Ciao

Posted on 27 Mar 2018 @ 9:19pm by Lieutenant Reginald Hawthorn

892 words; about a 4 minute read

Mission: Crossing Over
Location: Main Engineering
Timeline: MD36 || 2330 hours

The Warp Core was fixed.
The coolant tank replaced.
The hull breaches sealed.
And both of the magnetic constrictor rings had been pulled out and replaced, with favourable results that at least one of them could be salvaged and refurbished.
All in all, Reggie was going to call that a win.

He walked around main engineering one more time, running a hand over the freshly installed coolant tank. The surface of the pressure vessel had a rough quality to it, a property of the industrial replicator that had printed it. The little pockmarks in the glass matrix would fill in over time to form a smooth outer shell, but right now the qazi-diamond was almost the hardest material on the ship.

He gave it an experimental tap with the back of his knuckles just in case.

He heard something clatter to the ground behind and above him. He frowned, looking up to the empty catwalk. This late in the day there shouldn’t be that many people in Main Engineering, just a watch crew keeping an eye on the reactor and her associated systems. And no one should be up in the maintenance catwalk.

“Chief Stephens? That you up there?” Reggie grumbled, stalking over to the ladder and beginning to angrily climb the rungs. “If I get up there and find you’re playing boy engineer without all your marbles I’m gonna tape you to the warp core as an emergency patch!”

He vaulted the final rung and landed heavily on the catwalk...to find nothing but a hydrospanner left carelessly on the deck. He walked over to it and picked it up, turning it over in his hands to get a look at the lot number on its base. Someone signed it out, someone left it out: and that someone was getting a re-

Something struck him in the back of the head. A constellation of stars exploded across his vision as he fell to his knees, his head ducking amid a wash of nausea. It was this that saved him from the second batters swing as something heavy swished over his head and struck the bulkhead next to him. Sparks spattered his cheek as he lunged forward, trying to get out of range of his attacker. He rolled over onto his back, arms up in a defensive guard and...there wasn’t anyone there. There was the long, and now bent metal neck of a spot welder, its ignition tip sputtering fitfully. Now that had not been up here when he arrived.

“Reggie to Security-” he began to say before the muted guttural beep of a malfunctioning combadge greeted his ears. He rolled on to his front and got back to his feet, his head on a swivel. He began to back towards the ladder off the catwalk. “If you’re wanting to pick a fight face to face like, you’re really lousy at asking!”

Not seeing anyone, or more importantly anything that might be flying for his head, he knelt down-

Something grabbed the seat of his pants and pulled at just the right moment to send him off balance. Reggie had enough time in that dreamy falling state to register the fact that today was not only NOT his day, but it hadn’t been his week either. In fact, given the last Chief Engineer had evaporated into the wind during the crossover, it seemed a deck thumpers life was cursed on this ship-

He hit the deck hard, head bouncing hard enough to make his world sing like a struct bell. The upshot of that meant he didn’t feel a thing about the wind that had rushed out of his lungs on an express train to nowhere. Not that much more air got a chance to enter his abused lungs as something black, white, and furious landed on his chest from the catwalk above.

Reggie watched, dumbstruck by concussion and disbelief, as a small face loaded with curiosity appeared in his vision. Black and white fur, beady little eyes, and the sort of expression made to sell felt lined novelty items to the young and gullible. Except that Disney World (A class M planet in the Corporate Sector) didn’t sell plush animals with primed phaser pistols in their paws. Or maybe they did, trying to swing the anaemic Klingon tourist trade? Today was a good day to buy novelty nicknacks!

Chow the Capuchin monkey awkwardly hefted the phaser, which was half his own size, and jammed the emitter tip under Reggie’s chin.

“No witnesses!” Came the comically high pitched voice from the satanic simian as he pulled the-

+++

He snapped awake from the dream.

Reggie’s flailing arms did little to arrest his backwards fall as the chair he'd been leaning back on finally tipped, landing him ass over tea kettle on his office floor. In his confused near sleep state, his hands reached for his throat, feeling for a moment the dimple where a hand phaser had been pushed. But the dream memory was already fading, leaving the broad black and white furry outline of Chow the slap flinging monkey the centre of his sleep-deprived memory.

“I...hate...that...ape.”

It’s a monkey, an unseen and unheard narrator from afar commented to Reggie’s muttering curses and damnations.

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