Duty, Honour, Love
Chapter 42

Suddenly the hatch slammed shut almost taking Jaye’s fingers off and trapping Cain inside.

“Fuck!” Jaye said tapping the console to get the hatch open.

“Hey!” Cain shouted pounding on the hatch. “You guys this ain’t funny.”

The exit hatch below the housing opened and a fountain of water sprayed into the chamber.

“Shit, shit, shit close it off!” Cain wailed as water rapidly filled the chamber. He panicked thinking he was going to drown.

Outside Jaye pounded on the hatch. “I can’t get this open!” She could hear Cain desperately hammering on the hatch from the inside. “We need to get this open now!”

“Engineer Strong,” Wenasi commed Danielle sounding a lot calmer than both Humans. “Increase air pressure to PD nine.” He turned to Jaye, “Better burst ear drums than drowning?” He pulled out a datapad placing it against the console. “See here is the fault.” He tapped the diagram on his datapad. “Ok Engineer Strong turn off the pressure.”

The hatch popped open and water gushed out along with Cain.

“Cain, Cain?” Jaye gasped grabbing Cain out of the water pooling in the corridor. He was soaking wet. “You ok!” She shook him.

“Don’t leave me alone ever again,” Cain managed to stutter shivering with cold. “I thought I was going to die!”

“He’ll be ok once we get him to a Cell Stitcher,” Wenasi said.

“Imperial ships don’t have Cell Stitchers.”

“That’s an oversight. The Cell Stitcher would have him up and about quicker than you think.”

The sound if heavy hurrying footsteps stopped Jaye from saying something she’d regret later.

“What the Hell is going on here!” Strong demanded.

“This hatch closed.” Wenasi pointed to the hatch out of the chamber. “And the egress hatch opened.”

“It shouldn’t have done that the safety protocols would have triggered,” Danielle said thoughtfully.

“But they didn’t and I nearly drowned Cain!” Jaye shouted at her.

“Calm down Jaye. Take Cain to his quarters. Both of you take a break we’ll deal with this.”

“Yes ma’am,” Jaye said she’d nearly said ‘Sir’.

Danielle watched the two stagger down the corridor. She turned to Wenasi the Ezaran watched her with interest.

“Right let’s analyse what went wrong?”

“That’s easy,” Wenasi replied. “There was a fault in the programming subroutine caused by faulty sensors. An easy fix.” He tapped a few icons on his datapad. “That fixed it.”

“Just like that?” Danielle said surprised.

“Certainly,” Wenasi grinned.

The housing lowered without further incident and the two of them completed the work Cain had started.

“If that’s it for now. I’m heading back to engineering and do some fault tracing of my own,” Danielle said to Wenasi.

“See you later Engineer Strong!”

Sometime later Danielle headed to the mess hall. Although hall was misnomer for the cramped space the crew ate their meals and played on the entertainment machines. There was an equally small kitchen that served hot meals when they had fresh supplies. At the back of the room was a ration pack dispenser. Danielle had filled when they had arrived knowing they’d be here for a while. They hadn’t had a decent cooked meal since their ordeal began. Danielle sat at a table and munched her ration pack regretting they hadn’t brought any coffee with them. Jane had been through in ransacking the supplies and had taken all the coffee with her. She took a sip of her water. It tasted as it always did bland and recycled. The door slid open and Wenasi entered.

“Mind if I joined you?” he asked.

“Danielle shrugged her shoulders. “Sure.”

Wenasi sat opposite and pulled a flask and two thimble sized cups from the tool case he was never without. He opened his flask and poured the contents into the cups. It looked black and oily.

“What’s that?” Danielle asked.

“Valkyrie Festival Wine.” He pushed one cup towards her.

Danielle regarded the cup and it contents. “This looks like something I’d clean the corrosion off parts with?” She looked again at the cup. “No make it the stuff left over after I’ve cleaned off the corrosion?”

“The Valkyrie drink all the time.”

Danielle picked up the cup wondering whether Wenasi was telling the truth. “Right if this kills me I’ll come back as a ghost and kick you butt from here to next week!” She swallowed the contents it tasted of aniseed and mint. It slid pleasantly down her throat. “That wasn’t so bad,” she said. Then it hit her stomach and she felt as if she was about to explode. Her vision blurred and things went black.

She woke with a pounding migraine and her guts were churning. She felt bile fill her throat and she barely made it into her little bathroom in time. With her head over the sink she heaved the contents of her stomach into it. She was lucky that her quarters actually had a bathroom the captain’s didn’t. It was at that moment that she realised that she was naked. She never slept naked she’d had to attend too many incidents in engineering to sleep in the raw. In fact Captain Stillway had often commented that she looked like she had slept in her clothes. Which was the truth but she’d never told him that. Her bed was far more rumpled that she’d expected from being drunk. What she couldn’t explain was that her clothes were thrown about. She’d been drunk before but none of the other times had she stripped naked and made a mess of her bed. She tried to remember what happen but with a pounding migraine it was hard to focus on anything. Danielle shook herself she had work to do. She took a cold shower it was good not to have to ration water and stepped out into the corridor outside her quarters.

Jaye yawned and opened the door of her quarters to see two Ezaran in civilian clothes walk past carrying the arm of a point defence railgun. “Where the Hell are you going with that!” she yelled at them. “And who the Hell are you?”

They stopped one of the Ezarans turned to regard her. “Wenasi said he needed help,” it stated.

That might have been a problem if Jaye hadn’t put on her translator on.

“We putting this on the transport,” the other Ezaran added.

“Ok just be careful I’ll have to recalibrate the matrix if you drop it?”

“We will,” the Ezarans said and hurried down the corridor.

Another unfamiliar Ezaran trundled past wheeling a railgun ammunition canister easily as tall as it was.

“Be damn careful with that,” she barked at the Ezaran.

“Yes, yes as careful as holding a little one!”

Jaye shook her head and went in search of Loader Cain. She found him in conversation with Wenasi.

“Who are all these people and why are they on my ship?” Jaye wasn’t in a good mood. She still felt guilty about yesterday.

“Helping, you need help and I have provided it,” Wenasi said.

“Look it’ll get the job done quicker,” Cain told her.

“I will be doing an inventory later,” Jaye said and then coloured realising she said inferring that the Ezarans were magpies picking up anything shiny. “Sorry!” she blurted out. With a quick turn she headed back to her quarters before she could put her foot further into her mouth.