"Rise and shine," Madison said. "Up and at 'em, lady.
No time to lie around."
Larssen flailed in midair, and a hand took her arm,
letting her use that as a point of leverage to turn
around. "What time is it?"
"Minus seventeen hours." Madison said, yanking her
arm to bring her in reach of the wall and then letting
her go as if her arm burned him.
"Rotting stinking garbage in a silver plate with a herb
garnish and a cream sauce." Larssen said. "How are we
doing?"
"It's going to be close down here. I can't tell you about
the rest of the ship. Miss Fine Officer Bigtits won't
give me any information."
Using the doorframe to get her feet on the floor gave
Larssen slightly more of a feeling of control. She
fumbled her comm. from her pocket, lost hold of it and
had to stretch for it as it floated away. "Rand. Larssen
here. Status?"
"Engineering at five percent over. Life support at
twenty two percent over. Passengers are quiet.
Complaining, but in a civilised fashion."
"Nice of them." Larssen said. "We need more help down
here."
"I'll send it."
"Have you had a break?"
"I've come to realise something about command track."
Rand said. "The centre seat is a great place to cat
nap."
Larssen laughed. "All right. Anything else I need to
know?"
"Ships are starting to uncouple and pull out around the
rim." Rand said. "Evac on target, far as I can tell.
Admiral Dewey's compliments, and there should be ships
to off-load our passengers at plus five hours."
"Tell that to the life-support crew. That's their minimum
target."
"Yes'm." Rand said.
Madison was still in the doorway. "Are we going to do
this?" he asked her.
"If we keep going at this speed." Larssen said. "Probably.
Barring disaster."
"Lady, nothing in space is barring disaster."
As if on cue, there was a crash and a curse from the
engine room. Madison turned to look over his shoulder.
"That was the re-initialiser array." he said
conversationally. "*Was* being the right fucking word."
"Rotting stinking *festering* garbage in a silver plate
with a herb garnish and cream sauce." Larssen said
smoothly, and pushed off from the doorframe and over
Madison's shoulder to go out and survey the disaster.
As they were pushing the array back into position after
repairing the worst of the damage three hours later,
Rand paged Larssen to tell her that the passengers were
demanding to see a ranking officer.
"Put them off," Larssen said, comm. in one hand while
she braced the piping in place with her shoulder. The
filthy floor and the lack of gravity made it all the more
difficult, and the slight mismatch of the repaired array
with its housing provided a resistance that had her back
cracking.
"They've been asking for a while. I've put them off as
much as I can."
"Put them off, Rand. Tell them I'm aware of their concerns
and will be there as soon as I've finished with more urgent
ship's business."
"I told them that." Rand's voice was slightly higher than
usual. "They're really upset."
Larssen's foot slipped. The piping bounced out and
clipped her across the back of the head, making her see
stars. To control it before it slid all the way out she
had to let go of the comm. and it began to drift away from
her.
"Rotting." Larssen said. "Stinking. Festering. Organic.
Garbage." One more shove. It had to go in on one more
shove. "On a sliver plate." All right. Two more. Two more
shoves, and it had to go in. "With a herb garnish." It had to
go in. It *had* to. It had to, because she couldn't manage
more than one more, final, desperate heave. "With a
cream sauce!"
The piping clicked into place. Larssen struggled to
hold it there, made a wild swipe after her comm. and
managed to catch it with her fingertips, just enough to
send it tumbling further away. Her mouth tasted of blood,
her hair was in her face, there was sweat in her eyes and
the pain in her head made her ears hum. I can't do this,
she thought. I cannot possibly do this. I have had enough.
I will tell Admiral Dewey that we did our best but we need
evacuation berths on another ship and those five hundred
volunteers will just have to stay behind after all. I have
done my best, and I absolutely, positively cannot do any
more.
Madison slammed the drop bar into place and tightened
the bolts. Larssen let go of the piping and pushed herself
after her comm.
"Rand." she said. "Sorry about that. I can't go and see
the passengers. And there is no way we can keep them
quiet if they see the state of the engine room. Keep them quiet.
If you can't keep them quiet, lock them in, gas them, lower
the section seals. I am authorising you to take any action
necessary to keep our passengers in cargo and out of the
operational areas of this ship."
"Yes'm." Rand said. If she did any of those things, there
would be political repercussions that would follow her
career forever. Gassing civilians? Sealing them in? That
was not the sort of thing that Starfleet wanted as a part
of its reputation. There were already far too many people
who thought any military organization, even one primarily
dedicated to exploration and defence as Starfleet was, was
dangerous and a potential threat to civilian government.
Added to that, there were more than enough who had
nothing against the concept of the military, but like Madison, had
resentments and dislikes of Starfleet in particular. Gassing
civilians was not the sort of thing that got a young officer
promoted.
"If it comes to that," Larssen said, "don't log it. It's
my order and my responsibility and I will swear blind
from here to Alpha Centauri that I personally pressed whatever
buttons needed to be pressed and negligently failed to
enter it in the log myself. But keep them out of here,
whatever you do."
"Yes'm." Rand said.
Larssen looked at her comm. for a moment after closing
the channel, as if were a crystal ball that could show
her a vision of her career going down a waste reclamation
unit, and then managed a clumsy midair turn to see how
Madison was getting on with the re-initialiser array.
"Get me someone who can drop these catches closed." he
said, not looking at her.
"I'll do it."
"Lady, get me someone who can drop these catches
closed! I don't need to lose a fucking hand because you won't
admit there's something a woman can't do! I don't fucking
care what you have to prove, get me someone who can do
the fucking job."
She found purchase with a foot on the wall and shoved
herself into position. "Madison," she said, "unless these
catches are some new kind that can only be moved with a
penis, I can manage them." She thought about saying,
~Madison, when I was seven I was sent out to do a full
day's work on the harvest. What do you think these are
under my coveralls? Shoulder pads? ~
That would just confirm to him that she was defensive,
and Larssen knew that she wouldn't have let him
bother her if she hadn't been so tired. So goddamn
tired. Brand coming up to her shoulder and offering
to do the heavy lifting in the lab never worried her.
Lieutenant Commander Iyen, with delicate Andorian
bones she could have snapped with one hand, advising
her to get a trolley for boxes he moved alone and
unaided didn't get on her nerves. Madison and his
attitude shouldn't get to her either. She set her
feet on the housing for purchase and took hold of the
first catch. "Ready?"
"Yeah." Madison said, moving as far away from the catch
as he could while still keeping control of the array frame.
The resistance when she lifted the catch out told her it
had been tensioned well beyond the norm. She had to shift
her grip all the way around it to get enough purchase to
drag it out. If it slipped from her hands it would slam
down into the frame, probably breaking it and possibly
catching Madison's hands as well.
"Now." she said, and Madison rammed the frame in place
and pulled his fingers clear. Larssen lowered the catch
to five centimetres of the housing, edged her fingers
out from under it while her back screamed in protest
and delicately let it down until it clicked against the
setting.
~ Five of those. ~
She did them, though on the last one she had to let it
snap the last few centimetres while she pulled her
fingers clear in a hurry. The recoil send her tumbling,
and she straightened out midair to see Madison
inspecting the setting closely.
"Is it damaged?" She couldn't recognise her own voice,
it was so ragged with effort.
"Dinged a bit. Nothing serious."
"Lukewarm, rotting, stinking, festering, organic
garbage..." Larssen started, and let her voice trail off.
She sighed. "What time is it?"
"Minus twelve hours." He straightened up, sideways to
the floor, and with the ostentatious efficiency of the
null-G veteran rotated to face her with a flick of his
foot. "Lady, you have a fucking throat infection or
what?"
"Huh?"
He mimicked her Romulan curse, and got it close enough
that she could identify some of the words.
"It's Romulan." she said, trying and failing to reach
something to use as leverage to get out of the middle of
the room. "A good language for relieving your feelings.
Lots of fricatives."
Madison pushed off from the array, snagged Larssen by
the wrist and used the action for a course change that
put them both on a vector for the door. They reached
it with precisely enough momentum to fetch up lightly
and not bounce. 'What's a fruckive when it's at home
with its parents?" he asked. Larssen couldn't quite
work out the tone in his voice: cold, hostile, curious?
"It's why," she said, trying to find the pocket where
she'd stowed her comm., "you say fucking instead of
copulation."
"Lady, I don't say cop-u-la-tion because engineers can't
use words of more than two syllables." he said. "I
guess on those fancy Starfleet ships you say cop-u-la-
tion all the time."
"I think I can safely answer for colleagues everywhere,"
Larssen said, "that that is not in fact the case. Are we
ready to bring gravity back on?"
"Yeah. That array was the last of it. Everything else
will be easier with a bit of weight."
She gave the order. "What now?"
"Now we bring everything up live." Madison said. "And
then when it blows up you get to use those fancy
Romulan curse words while those of us without the
benefit of a fancy education have to stick to frecatives."
There were plenty of fricatives going around when the
warp drive came on line, whined, burped, and died.
There were even more when it was brought back into
alignment and the indicators on the main board showed a
failure in the temperature modulation units. Larssen
herself, under the distributor relay to her waist with
grease dripping into her face, began to feel that there
were times when even Romulan wouldn't do.
"Before you fucking ask," Madison said from the vicinity
of her feet, "it's minus seven hours." He crawled under
the relay beside her and studied the unit she was
replacing. Larssen shifted uncomfortably. There really
wasn't enough space for two. She was about to ask him
if it was really necessary to inspect her work when he
added in a voice pitched for her ears only: "Is it time
to call it quits, lady?"
Her instinctive answer was 'no', but she bit it back.
This was a serious question from a man who knew what
he was doing, not another objection on principle, although
how she knew that she couldn't have said. When she
turned her head to look at him he was studying the backup
board, his expression intent and professional.
"I don't know." she admitted, and he looked at her as if
startled. 'I don't know any more. I don't want to quit,
not when we've gotten this far, but it might be time to
cut our losses and fold."
"What's in your hand?" he asked.
"No aces. One joker." she said. "And in the pot, five
hundred lives. Starfleet officer's lives, if we pull
out and give up. Mine among them - I won't take a berth
from somebody else. And all our lives, and the passengers
on this ship, if we keep trying past the point they can
take us off and still can't do it, or if we get out there
and the warp core breaches or the life support goes down."
"What are you going to do?"
"What would you advise?"
His face went closed. "If I wanted to make those kind of
decisions, lady, I would have joined fucking Starfleet."
Pushing out from under the unit so fast he caught her leg
a painful knock on the way past, he strode away.
By the time Larssen crawled out he was already halfway
across main engineering. ~If I'd wanted to make these
sorts of decisions,~ she thought, ~ oh, Ifni, I never
wanted to make these sorts of decisions, that wasn't
why I joined Starfleet, it wasn't!~ Ann Ridley's pale
narrow face swam before her. If I could order you I
would, she'd told Ann Ridley, and Ann Ridley had done
as she asked, had done as she asked and had died. ~
And it was the right choice,~ Larssen thought, ~ I know
it was the right choice, I'd make it again.~
~I *am* making it again.~ And it was clear to her then,
what the captain would do.
~Oh, Ifni, I truly wish I knew how I go to be here.~
"Madison!" she called. "Madison!"
He turned and glared at her.
"We keep working." she told him.
Heads turned around the room. Madison shrugged
insolently and walked off.