Sweat It Out
By FoxRayne
Timeline: Set sometime before Scar.
Author's notes: please excuse my complete ignorance when it comes to ships and technical
things but that's why fiction is so great...It could work like that! ;)
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Power was completely out in the Galactica. They were basically a piece of scrap metal floating among the stars.
The cooling systems were out leaving it like a sauna due to body heat and lack of air circulation.
Tyrol and the maintenance crew were working around the clock to fix the situation while everyone else sat by flashlight, the harsh
beams mixed with the suffocating heat giving them headaches. The fleet was sweating it out, fighting over the melting ice in the ice machines.
Starbuck sat propped up in a chair, a big chunk of ice poking out of her mouth, dribbling water down her chin. They had all decided
to move the chairs onto the flight deck and set up a bunch of flashlights for a common area and to be on hand if maintenance needed assistance.
It was the strangest thing. They had jumped into a system of nebulas and had suddenly lost power, as if the strange swirling systems
had sucked it right out of them.
"Anyone mind if I take off my pants?" Hotdog asked.
"Yes.." several people replied hastily in unison.
"Tough," he said, pulling them off and tossing them into the clothes pile.
"We might as well be a nudist colony. It's too hot for politely covering my ass!," Kat said, taking off her tank.
That earned her a few whistles to which she just shrugged and continued fanning herself with an old flight manual.
"Well frak, I just didn't want to be the first to do that," Starbuck muttered, and peeled her sticky tank off as well, leaving her sports bra.
More whistles and applause.
"As if we don't all see this every day at the lockers," Kat said, rolling her eyes.
"Or after drinks and a few rounds of strip triad," Lee added as he entered the area and sat next to Starbuck, kicking her feet off his seat.
Everyone chuckled half heartedly, too hot to get as rowdy as they usually did when all grouped together for some downtime.
"Good news," came Tyrols voice from the shadows until he entered into the glow of the flashlights.
"Found another barely melted block of ice?" Hotdog asked wistfully.
"Better, we got the backup water systems running as well as backup power but the old man says to save it until necessary," he told them, beaming.
"Oh thank the Gods!" Starbuck exclaimed, pumping her fist into the air.
"Never thought I'd be looking forward to a cold shower," Helo joked.
"Not so fast," Tyrol yelled as everyone was scrambling with flashlights towards the showers.
"Let me guess. The old man wants to ration the water on a must have basis," Lee groaned.
"Excellent guess Apollo," Tyrol grinned.
"Well I'm dumping my ration on my head," Hotdog huffed.
"Ok, so any idea when main power and water/cooling systems will be back up?" Starbuck asked reclaiming her seat.
"Soon, we're almost there. It's just a matter of rebooting and resetting things then we'll jump out of here," he explained, scratching his head.
"Need help?" Lee asked.
Tyrol turned around to grab a thick notebook and let it land with a heavy thud in Lee's lap.
"You and Starbuck can take all the hatch's and reset them so they'll be ready to go when everything is back up."
"Wonderful," Starbuck sighed, flashing back to her days in the academy learning all the codes and tweaks imperative to
living on a battleship incase of rare improbable occurrences such as this.
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Lee walked slightly ahead of Kara, flashlight in hand, as she lugged the thick notebook full of rebooting data
and system codes.
"Ok, hatch number one," Lee said when they reached the end of the hall.
Kara sat down against the wall and hunched over the notebook, flipping through the pages.
"A little light please," she commanded, tapping her bare toes impatiently on the floor.
He found her toes with the flashlight and trailed it up her bare leg, stopping at the notebook.
"Ok, pop off the panel under the security keys and read me the code inside," she instructed, reaching out to take the flashlight.
"T980DSFD20002," he read, shining the flashlight back towards the notebook.
She flipped a few pages and ran her finger down, eyebrows knit in concentration.
"Uh, ok. Yeah, ok. So you press the white and violet buttons and key in the code you just read me followed by J9009
and the door should open. Then we have to go inside and pop off another panel and do the same thing," she explained.
"Ok, so…" he pushed the white and violet buttons, "T980DSFD20002-J-9-0-0-9," he repeated slowly as he punched in the numbers.
The door clicked open and they scrambled inside, bumping against things in the dark.
"I think you have to hurry or it'll lock back up," she told him, shining the flashlight towards the panel.
"Well prop open the door," he told her, grunting as he popped off the panel.
"Frak that, it'll slam into me if you frak up," she retorted.
He mumbled something as he keyed in the code. He stopped and stood back, waiting for some sort of verification. Suddenly the door
slammed shut, a heavy locking sound echoing in their ears.
"Lee…"
They both reached for the hatch door trying to turn the wheel and push open.
"You have got to be kidding me," Lee said, giving one last push.
"Did you not key in the code correctly?" she asked accusatory.
"I did what you told me to!" he snatched the notebook from her, flashlight in mouth, frantically scanning the text.
"Kara," he mumbled over the flashlight.
"What?" she asked, looking down at where his finger rested.
She had read him the directions to reset the lock to a different set of codes. They were locked in until someone on the outside
keyed in a reset series of letters and numbers. The problem with that was that nobody would realize they should use the reset
codes instead of the original.
"Frak!" she exclaimed, snatching the flashlight from his mouth and poured over the text in the notebook, searching for a way out of this
mess that she created.
The flashlight started to flicker and then it shut off.
"The Gods have cursed me," Starbuck claimed, slamming the flashlight into her palm in hopes of a flicker of light.
To be continued….