Two days in J-Space, and all is quiet.  Nothing much for anybody other than Saskia and Shui to do, and even their duties are much reduced.

Shui's days become a pleasant routine.  She gets up in the morning, does her own exercises privately, then does a slightly different set when Corlan arrives for his.  When finished, she offers the man tea, each and every day, choosing to spend that time talking with him regarding his travels, getting to know him as much as possible.

When that pleasant diversion is completed, she goes for breakfast, taking more time to converse with anyone who happens to be in the galley.  From there, it's off to the Low Berths, checking on their passangers.  For a while after, she has free time - it is mostly spent in her 'office', going through Corlan's journals.  She finds them fascinating.  Shui does, however, take the time to get out every half an hour or so, to walk the ship and check to make certain everyone has what they need.

Then it's time for lunch, and more discussion with anyone on hand.  More time spent walking the ship, offering refreshments to the crew on duty and any passangers she comes across.  More free time follows, which she spends on anything that seems appropriate - speaking with people, getting to know the the crew, answering any questions from the passangers.

After a light dinner, after another walkaround, she sequesters herself in her quarters for an hour and a half, then comes out to check the Low Berths again. 

At some point, though, she pages Jago.  "Captain Lanza?  If you have a moment, I would like to speak to you.  The children are expressing interest in the bridge of the ship.  I wondered if it might be possible for them to have a tour...carefully supervised, of course."

Yasmine's day become a routine.  She gets up too early in the morning as usual, as it would not do to break the habit, does her exercises alone or with Tylen if he is up to it, showers and goes about checking for hidden bugs as well as doing the routine checks on various systems.

One by one the others wake up and gets in her way or simply sits around being lazy, to lesser or greater lengths, but she keeps up her jokes and the discipline such as it is, even if the latter is not very serious at all.  Not even Jago can complain about it, as it is more in jest than anything.

Tylen, apart from the optional workouts, get a tour of the ship - in the sense of where the weak and strong points are.  She also shares her opinions about the weapons and any quirks in the system that comes up from time to time.

The rest of the day looks a lot like the morning, until the evening comes.  That is when she spends time tinkering with her motorcycle out in the hold.  While she hardly claims to love the bike or anything, it is something to do, something that takes her mind off other things.


OOC:  Yeah, I ripped it of from someone.  ;)  Call it a homage, or get shot.  8)

Saskia's days become a pleasant routine.  She spends most of her time napping in Engineering, or eating large quantities of chocolate - no!  Wait!  That's somebody else's days.

Saskia's real days involve her stripping out components from the thruster systems and replacing them with ones that she knows won't embarrass her by dying within the next ten minutes.  Then, often, she removes and replaces the replacements, because she suspects them of lying to her.  Plasma containment field chambers are particularly prone to that, to the extent that Saskia knows that if she were to look up the word "liar" in a dictionary, the definition would include a schematic of a plasma containment field chamber.

She makes occasional forays to the coffee machine, padding across the lounge on bare feet, after first checking that Shui is not about.  It occurs to her that she should remove the dirty dressing and speak to the medic about her injured hand, see if it needs a fresh covering on it.  Unfortunately, the thought of what manner of gruesomeness might be lurking under the current dressing, waiting to leap out and give her nightmares, prevents her doing what she knows she should.

OOC: If Yasmine can rip off other peoples' posts, then I can.  I'm a less good riter and need the help.  :o)

Time in ‘J’ space passes all to quickly for Jago, a game of chess with Corlan, a guided tour of the flight deck for the kids a bit of paper work and the routine pilot checks, two days passes like so many hours.

At his desk, with the door open of course, Jago takes a break, with a hot black coffee in one hand, an unlit cigar in the other and the soft sounds of classical music in his ears, Jago slouches in his chair and stars long and hard at the two pristine white objects in the metal tray on the desk and smiles.

Conrad finds most Jumps boring.  Nothing to see, nothing for a navigator to do, because after the insertion, there should be nowhere for the ship to go, except to the preplotted emergence point, where it should pop out seven days later, with whatever momentum it had when it went in.

But "boring" is better than the only real alternative in a Jump, which is "terrifying".  Once, just once, he'd been aboard a ship that misJumped.  Nineteen days in Jump, and the food ran out after fifteen.  The Quetzl had come out, in the end.  Thirty parsecs off target, and there'd been a frantic half hour checking charts and searching for nav beacons.  They'd been lucky, the system was inhabited, and had a basic port, because Quetzl had eaten her own Jump engine.  They could have been stuck in interstellar space, with no stardrive.

The really scary part came when they realized, later, that they'd been dumped back into normal space because they ran into a gravity well.  Given the scales involved, the chances of that moonlet being in just the right spot were ridiculously ininitesmal.  A tiny, freak coincidence had saved them from becoming another ghost ship story.

Three of his four crewmates had never boarded a ship again.  One of them wouldn't even go inside an interplanetary shuttle.  He claimed that angels had spoken to him during that Jump, told him he would survive, but that he was never to go offworld again.  He hadn't even gone home, but stayed on the world where they'd landed.

Conrad, on the bridge, plotting the next Jump on Jago's flight plan, stretches.  "Yessiree, borin' is just fine by me, given the alternative."

Superstitiously, he leans across and prods the warning lights in turn, just to make sure they're all awake and paying attention.  Never mind that, by the time they started flashing, it'd already be way too late.

As if on cue, a red telltale flickers to life on the bridge.  Luckily for Conrad's nerves, it's not on his panel.  Something on the environmental systems display, which is, perhaps, even more worrying than anything to do with the drives.

Quickly, he calls Jago and Shui to the bridge to take a look.

Jago sighs when he gets the call, ’tea break over, back on your heads’ he mumbles the punch line to a joke that’s as old as humanity itself as he gets heavily to his feet and ambles through eh lounge to the bridge, if there are passengers on this side of the ship, they really don’t want to see the captain running, it aint a pretty sight at the best of times but ‘J’ spaces adds a whole new dimension to the event.

Shui looks up at the page, and puts down her reader.  The latest of Corlan's diary entries will have to wait, it seems.  A pity - the odd, cross-cultural growth of the asteroid-bound colony fascinated her.  Quickly picking up her light jacket, she modestly checks herself in the mirror before leaving the room, brushing her hair out from beneath the collar.

With passangers aboard, one must look in uniform at all times...even when one is not.

Moving quickly but not hurrying, she makes her way to the bridge, begging off any attempts at conversation along the way.  Something has been nagging her for the last couple of days, and finally, upon entering the bridge, she makes the connection.  One corner of her mouth rises, ever so slightly, as does the thin eyebrow on the same side.

"Mr. Dietz...I assume this is not regarding you finally setting a date for your physical?"

"No Ma'am.  Though I swear I wuz jus' fixin' ta come on down an' see y'all.  After all, he looks past Shui, to the bridge entryway, as if checking for something, or someone, "I sure can't think o' nuthin' better I could be doin' than spendin' a little time in such delightful company."

Then he points to the disturbing red light, "Then that there warnin' light jus' kinda upped an' caught my eye, so I thought I oughta call you an' Jago through ta take a look at it."


"Says it's some sorta warnin' for an overload in the air system.  Well, I ain't no expert, but that sure don't sound too good."

Shui offers Conrad a quick smile at his compliment - it's truly appreciated.  It's probably a pleasantry, but still...very welcome.  The thought crosses her mind that he might simply be saying that to deflect the attention from his absence.  Which is, she admits, </I>more palatable than a simple excuse.</i>  A compliment is a close second to a valid reason.

But the smile drops off her fine features as she stares at the baleful, burning light on the board.  It's an ugly thing, and an ugly colour, the moreso due to the label underneath it.  Panic is the first thing that comes to mind, and immediately quashed.  "Thank you, Mr. Dietz.  And while there are no 'good' problems, there are many more I would rather be having."  Her eyes flick toward Jago for a moment, before Shui moves to stand beside his chair.  One hand goes out to rest, gently, on Conrad's shoulder - in this sort of circumstance, reaching out is preferable to isolation.  "Mr. Dietz," she asks softly, "might you access the environmental status?  I need to look at our current atmospheric composition, and the projected estimates until jump's end."

Jago will, most certainly, be calling up Saskia himself.

Shui studies the readouts as Conrad calls them up to the main displays.  Atmospheric composition seems normal, but there is an unexplained particulate build up in the filtration system.  The filters seem to be getting all of it (at lest the secondary filter module isn't showing any, so it's all being stopped by the first set.

The problem seems to be that the dust is unidentified, and is accumulating rapidly.  Source unknown.

Two days into the Jump, so five days left.  But the filters will need to be changed long before that.

”Hmmm! Wonder what that is.”
“Shui, would you have a discreet word with the passengers and see if anyone has a pastime that might be producing particles like these.”
“Conrad, would you check the cargo for leaks or evaporation.”
“I’m going to have a word with Saskia, when you see Yasmin and Tylen, bring them up to speed and have them keep their eyes peeled.”

As Jago walks into Engineering, something about fist sized, composed of plastic and metal, slams against the bulkhead next to him.  It shatters, scattering fragments and small components, mostly ceramic pseudoconductors and interface connectors, onto the deck.

Saskia is laying on her back, with everything from the sternum up hidden inside an access panel.  As she pulls her hand back from the throw, she can be heard muttering, from somewhere inside the panel, "Frelling heap of scholtz.  What the frell are navy teaching their techs these day?"

Her now empty hand gropes about next to her, appearing to be searching for another of the same component, which is sitting on the floor next to her, but which she keeps missing with her outspread fingers.

"Where are you?  You're as bad as your brother, and you saw what just happened to him."  She starts to work her way back out of the small compartment, her bare feet sliding across the floor, but gaining just enough purchase for her to wriggle and squirm out.  "Don't make me introduce you to Mister Hammer, you stupid...   Hey!  Jago!" she gets her head out of the hole, and suddenly spots the captain standing there.  Carefully she sits up and slides the hammer across the floor, behind her back, until she's certain that neither Jago, nor the offending transition modulator can see it.

"Need something?" she asks, brightly.