To Those We Leave Behind

[Cmdr JFarrington 0]

NPC Log: T McAvoy and K Krittenden

Repair Specialists, Lower Decks

USS Manticore – Starbase 9

 

To Those We Leave Behind

 

“What’d ya think is in that thing?”

 

“Damned if I know. Not sure I even wanna know.”

 

Specialist Terin McAvoy scooted half way out from under a raised replacement emergency generator. The sleeves of his coveralls were rolled up, his hands smeared with grease, and his face scratched here and there from whatever had grazed him in the last hour. Kate Krittenden stood beside the generator, leaning against it and staring out the bay doors. From that direction the new dorsal module had approached the Manticore and had been installed several hours before. She’d been standing there tapping the side of the generator with a tool for what seemed an eternity to Terin.

 

It wasn’t so much the standing that bothered Terin as the tapping. Echoing. Incessant. Annoying. Like someone bouncing a leg at the table and making it shake when you’re trying to eat, or someone jiggling the bleachers during a tense moment at a ball game.

 

He gave Kate a look of annoyance. “So, you gonna stand there all day thinkin’ about it or give me a hand? Toss the wrench, will ya?”

 

Kate grabbed the wrench and slid in beside him. Her hair, dubbed the bay cut from its short-cropped nature, should have been blonde. But today it was mostly-blonde, dabbled with assorted colors from lubricants and cleaners. The cut made less hair to wash, less hair to keep regulation neat, but no amount of washing could get out the crud they’d been working with.

 

The past few days the bay chief had ‘em working flat-out. INDIA team was helpful, but they seemed like an intrusion, not only to Crew Chief Karas, but everyone else. Repair was a no-nonsense group in pretty much everything they did whether in or out of the bay, on or off the ship. They were a team, finely-tuned, used to working together so much they could anticipate each other’s reactions well before the fact. They could tell who was coming by the tempo of their shuffle and the smack of their gum. They didn’t appreciate help from anyone, no matter how well-intentioned.

 

“Still,” Kate continued, “I’d kinda like to know what’s up there. You know, just in case we need to do repairs or somethin’.” She scrunched herself farther under to reach across McAvoy’s chest, pulling lines out of his way while he dug into another section that had been badly damaged during the return from Andromeda. All the necessary equipment had been repaired. Now they were busy working on backups.

 

He grunted, fighting with a bolt that had been flattened into a T by impact. “Like we’ll ever be repairing it, Katie me darlin’,” he said, affecting his mother’s Irish brogue. “You heard the I.G. One look and yer one more speck o’ space dust floatin’ towards eternal rest.”

 

He gave the bolt an almighty whack and a section of pipe along with the panel it was connected to smacked his elbow and fell against his lower arm. “Gaahh…. Shoot!! Chief’s gonna be happy about this one,” he said, jimmying up the panel, then scrambling to avoid an overlooked internal pocket of lubricant that began to stream over them. “Rag!”

 

A fast rollout and in, and Kate had a pile of rags in hand, stuffing them into the orifice. “Space dust. Right. Gotcha.”

 

“So just leave it alone, okay?”

 

“Right. Leave it alone.” Stuff. “Let it ride.” Stuff. “Just forget about what we might be carrying and what we might be doing with it,” stuff, stuff, “and who might get hold of it, and where we’re going, and that we might never come back, and we might never see our families and friends again, and that maybe we’ll all be dead in a few days. Gees, Ter! Like I can just erase something like that from my brain like wiping data from a PADD!” She finished stuffing with a motion that could have stopped a targ, grabbed hold of the work lift handles, pulled herself from under the generator and stormed off across the bay.

 

“Kate!” Terin slid after her, but she continued on until he caught her just before the locker room door and spun her around. “Hey. Girl. Simmer down.”

 

After a half-hearted attempt to fight him off, she wiped away a sniffle with the back of one hand and stood staring at the floor. Behind her, just emerging from his office next to the locker room, Chief Karas gave a jerk of his head indicating it was time for a break.

 

With a nod and a gentle hand on her arm, Terin led Kate past the storage room and into the crew lounge. It was the kind of place where no one cared what was on you, what you looked like or how you felt. Crew space. Sacred. Not even the Chief came in unless the ship was going to blow, and even then he’d think twice.

 

Terin mustered all the encouragement he could into his voice. “It’ll be ok, Kate. Really it will.”

 

“Yeah.” She slumped into a chair while he grabbed two glasses and a bottle of some dark liquid. “At least Gol go to leave.”

 

“Yeah. He’ll be a proud papa.” Terin gave the top a twist and poured. “And Ali, Grimy, and Weed.” Grimy never did seem to get clean; his wife, aboard the USS Livingston, was two months from their first child. And Weed – he just couldn’t stop chewing on toothpicks; looked like a farmer in a hay field most of the time. Weed was the surviving son of five, four of whom had already given their lives in various branches of the service. His elderly mother had no one else. “They’ll be safe and get to see their new families, or take care of the old.” He pushed one glass towards Kate and held up the other in a toast.

 

Kate grinned, giving one last wipe of her sniffle before she grabbed her glass. “Can’t imagine Gol bein’ a daddy.” She raised her glass. “To Gol… and Ali… and Grimy… and Weed.”

 

“To those we leave behind.”