THE SPACE NAVY AU (18+)

You hesitate for a moment, but he's likely to follow you anyway. And you can't quite help but enjoy him tagging along after you, as much as you try. You give in with hardly a grimace.

"If you don't follow my instructions to the very letter, you'll probably die of getting all your skin broiled at once," you warn him. "I'm not joking, that's how Marrio bit it just last sweep."

The rustblood slinks unhappily into the backseat of the transport device, an expression on their mangled face that conveys a devout wish to be forgotten about. Bel takes passenger side again and the two of you leave them to it-- you have to hand it to the young fellow, Bel's got a wonderful touch with traumatized lowbloods. It's almost enough to make you genuinely like the little anklebiter.

You give him a rundown of the pipe systems on the way to Pump Sixteen: how the water used for cleaning and gardening and pissing is distilled via waste heat from mechanical industry, generating electricity for domestic consumption on the way, then run through a million miles of void-facing capilaries to distribute that heat safely out from troll-occupied living spaces, then precipitated nice and clean and cool back into storage tanks to be used all over again.

"There's a non-negligible amount of loss at every stage," you conclude. "Water escapes, heat radiates unevenly, and of course electrical power isn't a traditionally trollish endeavor, our batteries are crap compared to most alien storage systems. But it keeps the lights on without resorting to expensive glow-feed or much in the way of toxic byproducts, and that's not nothing. And there's no end of dirty ice comets to snag, when we need top-ups. It's all a bit mad, but we're self-sufficient, and at the end of the quarterly budget that's really all that matters."

 

You. Are. Fascinated.

All concerns about status and rivalry are forgotten. All is coolant systems and joy. "The comet ice goes directly into the distillation system? Or is there molecular filtration first or what? There's dissolved metals and stuff, isn't there?" You've got a blank book out and are drawing flow charts for his setup. "Would this work on a smaller vessel, or is there not enough waste heat?"

 

"If you were sailing a rowboat then I doubt there'd be much waste heat, but smaller systems can actually run hotter, since there's so much less volume to circulate the air in." You glance over at Kadros's book, then get so interested you nearly run the cart into the wall of a T-intersection. Giving a little growl of annoyance, you flip the parking break and take the notebook away, decaptchaloguing a pencil and starting to correct the schematics.

It isn't until a good many pages and wrangling later that you hear a tiny, miserable cough.

"The pump? Sir?" the rustblood squeaks, then looks ready to bail directly out of the cart.

"Oh, damn," you say. "No, don't go anywhere, you're right, I forgot. Let's go see it."

You manage to get the rest of the way there with no-- alright, very few-- further distractions. Once you get there, you equip your toolbox right into Kadros's arms, then swap your wardrobe out fast for work shorts and a comfortably ratty old tank top. You're going to get drenched, no point in ruining any more of your nice Captain's togs.

You settle your toolbelt over your hips, and sigh, taking in the mess: hissing pipes, standing puddles, mysterious thumping and howling noises from behind wall paneling, flourishing and fluorescent fungal growths everywhere, and an atmosphere so humid it has your gillslits twitching.

"Hope you got enough sleep yesterday, old thing," you tell Kadros. "This is what we're going to be doing today."

 

The place is such a mess you almost didn't get distracted by his tiny, tiny shorts. Almost.

You've never witnessed plumbing that howls before.

"We're gonna need an old priest and a young priest," you deadpan.

 

"Don't be such a wriggler, it's just air pressure," you tell him. To illustrate how tremendously mature you yourself are, you pluck a very wet, squashy mushroom off the nearest bulkhead and throw it at him.

 

You catch it in the toolbox. "You aren't growing these on purpose? I can be on de-shrooming duty then, if you want."

 

"No, these are rogue, I believe." You pull another off the wall and lick it, to check, then wince. "Yes, they're the sort we just grind up and compost. They're technically edible but you have to boil them for an hour or two before they stop tasting like a fistful of petrochemicals, and after that they taste only of a pinch of petrochemicals, so it's just not worth the hassle. Unfortunately they grow like hell given the least excuse to do so, so... Here we are. Scrape them off with the flat-edged doohicky-- yes, that one, I think it's usually for spreading epoxy?-- and stick them somewhere for later."

You yourself get out an adjustable spanner and start taking the bulkhead plating off the nearest howling wall segment. You're going to really have to burrow in, it sounds like. Hopefully this Kadros is a little less snide about your work habits than the other one.

 

You beckon the red, who approaches as if expecting to be stabbed with the paint scraper. You don't attempt to smile and put them at ease, because that always backfires. Sticking to business is better. "Do you have a bin or something we can put these in? Thanks. Are you sticking around, or do you have other duties you need to get to? If Heinsz isn't expecting you back, I could use your help."

Of course, it's Aspera's say what the crew members do, not yours, but he seems to be armpit deep in the plumbing and burrowing steadily. If he gets stuck in there you are not going in after him. You get claustrophobic shudders just thinking about it. It's interesting, though, that he seems to have been telling the truth about working hard. You'd assumed that was just the Highblood's Burden nonsense your Erskin wanders into from time to time -- he's responsible for everyone by being in charge, therefore he works hardest, because all their work is his in a way, sort of thing. But Captain Aspera just got into his shameless gym shorts and Mariow'd into the pipes. Good on him.

You kick the square plastic tub the now-slightly-less-nervous red produced under the shroomiest bit of the project and begin scraping the fungus into it. The red follows behind with a stiff scrub brush and what smells like barely diluted bleach, getting the tough web of mycelium out of the crevices. It's hard work, and kind of stinky, but it feels good to make a visible difference to something.