snip

“It has been very nice meeting you, Helena. I should get off to engineering before I get put on report .. again.” Really, Helena, senior to him in rank and years, likely had somewhere she needed to go and El was holding her back.
- El, Eng

“It was very nice to meet you as well, El. I hope to see you around.” Helena made her way toward a lift. She really needed to a clean uniform and to freshen up a bit. If they decided to take a bridge photo before launch she didn’t want to look like a rumpled pile of laundry. That was fine for most days, but today, she’d put in the extra effort.

Laursen, pilot

On her way from the galley on the lowermost deck she passed by the gym and stopped hard. They had a gym here? A grin broke her tired features. Peeking in, she found it deserted, which was not unusual given that everyone was either settling or preparing for the launch. And it was just a deck down from her quarters and work in engineering. Her eyes scanned the machines and weights. They were mostly the same size, evidently gravity adjusted for weight. Pulling herself away from this she carried on. Perhaps she didn’t hate the ship quite so much as before, and meeting Helena had been nice. And she liked dragons.

But she was late – again – getting to Engineering and the Machine Shop. Engineering was bustling and, at that moment, as she gazed around, everyone seemed a stranger. Inside she knew this was not true. She had worked with a number of them over the past several months on the Bonaventure. It looked night and day. Her eyes moved hungrily over the Cochranes. It was huge! An engineering that spanned three decks! That was ¾ of the Bonaventure. Her eyes took it in. The displays winking with data, the raised central console as a kind of technological altar. Peering at that was like peering into the mysterious engines of Jules Verne’s Nautilus. She could smell metal and ozone and little else. The Cochranes were yet a sleeping giant. The other engineers, like Lilliputians, scrambled about it, around it, climbing up its sides in an effort to study and tame this fiery Gulliver. Oh how she envied them!!

Turning away she pressed on into the Machine Shop. It was her home for the next while. The sound behind her in the main engineering muted as she stepped inside, muffled and far now, punctuated only by an excited sound of some mystical mathematical discovery found hidden in these new engines. And here she stood in a foreign place. This was not a machine shop. She closed her eyes to take it in. On the Bonaventure to enter the machine shop was to enter into another world that burst onto the stage of her senses. Here it was simply inert. Gone was the powerful smell of lubricant and burnt steel and plastics. Gone was the feeling of creation and purpose. She opened her eyes. Crates piled wildly like giant tossed pebbles in a stream. Piping laying strewn like trees fallen in a forest. The lathe, drill and saw still wrapped. It was such a contrast to Engineering. The epitome of their technological cunning contained within powerful engines to propel them between the stars stood in stark contrast to a tinkerer’s garage. This could be a reflection of her own short life. The wonders of a world out there, understood in her mind by a dizzying array of mathematics, yet for much of her life a castaway, a meditative luddite, a cobbler of mixed technology. Still, it led her here. This was a far cry from the monastery or even Manticore. It was her new home.

El moved to a crate and sat on it and crossed her legs. Closing her eyes she breathed, seeking that center of herself. She needed that moment. The past two days had tossed her about like an unmoored buoy in a storm. Her reactions in it bore her frustrations when she should have sought to learn from them. Lt Green was right. She had been trying to find excuses for not completing the Bonaventure commissioning rather than facing the challenge to conquer it. It was done, but El had relied upon herself as the object of being the savior of her people and the martyr for failure. It was wrong. She had been rash. It was the thing that she had worked so hard to overcome; always she had wanted to rush ahead to act when situations called for calm assessment followed by meaningful action. Her eyes opened and the engineer machinist mathematician gazed around this shop, and planned. Then she worked, giving her muscles needed use. Time passed.

Later, El felt the hum of the Cochranes gently vibrating the deck plates. They were leaving. She went to the door and looked out at the other engineers. It looked like all of the stations and displays were manned. Everyone looked excited, those that she could see, the ants worrying over the giant bean they have found. She envied them in that moment, but then a thought struck her, and she turned and ran to a small window and looked out. Straining she could see the spider like Station falling away, then the circle of the Earth dwindling in size, now a blue, swirling marble hanging over a dark, pin-pricked curtain. Soon it was beyond her seeing. Earth was left behind.

She was safe.

Silently El returned to her organizing of the machine shop until her shift was done and she could at last close her eyes to sleep.
El, Eng

OOC: Gene you are such an amazing story teller. I adore El!

Jenn

OOC: Thank you so much Jenn!! :) :)
IC:

They were away now. Far from Earth. Warp 3.8 she heard – and cruising at that speed no less! It was an awareness that was just coming to her that each ship had a different feel while at warp. The Vigilance was old and was noticeably shaky while she was at warp. Well, warp 1.3 and was always there. It was a feeling that El had likened to the swaying of the old sailing ships. Always in motion, it took only days before it was background and not even noticed. The Bonaventure was different. While she was still old it had a ‘buzzy’ sensation like that of a bee not far off. Sometimes it was annoying and other times El simply imagined herself in a filed with them about her. Better than a mosquito sound! And now the third ship El had been on. The Sojourner. This feeling was a low vibration that started at the soles of her feet. She wondered whether ships could be identified by those sensory signals alone. Perhaps she would know this in time. But Warp 3.8! It almost made her feel giddy thinking of it, merging these two things – the vibrations and the speed. It was almost erotic. Or she was just tired.

El came to her cabin. F3. It wasn’t a long trip; she was close to her engines but away from the ‘power’, the department heads and executive officers. Perhaps someday she would be up there but for now, certainly right now, she didn’t care. Two days without sleep was catching up to her. Was Liz still her bunkmate? She hadn’t even looked when she came aboard and literally tossed her sea bag in and ran to the galley. Pressing the entry button, the door slid open. The Vigilance had older style doors. More bulkhead in style that hinged inward. Hers had creaked no matter how she had tried to fix it. That ship felt like she was aboard an old submarine. She wasn’t sure what the Sojourner felt like yet. Turning as she entered, El pressed the switch to close the door and turn on the lights. “Liz?” she asked. She had no idea who was assigned with her yet but hoped it was Liz.

Then El turned. The Vigilance bunked four. The Bonaventure two, but still it was four sharing a single head. Could this be right? There was no bunk. Her sea bag lay where it had landed. She stepped over it and peered around a narrow entry. A shower and facilities. For her? No bunkmate? El was stunned. Just her? A muddled euphoria battled with uncertain hope. It was something she had never considered, having a cabin to herself. Elation mixed with sudden loneliness, insecurity with possibility. A timid giggle echoed in the sparse, empty room. She was too tired to think further. Unpacking could wait for tomorrow before her shift. She would get up, meditate, go to the gym, eat and then unpack. Right now? El stank. Stripping out of her coveralls and separating herself from whatever disgusting thing clung to her like a bad date, she took a quick, exultant, three-minute cold shower. It felt wonderful. El studied the bed as she toweled her hair dry. If there was something that really didn’t change from ship to ship it was this. Reaching out, El pulled the thin mattress off. It sank to the deck in a heap next to her sea bag. She kept only the pillow and a single sheet. Wrapping herself in that as she lay on the cool, metal surface, El was almost immediately asleep.

Thus ended El’s first day on the Sojourner.