Chapter 14, Guests
Please note: I own no part or share in the Battlestar Galactica realm, either commercial or otherwise. This story is submitted for entertainment purposes only.
Reminder: I did not spend time making up non-earth names for common things; vegetables are not "Greenies" and a coffee mug is not a "Go-Go Juice Holder"
"Caprica time is frakked. The Leos had two hours less in their day cycle. Why not Leonis time?"
~Cru's journal, if he had time to keep one.
A note on Retrieving the shuttle from the PYXIS, Day 32
Cru and T-Dog crossed the PYXIS landing bay deck. They did not have to travel far.
"Is that it?" asked T-Dog. He gestured to a small shuttle a short distance off.
Cru nodded. "Yep."
The dock was busy. Three small transport vehicles were docked and offloading supplies. T-Dog had picked up Cru and landed his shuttle on the Pyxis. It was the largest of his maintenance rigs. It dwarfed the other vessels. Cru's tiny little shuttle had been moved off to the side and out of the way. A staging area was off to the right of where the shuttle had been gathering dust. In days past, people waited there for arrivals or for transport elsewhere. Now, it was a hangout for thugs.
"There you are," said a small fellow as he jumped up and cut off Cru from the shuttle. His name was Zebulal Sackleman, but he went by the nickname of "ZigZag". His four buddies stood and watched. "Which one of you owned this little gem? I'll need the key code, mates. It's locked. I can't get in"
Cru and T-Dog exchanged looks.
"Say that again," said Cru. He heard and understood the scrappy, little man. The response was more to say "no" than anything else.
"The keycode, old-timer. I own your ride now. 'Finders keepers, losers…', well you know the rest."
"Old-timer?" said Cru. "I'm not that old."
"Yeah, well, you look like a frakking has-been. Now pony up the keycode and go piss off."
ZigZag stepped up close, within inches of Cru. ZigZag's people fanned out behind him. Cru was taller than ZigZag by at least eight inches and truly looked like he could tie the diminutive hoodlum in knots. T-Dog was no less in stature. Still, ZigZag looked up into Cru's eyes as if he didn't give a damn.
"T-Dog," said Cru. "Could you?"
T-Dog snapped his fingers.
"Oh, you're so cute, Love," said ZigZag with a smirk. "I can snap my fingers, too, and I got plenty of muscle." ZigZag snapped his fingers. His four henchmen closed in, with weapons drawn.
ZigZag didn't say much more than that when fourteen men and women, members of T-Dog's crew, poured out of the maintenance rig, rough and ready, and armed with pipes, claw hammers, knives, and modified power tools that could shoot lethal projectiles. T-Dog knew the PYXIS had heavy gang activity, so he brought a team of enforcers. His team had watched the event unfold, waited for a signal, and jumped in with the snap of two fingers.
"Please, no violence!" called a deckhand who was under the shipowner's employ. He was an older gent and looked to have been sturdy before half-rations of food and limited water took his strength and made him gaunt. He paced over to the group but his health was poor and his movement was slow. "C'mon guys, put up the weapons."
The deckhand's pleading request was unneeded because ZigZag and his people ran full-tilt, for the exits.
Cru and the deckhand exchanged nods. The confrontation was over.
Cru opened up the shuttle, reached under the front dashboard, and withdrew John's pistol. He checked the magazine for rounds and slipped it back under the dash.
"Alright, we got work to do - inside," said T-Dog. "You good?"
Cru nodded. "Yeah, I'm good. Thanks for the assist. Thanks for bringing me with you."
"Sure thing," said T-Dog with a nod. "Are you still gonna look for that machinist? Brian Tanner? He's gotta be aboard here somewhere. There's no real escape if you take my meaning."
"I think I found him."
"Really?"
"That fellow over there." Cru gestured to the same deckhand who was ready to intervene in the confrontation. "He marked his clothes with his name."
"I didn't notice, but they all do - if you don't, someone will steal them right off your back."
Cru nodded. "Makes sense. His shirt says 'B. Tanner'. I assume it's him. Or, he stole Tanner's clothes."
"It could be either, I suppose. I never met him - I was just given the name by one of the guys. I'll tell you though, he looks in bad shape."
"They all do," said Cru with a nod. "I'll check him out. Thanks again."
"You got it."
~~~~~/~~~~~
The deckhand was Tanner, the machinist he had originally hoped to meet when he and Evvie had visited PYXIS. Tanner was malnourished and feeble from the effects of starvation, but the man knew his way around a machine shop. Evvie's new job would be to make the half-starved, wither of a man, whole again.
~~~~~/~~~~~
Bree's Twin, Mid-Day - Caprica Time, Day 34 (2 days later)
"Boss-man," said John, "The O2 is down a little more but I think it is leveling."
Cru grumbled. "What's it at now?"
"Still fine - one hundred and sixty-four percent capacity."
"What should it be at?" asked Evvie.
"Well, anything above one twenty-five is good enough for six people, so that is our bar," said Cru. "We can account for the new guy and the effect of all the plant life, but when it drops for no good reason, we have to assume something is breaking down."
Cru, John, and Evvie sat together in the galley. John sat on one side and Cru and Evvie sat on the other. Cru split the last of the morning's coffee evenly between them. Tanner was recovering quickly. He was away, aft, in the machine shop, organizing the tools and materials. Cru had a general 'way' of keeping the shop in order, but it really needed an overhaul by someone who knew the job. Tanner was fitting in nicely.
"Maybe filters are dirty again?" said John. "We've done a lot of work on the crops and organizing the spare parts. We've kicked up a lot of dust and everything else - more than usual."
Evvie agreed. "The agriculture people gave us a new set of guidelines - again. They want us to use higher rates of compost. We need to create more soil, which means more moving and spreading."
"Speaking of the good doctor," said Cru. "Can you get him to time his arrivals better? He keeps dropping in late. That's the end of the workday for most folks."
John smirked. "Most folks…," he repeated with light sarcasm.
"Right," said Cru with a smile, "if we really had a - you know - a 'workday'."
"Which we don't," said John. "Work is when work is needed."
"Which is all hours of every day," added Cru with acknowledgment. "But yes, kindly ask the Doctor to time these visits a little earlier."
"I will," said Evvie with a nod. "It won't be a problem."
Late, the previous evening, a shuttle had docked. It was the plant doctor and several members of his team checking on Evvie's crops. The crops were doing fine. Cookie was already clipping lettuce and cabbage leaves and including them with the meals. The zucchini vines were taking over several areas of the ship and would have good harvestable fruit within two weeks. The carrots and beans were slow. The tomatoes were slower. Weeks before, the Doctor's people had brought over strawberry plants, budding potatoes, several tufts of mature chives, and sprouting celery stalks. The new plants were growing well and the good doctor was pleased with the work. The good doctor also had his demands. BREE'S TWIN was expected to help in delivering fresh produce to the fleet and the doctor made constant changes to finesse the timeline.
John shrugged. "Can't be too many farms in the fleet. Are there any bigger than ours? Maybe Cloud Nine."
Evvie gave a nod. "We have the fourth in overall square feet of workable soil, next to the Cloud Nine, of course, and a couple of the big passenger liners."
"The passenger liners have dirt?" asked John.
Evvie gave a light smile. "All ships have dirt, John. Dirt is soil that is not where it is supposed to be - on our hands and on our clothes, tracked across the floor. Soil is alive. It is what we work and grow our crops in. Dirt is an annoyance. Soil has a purpose."
"Uh-huh…," said John. He wasn't convinced. To him, dirt was dirt.
"They've converted any and all growing spaces for crops," continued Evvie. "Some of the ships had atriums in their communal areas with living trees and plants. Most are growing crops now - thanks to that big box of seeds you two brought with."
Cru had grabbed a large vegetable garden seed display he had in the convenience store back on Caprica. He had John bulldoze large swaths of soil up into BREE'S TWIN. It was purely a whim - a survival gambit that might have seemed silly had the ending of the worlds not played out as it did.
Evvie paused. "In fact, they spoke of putting permanent people aboard."
"Bree's Twin?" said Cru. "Here?"
Evvie nodded.
Cru and John exchanged looks. This was exactly the kind of government oversight and control they wanted to avoid.
"What did you tell them?" asked Cru. He tried to sound casual as if her answer wasn't as big a deal as it truly was.
"I handled it, Boss-man," said Evvie with a reassuring smile. The term, "Boss-man" was John's endearment for Cru but she used it from time to time. "No worries," she continued. "No new lodgers."
"Okay," said Cru with a nod. "Okay, good. Thanks."
"You're welcome," said Evvie with another smile.
Cru and John sighed in unison as their thoughts strayed back to the problem at hand. There could be many reasons for the falling O2 numbers but dirty filters seemed the likely cause.
"Well," said Cru, "put 'Check the filters' on the maintenance list."
"Which one this time?" asked John. "Critical? Very Critical, or We Will All Die, Critical?"
Cru chuckled. "Put it on the 'Critical' list this time. The other two are getting way too full." Cru was being sarcastic - but not really.
John nodded. "'Critical' it is."
"On that note," said Evvie, "I have work to get back to." She stood and poured the last of her coffee into Cru's cup. "Waste not…want…," she began to say. She stood there looking at the two coffee mugs - Cru's now almost full and hers empty. "That was silly of me. I don't know why I did that."
A long pause ensued, marked by Evvie standing there rigid and a clock on the wall ticking loudly.
"Old habit, I suppose" offered Cru at last.
"It must be," said Evvie, but she set down her mug and quickly left the room.
"That was something she and her husband did, I'd wager," said John. "That 'old habit' ended about six weeks ago with his death."
Cru nodded.
~~~~~/~~~~~
It was John's turn to sleep up on the bridge that evening. He, Cru, and Evvie took turns. Tanner was new to the crew and still in poor health. He would be added to the rotations later.
John, Cru, and Evvie, whoever was standing watch, would remain awake while fleet activities settled down. Meanwhile, they would shut down the idling equipment and set up the manual overnight processes. They would file all the graphs and measurements created over the course of the day. They would run through all the messaging for anything missed. There was always plenty to keep busy with until midnight or so. After that, tilting back in the chair, with feet kicked up, and catching up on sleep was acceptable.
~~~~~/~~~~~
Cru retired to his room after showing Tanner the spin-thresher on the DDH45 Ionizer. The ionizer put a static charge on olfactory-offending particulates - like body odor or the numerous smells coming from the compost heaps. The static charge allowed the particulates to be extracted from the breathing air. Tanner would run the machine shop but he would also need to back Cru and John on keeping critical equipment running. Tanner had plenty of maintenance experience and would be well suited for the tasks.
Cru entered his room and kicked a doorstop wedge under the door to hold it tight. He did this every night. Wedging the door closed would stop it from rattling when some of the overnight equipment ran. This simple gesture, born from annoyance, would save his life less than four hours later.
Bree's Twin, Early Morning - Caprica Time, Day 35
The door rattled, not loud - not loud at all, but it rattled.
Something was amiss. The recyclers had not powered down. They made a loud low-frequency rumble that could be heard throughout the ship. They always started on their own, just after midnight, and ran for forty-three minutes - exactly forty-three minutes. It was 2:30 in the morning and they were still running. On any other morning, Cru might have thought there was something wrong with them, something broken, or maybe John was running a manual cycle, but maybe not this time.
He knew he kicked that rubber doorstop into place. For whatever reason, his door rattled and then it rattled again. It might have been his imagination or dreaming, or it might be someone trying to get into his room without the courtesy of knocking. No one entered anyone's quarters without knocking. It was an unwritten rule.
But there was something that seemed wrong and untimely. Earlier in the day, all the internal cameras failed. All the inside video feeds dropped. The outside feeds worked fine. Cru ran the related diagnostics. There was a low voltage to the video central controller. Yes, something else was broken. But, it gave Cru a moment's pause. Was it broken or was it tampered with?
Also, there was something else. Badger had thought either Cru or John was aft in one of the control rooms because "he heard some work being done". Both Cru and John were on the bridge at the time.
Another thought popped into Cru's mind. It was the conversation he had with John and Evvie. The lower oxygen capacity noted earlier in the day could be faulty equipment, yes, but there was one more really good reason for a decline in oxygen. Someone might have sneaked aboard, and just maybe, that someone might be trying to get into Cru's room.
Cru was half asleep but old training kicked in. In a blink of a moment, he was wide awake and as aware as a cat.
Cru sat up in bed, as quiet as an older, retired, special forces marine could be, which was still pretty damn quiet. A set of drawers was built into the wall at arm's length away. He slowly slid open the topmost drawer. He withdrew two weapons; a large caliber pistol for heavy knockdown power and a smaller caliber pistol for speed and accuracy. With both loaded, he quietly chambered a round in each and set them on the bed next to him. The low rumble from the recyclers masked most of Cru's actions, but even without it, he would have been near-impossible to hear.
Cru took up his computer tablet and attempted to connect with the ship's computer. He tried to flip through the menus but he was locked out from the ship's functions. Someone had locked him out.
They were under siege.
The door rattled again - barely audible above the rumble. The sound was different this time. It came from the bottom of the door. Whoever was out there had found the rubber doorstop and was quietly trying to knock it loose.
Cru rose from the bed, slow and stealthy, in a t-shirt and an old pair of short pants. His blanket slid to the floor. He stood there in a ready-stance. His arms were raised. One powerful handgun pointed at the door and the other weapon was held at the ready, in his off-hand. Cru's eyes stared forward, fixated, in the half-light of the room. His muscles were taught, like a coiled spring. There were no other sounds but the rumbling recyclers deep in the ship's interior and the mostly quiet interloper earnestly working away at the doorstop.
The doorstop popped loose. It slid eighteen inches into the room.
Cru clicked the big .45 caliber pistol off "Safe".
The door burst open.
Thus ends Chapter 14.
Some vision notes (what I was thinking at the time)
I've found it difficult to give everyone some screen time, so-to-speak. I still have a lot I want to do with the kids, but not a lot of time to write about them in this episode-like format and 4-6 weeks between installments. I hesitate to bring on the two new crew members Cru needs (Equipment tech and general maintenance). Like the kids, they'll fall into obscurity.
I stuck with standard round sizes when it came to the weapons. I could have spent a lot of time re-inventing a system or just sticking to the existing basics. I took the easier path.
The nicknames, "Cookie" and "Badger" aren't working for me. I may go back through and change them all back to Emily and Fletcher.
As usual, please leave a note. I saw someone the other day, read all 13 chapters in a single day. That's almost 50,000 words (HP, Sorceror's Stone was 77,000 words). I'm humbled. Thanks to everyone for clicking in.