You consider all these items, chewing your lip. At last you say, "I don't suppose there's unclaimed space on the other side of this wall? I could progress much faster if I could spread all this out on a few folding tables or something. Make a bunch of stacks."
"Oh, hm, no, there's hallways on two sides and a bit of kitchen on the other— we'll have to expand into the mudroom. I'll sweep up." You give him a wrench to start taking the brackets off, then go back to the mudroom and get one of the pushbrooms off the wall. You'll pile up the dust and mud and crap in the far corner and temporarily captchalogue the coatracks and toolracks and whatnot. You can probably toss mucky boots and such right into the ablution basin for awhile. It'll be worth it just to get the office finally fucking sorted.
The first thing you do is hang a hands-free headset on your horn. As you get to work on the brackets, you call Yerick, the cargo bay crewman who has the misfortune to be the first troll aboard to give you a contact number. You ask him who you talk to about requisitioning some folding tables; he doesn't know, but he knows who knows. In this manner, you gain three new contact numbers for useful crewmen, and around the time Aspera is done clearing the mudroom area, a brownblood knocks on the door and de-captchalogues four square-meter-sized card tables. "Return 'em to the game room when you're done," she says. You stare at her for a long moment. "Sir," she adds uncomfortably. "Thank you, crewman; dismissed." You begin setting up the tables. "Hopefully I won't need to disrupt your living space for long, sir, but it's hard to say until I've done a bit more sorting."
"Oh, I'll go crash at Lainey's if it gets to be a bother," you say, waving him off. "She's my second mate, I suppose? Second matesprit, ha. Mostly sticks to communication sorts of things, I think she's actually allergic to physical labor. You'll meet her. She's nice."
So he has a matesprit. That's good. It's good that he has a matesprit. You resolve to like her. "Soonest begun, soonest done. If you don't object, sir, I'll just dig in right now and get started." You gather up an armload of papers and begin making stacks. ((i could've SWORN i posted this half an hour ago, wtf.))
"No, no objections here, have fun," you say, and scoop up your own personal files. You settle down in the boots-and-coats pile you'd shoved in the corner of the mudroom across from the hideous-muck pile and start carefully updating things you'd been meaning to get around to. Writing and doing sums turns into longer and longer intervals of resting your eyes before you tackle another row— it'd been a long night even before Kadros had turned up, you're entitled to take things at a little less than breakneck speed every now and again— and eventually you doze clean off.
Though to a casual observer you're completely sunk in your work, you're alert to every sound and movement your new superior makes, so you know when he falls asleep. Still, you wait a while before looking at him, lest the change in the sounds of your activity wake him back up. Oh good grief, he's adorable. It's just not right for someone of his rank and status to be adorable. You discreetly take a picture. As you return to work, you caution yourself that if you develop a crush, you're not to nurse it. You can privately acknowlege it, but there will be no pining or fantasizing, you will continue to think of celebrities or fictional characters in the shower, and there will definitely be absolutely no poetry.
You are interrupted from pleasant dreams of fighting a mountainlion to a harsh, loud siren. You sit up fast, spit the boot out of your mouth, and answer your phone. "Yes, what?" you ask groggily. Then: "OH. Oh, yes." You bounce to your feet, snap out your cane, and dash for the door. Then you remember you had a guest. You poke your head back inside, grinning like a snapbeast at a somewhat startled First Mate. "Captain Headcase is trying to coerce my staff into releasing Twitch back into his custody, which means he is knowingly and deliberately attempting to obtain and traffic illegal goods as well as interfering with the rightful operation of a fleet ship, etc, etc, so now I get to snap his horns off and make him EAT THEM. I'll be right back!"
You drop your unsorted stack on the nearest table and stride after him, dusting your hands. "I stand ready to assist you, of course, sir," you say in a calm tone that nevertheless betrays your interest. You haven't had a nice, cathartic bit of violence in far too long. Not that you'd shove your oar in when your CO is so clearly eager to do the business himself. Is he up for it? You know better than to assume the cane and prosthetic render him helpless; you've known trolls with worse damage who kicked cubic acres of ass. But it'll still be educational to see how he goes about it.
"I wouldn't mind if you wanted to take video," you say distractedly, legging it for the cart. You hop in, wait an impatient moment for him to settle himself, then whiz off— you're nearly the full length of the ship away from the action, so you apply a heavy tread to the go-pedal and take every backway and shortcut you know. You're pulling to a skidding halt in front of the helmspace and flinging yourself through the doors in hardly more than a minute. Hardcase, broad and tall and dressed in full dress uniform, big spikey bits and all, has the poor girl hefted under one arm like a sack of grubmeal. She is crying very quietly. He has one of his nasty, electrified gauntlets equipped and crackling— likes to slap his crew around with them, and it looks like he's asserted that privilege over a few of your crew. "HARDCASE," you bellow joyfully. "Oh shit," goes Hardcase, and drops his captive. He's older than you by several centuries and outmasses you by a factor of two or three hundred percent— despite this he remains a complete creampuff. You charge him gleefully, swing your steel-core cane down on the wrist of the hand he flings out to get you with, and then you're past his pathetic defense and tearing into him easy as anything. He howls, swats at you, and trips over his cape when he tries to abscond. Some nights it's just grand to be alive.
For several seconds that seem much longer than they are, you're staring at your captain with huge eyes and your mouth hanging half open as he goes on a bona-fide feral rampage. You very much doubt he'll need your help. Yeeeeeah, he's got this. The camera drones you brought out during the cart ride are all right on their own as well. The crewmembers are hanging back a bit -- wisely, you think, given the signs of Hardcase's gauntlet on their faces and forearms -- so you take the initiative to go fetch the kid. You go to one knee, loop her arm around your neck, and scoop her up. She hardly weighs anything. Her puffy pigtails make you think of Pancho a bit, but otherwise she's nothing like. Once well out of range of getting caught in the fight, you set her gently on her feet, keeping an arm around her in case she feels as wobbly as she looks. "All in one piece, princess?" you query. Damn. You meant to call her 'helmsman', not 'princess'. You're not in the habit of pale macking on pupas, you swear. You just get these lusus-ish feels sometimes.
You half-chase, half-ride Hardcase back to his ship, and, just before his crew close in, you snap the last few inches of barbed horn off and shove it in his mouth. He bites your hand up something fierce but you have him— he swallows. You let him go and he collapses, retching and clawing at his throat. His crew drags you off him— not as promptly as they might, you notice— and dutifully smack you around a bit, which you accept in the spirit of fairness and goodwill. Then they heave Hardcase up, still hacking and gagging, and drag him off through the nearest hatch. You're pretty sure one of the ensigns gives you a cheerful little salute as she goes. Ahhhh, he got you a few good ones with the glove. You won't be walking anywhere for a few days— you wouldn't be able to manage your cane, anyway, with your knuckles in this state, and it seems as if a few of your fingers on the horn-shoving hand have been bitten to the bone. You'll need a lot of glue. The pain hasn't hit yet, and if you're lucky you can ride the giddy surge of triumph all the way to the medical bay and it's delightful stash of narcotics. Kadros will find you sitting in the docking bay, tying ad-hoc bandages with your teeth and two working digits, and giggling.
Having assured yourself that the yellow pupa is in working order and not too traumatized to reply to questions with a nod or headshake, you deliver her into the hands of the medical crew and stride off in the direction your captain went. You hear what sounds like the end of the fight, Aspera's triumphant whooping and the dutiful rar-rar-we're-definitely-mad noise of Hardcase's intimidated crew. You find the place where the violet blood trails split, and follow the one closer to fuschia. You find him, the misfit prince, the mad creature, bandaging himself with rags instead of calling his trained and equipped crew to do the job. You stifle a sigh. Then you stride forward to greet him with a cheerful, "Well done, sir, the young helmsman is unhurt." You scoop him up just like you did her; you don't ask for permission because you don't want to hear a refusal. "May I fight the next one? I haven't put a fresh scar on my knuckles in a maskbeast's age."
"Get your own hobby, you brazen interloper," you say cheerfully. "This is the only bloodsport I get to have anymore, we're not all lucky enough to go frolicking around on alien planets and punching alien dragons in the face." You wriggle a bit to get both elbows planted on the same broad shoulder and peer around from your new vantage point. "I say, this is excellent, you're very large. You can be my new fourwheel device, I hate that thing, doesn't go on grass. I'm going to be absolutely hacked off tomorrow, you'd better be extra nice and make sympathetic noises when I complain about the consequences of my rash and ill-considered actions or I'll fire you." You lick some blood off your arm so it doesn't drip on his nice shirt. "Did you see where my eyepatch went? If Hardcase took it I'm going to fucking bill him."
"Noted, sir," you say mildly to the warning about tomorrow. You're entirely sanguine about the prospect of carrying him around. About the eyepatch: "No, and I was following your blood trail so I would've seen anything on the ground. I'm afraid you'll have to requisition another from medical, sir, I'm sorry. But I'll help you decorate it if you like. I have glitter pens."
"Ha! Is that a sense of humor I detect? That's not in the regulations, is it, soldier. Pfftht. Neither is all this pump juice I'm dripping down your backside, I'm terribly sorry. About your backside." You giggle. Backside. "I'm gonna confiscate your glitter pens," you tell him. "I want glitter pens. I have no glitter pens. As ranking officer I deserve glitter pens."
"No, sir," you say apologetically. "My glitter pens aren't contraband, neither have I failed to do any required maintenance on them, so you can't confiscate them. Also, if you think Planetary Marines don't have a sense of humor, you don't know Planetary Marines. On duty we might be stone statues, but off duty we're disgusting." You stride into the medical block and set him down on the treatment platform beside the yellow girl's. This isn't the official sick bay, you don't think, but it's the one you know how to find, and it's probably closest. You step back as personnel cluster round to stop him leaking royalty all over the floor, but you stay in conversational range. "Is Hardcase's crew likely to retaliate, sir?"
You giggle again. "Heavens, no. They very nearly slipped me some tongue while they were pulling me off him." You shift about as the helmscrew strips you down to your briefs and gets to work. "I want drugs!" you announce. "No," Sal, the medical department head, tells you. "You're fired." "No," Sal says. You grumble loudly and suffer yourself to be scrubbed, disinfected, and glued back together. "Drugs," you mutter. Sal flicks your horn.
To distract him, you ask, "What would you like me to do with the video, sir? I had three microdrones filming from the time we drove up. They got some very nice footage." You turn your husktop so he can see the frame you're paused on: an overhead view of him making Hardcase eat a chunk of his own horn. "I'd be happy to edit it together for you, but I'd need to know what sort of film I'm making. Evidence? A music video? Or would you like to be CruelTube famous?"
"Evidence," you say. "Though I wouldn't mind a music video set to There's A Hole In My Bucket. Send all the raw footage to Lainey, she handles this sort of thing." You tell him her number, then add, "I think she must be off with— with a friend, right now. Else she'd be here. Leave her a message. Tell her to bring me drugs. This is really starting to hurt." "No drugs," Sal says firmly. "Not until you have depth perception." You make a rude noise at him. "Turns out growing a new eyeball takes a long time," you tell Kadros. "And in the meanwhile the list of things you're not supposed to bloody well eat, drink, or snort is longer than the Empress's goddamn bulge. I do not recommend the activity."
