"A drink sounds fine by me," Yasmien says with the biggest smile Caution probably has ever seen.  As if the reddening face was a signal for another hug, she grabs him and gives him yet another one, this time squeezing hard - not that she could really squeeze this guy, and it was not aimed at hurting; more to squeeze him up tight against herself, hoping to make him remember her for a long, long time to come.  Plus, she rarely got to hug anyone anyway, and this was one of the few guys she ever would consider hugging, so why miss the chance?

"You go get them, you heartbreaker you!" she tells his ear while hugging him.

While Shui works on her hand, Saskia keeps her eyes averted.

"Sorry." she says for what feels, to her, like about the hundredth time, as pain, which is currently pure imagination, causes her to wince and pull her hand away again, "I'm just a bit squeamish.  Don't like blood.  Especially when it's mine."

Trying to keep her attention off the doctor's work, she looks instead at the open cabinets and drawers.  "So, been having a tidy up?" she finally asks, her voice sounding weak and strained.

"Oh, and do you have something I can be sick in?  Just in case."

Without looking around, Shui reaches out with a foot, absently snagging a small basket from the floor, guiding it to her hand.  Placing it one the table next to Saskia, she continues to check the woman's hand.  "Just...searching for...tracking devices."  She pauses, looking up.  "Navy tracking devices.  You may vomit in that, should you wish.  Please."

The doctor nods, slowly, before splinting Saskia's hand.  "I have a lot of experience with blood, else I suspect I would be rendered ill by the sight.  This will hold your hand steady for a while, allowing the internal injury to close.  It is deep, but not terribly serious."  She looks up again.  "Painful, though, when the 'shot' wears off.  There is some small damage to the surrounding tissue.  I will spray it shut," Shui continues, picking up a tube of Seal-All^TM, "and you will refrain from using it for at least four hours.  Allow the wound to begin the inner sealing.  Then be careful with it, and do not overwork it.  I realize you have duties, but if you overwork the hand, you may permanently damage it...which would pose severe difficulty in your carrying out of future duties."

The spray-bandage is a cool wind on the back of Saskia's numb hand.  Shui raises one eyebrow when she finishes.  "Now.  Should the pain return, take standard pain relievers.  Should they not suffice, return here, and I will give you something stronger.  Do not concern yourself with it - I am here to assist, and this-" a wave at the hand "-definitely requires assistance."

"Oh, right.  Like the one in the belly turret station." Saskia stands, inspecting her hand.  She looks like it's something that's been dead for a couple of weeks, somewhere warm.

"Well, seeing as how I've been told not to do any real work for a while, maybe I can help you out here?  Sorta return the favour?  I've got a hand scanner back in engineering that should pick up even the tiny charge in a bug."

She smiles, "It's not a bug detector, but the manufacturers claim it can pick up the current in a fly's brain, when it's dreaming.  I can fetch it up here and help you search if you want?"

Jett had returned to his quarters, then realised that his tunic was still on the bridge, along with the comm code for the local Naval recruiting office.  With a sigh, he returns to the bridge, steps through the door, and stops in his tracks.

Kal-chan and Yas are... hugging!  I've known Yas for, what, five years?  I've never seen her hug anybody!  I'd best go before she notices me and makes my life a misery until I leave.

He turns to leave quietly, and fails entirely as his hip bangs against the side of a control panel and knocks a datapad to the floor with a loud clatter.

"Hm?"  Shui glances up again, just finishing off the spraying.  So there were definitely more bugs.  She listens quietly while the Engineer goes over her plan, then slowly nods.  "Yes...yes, I believe that might be suitable.  In fact, likely will.  There are few electronic devices, here, and things that do carry a current I can sweep myself.  If your sensor functions properly, it would be of enormous assistance."

Again, that small smile as she pushes her glasses up.  "I would appreciate it no end, Ms. Blake.  And it would certainly allow your hand the time to rest."

And you, perhaps.
This message was last edited by the player at 17:47, Wed 21 Dec 2005.

"Jett!  You need a hug too!" Yas calls out and breaks away from the reddening Caution, takign a step towards the navigator with arms spread wide and an equally wide smile on her lips - somehow appearing a little bit like the spider closing in on the fly caught in its web.

"C'mon, you know you have wanted this ever since you came aboard all those years ago," she coos, yes, actually coos and bats her eyelashes at him.  Of course she is really enjoying this, knowing fully well that neither of the guys have ever seen her like this, and it no doubt makes them nervous.  But then, she has had very little reason to actually hug either of them before, and what better way to make them remember her by than to show that she is indeed a fully grown woman under her rough Marine surface.

In addition, the sight of their faces will keep her grinning for many a weeks to come.

"Please, call me Saskia.  I'll be right back."

She almost runs back to engineering, and is back just a couple of minutes later, "Here we are.  If there's anything here that shouldn't be, we'll soon find it."

The scanner consists of a rectilinear block, about twenty centimetres long. by ten wide and five high.  A transparent panel at one end  reveals a tightly wound coil, laid horizontally across that end of the unit.  There is a display window on the top, and a pistol grip and trigger underneath.

"It has a range of about half a metre, but gives better results if you get closer.  I'll do the scan, and if I find anything, you can tell me if it should be there.  Okay?"

A look of concern is quickly replaced by a grin of amusements as Jago stands in the bridge doorway and watches Yasmin close in on her new victim. He leans one shoulder casually against the doorframe, his bulk blocking any escape through the narrow space, and rolls a cigar between his fingers.

“You guys were quite safe while signed on, but now,” Jago shakes his head in mock despair.

Shui waits for the other woman to return, smiling faintly when she does.  Saskia gets around pretty quickly when she wants to do so.  The doctor studies the tool with some interest, cocking her head to the side, then pushing her glasses up and leaning forward.  "What a fascinating tool...Saskia.  I would definitely like to observe its use - in all likelihood I will learn something useful.  Yes, please go ahead - I will inform you if there ought to be current in an area or device."  She frowns.  "Though I am hardly a designer.  Still, it should be easy enough to verify with those things for which I cannot say...."

With a nod to the other woman, Shui slips around behind her, staring at the display.

On the bridge, Jett finds himself trapped, a situation which brings an admitadly embarrassed smile from Kal-chan.

"What's the matter, Navy?  Too used to letting the Marines deal with the close-quarters action?"

Then, shocked by his own daring, he shuts up and raises his hands to Yas in a gesture of pacification.

"Thanks, Jago." mutters Jett, "If I hadn't already quit, you'd be getting my resignation later."

He glares at Kal-chan, for the taunt, and then tries one last gambit.  "Yas, are you sure you want to do this?  I mean, hugging a Navy officer?  Think of your reputation."

Then he surrenders, realising that he's outnumbered.

"Caution," Yas says and looks back at him with a grin, "I had no idea you were such a ladies man!  Lucky for me you're leaving, uh?" she teases him and then turns back to the navigator with the same grin.

"Why, Are We There Jett, I didn't know you cared!"  She bats her eyelashes at him and advances again, "Reputation?  Who here would ever dare telling anyone?  Hardly you," she continues and then gives him a big hug as well.  While hugging him she looks over at Jago with a look that might scare him a little.

"You want one too, Skippy?" she asks him in a very feminine manner, so completely unlike her usual way to speak.  All the while she is squeezing the soon to be former navigator of the ship they all have been on for what feels like an eternity - but not because it has been boring or tedious in their company.

"I will miss you," she whispers to Jett while keeping her smile aimed at the captain of Profit Margin.

In the medbay, Saskia starts checking for bugs, moving the hand scanner quickly and smoothly.  Every so often the display flickers, and she moves the device back a little to take a better look at what it picked up.  In most cases a quick inspection reveals the cause of the blip to be perfectly, but when Saskia isn't sure, as in the case of some of the medical equipment, Shui is there to give her expert opinion.

And so the work continues.

"Here's something!" laughs Saskia as the scanner picks up a current, followed by a disappointed, "Oh." as Shui indicates that the thing should really be there.  Again.

She sighs, and recommences the search.

"I had no idea you had so much electronic stuff in here, Shui.  I don't need to come in here that often, so I suppose I just never noticed it.  Only time I was in for anything serious was a few years ago.  Smoke inhalation.  Even then I just stopped by for a quick checkup, and went back to my own room."

Jago grins and waves of Yasmin’s offer as he clears the doorway and heads for the comms set. “Better not, I’m still on the crew roster.”

“Last job before you to split,” he says as he pulls out a seat, “find us somewhere suitable for this farewell drink.”

Once at the set, Jago Ignores the activities behind him and gets to work.

OOC
You guys will know by now that Jago never quibbles about footing the bill for this kind of thing.

"Regrettably," Shui agrees, "much of the equipment is electronic.  Too much, in my opinion.  I try to avoid using it as much as possible - I need to be able to feel my way through a diagnosis more than depend on a machine.  The vagracies of human biology are far more different than those of machines."

She frowns, hoping she didn't make the wrong point.  "Not to say that all machines are the same.  They certainly are not, even from the same assembly-line.  But the variations are...smaller," the doctor finishes, shrugging.

"How did it come about that you - no, that has a battery, but I shall check it in any case - that you suffered from smoke inhalation, Saski?"

"Hey!  No need to apologise to me for not liking machines.  Sometimes I'm not too fond of them myself." Saskia says, with a laugh.  "I understand what you mean about instruments too.  There's times when I feel like I can tell more from talking to the drives, or just touching the casings, than I can from the readouts."

A nervous pause, then, "Does that sound crazy?"

Saskia waits, while Shui eliminates another of the medical devices from the search, "The smoke was an accident.  Jago paid out a bonus, and I decided I was going to stay at the best hotel in town for one night.  Take a bath instead of a shower, and dress in something other than a shipsuit for once."

The engineers shoulders slump, "No such luck though.  Some dumb frelling vargr planted an incendiary charge because he was drunk, and he'd lost a fight with a human.  The hotel wouldn't let him in because he was in a mess, and he just lost it.

"The place caught fire, and the suppression systems failed.  People were going to die, trapped on the top floors.  I got a lot of guests to the roof, because the elevators had shut down, and there was fire in the stairwells.  Lucky I had my commlink, and Jett and Yas came in the 'raft and helped me set up a rope slide to the next building.

"Managed to get everybody out, and saved the life of an aslan ambassador and his two aides.  Got an award from them, and a letter that gives any ship I'm working on special rights at any port in aslan space."

She smiles then, though she still looks sad.  "Suppose they thought I was some sort of hero, but I was just acting on instinct, in a panic.  Even afterwards I couldn't think straight, and did some stupid things for the next couple of days.  So much for Saskia Blake's Big Night of Luxury."

"Not crazy at all.  When one begins to understand the ways things connect, in one's chosen profession, one can find the smallest of issues, diagnose it, from subconcious observation of changes to small to conciously note."  She pauses, then smiles.

"And that, of course, is not even getting into the realm of the spiritual...which, I fear, is beyond my knowledge, but not my acknowledgement.  If you get my meaning."

Watching Saskia continue the search, listening to her speak, Shui is struck by a wave of sympathy for the other woman.  Someone else might have laughed, seeing only the amusing parts of the story (and there are those, to be certain), but to Shui, it speaks of loneliness and longing.  A desire to have something different, to be different, just for a night.  To dream and experience, just for a night.  All dashed, all through coincidence.  'Wrong place, wrong time'...and the night is shattered.

Reaching out, she puts one hand on Saskia's shoulder.  "Perhaps in our next port, we can arrange something like that.  Singly, or together, depending on your wish."  A small smile.  Everyone has dreams.  If you can't pursue them, just for a night, where does that leave you?

If only my family understood that, she thinks ruefully, squeezing Saskia's shoulder then releasing.

Saskia smiles, "That could be good, yes.  Maybe see if Yas wants to come along too.  Just us girls together."

Then she laughs, "But wherever we go, we ask to see their fire safety certification first, before we order anything."

She returns to her work, painstakingly covering everything, in excruciating detail, and happily chatting to Shui.  It's almost like working in engineering, but at least she knows that the answers Shui gives aren't just in her own head.

Jett hugs Yas, and replies, louder than Yas' whisper, "I'll miss everybody here too, Yas.  Profit Margin crew... we're family.  I'm counting on you to look after them until I come back."

Releasing the gunner, he crouches and pats the deck, "And I'm counting on you to look after Yas."

"Yeah.  She'll look after me," Yas says and barely avoids having her voice crack.  Feeling something strange in her eye she brushes past Jett towards the crew lounge.  "Duty calls.  See you boys in a bit," she calls out, sounding like the same old Yas as always.

But once she finds herself alone in the crew lounge a single tear begins to flow over in her eye, and as she walks with long, determined strides into the cargo hold it breaks free and wanders down her cheek.  Stopping just inside the entrance she leans back against the wall and as her head falls back to gaze up towards the ceiling a hand comes up to remove the incriminating evidence from her cheek.

An unknown amount of time later she pushes away fromt he wall and moves over to a nearby wall panel.  Crouching down she begins to remove it, whereupon she busies herself with whatever is inside.  Her hands and fingers get dirty, but she does not seem to notice even as she wiped her cheeks with them, focusing on her work.

Its a long, hard bit of work, leaving Shui time to talk with Saskia and consider her words.  Just us girls together.  An odd feeling.  She knows what it is, of course.  Belonging certainly isn't alien to the doctor.  But it has been awfully rare feeling for the past...well, many years.

It's just one comment, in the middle of their work, but sometimes one comment can brighten your day.

When they finally finish, Shui sits back on the floor and brushes back her hair before adjusting her glasses, vexed.  "Well.  I should be pleased," she begins, "not to find anything wrong...but at the same time, I am bizarrely vexed that we spent so much time to unearth nothing."  Amused at her strange feelings, she shakes her head.

"Just be grateful we found nothing." Saskia smiles, "If we'd found one thing, then Yas would have been in here next, ripping the place apart just to be on the safe side.  And she'd do it the old-fashioned way.  No hitech gear for Yas, she doesn't completely trust them."

The engineer grows thoughtful then, "I guess she's a bit like us in that.  She'd rather trust instinct than some gadget.  Must be what they used to call feminine intuition."

She shrugs, and heads for the door, pausing as it slides open, "Thanks for letting me help, Shui.  It took my mind off my hand for a while."

Shui slowly pulls herself off the deck.  "I shudder at the though of Ms. Crow unleashed upon my laboratory.  It is possible she will decide to check these walls despite our 'success'."  The doctor grows silent, considering Saskia's words regarding intuition.  Men are gadget-prone; perhaps there is something to that old saying.

"I was honored to accept your assistance," she finishes, with a quick little bow.  Reflex, one she has not been able to eradicate, after all these years.  "Please, be free to stop by the lab and search again, any time you wish."  Again, that small smile, slowly fading as the door closes.

Shui glances around, experimentally.  Then she moves to the door, waiting until Saskia is long gone, and keys the lock.  Back into the room, and she begins pushing furniture about.  Things aren't right.  Things are downright dangerous - she has actually pulled her gun with intent to use, not clean, in the last eight hours.  Bugs aboard the ship.  What next?

Best to use the free time productively.