CWR & Kimmy – I love you! :D
The sun was warm on his back, and Rush's skin warm under his arm where it rested across the other man's shoulders. The long grass swaying in the slight breeze was slightly soporific and Young found himself relaxing, his mind turning over random thoughts vaguely, nothing particularly serious. He mused the possibility of making leather from the herd animal hides, food, salt supplies which were being retrieved from the ice planet, the possibility that the heating in his room could be fixed if they'd managed to create cold storage, which hadn't even occurred to him.
"Colonel? This is Atienza."
The burst of sound from his radio startled both of them and they jumped. Young fumbled the radio out of his thigh pocket one handed. He'd forgotten it was even in there.
"Atienza? This is Young."
"Sorry Colonel, you disappeared."
"We're sitting down."
"Long grass." Atienza said in realisation. "Sorry."
"No problem, if we're not back in thirty I'll call in again." Young slid the radio back in his pocket.
Rush had turned away a little and was wiping over his face with a handful of water from Young's canteen. As he had turned Young's hand had slipped to his waist.
"You okay?" he asked Rush.
Rush looked over his shoulder.
"I'll be fine."
Young nodded. "You're always 'fine'." He replied.
He patted Rush on the hip. Rush huffed. Young took his arm back.
"Wanna hang out here for a bit longer?" He asked Rush.
"Yeah, it's not as if I have much else to do."
Young lay back in the grass and made himself comfortable. Rush sat forward and wrapped his arms round his knees staring out over the plains.
They sat for about 20 minutes until Young's nose twitched. Smoke. Grassfires were damn dangerous. He stood fast, looking for the fire. Rush looked up at him in surprise.
"What is it?"
"Smoke." He turned and saw a small line of smoke rising from near the gate. "I better go back, it looks like they've lit a fire. You coming?"
Rush unwrapped his arms from his knees. Young offered him a hand and hauled him up and they walked back towards the gate. When they got back there, it was less worrisome than Young had realised. Varro and the hunting party were there with a set of carcasses on a kino sled and they'd set up a cookfire by the gate, in a large area of clear dirt where they'd cut away the turf. Young walked up, noting Rush had retreated to his blanket.
"What are you burning?" Young asked.
"Mainly dung." Varro replied.
Strips of meat interspersed with white vegetable looking chunks were cooking on sticks over the fire. The smell of the kebabs was mouth watering. Young watched them cook, grabbing four and walking over to Rush's blanket when they were cooked.
"Lunch?" He asked. Rush looked up from the lap top. "It's real food. Meat and vegetables."
He offered Rush two of the kebabs then sat down on the blanket next to him. Rush took the skewers. They ate in silence for a moment, Young trying not to eat too fast. The meat was frankly an orgasm in his mouth after weeks of vegetables and protein slop and the white stuff was soft and thick like banana but savoury with a root vegetable like taste. Rush seemed to be equally absorbed in his meal.
"Feeling better?" he asked.
"Better for food." Rush agreed, looking up as a soldier came over with more.
Neither of them turned down the offered food and Young watched as the entire party slowed from picnic party levels to relaxed satiety. He spread himself out on Rush's blanket and was surprised as Rush sprawled out on his side, still with his laptop, but relaxed. Young wadded his jacket up under his head, shoved his t-shirt sleeves up over his shoulders and spread out to doze in the sun.
Four hours passed in more relaxed quiet, and when he realised Rush was actually dozing in the sun as well Young thought he might even have enjoyed some of this.
Young was glad he'd agreed with Camile's shore leave suggestion, as once Destiny dropped into FTL after leaving the plains planet, she showed little inclination of dropping out again. Rush and the science team had been checking the data base and said it was something about the area of space they were passing through made dropping out a risky proposition at best and so the crew battened down the metaphorical hatches and set their minds to lasting out the long haul.
Young was thankful for the hunting and foraging on the plains planet and the cold storage that had made the supply of meat a feasible option. Becker was under orders to make it last as long as possible, but they were eating a least a small amount of meat two or sometimes even three times a week, with one of those meals a real meat meal. Eli had finally even got his herbivore-burgers made from the butchery scraps, but tasty none the less even without buns.
Rush appeared to have settled again and was back to his normal routine of bridge shifts and working too late playing with the database and the ship itself. Even he looked a little better for a bit of sun and some good meals. They managed largely to avoid talking to each other, on any thing but a strictly professional basis for over a week until he came in to the bridge to find Eli badgering Rush.
"Come on, you must have a favourite song."
Young realised immediately what was going on. As self appointed entertainments officer, Eli was always thinking up new diversions and the current diversion was "name the favourite track". In an attempt to drag out the supply of movies, Eli and his partners in crime Airman O'Hara and Calvos, the former Lucian Alliance member had organised a guess whose favourite track this is competition. Calvos, Eli appeared to have somehow wooed over to Tauri cultural entertainments with a combination of Star Wars, wrestling and pop music, and he seemed to be rapidly developing a minor obsession for boy bands and action movies. Weird.
"Yes, I have several things I like to listen to, however I have no interest in sharing them with the whole of the crew."
"But everyone's joining in." Eli's wheedled, voice coaxing.
"No, Eli. And I seriously doubt all the crew are participating. Dr Marshall has a hearing impairment and the Lucian Alliance crew don't have iPods."
"Calvos is."
"Calvos would, he's got an unhealthy interest in you." Rush snapped.
"What do you mean unhealthy interest?"
"You'll figure it out eventually. Go away Eli." Rush's voice was flat, shutting down the conversation.
Eli scowled and wandered off, passing Young. Young cast his eyes over the bridge crew. Brody was keeping his head down, and James and Varro who was sat next to Chloe being shown how to monitor the sensors were sharing an amused look.
"Does Calvos really have a thing for Eli?" Young asked Rush, who was sitting in the command chair, an open laptop on his lap.
There was a giggle from James and a snort from Varro. Rush gave Young a long look.
"I'll take that as a yes then."
"If it is any comfort," Varro said. "Calvos is aware that Eli is, ah, straight you call it? Not interested in men."
Young looked around, then shrugged.
"Explains his taste in music." He said. "Are you really not providing a song for Eli?" he asked Rush.
"It's a ridiculous exercise." Rush said. "And I don't feel the need to share my personal interests with the crew."
"I suspect most of them think you don't have any." Young said leaning on the railing.
"Well they'd be wrong." Rush said.
Young decided not to push the issue.
"Anything happening?" He asked.
"Nothing" said Rush.
"'Kay."
Young left the bridge to do some paperwork.
It wasn't until he had finished his paperwork, had dinner, joined a workout session with some of the marines and had a shower that he made it back to the quiet of his own room. There was a small piece of scrap decking on his desk with an MP3 player sitting on it and a message chalked on it.
"Just press play. I'll have it back tomorrow."
Trust Rush not to waste paper.
He put the headphones in and laid back on the bed. The sound of echoing violins, fluid over pizzicato wrapped round him. Classical, kind of. The violins seemed to wrap around each other as the music flowed on.
Finally the track ended and the playlist moved on, some stuff that sounded folk, more classical, some more modern stuff, he recognised Cream and a couple other recent bands, all interspersed together, but once it had finished it was the first track he went back to and he fell asleep with the violins wrapping around him.
He woke tangled in the headphone cables, and had to take a second to untangle himself. It surprised him a little that Rush had bothered to share anything with him. He had liked some of the music though. He looked at the time. Not quite 6 am, unlikely any of the science team would be up. He knew where what he wanted was.
The box of assorted cables was in the core interface room, an old ancient crate full of assorted cables and connectors, all labelled, some homemade. He sorted through till he found what he wanted and connecting the MP3 player to his borrowed walkman, dragged the whole playlist across, then with a further thought, the whole of the violin album. He unconnected the music player and put it in his pocket. He would have time to give it back later.
He went to the mess hall, knowing Becker would be up by now and that care of the grass and plants on the plains planet, there was a supply of something approximating flour and hence something approximating bread. Breakfast was considerably more fun when it wasn't liquid again. Breakfast this particular morning was some kind of flatbread, soft tortilla kind of thing, dipped in reheated gravy from last nights stew, tasty enough and more importantly not protein slop or porridge.
He wasn't quite the first one to arrive, but the other two people there, a couple of the soldiers and a very bleary looking Chloe who he recalled had an early bridge shift, were all virtually silent and focussed eating their breakfast and drinking the strange herbal tea. Young took his cup and plate with two flatbreads and a small puddle of gravy and sat down at an empty table.
He sat there in silence, focussed entirely on the bread and gravy and only noticed Rush when he sat down opposite him. Young looked up in surprise.
"Morning."
Rush nodded and turned his attention to his own breakfast. As usual he ate neatly, methodically and fast. Young found himself with his eyes fixed on Rush's plate, watching the man's hands as they tore small strips of bread, swiping them through the gravy and disappearing upwards out of view. The other man finished his food even before Young. He finished his own food and sat there sipping his tea and staring vaguely at the table.
"I know we're still working towards fixing the dome, but I'd suggest now would be a good time to undertake a bit more exploration of the ship Colonel." Rush said.
Young jumped. He shook his head. Rush was looking at him.
"What? Oh, yeah."
"From what I can tell we are going to be in FTL for at least another six weeks, maybe more, so we won't have to worry about anybody attacking us, and it will give the crew something to do."
Young looked at him. The idea had some merit, if only as a morale booster.
"Is there anything you think we ought to investigate particularly?"
Rush shrugged. "Many things."
"Helpful, Rush, very helpful"
Rush scowled at him briefly, then leaned forward intently in his chair, eyes fixed on Young.
"Apparently there is a larger medical facility somewhere in the ship, possibly more than one. I think Lieutenant Johansen would be interested in that. Also there are some manufacturing facilities and there is storage further towards the back of the ship."
Young leaned forward towards him.
"You got all this from the database?"
Rush nodded and picked up his tea.
"You got a map?" Young queried.
"Of course, but it's only a floor plan, there isn't any detail on what the rooms are necessarily used for, people never lived on Destiny, so I don't think they ever finalised the room allocations on the map. Or if they did I haven't found it yet. I think I've identified another medical facility though and possibly a workshop of some kind based on the layout and what systems are connected to them."
Young downed the last of his tea.
"Are they close?"
"No, not at all, and the medical facility at least would involve travelling through a very damaged area of the ship."
Young looked at him.
"Show me the map and we'll work out a couple of teams."
A faint look of surprise from Rush, evidently he hadn't expected Young to agree, and he nodded, brows slightly furrowed. Young nodded back with a tight lipped smile. He dug in his pocket and pulled out the MP3 player, coiling the headphone cables round it. He slid it across the table.
"Thanks, by the way."
"You liked it."
Young nodded.
"Particularly the first track."
Another faint look of surprise, Rush scrutinised his face.
"I'm glad." Rush said after a moment. "Look, I have a couple of things to do, I'll meet you in the core room in say, half an hour?"
"Make it the small room on the same corridor," Young said looking around "I don't want to be getting people's hopes up until we've got a firm plan, but yeah, half an hour."
In the small room, which Young thought of as having been intended as someone's private office, but which the current crew barely used, Rush brought the floor plan up on the single console to show Young. The two rooms he indicated were in opposite directions, the possible medical room towards the front of the ship and the possible workshop towards the back.
The workshop seemed a safer option to access. Rush's basis for his tentative identification was the amount of power systems that fed into various parts of the room, and reasonably sophisticated variation on Destiny's normal fire and air quality management systems and the way the layout diagram seemed to show equipment in there.
They sat heads together, hunched over the console and Young traced routes through with his fingers, as Rush overlaid damage maps over the floor plan, skipping up and down between decks. It looked like there was at least one reasonably safe route to the workroom, with only three shifts of deck to avoid major hull breaches.
The medical room was a much more difficult proposition. Accessing it involved passing through some areas that had suffered badly from the drone bombardment as well as areas that had already been damaged before they had even arrived. Rush's identification of this room was largely based on the fact the power and life support requirements of the room were practically identical to that of the infirmary, but on a larger scale, and it appeared the room was maybe twice as large.
"I think we should try both." Rush said. "We won't want to send large parties the first time, just to identify what the rooms are, see if my surmises are correct."
Young nodded.
"It would make sense to just send a small exploratory party to each." He agreed. "I think we're ready to broach this with the command team."
Rush gave him a withering look.
"They've kept us alive so far." Young retorted.
"We've kept us alive so far."
Young was a little surprised Rush included him in that statement.
"All on our own with no help." Young gave Rush an amused look. "No Eli, no Scott, no Chloe, no Greer, no Brody."
Rush scowled, but his scowl was twisted a little with a slight smile.
"Definitely no Volker." He snapped out.
"You rate them as much as I do. You'd be lost without your team." Young said, mockingly.
"Well, maybe Chloe."
Two days passed quite quickly, with plans being made, changed and routes planned out. They decided on teams of three for the first attempts to access the rooms. Young wasn't enthused with Rush's plan to be part of the teams, but even he could see the benefits of better medical facilities so he acceded to Rush joining that party additionally. With Rush would go TJ, Greer and Barnes. On the basis that the other room may be a manufacturing facility or workroom, Rush delegated Brody as an engineer and Young allocated James and Baras, whose father was a mechanic and might actually be able to be of some use to Brody.
Rush spent most of the time either on the bridge or in the core room with Volker and Brody, checking the levels of the shields and ensuring that Volker would be able to dial them up over specific areas if required. Apparently it wasn't easy, but then Young thought, what ever was on Destiny. He took over the second daytime bridge shift from Scott and told him to get some sleep, Scott had ended up with the short end of the wedge, with so many senior crew on missions tomorrow he was pulling the night shift as well, although Young had extended his own shift to cut Scott's down.
He was there the next morning to see the parties off. He'd got the whole day on the Bridge but Volker was there anyway so Young could keep up on what was going on and keep track of how they were progressing. The two groups both looked pretty upbeat as they met up by the door to the mostly unaccessed sections. Greer looked more than happy to be doing anything, as did James and Baras, and TJ had already expressed her interest in the mission. Brody was his usual laconic self, saying little, just watching everyone else and taking it all in. Young made a few suggestions to Greer and James, who listened attentively as was expected. He had a quiet word with TJ, and finally turned to Rush who was waiting impatiently by the hatchway, ignoring Eli who had two kinos ready to follow the parties.
"You're ready."
"Of course. We're all ready. Surely there isn't anything else that needs to be said?"
"No, probably not." Hands on hips he gave Rush a long look. "Don't do anything stupid, don't take any unnecessary risks. We don't need anything enough to risk any of you getting killed or injured, do you understand?"
"Yeah, yeah, that's quite clear Colonel." Rush snapped.
Young hit the door release himself.
"Keep in touch."
He watched them walk to the turn at the end of the corridor, then split up and go in opposite directions.
"Damn." He said.
He just knew this was not going to go smoothly.
The veneer of professionalism, the mask of command was easy to put back on before he turned away. Eli was standing behind him, already watching the kino feed, from the audio swapping between the two parties and from the muttering checking the kinos were set to follow correctly. Young still couldn't shake the nagging feeling on unease though.
"Eli."
The young man looked up a little startled.
"Bridge." Young told him.
"Oh okay."
He set off towards the bridge and heard Eli fall into step behind him. Volker was already waiting with Varro and Chang on the bridge and Young was glad they'd begun training people up and widening the pool of bridge crew.
Young took the command chair and listened as Eli said a few words to Volker and a display on Volker's console and shortly after that the one by the command chair synched to the kino feeds.
"Can you get me a progress map?" Young asked Eli.
Young decided he seriously needed to learn more of the commands used on the console menus, maybe even consider learning some Ancient, however once the map appeared holographically in the air by the Command chair he knew enough to pan and zoom in and out. Eli had obviously managed to add the planned routes as these showed green and the parties showed as little groups of blue dots.
The first hour went slowly, both parties seemed to be making slow by steady progress, only slowed by the need to open the occasional stuck door manually, and the fact they were attempting to identify the larger rooms as they passed them.
Young knew that Destiny's original crew complement was intended to be in the hundreds or even more, but he still found it hard to believe how much of the ship was actually a floating city. Moving forwards there were a lot more crew quarters, some of which appeared to be arranged for families, several open areas like the observation deck, what appeared to be something like a lecture theatre and some evident office type areas.
Brody's party was passing through more engineering areas. Brody, Volker, Eli and occasionally Rush by relayed kino feed were identifying some of what they were passing as parts of the life support and the sublight drive, part of which apparently speared into the centre of the ship away from the FTL drives.
The first major hitch appeared when Rush's party reached a door which would not open even manually.
"Can you bypass the local door controls?" Young asked Eli.
"Wait, wait, let me look." Eli started tapping hastily through screens.
"Young this is Rush, what are they doing?"
Young saw Eli snatch up his radio.
"You really do not want to open that door, it's closed for a reason."
"That would be an obvious assumption Eli." Came the predictably sarcastic response.
"Hey, you want me to just open it so you can take a look?" Eli snapped back.
Young stifled a smile. They all waited while Eli checked systems and sensors. Finally Eli picked up the radio again.
"Okay I think I was right the first time I looked, I think this is telling me there's some kind of leak in there, some sort of fluid."
"Read it out Eli." Rush ordered.
Eli read a couple of short statements back to Rush. There was a pause before the radio crackled again.
"If you had 'a' opened the door, it would ha' been decidedly cold in here." Rush said flatly. "Terminally so, from the ankles upwards. You'll have t' find us a way round."
"What is it?" Young asked into his radio.
"Coolant fluid. It's very cold, way below freezing." Rush said. "There's a system venting coolant fluid into that compartment. We'll have to fix it eventually as it's a power drain, but not today."
Young sat back in the chair as Eli started plotting a route round the affected area. It was going to take them significantly out of their way, but was unavoidable. He hoped that it wouldn't add too much time to the journey. While Rush and TJs party cooled their heels waiting for Eli to redirect them, he turned his attention to Brody's party. They appeared to be making considerably better speed than the others.
"Brody this is Young."
"Brody here."
"How's it going?"
"Pretty good." Brody said. "We're past the area Rush thought would have the most damage."
Young looked at the map.
"Looks like you'll be there within half an hour if you keep up that pace."
He sat back and watched as Eli and Volker replanned the route to the suspected medical facility and the three green dots that indicated Brody's team crept closer to the possible workshop. Finally, Eli grabbed the radio and started directing Rush's party the long way round.
"Colonel, this is Brody."
"Brody. What's the news?"
"We've arrived."
He listened in as Brody, James and Baras explored the room, catching occasional snatches of discussion. The room was apparently full of equipment, but they seemed to be confused about the machinery in the room and Young listened in as Brody radioed back to Volker and Eli to discuss some apparently technical Ancient written on the machinery.
Volker started to laugh, and Eli was stifling a giggle.
"Okay, okay." Came Brody's voice on the radio. "It's a bust."
"What is it?" Young asked.
Volker and Eli descended into gales of laughter. Young picked up the radio.
"Brody, have you identified the contents of the room?"
"Yeah, yeah we have." Brody said.
"What is it."
Eli fell off his chair.
"It's a kitchen." Brody said. "A really big kitchen."