It was quiet. So quiet that Susan Ivanova was almost tempted to say it was too quiet. No ships showing up unexpectedly throwing docking into chaos, no fights anywhere on the station, not even an ambassador calling to drive her insane. Yes, it was much too quiet, and frankly, she was more than a bit suspicious of what the silence might mean. The ambassadors were never this quiet. At least one or more likely ten of them would have called by this point in her shift, demanding this or that, but there hadn't been a peep for hours, since she had heard that Londo had called about a bug on the loose in his quarters. Much too quiet.
But maybe she was worried for nothing. Maybe the lot of them had been stricken down with mass cases of laryngitis. John's voice had sounded a bit scratchy before his meeting with the ambassadors the day before. Maybe he had been coming down with something, and had infected them all. Of course, then he would probably put her on sick duty, running tissues and hot drinks to all of them, but still, blissful, blissful silence. Susan closed her eyes as she pictured it, silent ambassadors for days and days.
Something cold brushed her face, causing her eyes to fly open. What in the…. "Corwin, what is this?" She demanded as she glared at the bits of white falling in front of her face, not sure that she didn't need to run down to Medlab and get Stephen to check out her eyes. They were indoors, on a space station. How in the world could she be seeing snow?
"Snow." Corwin looked around, trying to see where it was coming from. "I think something might be wrong with the environmental controls." At least that looked like what was producing the snow that seemed to be coming down harder every minute.
"Snow." Just perfect. She would probably be the one who got laryngitis instead of the ambassadors. "Ivanova to maintenance." She called as she activated her link. "We have a problem in C & C with the environmental controls."
No beep, no voice responding. "Corwin?"
"Nothing here." He said after trying his link, and then the main communications system without response. "Commander?" Probably this wouldn't be a good time to ask her if he could run to his quarters to pick up the pair of mittens his sister sent him for some odd reason last Christmas.
"Does anyone in here have an active link?" Susan called, only to be greeted by a universal shake of heads. Communications were down? How long had communications been down? And what disasters had hit various parts of the station while communications were down? "Corwin, get down to maintenance, and get someone up here to fix communications." The snow would have to wait until they had the comm system fixed.
"Commander?" Corwin called a few minutes later, when he had tried and failed to summon a lift. "I think the lifts are down too. And I will take the stairs." He said as he caught sight of the expression on Susan's face.
Lifts were down. Communications were down. It was snowing. What else could go wrong? No, don't think that. She knew all too well the things that could go wrong. It would be her luck that G'kar and Londo were trapped in a lift together and maintenance would be spending the next week cleaning up the blood. "Do we have external communications?" She asked the officer who had taken Corwin's place. Wait, how would they know if they had external communications, with the lull in ships coming on. "Never mind. Just set up an automatic signal, on the off chance it's just internal communications that are down. Warn any incoming ships that we're experiencing minor technical problems, and there will be a delay with docking." That sounded diplomatic, and a lot better than what she would really like to say to anyone who might want to dock at the moment. How long was it going to take for Corwin to hike down the stairs and get maintenance anyway? She shivered, in spite of trying to resist and frowned down at the snow that was covering the floor of C & C. An inch. There was already an inch of the stuff. What in the world was going on here?
"Commander?" Corwin called when he finally returned nearly forty-five minutes later.
"Corwin, how nice of you to join us." Susan grumbled. The snow was up to mid-calf now, and would be up to her knees if she was any shorter. She was half-way tempted to send someone out to hunt down shovels, but where would they put the snow if they tried to clear a path? And where in the world was John? Surely he had some clue they had a problem by now.
"Sorry, Commander. It's crazy down there. I don't think a lot of the aliens have seen snow before or something, because…." Corwin shook his head, to get some of the snow from the Narn showball ambush he had wandered into off. Honestly, his hair was flat. He didn't know how they had mistaken him for a Centauri. "We've got a real problem. Maintenance…. I checked and their office was empty so I started asking and I'm not sure what happened. I was a little afraid to disturb Doctor Franklin asking for the details, but pretty much the entire maintenance department is down in the Medlab. I don't think they're going to be able to help us right now."
"What?" Maintenance was out sick? Things were definitely getting worse. She closed her eyes and forced herself to take a deep breath. No maintenance but…. "Corwin, go down to the docks, see if the guild has any members who have some clue about the communications systems and how to fix them." Communications had to be taken care of first, although the snow and stopping or at least containing it was fast becoming a priority too. Why in the world wasn't Mister Garibaldi doing something, and forcing the aliens into their quarters if they were acting as crazy as Corwin said? Not that she had time to worry about that at the moment. "You." she turned to another officer. "Go and see if you can find some shovels so we can at least move up here." If they had to, they could always blow the shoveled snow out of an airlock. "And someone find Captain Sheridan now!" Where in the world was everyone else?
