Extra Duties and Cleaning Up

Posted on 22 Aug 2021 @ 11:29pm by

685 words; about a 3 minute read

Mission: Extinction
Location: Flight Deck and Maintenance Deck
Timeline: Mission Day 22 at 1715

Ensign Clark Roberts, low man on the pilot totem pole, was busy pulling extra duty. It was something that he didn’t like too much. As a matter of fact, most people didn’t like extra duty. This one, though, was a little more active. He was transferring support craft from the maintenance bay to the flight deck and vice versa.

The guy sighed and checked his PADD. He was only halfway through the list. He shook his head and looked at the next one. It was the runabout that had just come up from the surface. Rumors were swirling about an old woman, a survivor that was with them. Clark hoped that the cabin didn’t smell like old person.

He was about to walk in and prep it for moving to the maintenance deck when he stepped on something that cracked and broke. Well, was already broken. Clark stepped back and leaned against craft while lifting up his foot. There was nothing on the bottom of his shoe but on the deck was a pile of broken glass. He knelt down and carefully picked up some of the bigger pieces. There was an oily substance on the glass that came off on his fingers. And it smelled like a perfume.

Clark wrinkled his nose and picked up the rest of the pieces. While he carried them over to a nearby replicator, one of the bigger pieces cut his hand. It wasn’t a deep cut, but it was enough to bleed and allow the oily perfume into his bloodstream. Clark dumped in the mess and pushed the recycle option. The best place for a broken perfume bottle was the trash.

He rubbed the blood on his uniform pants and got a dermal regenerator from a medkit before heading back to the runabout. He did a quick check of the inside and input a few commands on the PADD to the take the runabout out of rotation for a few days for functional checks and standard maintenance. He closed it up and piloted the runabout to one of the lifts that led to the maintenance deck. Once down there, he moved it over to a bay.

“Well, well, about time,” said one of the maintenance officers to Clark as he exited the runabout. “If you were any slower getting the craft down here, we might be able to write a novella.

“Yeah, well, I had to clean up somebody’s mess,” said Clark. “Some klutzy officer dropped some glass or something on the deck outside of the runabout. Trashed it in a replicator so you guys won’t have to worry about cutting your tender little hands,” he snarked.

The maintenance officer laughed. “Always good to have a battle of wits with someone so well equipped for battle, Roberts.”

Clark laughed, too. They’d become pretty good friends over the last few weeks and learned that each other loved a good round of roasting. “You too, man. You too. Oh, there was some kind of oily perfume on the glass. I got some on my hand so there might be some on the helm console.”

“Of course there is,” said the maintenance officer. “I’ll be sure to have someone else clean it off. You never know what some klutzy officer has spilled all over the consoles. Those helm guys are always bringing some sort of drink along. But perfume is a new one. Anyway, we’ll take care of it.”

Clark nodded. “Well, I’ll be off to the next one. I think you have one down here that’s going back up. A shuttlecraft I think.”

The maintenance officer waved his hand in the general direction of the requested shuttlecraft. Clark saw and made his way over.

The Dargol, the oily perfume that got into Clark’s cut, wasn’t enough to harm him. It would simply be absorbed into his body and then expelled through his sweat. It would then evaporate into a colorless, odorless, untraceable gas as it did on the flight deck when the thin glass bottle was broken.

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