his assurance that he'd tell the away team that she'd been asking about them further relaxed the doctor's body. To get rid of the rest of the tension, the woman wiggled in place from where she stood by the door, laughing softly to herself as her curls bounced free of their clasp and framed her face in golden coils.

Viktor's tape dilemma pulled her attention away from how fun it was to pull a curl straight and watch it bounce back into place, blue eyes finding where she could see bits of him peeking out from behind the engine housing. For such a small problem, he was deeply concerned with which tape he picked and while perhaps she might've seen why this was such a dilemma, she hoped he'd make up his mind first. A little tendril of smoke that had escaped the venting made its way into her throat and she covered her mouth with her hand as she cleared it, unintentionally shutting the preacher up.

Duct it was! Tabitha smiled brightly and pointed in Viktor's direction, "Okay! Tape up the thing with the stuff, and then we..." she paused again, recalling the Captain's directions. She counted on her fingers, "Vent...tape...Oh! Now we wait. And see what's 'caused this mess'...and then something about a pig," she reminded herself and Viktor.

[Mona Heyerdahl]

"I may have been wasting my time with the consoles... if somebody thought it worth their dime to send us out here, there's gotta be cargo worth more than what we'd get selling this for scrap..."

"Don't be so hard on yourself, Rian. I'm sure those components can help fix The Darling down the line." The commanding officer tried her best to sound reassuring, but given the lack of confidence she felt regarding her own computing skills she risked her tone coming across as let down. Her clicking proving fruitless, Mona returned the substitute for fine manipulators back to its pouch and rested her thick gloved hands at her sides with a sigh. "Doubt there's anything uncorrupted on the data stores anyhow."

Watching the view within the pock-marked body of the derelict shift about, she remembered a much younger version of herself becoming fascinated by the make-shift stargazer her sister Helga taught her to make using a length of cardboard tube with a pin-holed circle of construction paper glued to one end. Toys were rare treasures in the Heyerdahl house, and few remained after being handed down to Nils. And no one had much use for a real telescope anyhow, unless they were Sigurd - and Mona wasn't. "Still," she started, trying to forget again the family she left for those in present company, "it would be nice to have a clue."

"Maybe those?"

Mona's eyes followed Riot's upward movement as the mechanic glided toward the ceiling an collected a handful. Her tongue clicked inside the helmet, wondering how she managed to let that detail pass her by. Rian moved to snatch up a handful of papers of his own.

"Holler if you see anything useful... so far all I can find is gorram checklists.... pilot must have been an anal retentive wángbā dàn...who still uses this much paper anything?"

While likely not Rian's intention, the ball of crumbled paper came rolling toward Mona in slow motion. Her head cocked in a moment of curiosity, and for some reason she imagined being engaged on a battlefield on Earth-That-Was and seeing a cannonball turning toward her head as her life flashed before her eyes. The ball of paper ricocheted softly from her bulbous helm and drifted to rejoin the other scattered sheets in its forever altered form. "Maybe not just the pilot. Could be the boss preferred paper notes? Suppose an inspection of the Captain's quarters is in order? Let's take a look. And mind your oxygen levels. Keep an eye out for any spare tanks. Right along, then."

[Lomari]

Ship Time: 1130
Location: Within range of the derelict. Ship's XO, Mechanic, Gunhand inside the derelict.

The Derelict:

The papers floated around the cockpit like little lost doves, every small displacement sending them drifting in one direction or another. The papers in Riot's hands looked like a mixture of star maps, trajectory data, and hand-written estimates of several known space storms, including whichever this ship had encountered. Clearly, the author's calculations had been off and their apparent obsession with not relying on the ship's computers cost them their ship and their payday.

Rian had just as much luck in locating a cargo manifest, instead finding pre-flight checklists, and a rather raunchy romance story apparently written during the pilot's off time on their journey. It was written acceptably but just about every paragraph contained something vulgar and startling. Beneath that was a hand-drawn map or layout of the ship, something sketched lovingly and with the level of detail only a ship's pilot or captain would have bothered with.

But it wasn't all bad. As Mona suggested, the presence of so much paper was a good indicator that other members of the crew had been just as reliant on an ancient technology and it just so happened that the Captain's Quarters were down the hall on the way toward what was likely the Cargo Hold, if the ship layout was any indication.

The Darling:

The ship continued its dance with the Captain, both sides seeming to tire just a bit. With the pressurizer presumably taped back up, some of the thrumming and vibrations stilled or ceased. The ship seemed pleased with the temporary repairs, but something was still causing it to rock and dip in a way that was wholly unnatural. The engine room had been cleared of smoke and while it was now a mess of extinguisher fluff, it seemed less chaotic. Beneath the frosty fire-retardant snow, it became clear that a component had come loose from its housing, and might have been the cause of the ruckus and truffle pig metaphors.

[Riot]

Riot scanned through her share of paper, finding nothing that looked like a manifest, but maybe some clues as to what had befallen the derelict.

"Maybe not just the pilot. Could be the boss preferred paper notes? Suppose an inspection of the Captain's quarters is in order? Let's take a look. And mind your oxygen levels. Keep an eye out for any spare tanks. Right along, then."

She looked down at Mona. "Good idea, Captains cabin should be near the bridge. Clearly marked if we're lucky." She folded her papers and stuck them into a pocket of her tool belt. "I've just got a bunch of star charts here, and some location estimates of space storms. Maybe their pilot miscalculated and they went through one."

She took another glance around the bridge. "Guess I'll go look for the Cap's bunk." She said, and pushed off back down the corridor.

Something nagged at the back of her mind as she went, but try as she might it remained just out of reach. She didn't have far to go. A short ways down, past where they had turned towards the bridge, she came upon a door marked "Captain's Quarters." She swept her light further along the corridor towards the unknown parts of the ship, mentally shrugged, and then opened the cabin door.

[Viktor Söderberg]

Viktor's hacking cough cleared slightly as the smoke was vented from the room. He made a mental note to have the doctor take a listen to his lungs after all this was over. His throat burned and there was a pinching sensation in chest. He was sure it was the smoke inhalation - he'd had these symptoms before but in a very different place and situation. But he mustn't dwell on that now. Now he needed to remain here in this place and situation.

His assumption about the tape was correct, but he felt it had still been a good idea to find out for sure - especially after Barnaby had given him one answer and then changed his mind.

"You're doin' great." He said to the crew in the engine room, and he meant it.

"You are doin' wonderfully too, Cap. Just keep on keepin' her relatively still and we'll get her patched on up in here."
As he spoke with their fearless leader, Viktor he reached out for the duct tape, feeling thankful for his long arms.

"Okay! Tape up the thing with the stuff, and then we..." she paused again, recalling the Captain's directions. She counted on her fingers, "Vent...tape...Oh! Now we wait," her voice dropped off slightly and was overlaid with the sound of the tape being yanked off the roll. 

The breach securely patched, the preacher shifted forward careful to avoid the offending outcropping from earlier. He stood gingerly turning in a circle. The area he was standing in wasn't much bigger than himself. He could make half a step in any direction before being hemmed in again by greasy metal and tubes going god-knows-where. He could go under, as he came but that idea wasn't very appealing. Going over seemed a better bet.

He looked over to Tabby to see her fussing with her hair. He wondered if the far away look in her face matched his own when his mind was entrenched in the past. He couldn't imagine this small innocent girl in a war, but wars come in many flavors. He could attest to that as well as anyone.

"Captain, the line is patched and the smoke is vented and I'd like to find out what's next before I find a way out of this space I'm in.
Whattaya got for us?"

Then an aside to the doctor, "Tabs? You holdin' together OK over there?"

[Barnaby Goodweather]

"Thanks, Preacher. We're all just carryin' on keepin' calm." Barnaby took a deep breath in and back out again.

"This is the tricky part." Barnaby said. Whether it was to his crew down below, or to himself, well it didn't much matter because it applied to both of them. If the problem was what he thought it was, the Gravitec Exchange coming loose and wrecking havoc, in order to fix it properly they'd have to unplug it entirely.  The Gravitec Exchange accounted for the artificial gravity on the ship, exchanging information with the thrusters to account for changes in speed, plane, horizon, that sort of thing. With the ship swinging every which way from here to kingdom come, Barnaby would bet even money that was the problem. Trouble was, he had never done such a thing while the Darling was running, let alone floating the black with crew outside her, so he wasn't entirely sure what would happen. He had to figure it would be one of two outcomes:

Either nothing would happen at all and the ship would stabilize long enough for them to fix the part how it needed to be fixed. They might lose gravity for a bit, but other than that, he didn't figure it could cause much more harm.

Or it would exacerbate the problem exponentially, send them into a non-rectifiable spin that would increase in velocity until they all liquefied. Also the boarding crew, if they were able to escape the Darling's spin through the wreckage, would be stranded with waning oxygen supplies and no way to get help.

So, here goes nothing.

"Alright, folks. Take a looksee down where the lubricator was. There should be a sorta rickety piece there, might even be hanging out. It's small, delicate, attached by a wire out the back. That's the Gravitec Exchange. Beg pardon we ain't replaced it before today, but you got my word we will now." Barnaby paused for a tick while he went through his ritual keeping the ship right. "My conjecture is that's what's makin' Darlin' kick. It's a complicated and crucial little piece of equipment, keeps everything runnin', and we can't fly or land or nothin' without it." There was nothing else it could be. It had to be the Gravitec Exchange. All of the symptoms fit. Riot had told him they needed a new one and he'd put it off for too long and now they were paying for it. Even though that little voice in the back of his head warned against it, Barnaby knew what had to be done.

"Disconnect it for me, wouldja?"