This was shaping up to be a bad day, and it had little to do with the fact that he was drifting the wrong way up in the middle of the cargo bay.
Blue's head hurt. It had been hurting when he woke up at the start of his shift, and even before that, if he trusted the wisps of dream he still remembered. But headaches were nothing extraordinary for him, though at least they weren't yet what he would call common.
Either way, not a good reason to stay in bed. The bucket of rust they were flying wouldn't stay in the air long without a full-time mechanic. He'd stumbled out of his bunk bed, pulled on his gloves, stepped into yesterday's bunched-up overalls. And then he'd gone straight to work on that faulty aeroponics regulator, unwilling to brave the kitchen and its comings and goings, its morning greetings and morning grouchiness, and its too-large share of morning people who liked to laugh too loud as they stole your coffee.
Some of them even touched you. Blue didn't want coffee that badly.
Out of his seven crewmates, Oriana and Dhaval were the ones most worried by the lack of gravity; Dhaval more than her, but from farther away. Blue closed his eyes against the red flickers of the warning light and waited. Soon enough someone would notice that no one was reestablishing the gravity -- ah, there went the crackle of the comm., and Dhaval's misleadingly light and steady voice.
'Control to engine room, what's going on?'
Blue didn't have a clue, on account of not having been in the engine room today yet. His first guess was prehistoric components deciding to shuffle off this mortal coil. His second guess, rats.
'Control to engine room, is there someone in there?'
If there wasn't, how would they respond? Or they could have knocked themselves unconscious, or lost their grip -- like Blue -- and ended up out of reach of the talk button on the comm. unit. For a pilot, Dhaval really fretted too much.
'Khiaw here, going to the engine room. Sevag, be there. Khiaw, over.'
And now the Captain was calling him by his name. Great. Just great. Even better when Khiaw would have to look for Blue, since he wasn't even in the engine room in the first place. Fuck. It wasn't like Khiaw was a despot, but he was pretty much at the top of the list of people Blue didn't like looking stupid in front of.
"Coming with you, Captain!" a woman hollered cheerfully from a close-by corridor.
... Fuck, and fuck again. Alind was going to have a field day. Well, he might as well bite the bullet.
"I'm here," he called when the echo of her leaps through the corridor grew close enough that he didn't have to yell. The sealed door beeped and slid open with an enthusiastic woosh. Blue crooked his neck to give the woman peeking through a weary, 'don't even' look.
He was sure the scenery was interesting; ultraviolet lamps casting weird glows on heavy-looking boxes lazily floating out of alignment in their security nets, trays of plants with their leaves and exposed roots swaying in a nonexistent breeze, a trail of small electronic parts drifting toward the air vents in the ceiling -- everything not secured would end up there eventually. Like Blue's tools. And Blue himself.
In his current position, his ass would touch down first. Or up? To her credit, Alind barely snickered; but it didn't matter much because he knew she was laughing herself breathless inside. "Captain's looking for you, Sevie-dearie."
Blue narrowed his eyes, and twisted his body, kicking in the void, trying to flip over to face her. "Do you hate having heat in your cabin that much?"
Pointy chin, blade-like nose, narrow brown eyes; Alind wasn't pretty, per se -- she had the kind of face her mother would call 'striking,' her friends 'distinctive,' and everyone else 'You were Head Bitch in high school, weren't you.' The smirk on her thin lips didn't help softening it any. "Aw, come on, it's not that bad. Sev--"
"Don't even."
"Gee, it's only your name."
'Only his name,' and she'd only been told she could use any nickname she wanted, provided it didn't prompt him to violence, a total of twice a week for the last two years. 'Sevag' wasn't one of the violence-free names, or not for her, at any rate.
The crew had gone through many variations on 'kid', 'wrench-boy,' 'the tall one,' 'Marcelo,' 'Archibald,' 'Bob,' and of course, 'hey, you,' before that fateful day when a practical joker got his (or her?) hands on Oriana's discarded midnight-blue hair dye. The joke was on them; he liked it. 'Blue' had been his name ever since. But if Alind didn't approve, she was free to go back to Rex.
Rolling her eyes, Alind kicked off from the door. She bounced past him along the walls, leaving him still floating dumbly, ass over head, and launched herself toward the other end of the cargo bay, where she clicked on the comm. button with more strength than it really needed.
"Cargo bay to control and captain, I found our errant mechanic. He was just too busy learning to dogpaddle in zero-grav to bother answering. Captain, I'm fishing him out and we're meeting you at the engine room. Alind, over."
Alind kicked off the wall. Knowing from experience that she would likely "accidentally" miss his glove-covered hand, Blue braced himself for a touch on his bare arm. Of course, his crewmate chose to aim for his leg instead, snagging a booted ankle on her way back to the door. He didn't know whether to be annoyed or grateful. Her trajectory missed the perfect axis that went through his center of gravity, though, so by the time they floated back toward the door they had built up enough of a spin around each other that he was the one who touched the wall first.
"This is where I accidentally lose my boot and you get to float a bit," he commented, his fingers catching on the handhold that went around the door to pull his body toward the floor.
Alind snorted, and reached up his leg to get a solid hold on the back of his tool belt. "Not on your life, brat."
Nice ass, he caught, pity about the (bony-underfed/too-friggin-tall/shitty-personality) rest. He almost kicked her off his back in reaction. "Hey!"
The annoying woman grabbed his overalls' shoulder straps and scaled his back to reach the control panel. When the door opened and he rolled into the corridor, Blue tried to shrug her off, but Alind only smirked at him and used his shoulder as a launching pad.
Blue glared at her back as she bounced ahead. Her head was full of I win, I win, and assorted smug gloating and amusement. Blue wanted to growl "Like hell you win," and race her to the engine room -- and possibly step on her head as revenge; having her smooth, well-combed blond bob messed up would teach her -- but his head might split and fall off if he got within touching distance again. Besides, she would only sniff at him haughtily and ask him where he'd gotten the childish idea that they were competing in the first place.
Blue reached the engine room to see Alind's thin frame already bent over their captain's shoulder.
Khiaw didn't even glance back to look at him. "You were supposed to finish your night two hours ago. Not in the cargo bay."
"I wasn't napping," Blue gritted out as he floated to the ceiling. He wedged the tip of his boot between a tube-lamp and the roof, and bent backwards for a better overview of the faulty generator.
"Hm. Of course."
Blue twitched at the absence of actual agreement in his captain's voice. Just because he'd gotten tired and fallen asleep once... "I was working on the aeroponics. Oriana asked me to."
You did not say no to Oriana when her plants were concerned. Oriana was a petite mouse of a woman, pathologically non-confrontational, but for the sake of her plants she would probably cut a bitch or three. Blue had cut a bitch or two in his time, but it was hard to tell her no for many other reasons, only a couple of them cleavage-related.
"Hm-mm." Khiaw, as always, was a smooth pool of blanked, deliberately neutral awareness, and the rare ripples on his surface didn't mean much of anything to Blue. Khiaw's expression didn't say much either; heavy-lidded eyes reserved, elegantly arched eyebrows at rest. Whether the Captain believed Blue or not was anyone's guess. Usually Blue was rather happy not knowing. Right now it was aggravating.
"Alind, get out," Blue growled. "You're blocking the light."
Pushing off the ceiling, he pulled himself down between the two watchers and the engine, and slipped his upper body between the generator and the floor, sticking a thin torch lamp between his teeth for a better look at the depths of the machine. Alind's irritation was distracting, though, and her moving back to float by the door didn't help much. Somewhere beyond, there was a sharp burst of frustration -- Darel? -- and yet more of Dhaval's fretting, dead in space, how long, not enough air. Muttering swear words between his clenched teeth, Blue wrenched out a panel that wouldn't unscrew fast enough, throwing it down his body.
"Hey, careful," Alind said, nowhere near close to where the panel had bumped in the wall.
The captain's mind gave another of those strange ripples that meant he was paying attention, and meant exactly nothing else. Blue should have found it soothing not to have a ton of thoughts, emotions, and everything else in between forced on him. But knowing that the reaction was there in the first place was bothersome enough, and wondering what the hell it was about added insult to injury.
"Headache again?"
Blue had a 'None of your business' on the tip of his tongue, but it was Khiaw's business if it was anyone's. And if he'd noticed, it was because Blue was doing a shitty job of keeping it to himself. "It's nothing," he grumbled, guilty.
He took a deep breath, closed his eyes, and tried to ignore the few snatches of strangely romantic songs big-and-bad Vartan sang to himself, a few doors down in the kitchen. Alind was thinking frosty thoughts that made him lift his knees defensively, in case she really did throw the panel right back at his groin. Darel was now down to swearing at some kind of computer program, with numbers and parentheses and weird symbols doing a twisty, highly regulated dance that meant jack shit to Blue but it still wouldn't stop, and his head, god, his head...
Khiaw's foot tapped against the sole of Blue's boot. "The generator, Sevag, if you please."
...Right. His job. Alimentation switch -- he flicked it off and then unplugged the power lines, just in case. His head didn't hurt enough for him to forget that. The thick wrist strap of his gloves snagged on a corner, so he swore a bit, pulled the gloves off with his teeth, and slid his hands inside again, slow, gentle, cautious. It was easier to feel his way around, easier to concentrate on his hands and not on his headache.
Metal, cold under his hand, soothing, quiet like the tomb. Smooth plastic. Panels and wires, a bit of rust, bolts and isolation foam and fur --
Fur?
He had enough time for a resigned "Fuck" before the rat bit him.
[Chapter 1][Chapter 3]