3rd May 2025, 12:36 AM
(This post was last modified: 3rd May 2025, 12:44 AM by Sunlight123. Edited 2 times in total.)
I guess I was procrastinating this part tbh.
The Spaceship
Bea stoops down and picks up a flashlight. Pointing it towards the floor, she presses the button to test if it works. It does. Satisfied, she toggles it off. As nice as sitting around with the QM could be, Bea decides she's got to learn her job, it wasn't really a choice though. She felt she would go stir crazy if she wasn't doing anything for an entire work day.
Beatrix Montgomery:
"Alright let's go." She motions for Dai to enter the maintenance tunnel first.
As they both step through, the sound of their steps on grates echo through the long metal tunnel. Bea tries to minimize her sound and finds that stepping on areas are louder to step on than others. There are tables of junk strewn about. A screwdriver here, a crowbar there, many items Bea cannot immediately recognize. There are also lockers and metal crates—most empty.
There's a myriad of airlocks on each side, some with wires or pipes visibly going into them. As they reach the end of the hallway, they begin to head through one door and into another maintenance room. In that room they reach a junction and turn right through another airlock. In that room they go through the left door. And so on, and so on, until eventually Bea feels completely lost.
Cargo Salvager Lady - Dai:
"I don't know the exact path to take," she confessed, "I'm just heading diagonally in the vague direction they were. As long as they aren't dead quiet we'll be able to hear them when we're close by." She accidentally steps on a rat's tail. It must have been nibbling on crumbs, since its head is inside a crumbled up potato chip bag. It crawls out with its fur raised, hissing at the two of them, before running off. Dai does not mind.
Cargo Salvager Lady - Dai:
"I haven't been back here since the last big switch around. You see, the ship is currently docked in orbit around the planet you saw out there. So for now we're basically just a space station. When the ship is actually functioning as a ship, coasting through space, it picks up more rooms from space if you can believe it. It's hard to understand since you haven't seen the ship from the outside, but it's just a giant series of cubes attached together. It's all modular."
Cargo Salvager Lady - Dai:
"Throughout the galaxies are rooms, compatible with this ship, and all other UnionTransen ships. The reason why there are rooms randomly floating around in space is because other vessels have ejected them. They shed them. Maybe the rooms were too heavy, or maybe they took up too much power, or maybe the vessels they were a part of were destroyed." She wrongly enters a room, a dead end housing an electric power controller, and backtracks a bit. "Worst case scenario is a room that was spaced because it was damned. Some exotic alien predator or some genetically engineered monstrosity was there, and now that its part of our ship, now it's our problem. That's why you usually bring a radio, and a friend with you before doing anything professional. We won't be doing anything like that today."
Cargo Salvager Lady - Dai:
"Part of our job description is opening up new rooms that the ship has picked up. We see if there's anything valuable in them we can resell, reuse, or rework. We handle all goods coming in, and they're just another good. Eventually our ship will meet a friendly Returner Ship. Their job is to take the empty rooms back to a local headquarters. So basically, we get rooms, gut them, and then shed them off. They probably get recycled in the end."
Cargo Salvager Lady - Dai:
"All of this is to say, the layout of maints is always changing. And there are always rooms we haven't seen. Don't know how much sense that makes, but you'll get it sometime. We aren't exploring any new rooms today. We're just familiarizing ourselves and exploring."
After she finishes her explanation, Dai just goes quiet for a bit while walking. She whistles to break the silence. Eventually, they end up walking into a room filled with people. Bea recognizes Sonny as one of them. She also spots two others wearing cargo uniforms, a woman with shocks of curly hair, and a blonde young man. They all appear wordless.
Cargo Salvager Lady - Dai:
"Hey, I thought you guys would be yapping each other's ears off. We’re lucky we ran into you, otherwise we could've gotten lost," she shifts with an annoyed sway, hand on hip, "What gives?"
Other Cargo Lady:
She gulps. "We... Found this." She holds up a red handheld electronic device. "This PDA was over there..." She aims her flashlight to a metal chair in the middle of the room. Underneath it is a large pile of ash.
Bea scans the room over with her light. It is a small square room, with no furnishings and nothing else lying around, except for other small piles of ash, and a broken purple-painted canister-drum on its side. Most of the room is black, as if it has been burnt badly. Dai walks over and handles the red PDA herself, powering it on. Basic information on the screen displays.
Cargo Salvager Lady - Dai:
"Security Cadet?" She pauses in a ponderous pose, "Was there any ID here?"
Other Cargo Lady:
"There was nothing else here. It's... Worrying... To find this. You don't think the ashes are? Well, you know?"
Cargo Salvager Lady - Dai:
Evaluating the scene, she asks, "Did you call anyone?"
Other Cargo Young Man:
"We haven't called anyone yet. Should we?"
Cargo Salvager Lady - Dai:
Dai presses a button on her headset and says, "We need a detective to our location. We found personal property of a security cadet in a... Suspicious scene."
Bea can see the message being sent to the [general communications] tab on her headset's virtual text-chat. After what feels like an eternity of awkward silence, a reply message sent from a detective is received:
General Communications:
...
Salvager - Dyani Dancer:
"We need a detective to our location. We found personal property of a security cadet in a... Suspicious scene."
Detective - Jethro Bruno:
"I'll be there PDQ."
The atmosphere seems generally uncomfortable.
To be Continued
The Spaceship
Bea stoops down and picks up a flashlight. Pointing it towards the floor, she presses the button to test if it works. It does. Satisfied, she toggles it off. As nice as sitting around with the QM could be, Bea decides she's got to learn her job, it wasn't really a choice though. She felt she would go stir crazy if she wasn't doing anything for an entire work day.
Beatrix Montgomery:
"Alright let's go." She motions for Dai to enter the maintenance tunnel first.
As they both step through, the sound of their steps on grates echo through the long metal tunnel. Bea tries to minimize her sound and finds that stepping on areas are louder to step on than others. There are tables of junk strewn about. A screwdriver here, a crowbar there, many items Bea cannot immediately recognize. There are also lockers and metal crates—most empty.
There's a myriad of airlocks on each side, some with wires or pipes visibly going into them. As they reach the end of the hallway, they begin to head through one door and into another maintenance room. In that room they reach a junction and turn right through another airlock. In that room they go through the left door. And so on, and so on, until eventually Bea feels completely lost.
Cargo Salvager Lady - Dai:
"I don't know the exact path to take," she confessed, "I'm just heading diagonally in the vague direction they were. As long as they aren't dead quiet we'll be able to hear them when we're close by." She accidentally steps on a rat's tail. It must have been nibbling on crumbs, since its head is inside a crumbled up potato chip bag. It crawls out with its fur raised, hissing at the two of them, before running off. Dai does not mind.
Cargo Salvager Lady - Dai:
"I haven't been back here since the last big switch around. You see, the ship is currently docked in orbit around the planet you saw out there. So for now we're basically just a space station. When the ship is actually functioning as a ship, coasting through space, it picks up more rooms from space if you can believe it. It's hard to understand since you haven't seen the ship from the outside, but it's just a giant series of cubes attached together. It's all modular."
Cargo Salvager Lady - Dai:
"Throughout the galaxies are rooms, compatible with this ship, and all other UnionTransen ships. The reason why there are rooms randomly floating around in space is because other vessels have ejected them. They shed them. Maybe the rooms were too heavy, or maybe they took up too much power, or maybe the vessels they were a part of were destroyed." She wrongly enters a room, a dead end housing an electric power controller, and backtracks a bit. "Worst case scenario is a room that was spaced because it was damned. Some exotic alien predator or some genetically engineered monstrosity was there, and now that its part of our ship, now it's our problem. That's why you usually bring a radio, and a friend with you before doing anything professional. We won't be doing anything like that today."
Cargo Salvager Lady - Dai:
"Part of our job description is opening up new rooms that the ship has picked up. We see if there's anything valuable in them we can resell, reuse, or rework. We handle all goods coming in, and they're just another good. Eventually our ship will meet a friendly Returner Ship. Their job is to take the empty rooms back to a local headquarters. So basically, we get rooms, gut them, and then shed them off. They probably get recycled in the end."
Cargo Salvager Lady - Dai:
"All of this is to say, the layout of maints is always changing. And there are always rooms we haven't seen. Don't know how much sense that makes, but you'll get it sometime. We aren't exploring any new rooms today. We're just familiarizing ourselves and exploring."
After she finishes her explanation, Dai just goes quiet for a bit while walking. She whistles to break the silence. Eventually, they end up walking into a room filled with people. Bea recognizes Sonny as one of them. She also spots two others wearing cargo uniforms, a woman with shocks of curly hair, and a blonde young man. They all appear wordless.
Cargo Salvager Lady - Dai:
"Hey, I thought you guys would be yapping each other's ears off. We’re lucky we ran into you, otherwise we could've gotten lost," she shifts with an annoyed sway, hand on hip, "What gives?"
Other Cargo Lady:
She gulps. "We... Found this." She holds up a red handheld electronic device. "This PDA was over there..." She aims her flashlight to a metal chair in the middle of the room. Underneath it is a large pile of ash.
Bea scans the room over with her light. It is a small square room, with no furnishings and nothing else lying around, except for other small piles of ash, and a broken purple-painted canister-drum on its side. Most of the room is black, as if it has been burnt badly. Dai walks over and handles the red PDA herself, powering it on. Basic information on the screen displays.
Cargo Salvager Lady - Dai:
"Security Cadet?" She pauses in a ponderous pose, "Was there any ID here?"
Other Cargo Lady:
"There was nothing else here. It's... Worrying... To find this. You don't think the ashes are? Well, you know?"
Cargo Salvager Lady - Dai:
Evaluating the scene, she asks, "Did you call anyone?"
Other Cargo Young Man:
"We haven't called anyone yet. Should we?"
Cargo Salvager Lady - Dai:
Dai presses a button on her headset and says, "We need a detective to our location. We found personal property of a security cadet in a... Suspicious scene."
Bea can see the message being sent to the [general communications] tab on her headset's virtual text-chat. After what feels like an eternity of awkward silence, a reply message sent from a detective is received:
General Communications:
...
Salvager - Dyani Dancer:
"We need a detective to our location. We found personal property of a security cadet in a... Suspicious scene."
Detective - Jethro Bruno:
"I'll be there PDQ."
The atmosphere seems generally uncomfortable.
To be Continued
