The transfers from the Noveria branch were being given the tour. Three new engineers were assigned to Myrtus' department. It would probably take a few months before everybody felt truly comfortable with each other; with the new faces getting brought up to speed on various projects, and everybody figuring out the shuffled responsibilities. He'd met Veronica that day, when everyone's department heads arranged a lunch meeting for the entire office. He didn't notice her, in particular.
She noticed him, though. His marks were a pale cream, standing out from his bronze-y plates, forming precise blocky, sharply outlined strokes confined on the mandibles and a single stripe down his chin. She thought that the marks created an interesting, nearly typographical effect.
He found out eventually that she was a technical writer and they worked on many of the same projects. Veronica preferred getting direct face to face answers about specs and development by going the three floors down to engineering instead of setting up vidconferences or even messaging. She started out with the two Noveria engineers she was most familiar with and then branched out, finally stopping by at his desk. She had a rapid patter when she spoke that was more salarian than human to his hearing. He hadn't encountered a human like her before.
Later, Davidson clarified this difference; Veronica was of the same ethnicity as the first Shanxi colonists. She was in the habit for sheer efficiency's sake of flipping back and forth from Standard to Mandarin Chinese as the mood took her. Myrtus thought at first that this would be a source of delay and confusion, but it turned out that Veronica was a champion code-switcher in not just language but in style; she went from dry technical jargon to making pop culture references in her office communications without a hitch.
Later, development deadlines were pushed forward and he and the rest of the engineers were put into what the humans called 'crunch time'. They were pulling consecutive all-nighters, sleeping in cots in their cubicles, practically running on stims. Veronica and the other technical writers were right there with them, editing and composing copy as quickly as possible for all the tech. They squeezed in to any available cubicles on the engineers' floor, and it was definitely then that Myrtus really began to notice her.
She'd cracked her knuckles and boasted to the salarian tech writers that nobody was going to match her ten fingers for output. Now give her caffeine and get off of her runway. There was some disbelief, but results were results; she was putting out copy in Standard and Chinese drafts that required no second run throughs. She did all of that with a backdrop of what were scandalously explicit songs about... sex.
He had to pass her temporary set up on the way towards the vending machine for energy bars and drinks filled with dubious amounts of stimulants and he couldn't help his translator picking up on the lyrics each time.
"How does it feel?"
"Close the door..."
And very frankly:
"Let's get it on, sugar! Let's get it on..."
That last song was the apotheosis of 'baby-making songs' according to Daro, an objectively disinterested salarian tech writer who had heard it all before. The incongruity of what he was hearing and Veronica's maniacally regimented tapping on her keyboard gave him pause. Unfortunately, he paused right at her cubicle and Veronica turned as his shadow fell over her screen.
"You need anything?" she asked.
"I say yes, boy, oh yes-"
She turned the volume down.
"Ah," Myrtus dithered. "...Need more coffee?"
Veronica considered her mug.
"Sure. Thanks."
"Right."
Veronica was about to resume typing, but the fact that Myrtus hadn't left yet made her curious.
"Myrtus? Anything else?"
"Your playlist is pretty interesting."
Interesting? Was his mouth malfunctioning?
"You like?" Veronica reached up to tuck a strand of hair behind her ear. "What other people call distracting, I call inspiration."
"...Inspiration?"
How was she keeping her face straight with tinny moans and pleading coming out of her console speakers?
"Definitely. Sexual frustration keeps me awake and I don't crash after like for caffeine," she explained, like this was completely logical. "You know how it is."
Did he? Myrtus was sure that sexual frustration would only frustrate him instead of being a productivity aid.
"I hear casual chatter!" Lead Engineer Beloxia stood up from her cubicle, her mandibles quivering with exhaustion and ill humor.
Myrtus automatically straightened to attention. Veronica just laughed.
"Morale break, ma'am!" she called out.
"You'll have no such thing," Beloxia shot back. "And I'll thank you to quit playing any of those, those songs with the- what-are-they-called- saxophones!"
She was jabbing the air for emphasis.
"What, like this?" Veronica flicked the volume up.
A riff of a solo alien instrument tore through the air, high, reverberating, and sounding much too much like a female turian before peaking in coitus.
"MISS WEI!" Beloxia barked, shaking her fist.
Veronica cut the music off, giggling and turning to look up at Myrtus, waggling her eyebrows. Myrtus blinked, perplexed and a little embarrassed, not moving in case that would draw Beloxia's ire onto himself.
Beloxia was disinclined to make further issue, disappearing back into her cubicle, after shaking her fist one last time.
"Guess she wasn't kidding about what that sounds like, huh?" Veronica whispered. "You're getting kind of blue there."
Myrtus coughed, putting a hand to his neck.
"Should've known you'd have weird sex sounding instruments to go with the lyrics."
Veronica snickered to herself, plugging in a set of headphones. She didn't actually want to push Beloxia to the point of getting an official reprimand.
"You're funny," she smiled at him. "Get two packs of sugar with my coffee, okay?"
Oh. Right. He was going to get her coffee.
tbc