She had not requested help when moving her equipment from the cargo bay to her lab. Her lab, as the CSO had mentioned. Sure she might have to share here and there, but for the most part people would leave her to her own devices and she could do what she came here to do.

The slight twisting feeling in her stomach lasted only a few minutes as she had made her way to the cargo bay and she made a show id disregarding it as much as possible. Now what not the time for guilt over anything. It would all work out in the wash, or so she was constantly reminding herself.

Entering her security code on the one crate, Faye had lifted lid and grinned deeply. It was beautiful. To most people it would be silly to get excited over a few pieces of technology but she was excited, enthralled even as she beheld the key to her work for the next several weeks and months.

Pulling out the signal converter, it didn’t look like much, but she knew better, as would anyone with a decent amount of programming experience. The smart ones she would have to be wary of, but for the most part she knew that they would be looking for something far different than what would actually be found. If only she could do this without all the secrecy. People’s were already piqued when she spoke the word classified and there was nothing she could do about that. to try and explain otherwise would ruin not just all her work, but the hard work of others who had as much invested in this as she did. It was lonely though.

Oh stop your complaining and just get on with it, she chided herself. Self-pity is what usually got her into trouble. At least she was on her meds still, and she was strangely comfortable with that. Now was a terrible time to try and work without them.

Moving the anti-grav sled that contained a crate full of stuff she needed from her other crates, Faye began the work of setting up her conversion system, half of which she had helped to fine-tune. An hour later there was a set of snaking cables from one panel that cut across the corner of the lab and was integrated into the ship’s circuitry, half through the lab’s contained computer core. The rest were loose but sealed off until she could integrate them into the larger mainframe of the ship for the bigger tests. But for now she would work contained. As much as she had joked about re-styling her hair, the risk was real until she eliminated a few variables that no simulation could fully predict or counter.

Sealing the unused equipment into the crate and tucking it away, Faye got down to the nitty gritty of what would likely take her days to do before she could actually do any of her actual work.

A sealing cap was stuck in between her teeth as she dd the physical work of delicately splicing and reconnecting the various optic cables. Sure, it meant sitting on the hard floor for ages but she had dealt with worse and wasn’t about to grumble about it. Faye was anything but soft.

~Faye Calloway, Data Scientist