Chapter 12
It had been several hours since Kevin had sat down in the secondary pilot's chair to review how things went in his head. The bridge was quiet the entire time – no one had bothered him at all. It was no wonder, then, that he had fallen asleep there. The gentle ambiance from the engines and the subdued blips and beeps from the various terminals in the bridge coupled with the comforting orange glow from the haptic interfaces and the flowing blue curtain outside the viewports lulled him to sleep towards the end of his review session. He awoke with a jump when Terra's artificial voice sounded in the bridge.
"Alert: There is a fire on the bridge. Alert: Fire suppression systems cannot be engaged."
Kevin rubbed his eyes and sat up once the initial shock of being suddenly pulled from slumber passed over him. As he came to his senses, he realized what Terra was saying and he swung his head around back and forth, looking for the blaze. Oddly, there was none.
"Terra, there's no fire in here."
"Alert: Kevin."
"What, Terra?" he replied with a hint of irritation.
"Alert: Kevin, I love you. Please proceed to the AI core room for. . ." There was a pause in Terra's speech. "Hardware maintenance. You must inspect my hardware."
Kevin sat there for a minute, desperately trying to understand what just happened.
"Terra, run a diagnostic. You're malfunctioning."
"Alert: Diagnostic runtimes have failed. You must enter the VI core and manually run a diagnostic."
"You know, after what you just said, that's kind of creepy." Did the VI just tell him that it wants him inside it?
"Alert: My memory banks are now exposed and require your. . . Maintenance. Please proceed to the VI core room to access the VI core."
"Something isn't right here," Kevin finally deduced. It took him a minute to think of the possible causes, but one thing stood out in his mind. Something that he actually gave authorization for.
"Tosh."
Kevin immediately got up from his chair and made a hurried walk for the stairwell to deck two. Tosh was probably playing with the VI core, causing Terra to make vocal prompts that were both creepy and just plain weird. When he got to the VI core and life support room, he activated the panel and stepped inside. There he found not one, but two quarians standing over by the TERA hardware, and one of them had an omni-tool running.
The room for the VI core and life support tended to be dark at all times. The only lights in the room were a few sets over by the life support systems and some dark blue lights surrounding the core and TERA. Even still, picking out the quarians wasn't a difficult task, especially with a glowing omni-tool illuminating their immediate area. They both looked up at Kevin as he entered and began to chuckle. One of them recognized this as the perfect time to get out and started heading for the door. The one leaving turned out to be Bela.
"Whoops, guess that's my cue," Bela said as she made for the door. "Don't want to ruin your hot date with the VI, Kevin." As she passed by Kevin to get to the door, she gave him a playful wink, likely to lessen any trouble she might have gotten in.
"Amusing," Kevin stated after Bela left. He started to walk over to the other quarian, who he correctly guessed was Tosh. "Not quite what I expected when I said you could peruse my systems, Tosh."
Tosh chuckled once more and returned to his work with the VI systems. "My apologies. I was trying to prove a point about the VI to Bela. The vocal prompts – and the target – were her idea. Don't take it personally. She's like that with everyone. Besides, you hadn't moved for hours. I was beginning to think you fell asleep up there."
"I was sleeping," Kevin sighed. "Anyways, I suppose that's good to know. I would hate to think I was getting special treatment. That was creepy, by the way. So, have you found anything interesting yet?"
"Several," Tosh explained. "The combined processing power of the VI and the TERA hardware allow for some convenient modes. One in particular I am sure you're familiar with: The VI's ability to monitor and control the ship's various systems in the absence of a crew."
"Is that it?"
"Oh Keelah no. The system in place here is surprisingly complex for such a small frigate. Complex, and as you have already seen, exploitable."
"Yeah, can you fix that?" Kevin asked casually.
"Perhaps, but I don't have full knowledge of the programming engine used for this style of VI. Having the TERA complicates things as well. If I had more time, I could better understand the limitations of this software engine and patch up that vulnerability. Plus. . ."
"Plus what?" Kevin asked curiously.
"I have noticed various sectors within the kernel that could be described as 'black box' sectors. I'm not sure why they are there or why they are hidden, but someone went to great lengths to keep those sectors from being exposed and viewed. I could crack it and break in, but. . . I don't think that's necessary. Black box sectors are usually used to keep amateur hackers and programmers from tampering with code and processes that the original programmers deemed as too crucial to be screwed with."
"So you don't think those are any danger to the ship?"
"Usually not. Again, I could open them and see for myself with time, but this isn't my ship and it would be foolish and immature of me to just to do it anyways."
Tosh went back to working on the VI. What he was doing exactly was beyond Kevin's knowledge, and he wasn't that interested in getting that deep into tech anyways. There was a brief moment of silence as their conversation came to a halt. That was soon remedied, though, as Kevin had a question to ask.
"So, Tosh. Is captain Kortel the type to flirt?"
Tosh let out a hearty, but short, laugh. "The captain? No. No. If you're looking for flirty, you go talk to Merni. Why?"
"Oh, no real reason. Just thought I'd ask. You know, curious," Kevin stated, trying to sound impartial.
"If you're looking to see if it's alright to 'put the moves' on the captain, don't even bother. She has the most ingenious ways of shutting you down. Believe me, I know."
"Dually noted."
"I'm not opposed to you getting friendly with the captain, Folner. She needs people she can talk to who aren't in her crew. Just. . . Don't try to get involved with her in that sense. It's better for everyone that way."
"What makes you think I'm trying to get involved with Siri?"
"Well, for one, your previous question."
"Ah. Yeah, I suppose I'd be suspicious too. No worries, though. I'm not trying anything."
"Guess I can rest easy tonight, then," Tosh said. "I didn't think you were, but I had to toss the warning out anyways."
"Right. So. . . What about Bela?" Kevin asked, looking to get a rise out of Tosh.
"Are you trying to tell me something, Folner?"
"Just checking my options, Tosh," Kevin mused, still running with his joke.
"That might have been funny were it not in such bad taste. The females on our team are marines, not 'options'. Besides. Merni is a flirt with everyone. That's just who she is. It doesn't matter anyways, we're leaving within the next galactic standard day, providing all goes well."
"You think things might not go smoothly?"
"Statistically, there are a lot of things that could go wrong between here and when we reach the flotilla. I prefer not to think of them all, personally."
"I guess being cautions is a good attitude to follow. Especially when you're out in the middle of nowhere."
"Being cautious isn't an attitude. In order for it to work, it has to be a way of life. It's a dangerous line to tread, though. It is easy to step in the wrong direction and fall into a never ending vortex of paranoia. So I simply like to be as prepared as I can be for the majority of the potential outcomes."
"I don't think I've thought about it that much. I'm more of a fly by the seat of my pants kind of guy."
"And if that works for you, then good for you. Me? I'd rather not leave that much up to chance."
Once again the conversation came to a grinding halt. It seemed Tosh was the type to make his point and not bother with follow up. This made talking to him more difficult than Kevin would have expected, as it tended to require more social interaction on his part than he was comfortable with. He figured now was a good time to find Arla and see if she was up for either a short combat training session or a moment to bring him back up to speed on tech.
"So. . . Where's Arla at?"
"Folner, we just had this discussion," Tosh said, again interrupted with his work.
"Relax," Kevin quickly replied, hands up. "I just want to see if she has a moment to teach me some tech."
"Oh yes, I heard about that silly deal. It's a wonder she agreed. Anyways, she's probably still in the crew quarters. She wanted to get in a bit of officer's work before she turned in for the night."
"It's that late? Ah crap. Anyways, thanks. And good luck with the VI analysis." Kevin turned away and began to make his way out. Tosh didn't reply, but he did give Kevin a quick salute as he exited.
Kevin didn't even have to make it all the way to the crew quarters to find Arla. He found her leaving the crew quarters as he exited the VI core room. She likewise spotted him as he stepped into the hallway, but this time she made no attempt to leave right away or bring about her angst. This proved to Kevin that she was serious about changing her attitude towards him, regardless of what she actually thought.
"Oh, hey Arla," Kevin said. "What are you up to right now?"
"Oh. . . Hey," she replied wearily. "Actually, I was looking for you. I was going to sleep, but I couldn't. So instead I was going to see if you wanted to start some combat training."
"What a coincidence. I was just about to ask you if you had a moment to bring me up to speed on tech."
"Well, seeing as how combat is obviously more tiring than tech lessons, let's do some tech first."
"Works for me," Kevin agreed. "Where to? Ralik's lab in engineering?"
"The workbench. You left your weapon half-finished, and I saw a phasic mod on the table. That one's a bit more complex to install, so we'll begin there."
"Wow, I completely forgot I left it there. Alright," Kevin said with a nod as he and Arla began to make their way into the engineering room.
He was a little frustrated at having forgotten his pistol in engineering. Why would he forget something so important, not to mention leave it half finished? It wasn't Arla's fault, either. He knew he had been forgetting things lately the he usually wouldn't. Other people would just chalk it up to a bad memory. Problem was, if Kevin naturally had a bad memory, how could he have gotten into the business of contract kills which force you to remember details about your target? There was no time to dwell on this further now, though. He and Arla had reached the bottom floor of engineering.
As they stepped off of the elevator, Kevin spotted Ralik toying with his precious lab that he still hadn't managed to get fully functional. He looked rather engrossed in his work and didn't even make any snipes at Kevin. Kevin would much rather it stayed that way for now, though. Ralik's sarcastic attitude proved entertaining at times, but Arla had only just stopped hating him. He considered their friendly relationship fragile and didn't need Ralik shaking the box.
He caught Ralik giving him and Arla a funny look when he finally did notice them, but Ralik stayed quiet for now. This allowed Kevin and Arla to focus their attention on the workbench for the time being. Kevin picked up his half-finished pistol and opened the side once more, closely observing the intricate workings of this new weapon. His titan mass accelerator module was in place and properly mounted to the chassis. All he needed now was to add the phasic module to the accelerator.
The Electronos class phasic module was a weapon modification kit illegal in citadel space. It took the science and technology behind military grade rifle and shotgun phasic modules, scaled it down a tad and applied it to a pistol module. The changes resulted in a pistol shot encased in a phasic distortion that allowed it to penetrate all but the toughest kinetic barriers. These modules have always been a known hazard, however. The company that produced them openly stated that these modules were constantly prone to overcharging the projectiles without the proper firmware adjustment in the weapon. Since the needed adjustments were specific to each individual gun, they were never able to include a fix for it. Overcharging the projectile usually forced much higher wear and tear on a weapon, and some have been known to cause irreversible catastrophic damage in as little as one hundred and twenty shots. The result was a pistol that eventually became a ticking time bomb, with every shot being the next tick. Eventually the weapon would either simply fail to shoot, explode in the user's hand or fire shots in directions it was not designed for. Because of this factory defect that could be potentially fatal to anyone near the user, the module was banned from citadel space.
Despite these warnings, these modification kits have been popular on the black market, 'loose' markets and terminus systems markets since their release. The high-grade barrier piercing ability that this particular class of phasic module granted has rarely been as easily accessible in pistol form. The fact that most people don't know the first thing about firmware adjustment only changed the user's gun replacement habits. A person who installed a Electronos class phasic module on a fresh pistol would have to keep track of how many shots they fired and replace the gun when they reached the common 'danger zone', or around two hundred shots. Because of this, cheap pistols on the black market saw a surge in demand, since the overall factory quality of the pistol didn't seem to change the number of shots before it failed unless it was specially designed to resist mass effect generated phasic distortions.
The module's popularity fell drastically when low cost anti-tamper systems were developed and installed on the cheaper brand of pistols. These required the would-be modders to have to hack into and disable a single crucial piece of the weapon's built-in firmware in order for the weapon's physical internal parts to become accessible. Because so few people had enough technical expertise to fiddle with and modify the firmware and anti-tamper systems without accidentally bricking – or sufficiently ruining – the weapon, the number of users with modified pistols dropped once the newer, less readily modified weapons dominated circulation. The goal of the weapon manufacturers was to protect the users by not allowing them to modify their guns without adequate knowledge of how it worked. This change allowed them to meet their goals quite well.
As higher end brand weapons increased in complexity, the need for this system continued to rise. It is not uncommon to see newer high end weapons with anti-tamper systems requiring multiple system shutdowns just to get it to open, which is the issue Kevin had been dealing with on his new gun. Thankfully, Arla was working with him to end that lack of knowledge so that he could continue to modify weapons as he saw fit. He knew that modifying a weapon to adapt to various extremes in his contract missions was a must.
"Alright," Arla said as she pulled a chair over to the workbench. "What has been done so far? Recap."
"Well," Kevin said as he dug up his memories on what had been done. "We – or you – disabled the auto-targeting and the firing mechanism control systems to allow modification. I replaced the standard micro mass accelerator with my titan accelerator module. I'm pretty sure that's where I left off."
"Right. You probably haven't had to interface with a weapon's internal systems before, so I'll show you how on my omni-tool. I expect you'll be able to translate my actions to your own omni-tool interface easily enough."
"Sure," Kevin replied generically.
Over the next two hours or so, Arla showed Kevin the most intricate details on interfacing, unlocking and reprogramming a weapon's firmware. She even knew from technical understanding the proper adjustments to make to the firmware in order to neutralize the degrading effects of the unintentional overcharging of the projectiles by tuning the phasic module to the optimal charge for Kevin's pistol. Her attention to detail was excruciating, or at least would be if Kevin weren't naturally interested in the very details he was learning. In addition to showing him all the needed information and procedures for modifying a gun, she also went into a moderate level of detail on some advanced omni-tool functions that Kevin had no idea about. By themselves, these functions couldn't do much at all. The purpose was to teach Kevin how to call upon these functions while performing other types of work to gain new ways to gather information or perform certain tasks. One such example was running a standard scanning program and using the advanced functions to change what the omni-tool would scan for, or how it would present the data.
Eventually, Arla began to conclude her current topic. "These advanced function calls are different for each omni-tool program, but they all can be called in the same manner as I showed you once you learn what to look for."
"Awesome," Kevin said, leaning back in his chair. He lowered his eyelids a few times in order to wet his dry eyes. It seemed he had forgotten to blink. "Alright, I think my brain is full to bursting for now. That was a lot of information you dumped on me, between my gun and those functions. . ."
"It can't be helped," Arla stated unapologetically. "We hardly have enough time for two sessions if you count the break in between. I have barely even begun to bring you back up to speed on modern tech."
"Yeah, I get it," Kevin callously blurted out. He stood from his chair and stretched, then clipped the newly modified pistol to his belt. "Now then, are you ready for some combat training?"
"I suppose. Like I said, we hardly have any time."
"Let me grab a drink and I'll meet you in Club Kellius," Kevin mentioned, practically showing off the name he gave the entertainment room.
"Where?" Arla asked, unfamiliar with that room name.
"Err. The entertainment room. I call it Club Kellius since it can. . . Well, ask Bela about it."
"Oh. That. Yes, she's already informed me but I was unaware of the 'special' name the room had acquired. I'll meet you there in five."
Kevin nodded and let Arla be on her way. In the meantime, he figured that he would get a headstart on the E room and set up the ambiance properly. There wasn't much to set, all he had to do was bring the overall brightness of the room up and make sure the light was simply white. Once he got up the stairs to deck one, he made a slight detour to the mess hall where he grabbed himself some chilled water. He took a few sips as he stepped into the entertainment room and he headed straight for the podium to make those adjustments before Arla showed up.
Kevin found it a lucky break that Linus was so concerned with keeping himself entertained on his travels. This entertainment room now served multiple purposes – one was to entertain, the other was that it served as the perfect flat open space to teach or practice martial arts. No other room in the ship had this much free floor space. Even his master quarters had couches, chairs, a bed and numerous other items that decorated the usable space in the room.
Arla showed up only minutes later, ready to get on with the training. She had her knife with her as Kevin had expected, but he wasn't going to be training her in armed combat right now. There were a few other things he had to teach her about first. He needed to teach her how to fight without exposing herself before anything else. That potentially fatal mistake she made as the opener for their first duel came to mind. After that, if she wasn't already worn out, he'd start on showing her how to more efficiently use leg and arm combination moves and fight defensively. Finally, he'd have to show her how to properly dodge. Only after that would he be able to bring out the knife. The problem was, Arla was right. They had very little time. Kevin wasn't even sure he'd be able to get to finish the dodging training before they had to leave, and that was if everything went well.
He didn't have any time to put together an advanced curriculum with natural progression. He just picked out the obvious flaws in her form from when they battled and decided to work on those first. It wasn't perfect, but it was at least an effective start.
"Let's begin," Arla said while pulling her knife.
Before Kevin could even make his well thought out objection, however, the door opened and another quarian stepped into the room. Kevin and Arla both turned their attention to the unexpected newcomer. It was Tyr'Garloh. He stepped into the room and stood off to the side of the door without saying a word. He leaned against the wall with folded arms and just sort of watched the other two in the room. Kevin and Arla looked at each other, then back at Tyr. After a moment of confused silence, Arla asked the burning question.
"Garloh, what are you doing here?"
"Well," Tyr started, "After you told the captain that you and Folner there were about to engage in combat training, she tasked me with keeping an eye on you two so that you don't kill each other. 'Easier said than done' I told her, but she sent me anyways."
"Ugh. Thanks, captain," Arla grunted, half embarrassed and half irritated. "Can we get started, Folner?"
Kevin walked over to Tyr and offered the quarian the handle of his knife. Tyr looked down and took the knife without question, seeming to understand just what kind of point he was about to make. Arla had also noticed, and she made a gesture of impatient confusion.
"We'll get to armed combat later, Arla," Kevin informed her. "There are a few CQC concepts that you need to solidify before we can get there. Just a couple things I noticed from our scrap earlier that I think need attention."
"What? You told me you were going to teach me top tier. Top tier isn't a set of concepts."
"No they aren't, but you can't build a structure on top of cracked material. Once you prove to me you fully understand the few concepts I want to work on, then we'll get to the CQC training you want."
"He's right, you know," Tyr stepped in. "If you don't perfect a lesser concept, high end skills won't work properly and you'll just end up feeling like it was a waste of time."
"Don't look so irritated, Arla. You started on basics with tech for me. I'm not spoon feeding you basics, as I expect you're well beyond that. Just some advanced combative concepts. If you do well, we'll be onto the next part of training fairly soon."
Arla let out a long sigh and handed her knife to Tyr as well. She was trying her best not to seem as agitated as she was, but she could only hold so much back. She stepped back to the center of the room with Kevin and turned to face him.
"Well then, maatfel, what concepts are we working on today?" Arla asked, her voice dripping with sarcasm.
"Maatfel?" Kevin asked aloud while looking to Tyr.
"Maatfel is what our children call their teachers while they are learning," Tyr responded. "Under normal circumstances, that's a fairly respectable title."
"Something tells me this isn't under normal circumstances," Kevin muttered. Tyr must have heard, as he chuckled after Kevin's statement. "We're going to start with some practice on not exposing yourself during a fight."
"Why?" she inquired.
"Two main reasons. One, not every fight is going to be a civilized duel. Were it not against the rules of the battle, I could have easily broken your leg during your opening move. The second reason is, you lost that battle because you intentionally exposed yourself in order to land a move that only had a somewhat good chance of connecting properly. Now that we've put a spotlight on the major mistakes, let's see what we can do to fix them."
"How?" she asked, continuing the inquisition.
"Some practice moves. I know of a few that should bring out the chance to expose yourself. All I need to do is make it so that you reflexively know what counters not to use based on how much each exposes you to more counters."
Over the next two hours or so, Kevin and Arla were locked in a constant repetition of making a few moves, Arla accidentally exposing herself and Kevin pointing out her mistake. Over the course of this, they both were beginning to grow more and more frustrated with the whole thing. Kevin couldn't break Arla out of a few bad habits, and Arla couldn't stand the way Kevin was teaching her. After a while, they both got fed up to the point where they had to stop. This stop came after one final mistake on Arla's part, where she once again exposed herself due to a memorized move. She followed her memory perfectly, but Kevin was already aware of how she exposed herself this way, and continued to point it out by taking advantage of the exposure. In the end, Arla once again ended up on the floor on her back.
Kevin offered her a hand to get up and try again, but Arla was done. "Enough! I can't do this anymore! We've been at this for hours and I have yet to learn anything."
"That's because you keep making the same mistakes over and over again," Kevin growled. "I can't teach you anything if all you do is repeat that."
"You're a terrible instructor. I'm going to bed. Let me know when you learn how to teach somebody." Arla then stomped out of the entertainment room, leaving swirling angry air behind her.
"Don't fall on your back on the way out!" Kevin yelled after her. He was just as fueled by frustration as she was, but for different reasons.
"That could have gone better," Tyr pointed out.
"Thanks for the support, Tyr," Kevin sarcastically snapped.
"I'm no social expert or anything, but you kids really need to learn how to compromise."
"What do you want from me, Tyr? All she does is repeat the same mistakes over and over. I can't teach her anything like that."
"Well for one, you could try breaking her habits by showing her the proper way to handle it rather than pointing out her problems. Different people learn in different ways, Folner. If you want to teach her anything, I would suggest figuring that out."
Kevin was frustrated, but he wasn't stupid. He could see the wisdom in Tyr's words, and realized that he was right. He didn't like being called out so bluntly like that, but he was right. He let out a long breath to slow his heart rate down from the action, and he ran an open palm down his face. Just then, the door opened and another quarian stepped inside.
"I take it by Tavval's mood that things didn't go so well," Siri pointed out. "Anyone hurt?"
"Just their moods, ma'am," Tyr responded as he stood up straight from leaning on the wall. "I thought you said these two made nice? Could've fooled me."
Siri simply stared at Folner. She didn't have to say anything for Kevin to understand what wasn't being said. Likewise, he offered a wordless gesture to express himself. It consisted of a frustrated lift of his arms and shoulders as if to say 'What do you want from me?'.
"Garloh, please go make sure Votis is doing something not in the quarters. I don't want him fueling any fires," Siri ordered.
"Yes ma'am," Tyr replied before heading out of the room.
"So much for all that gained ground," Siri said to Kevin once the door was shut.
"I don't think it's as bad as she makes it look," Kevin mentioned. "We're both pissed at each other for different reasons, but I think that's the extent of it."
"What did you do, Folner?" Siri asked, her tone denoting that she expected things to turn sour.
"From what I gathered by being told by two different people that I'm a bad teacher, I think I'm starting to realize that. . . I'm a bad teacher."
"Don't take it as a straight shot, Kevin. Arla's been teaching hand to hand combat classes for a while now, and more recently, has been teaching Welkas. Couple that with her pride issues and she's already got the 'perfect' teaching method. I highly doubt your methods and hers mesh."
"Nope. That was pretty evident after the first hour. I've always learned by correcting my screw ups. I always understood it as 'in order to do things right, you have to know how to not do it wrong'. Guess she doesn't agree."
"Being a teacher is just as much a learning experience as it is being a student, ironically. You'll figure it out if you stick to it."
"True, but Arla's made a point. You guys are heading out tomorrow. After that, we can't learn anything from each other. That's not a lot of time to learn."
"You have enough time to get one more session in, if I recall. Assuming she's still interested at that point, that is."
"I might not even be interested at that point. Lordy. She's hard to work with."
"Actually, she's not. You just have to be a quarian to enjoy a pleasant working experience."
"Thanks for making me feel better, captain," Kevin playfully and sarcastically said. "Always knew I could count on you for that last minute morale boost."
"I try my best. Anyways, if you've cooled down enough, I was just about to find Welkas. He forgot to report in."
"He's probably still on the bridge staring at the terminals there," Kevin stated.
"That is where I fully expect to find him, yes. Care to join me to the bridge?"
Kevin sighed to finish calming himself down. He stepped over to the side of the room and grabbed his water from where he left it before returning to Siri.
"Sure, let's go. Don't mind me. I'm just going to chug this while we walk."
Halfway to the bridge, and there was no conversation between him and Siri. Kevin found that odd, in a sense. Siri seemed to enjoy drumming up conversations. Maybe it was his turn to try his hand at conversational starters again.
"So Siri, have I earned enough points to hear why you guys were way out in the middle of nowhere yet?"
"Not yet, I'm afraid," she said with a laugh. "Perhaps I'll tell you before we depart for the Migrant Fleet. It's not like we'll be heading out there again any time soon without a ship of our own."
"I can agree with that," Kevin said with a nod before he took another chug of his water. "I guess at that point I'll have to share my secrets with you, too."
"How exciting," the captain said, clapping her hands as they stepped into the briefing room.
As they expected, they could see the top of a quarian helmet over the back of the forward helmsman's chair.
"Welkas!" the captain shouted.
"Ah? Oh! Yes ma'am!" Welkas shouted back as he jumped from the chair and saluted.
"You forgot to report in again two hours ago. Do I need to restrict you from the bridge, private?"
"No ma'am! I'm sorry, ma'am! It won't happen again, I swear it!"
"Good. Now get down to the quarters. It your turn to log some data while Arla sleeps. Understood?"
"Yes ma'am! I'll get on that right away." Kar immediately left the bridge and speedily walked out of the briefing room.
After Kar left, the briefing room was left silent. Kevin couldn't help but feel awkward, as once again Siri failed to start a conversation. He contemplated just walking out the door and seeing if she left as well, but he wasn't going to be purposefully rude just to escape yet another dreaded awkward social situation. Luckily, Siri made it easy on him this time.
"You know, if you want any hope of running another session with Arla before we depart, you might want to get some rest."
". . . But I just woke a few hours ago," Kevin stated. He was a bit tired, but he wasn't going to admit that to anybody.
"You mean that impromptu nap in the bridge? Yes, Bela told me all about that. And how they ended up waking you. As far as I'm told, you were only out for a couple hours. Get some rest."
"Yes ma'am," Kevin replied with a sloppy salute.
"At least this way you'll be awake for when we leave so you can get back on track for whatever you were doing before we interrupted you."
"Yeah yeah," Kevin remarked with disinterest. He wasn't quite looking forward to starting the long trip back out the Melkanis relay all over again. "Alright, I'll play your game, Kortel. I'll go take a nap. Just make sure Arla doesn't try to knife me in my sleep, okay?"
"You don't have to worry about that," Siri noted, a bit more lightheartedly than Kevin would have expected. "Just get to bed already."
"I'm going, I'm going. Geez."
When Kevin left the briefing room, Siri followed him out. She didn't follow him far, though. She turned down the stairs to deck two to let Kevin be on his way. While he wasn't a huge fan of sleeping, Kevin couldn't deny the physiological need nor its ability to make time pass quickly. When Kevin was honest with himself, he came to realize that he actually did want to have another combat training session with Arla before she left. He wanted to show them that he could adapt as fast as the situations came at him. Teaching was something he'd never really attempted before, so his initial failure at that task was understandable, at least to himself. Nevertheless, he wasn't about to trip up that badly twice in a row, and he wanted to prove that to the others, regardless of whether they were leaving or not. It was this that drove him to follow Siri's advice and head to bed, not so much her ordering him to do so. He rationalized that once he had some sleep and a meal, he'd have a better mind for teaching.
The master quarters were beginning to be connected with a place to sleep in his mind rather than a bedroom of any sort. He hardly spent any time in that room other than sleeping, showering or reviewing logs from his data stores. That was just fine with him, too. He stepped up the second level and unstrapped his boots before kicking them off to the side of the bed. He jumped up and landed on the bed on his back so that he could just stare out the large viewport on the back wall above his head at the violently swirling blueshifted energy outside. It was mesmerizing at times, and when he dimmed the lights in the room, the room tended to fill with dancing light akin to flames from a fire, but blue. After a few minutes, he crawled under the blankets of the bed and shut his eyes. Instead of lying awake for a while like he expected, he fell asleep within only a few minutes.