Young spent most of the next two days watching as the identifiable contents of the kitchen and storage were catalogued and keeping an eye on the supplies manifest. Not necessary, but he wanted to keep a strict hand on what the science team were getting up to. He wouldn't put it past Rush, or any of them to be honest, to start some creative thinking about what they could play with. There were priorities here, and he knew their's diverged from his. Various parties were tasked with bringing back immediately needed and identifiable parts from the storage and items from the kitchen. He called a rather hastily convened planning meeting in the core interface room at the end of the second day to establish what else was relevant or necessary from the storage and kitchen area.
"For the moment," said Becker, a little uncomfortable to be included in the meeting, "I've got everything I want from the kitchen." He shifted and grinned. "But what I've got is going to make cooking a whole lot easier and there's more plates and cutlery so we won't have to eat in shifts no more, though they don't seem to have used forks, just knives and spoons. No big deal." He shrugged. "I'd better be getting back Colonel."
Young nodded and gestured for him to go.
"Well that frees up a working team." Rush said, rubbing his chin with his knuckles. "We should look at a good route to the second storage chamber."
Eli nodded enthusiastically.
"No," Young said. "I'm not authorising any investigation of unexplored areas until we're back at full complement." He looked directly at Rush. "Both you and TJ need to be cleared for full duty by Susannah before we are undertaking anymore exploration."
"That's bloody ludicrous. I'll be a week …"
"More actually," TJ said. "Doctor Macarthur said probably two more days wrapped and at least another ten to fourteen days before she'd consider allowing you to do anything more than using a pencil or eating utensils, and banging on a keyboard." She furrowed her brow, looking at him seriously. "And she's signed you off anything that risks you getting cold for two months. Greer, Barnes and me too, just in case."
"That's fucking ridiculous!"
"There's a lot of damage between the two areas, it's unexplored, potentially dangerous and my chief scientist and chief medical officer are on reduced duties due to injury...?" Young let the question tail off and leaned back against the console and stuck his hands in his pockets. Rush glared. "Anyway," Young said, "Brody, you were saying that we now have the bulkhead panels to fix the breaches in the inhabited area? Make us all a bit safer?"
Brody nodded. "We should be able to seal some of them from the inside without breaching the shields. There's a few where we will have to take out enough of the hull that the shields won't be a sufficient seal, we'll need the suits for those."
Young nodded, he could see Rush scowling in his peripheral vision.
"What about the coolant leak?" Rush demanded.
"Another piece of work that is not getting started until we are all back to full fitness." Young said. "I am damn well not risking any further crew on that project when as I said before, myself, my chief medical officer and my chief scientist are not there to pull their asses out if something goes wrong. I'm not dealing with possibilities when there are real risks much closer to home we can resolve simply." He turned to Brody. "Brody, how many personnel do you need and how long will it take?"
Brody gave his estimates and Young brought the meeting to a close. The rest of the meeting was likely to simply be Rush glaring at him and sniping, and any other business he could deal with personally.
oooxxxooo
Susannah finally pronounced Rush's hands safe to be unwrapped if he remained on light duties and announced she was cutting down her time on Destiny to one day a week until she was convinced there were no further ill effects. Her last task before she left for the week was to order Young to the infirmary for an assessment of his knee.
"Well," she said. "It's not good. I think you've got a chronic injury to your meniscus."
Young looked at her blankly.
"In terms you can understand, the cartilage in your knee is damaged." She said. "It's not as bad as it could be and won't stop you doing things if you have to, but you're going to have to be careful. And by that I mean don't push it too far, and if it starts to hurt you stop." She stared into his face. "I mean that. You should stay on the stick for at least another two weeks, and use it any time it starts to hurt again. If you do too much on it, it will flare up again, and if you push it you could tear it, which would be extremely painful and a much more serious problem. One that you aren't going to be able to get fixed out here."
Young slid off the gurney and lowered himself to the floor carefully. "I get it." He said. "It's not as if they can put me on a desk job out here though."
"No." Susannah said. "But you could make yourself completely useless if you don't take a bit of care now, I'm talking pretty much constant pain walking and a permanent limp if you tear it. And I can't see you wanting to be stuck behind a desk if you do make it back."
Young nodded, a little thoughtfully. TJ was watching from where she was stood leaning on the edge of the desk and Susannah turned to her. "Keep an eye on him." Susannah instructed. "Don't let him or Rush do anything I've disallowed."
"Yes ma'am." TJ said with a smile at Susannah.
"And take it easy yourself for another week or two."
TJ nodded, still smiling then turned to Young, planting her hands either side of her on the desk and gave him a stern look. Young scowled, trying to channel Rush for full sarcastic effect. It failed.
oooxxxooo
Young rearranged the rotas for facilitate maintenance and scheduled Rush onto the bridge everyday, it kept him out of trouble and freed up Brody, Eli and Volker to supervise repairs. It wasn't a popular option, Rush sulked, but Young had taken one look at his scabbed reddened fingers covered in dried out blisters that snaked down over his hands and instantly backed up Susannah's decision there was to be no working with his hands.
Young barely saw Rush, he was free to go back to his own quarters and with an ability to use a cutter and welder Young had volunteered himself onto a maintenance party.
"Are you sure you're up for this?" Brody asked doubtfully.
Young rocked his head from side to side. "If you tell me what to cut or weld, I can do it without cutting my fingers off, or burning holes in myself or anything else. I'm not going to be making any professional judgements though, and I'm pretty certain Susannah will kill me if I do any heavy lifting."
Brody grinned. "More than I can expect from half the crew here." He said. "Nice to know you won't be too much of a liability."
There was at least two weeks worth of work ahead even with all available hands. However, it made Young sleep better at night knowing that there would be no rooms or corridors around the inhabited area where only a thin film of energy stood between them and decompression and stellar radiation. Two weeks well spent.
In fact it was sixteen days all told, taking account of two emergency stops for larger breaches to be sealed by crew wearing the suits.
oooxxxooo
Young grabbed his plate of food and turned to scan the room. Rush was sitting, on his own as usual, at a bench by the far wall. Young walked over and sat down opposite.
"Colonel."
Young nodded, then looked down and stirred the soup in his bowl. "How's it been on the bridge."
"Deadly boring." Rush said, in a sour voice. "I can think of better things to have been doin' with my time."
Young took a spoonful of soup before looking up.
"We're all done with the patches."
"I know."
Young watched as Rush took a couple spoonfuls of soup, waiting for the follow up to that statement.
"The air pressure is more stable in the inhabited area." Rush said.
Young was surprised at the concession.
Rush rested his spoon on the edge of his plate. "But we're still losing power at a significant rate from the coolant leak." He said pointedly.
Young had some more soup, considering the options.
"Do you reckon you can talk Eli and Brody through the repairs via kino?"
"It'd be quicker if I…"
"No." Young cut him off. "Nothing that risks you in the cold."
Rush scowled again. "Yes." He said. "I can do it. But we'll need to retrieve the components we'll need from storage again. Pipes, caulk, conduit and the like."
"Fine." Young said. "Speak to Brody and get him to arrange another trip to the storage we've already found. After that I'll schedule a meeting to plan what we do next."
Rush appeared somewhat mollified, and they both turned back to the food in silence.
oooxxxooo
Rush sat back in the command chair a moment, running over the data in his mind. Eli and Greer were at the consoles, Eli looking at something on the screen and Greer alternating between watching the console and darning a hole in a pair of underpants. The underpants were not military issue and it passed briefly through Rush's mind to wonder whose they were, certainly not Park's, they were men's underpants. He turned his attention back to a readout.
The power levels were still dropping at a much faster rate than he had hoped. It annoyed him that Young had not yet permitted him to undertake the repairs on the coolant leak, which might have gone some way towards mitigating the effects of this. Despite the fact that Brody and Eli had undertaken the trip to the storage two days ago, Young had yet to schedule a meeting.
There was little else they could practically do to conserve power levels but it was rapidly nearing the stage where they would have to drop out of FTL and refuel, whether it was safe or not. At this stage that would mean a very dangerous refuelling and then years of sub light travel. The whole area they were travelling through was subject to a series of gravitational anomalies and the forces that would be in play on the ship and hull dropping out of FTL and going back into FTL, well the risks were extreme. It wasn't particularly safe traversing the area in FTL.
From Destiny's records, one of the Seed ships had been sacrificed from the first wave to travel through the area in sub light, and it had taken three hundred and fifty seven years and taken a significant amount of damage. That was time that they just didn't have, even though they were close to being free of the area, it would still mean two or three years of sub light travel, maybe more.
The only way that would be feasible would be back in stasis. The gaps between planets would be large enough there would be no way they could obtain enough provisions to sustain them, even if there were suitable planets. The idea of going back into stasis didn't bother him on a personal front, he wasn't missing anything or anyone on Earth, but it would have serious consequences for many other crew members. The idea of your family, your spouse, your parents growing old, maybe dying, while you slept...Well, Rush was not completely callous, it was pretty horrific. And the simple fact that it would involve the ship travelling through such a high risk environment, well the likelihood was Destiny wouldn't survive long enough to wake them anyway considering her current condition.
Eli looked back over his shoulder from the left hand console interrupting Rush's musings. "Have you seen these power readings? I think this is the equivalent of a gas warning light." He leaned back to show an orange box showing on his screen.
"Yes, I've been monitoring it for a couple of days."
"And you didn't mention it?"
"I didn't say that, I spoke to the Colonel, but it's not like there's anything we can do about it is there?"
Eli shrugged. Looking past him Rush could see the box as it flickered and turned red.
"Eli." Rush nodded at the console.
Eli spun and Rush looked down at his own console.
"Oh that's not good," Eli said, "it looks like Destiny is shutting down systems."
Rush scanned through a few screens carefully, his fingers still painful as they played over the screen.
"That's exactly what she's doing Eli."
"Are the power levels that low?" Eli asked pulling up more data.
"Apparently, she's planning ahead, levels are certainly higher than they were when she powered down when we were first here."
Rush pulled up the projections of how long they would have to remain in FTL. It looked like Destiny was expecting them to be in FTL for five more days, four nights, plus or minus one day and night with a margin for reaching the neatest suitable star on the other side of the danger zone.
"She's just powered down lights and life support in all areas except the inhabited zone and dialled back the shields to FTL minimum all over the ship, they're not going to be holding so much air." Eli reported. "Lucky we fixed the holes round here."
Rush scowled.
"I suspect she's felt able to do it precisely because we fixed the holes." He said sharply. "She's quite attentive to our frailties. I doubt she would have done it if it was likely to kill us. It's the first repairs we've made to the ship's superstructure though," he mused, "we didn't take into account how the AI would react to that."
Eli turned to look at him.
"She hasn't reacted."
"Yet." Rush said.
Eli turned back to the console and kept running through the systems.
"What's that mean for us?" Greer asked.
"No more exploring." Rush said. "No recharging anything, and it's probably going to be a bit colder. We're going to lose heat to the unpowered areas, and we're probably going to be short on atmosphere outside of our areas until we can find some way to replenish it."
Rush went back to look at the time and distance calculations again.
"We're going to do more than that." Eli said after a while. "She's dialled down the heating and lighting in all areas except the bridge, mess hall, infirmary, gate room and observation lounge."
Rush pulled up the data. Fuck. Just what he needed.
"You appear to be right Eli," He said aloud, keeping the unease out of his voice. "It looks like communal living is going to become very popular."
Greer laughed a little sourly. "More so than usual?"
"It would certainly appear so." Rush didn't bother to censor the distaste in his voice, it was not something anyone would expect him to appreciate.
When Brody came on the bridge at midnight with Varro and Chloe to take the night shift, Rush spent ten minutes explaining the issues and giving strict instructions that absolutely nothing non-essential was to be turned on or used and that they were to refer Colonel Young to him first thing in the morning for a briefing. Even Young would be able to grasp the scope of this problem.
"Is it going to be really cold?" Chloe asked.
"Yes." Rush replied shortly.
"Isn't that going to be a problem for you?"
Rush gave her a hard look. "Possibly, that remains to be seen." His firm tone effectively closed the conversation down and Chloe was too polite to push the issue.
He left the bridge, Eli following him.
"Are you going to be okay?" Eli persisted. "I mean, you do have to keep out of the cold now."
Rush almost growled, did everyone have to make comments on his health? "I will be fine Eli." He snapped. "I am sure if it becomes an issue, Lieutenant Johansen will very quickly have me sleeping in the infirmary."
Although the infirmary wouldn't be that much warmer than the rest of the inhabited area due to heat loss. Eli seemed not to consider this though. Rush realised Eli tended to take anything TJ said, or that relied on TJ's discretion and judgement pretty much as read.
They divided at the corridor junction and made for their own quarters. Rush's were further out on the edge of the inhabited area. Eli's quarters, not really quarters in the true sense of the word, were right in the centre. As he got close to the outer edge, Rush could feel the temperature dropping off a little already and the cold seeping through his clothes.
His quarters were no warmer than the corridors and stopping only to take off his shoes, he dived under the bedclothes immediately, pulling them in tight. He had double bedding already and he wrapped himself tightly in it, waiting for it to warm up and for sleep to arrive. Hopefully he would be asleep before it got really cold.
Sleep eluded him. He knew it was because he was worried about the effects of the power down, and lay there waiting, analysing the feel of the air on his exposed face. His abused ear tips began to feel uncomfortable in the chill of the room and he pulled the covers up round his head so just his face was exposed and tried to sleep. Closing his eyes and running through things in his head, replaying pieces of music he could play or knew well, counting in prime numbers until he ran out of memorised ones and couldn't be bothered to work out if they were or weren't in his head.
He opened his eyes. The bed didn't feel any warmer than it had when he got in. He shuddered, and started with Crusell's Clarinet Concerto in E Flat Major, humming the main themes as his brain replayed the whole score in his head. He hadn't got far into it when he opened his eyes and realised his breath was beginning to be visible in the air. This was a bad sign. His rooms were probably the closest to the edge of the inhabited area, against the external wall and close to the major bulkhead hatches that defined their living space. Not all of what they referred to as the inhabited area was actually inhabited. Destiny was laid out in predefined segments, defined by more substantial infrastructure and bulkheads, within which the rooms were separated with less robust engineering. The "inhabited area" now included the bridge section and comprised three segments of Destiny that they had occupied.
Rush's rooms were going to be cold first and coldest. He shuddered again. His bed actually felt colder than when he had got in and there was an ache starting to creep into his hands where they were clenched into the covers, despite the fact they were buried within them. Fuck, fuck and damn. This was ridiculous. His mind played over his options, the first of which he discarded instantly.
The infirmary was another option, which would at least be marginally warmer, if with no privacy and the fact that Lieutenant Johansen would feel the need to constantly monitor him. The idea of another five days effectively trapped in the infirmary however, made him feel stressed and frustrated just thinking about it. There was the observation lounge. Still partly heated and closer to the centre of the warm area. The mess hall was out, far too busy too early and Becker would be in there at some ridiculous hour of the morning clattering. Additionally there was a strong possibility of insomniac crew wandering in.
He realised he was shivering and the ache in his hands was beginning to rise to levels that couldn't be ignored. One thing was clear, staying here was not an option. His hands felt sore and cramped, and letting go of the covers was actually painful as his hands unclenched. He sat up, swung his legs over the edge of the bed and stamped them into his boots, trying to stop the shivers. Standing up he hauled both his sets of covers round him and stood. Observation lounge.
He met no one in the corridors, not surprising considering it must be past one am in the morning and made his way towards the Observation Lounge, feeling a little foolish at wandering around wrapped in his bedding. When he got to the lounge he was surprised to hear voices. He stood, just outside the door, just out of sight and stared across the room. One voice was instantly recognisable. Eli. He looked towards the windows and realised that there were two figures, sprawled on the bench, not close, just talking quietly. After a moment, his mind filled in the other voice as Calvos.
Fuck. He took a couple of quiet steps back and walked away. His mind scanned back to his first option. No. Damn he was cold. This was so frustrating! He stopped dead, turned to the wall, trying to turn away from his thoughts. He wanted to clench his fists in annoyance but his hands were painful enough already, telling him that staying in the cold like this was going to result in consequences. Already the pain was making it hard to hang on to the blankets around him. The first option. He swallowed his pride, turned back and walked towards Young's quarters.
Young woke as the door opened. Rush stepped into the room quickly closing the door behind him. Young blinked at him and rubbed his eyes.
"What is it?" Young asked, turning on the light as Rush closed the door.
Rush looked embarrassed and Young realised he had blankets wrapped round his shoulders.
"I'm cold." He said. "Really fucking cold." He took another step forward. "I can't warm up."
Young sat up. Cold air hit his skin. "It feels pretty cold in here."
"Destiny's conserving power." Rush said, and Young could hear it in his voice as he shivered. "She needs to stay in FTL for another five days to get out of the danger area, but power levels are getting low."
"So she's turned the heating down."
"Turned everything off except for in the inhabited area, and turned our resources down, lights, heating, peripheral consoles." Rush said. "I checked the console before I came off the bridge and left instructions not to use anything not absolutely necessary until the morning."
Young looked at his watch. Just gone half past one in the morning, Rush's shift had finished at midnight, in the week since the second storage trip, bridge crew scheduling was back to normal. Rush shuddered again, twitching the blankets closer round him. Young realised Rush must have been back to his own quarters to get the blankets, probably tried to sleep.
"So you came here to warm up." He said to Rush.
"My quarters are literally freezing. I could see my breath." He shifted the blankets round his shoulders, hands moving a little stiffly under the fabric. "I'm under strict instructions not to get cold, my hands are killing me and it's not like I've got anywhere else I can go." Rush said acidly. He failed to suppress a shiver.
Young nodded, and slid back under the covers, lifting the edge, trying not to let all the heat out. "Get in." Young told him.
Rush moved over to the bed and reached for the covers.
"Take your pants off, you'll warm up quicker." Young instructed. "And flip those blankets over the top of us."
Rush hesitated for a moment, then sat on the edge of the bed and removed his pants with fumbling fingers. For a moment Young wondered if he'd manage it, his hands appeared clumsy with the cold. Young reached out and pulled the blankets off his shoulders and flipping them over the bed as Rush slid in. Rush's foot hit his leg. It was like a block of ice.
"Damn Rush, you're frozen."
"I think that's what I already said." Rush said, sighing as he settled into the warmth.
"TJ and Susannah said you shouldn't get cold."
Rush snorted, shivering and pulling the covers up around his neck. "Like I said, I know, but I didn't really have much choice, did I?" He said. "Why d'ye think I came here."
Young reached out to touch Rush's shoulder, he was icy cold all over, even where he'd had a blanket wrapped round him and was still shivering. He ran his hand down Rush's arm to his hand, cold all the way down to frozen fingers, and Rush flinched.
"That hurts." Rush said sourly.
In his head Young ran over the information Susannah had shared about frostbite, it would hurt his hands and they were probably really painful with him being this cold.
"Is it just your hands that hurt?" He asked Rush.
"Yeah." Rush said. "They'll warm up soon enough."
They lay there for a short while, not touching but Young could still feel Rush as a cold presence next to him as if the cold radiated off him.
"Roll over." Young said, reaching out and shoving at Rush's arm.
He pushed Rush over bodily, rolling him onto his side, and wrapping an arm round him, pulled Rush back into his own body and the warm area of bed he'd already heated up. He spooned up around Rush, flinching as chilled skin and fabric hit him, tucking his knees in behind Rush's legs, and pulling the covers down tightly. He stifled his own shiver as he huddled himself into Rush's chilly skin. Rush had gone rigid.
"Rush, relax." Young said. "You want to warm up? This will warm you up faster. It's not like you haven't done it before."
He slid the arm closest to the bed under Rush's neck and wrapped the other round his ribs and relaxed. Young sighed, Rush was still bloody cold, he hoped he warmed up quickly. Incrementally Rush began to loosen up.
"So, five days of low power reserves. Is this going to cause a problem?" he asked after a while, speaking into the back of Rush's neck.
"If we're careful, then no." Rush said. "We just need to be as economical as possible with our energy. Not using systems we don't need. It'd be better if we'd fixed the coolant leak."
"Yeah, yeah, I can see. You can start looking at it soon."
"Thank you for giving your permission." Rush said acidly, but the tremor in his voice stole it's menace.
Tiredly Young rested his forehead against the back of Rush's neck. "Looks like I've got company then for four nights doesn't it?" Young offered.
Rush shuddered again, but as the shiver subsided he seemed to yield to the situation, his muscles relaxed and he settled back against Young.
"Looks that way." Rush said neutrally.
Young rolled onto his back briefly and turned out the light before curling himself back around Rush and pulling the covers in around them.
"Let's get some sleep." He said.