| 12 Starboard |
| Summary: | Constin comes a callin' in Officer Country. |
| Date: | 2 Mar 2042 AE |
| Related Logs: | None specifically. Hammerfall missiles and cylon attacks generally. |
| Players: |
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| Officer Berths |
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| Much smaller than the Enlisted Berths, 'Officer Country' has a less available in it but still manages to squeeze everything into this room. Like the other berthings aboard, this room has armored doors that can lower to seal off sections during fire or depressurization. Over-under bunks provide some individual privacy for the crews who occupy this area with a small blue curtain while lockers stand between each sleeping module to hold personal items. Tables are set-up in the space in between. |
| Post-Holocaust Day: #369 |
An hour past the start of Second Watch and an unusual sight can be seen ducking his head to step through the hatchway into the officers' berths: not only an enlisted, but an enlisted marine- duty tans and all. Glancing about briefly, the big man wonders of the first person he sees, "Sir, which of these bunks is Captain Makinen's?"
As it happens, it's a young Ensign just off duty in the CiC, given the paperwork he's pouring over at the table, who answers the question posed to the empty air. He doesn't even bother to look up at the question as he chucks a finger down the right hand side, "12th in on the starboard side." It's only after the fact that the man looks up. And up, and up, to the face of the ship's Master-At-Arms. "Sorry, Sergeant. I'll just be on my way." He's heard rumours. Nobody sees the MaA this far afield unless some shit is about to hit the nearest fan. paperwork is quickly gathered up as the barely drinking age junior tactical officer nearly flies out of the berthing.
"Thank you. Sir," the big marine voices evenly in return to the spooked ensign- who, technically, does still significantly outrank him. Turning his narrow stare toward the starboard row of bunks, after briefly orienting his perceptions of whether he's presently facing fore or aft, and starts toward the indicated bunk, taking in minor details: whether the curtain is drawn or opened and whether the Chief Engineer is to be seen milling around as his bootsteps draw nearer to number 12.
No ChEng milling around, but the curtain is mostly drawn. The feet sticking out on the bunk that you can see aren't the size or shape of a man's feet. Nor is the hand that pulls back the curtain at the sound of heavy foot tread in the area, "Sergeant, not looking for me I hope," is the pilot's comment, as she sees the MaA making his way through the berthing. And she is lying in the ChEng's bunk.
Constin squints his naturally narrow eyes at Leyla as the curtain is pulled. "Huh," he grunts at first. "Not unless the Chief Engineer got his brain transplanted, sir," he returns after the greeting. "The little fella didn't point me at the wrong bunk, did he?"
"While it might be useful for getting into the tight spaces on this ship to be my size as opposed to his, I can safely tell you that the Chief and his brain have not parted company." Leyla pulls the curtain further back, as she tucks up into sitting cross-legged. She probably is dressed, in shorts or what have you, but it's hard to see in the, for her, over-sized duty greens she's wearing like some sort of military parka, with the sleeves rolled up about a dozen times each. Must be the right place, if not the right person, because the name stitched onto the left breast of the greens is indeed 'Makinen'. "I'm sorry you missed Mark, he's over on the Elpis having a look at their FTL drive. I'm not sure when he'll be taking the raptor back. Is there anything I can help you with?"
"Eh frak," Constin mutters at the report of Mark's occupation aboard the Elpis, "That's gonna be a good long while, then," he grouses, half to himself, before returning his attention to the pilot seated in Makinen's threads in front of him. "Don't imagine so, sir. Unless you've been in on that Hammerfall business?"
"It's definitely a bit of work needed to be done over there. But Mark can surprise you sometimes, he might be back sooner than we both expect." A thoughtful look at the marine as he mentions the project by his wife, "We've gone over it a bit, yes, working on scenarios for launch." Clearly, the pilot is more than Mark's walking clothes hanger. "Mark was incredibly impressed by your wife's work, Sergeant."
Constin nods once at that last, a brief grin tugging at the corner of his lip. "He weren't shy about saying so, sir. Still, s'good to hear." The grin fades, not into displeasure, but the standard stern cast the Gunnery Sergeant's face gets when talking business. "Good to know. If I can ask, how is that launch prep running? Was wondering if you all had a rough guess for when a field test might be viable, and what you'd need to get that moving."
"There's no way we can predict when a field test might be viable. Not while we're being attacked by the cylons the way we are. Though I have a mind to mention it to Mark to try to get Command on board about using the foundry as a test target." The implication there is clear. As a Captain and a Department Head, Mark has the ability to get things moving. Leyla as a pilot, not so much. "As for what we'd need? A raptor, a flight team and some tow cables. None of the hardpoints on a raptor would fit the weapon as it was built. The easiest way to release the weapon would be to tow it into space, set its programmed path and launch in vacuum."
Constin nods to the answer. "Yeah, they were cooking up some kinda specialized prototype frame to sling the missiles, back before Weber and Lauren got killed. But hell, if they work just as good getting towed and dropped off, all's the better, yeah?" Crossing his arms, and managing to forget that he's talking to a pilot in someone else's bunk and clothes, he drawls, "Sir, to your eye and understanding, is the range of those things really as huge as the sim made it look?"
"The problem with that is twofold. First, that we have very little in the way of salvageable metal with which to build such a frame, given the amount of metal that was used to repair the damaged decks after the cylon attack at Tauron. Second, what metal we do have is being retasked to repair the birds that are coming back broken after each of the attacks we're facing now. And third, no offense intended to the memory of your wife, but speaking solely as someone who's been over the information and the problems she was having getting the system working properly, the power and capabilities of that missile make it dangerous to the raptor crew onto which the missile would be mounted. Using a tow system would allow the raptor to drop the missile and FTL out if things became hairy." But there's a nod, at Constin's question, "The sim was as close as we could come to a realtime and realworld evaluation of the missile's range and capabilities."
Constin shakes his head, "No slight taken, sir. I can see the point, clear enough. 'Sides if anyone was gonna take slight with scrapping the fram it would be Weber- the Strike Raptor was his baby. But I don't doubt for a second that given the choice between building his own bird, and keeping everybody else up and able in the black, Fresh would've been the first one to write it off." Leyla's latter answer on the question of range draws a low whistle. "Sunovabitch. That is one hell of thing, ain't it?"
Leyla nods, shifting to refold her legs, lest they start to fall asleep under her. That would be just the time for the klaxons to go off, "I'm certain that he would have. We're already overtaxed on the repairs and modifications we're already making to the raptors as is." A moment, as if the woman were considering how to phrase the reply, "Yes, it was and is quite a feat of engineering. Surprising, that she was able to get something so powerful and so intricate done so quickly, and, frankly, so efficiently."
Constin rolls his right shoulder in a half shrug. "Well, Lauren's thing's Avionics. Went to school for it and everything. She used to be an Ee-Cee-Oh," he notes, with a crooked grin. "But then she falls in love with shit that goes boom, and then you got an Avionics trained Ordnance specialist tinkering around with bleeding edge military hardware? I ain't surprised she did it, I'm surprised nobody else did it first."
"Yes, I had heard that about her. That she used to fly with the 129s on the Mars." There's a hint of a smile on the woman's lips, "Not that surprising. I think most of us were still trying to figure out what had happened and how we were going to keep on surviving another day. I don't think we were focused on building or retasking ordinance for a purpose for which it wasn't really intended."
"Two things about Lauren?" Constin muses, with an easy grin. "She loved work, and she looooved killing cylons. Swear, the day these missiles score their first big kill? There's gonna be a big-assed hoot from the far side of Styx, sir." A breath drawn in and let out through the nose.
"I'm sorry that I never had a chance to know her. I like people who share my work ethic." Despite the fact that Leyla, at the moment, doesn't seem to be working at anything except stretching out the ChEng's clothes. "With any luck, we won't have to be waiting too long to see it in action. We could certainly use the advantage they might bring us."
"So say we frakking all, sir," Constin returns dryly. "Don't mind saying I'd be real glad to take some pressure off the Wing for a spell." Just what every marine loves: waiting aboard a ship while constant battles rage outside and being unable to affect it.
"And as a member of the wing, I can quite truthfully say that there are days, now more often than before, if you can imagine, when I dearly wish there was someone else up there and not me. The fleet is falling apart. Not even the military vessels were intended to be jumping the way we are. And the Elpis is barely holding it together." There's a frown there, in Leyla expression, "I don't even want to think about what's going to happen the day we can't jump her and we need to start selectively evacing people off that ship."
"Then don't," Constin advises simply to avoiding thought of selective evac. "Not your problem if- and that's a real big 'if', it ever does come to that. First priority's settling down this lot of tin cans, next is collecting more ships and survivors. Simple as that, sir."
"And just leave five hundred plus men, women and children to die, Sergeant? That's not going to happen. We lost enough on Warday and more since then. I'll be damned if I'm just going to chalk up a whole ship full of survivors to 'casualties of war'. If we're not fighting for their survival, then what the hell are we fighting for?" Leyla's tone isn't angry, but it is determined, "We've got, potentially, another FTL drive that we might be able to salvage, to either replace the one on the Elpis or keep as a backup, but we need to get these cylons under control before we can do that."
"Getting riled over nothing, sir," Constin returns evenly to Leyla's vim. "Just pointing out, there ain't much for you to do about it, except what you already do on Caps. Them that can do something for the Elpis are doing it. Such as the reason you and me are chatting here and now, and not me and Captain Makinen. Does nobody any good for folk to get bent out of shape about shit they can't control. Just like it does no good for me to sweat out whether or not the Wing will chase off the cylons every time the Fleet goes to stations. Everybody does their part, s'all I'm saying."
"Except that we have three raptor squadrons who are all tasked with SAR duty when the need arrives. Like it or not, if it comes to it, it will be one of us who will be going over there to get people clear of the ship. We've actually been working on some plans for that, at least the Providers have and I was attached to them for the last week. We're all doing what we've been tasked to do, but as your wife exemplified, with her creation of that missile, we can and all do have the capability to do more." Leyla shifts, pulling back into the bunk to pull out her smokes, "Do you mind? Mark doesn't smoke, so I try to avoid it when he's here."
Constin shakes his head to that last query. "Nah, go on." Idly crossing his arms as he hears out the response, the big marine drawls, "So what I'm hearing is this: Wing's got plans for worst-case scenario. Work's being done to get the Elpis in shape, and you're a bit wound up under the pressure of the past few weeks. That about sum it up, sir?"
Before Leyla takes one for herself, she holds the pack out to the big man. She's never been one to smoke and not offer whomever she's with. "That's about right, yes. I swear, I might never have time to paint my toenails again." There's a humour there, "Not that I actually have ever owned any nail polish in my life, but." A smoke is lit, as she steps out of the bunk, coming to her feet, which, given how tall the MaA is, doesn't really do all that much to bridge the difference in their height. It does, however, give a better view of the bunk itself, which, yes, does glow slightly, or the shirt, green, garish, that's hung on the wall. Leyla settles onto the table not far from the bunk, bare feet on one of the chairs. "I can't imagine its going much better for the marines, given the general discontent on the Elpis, and the discovery of this second foundry."
Constin shakes his head to the offered smoke, giving a short bullish snort of something not unlike amusement at the talk of nail polish. One blond brow climbs, even as the big man's lip twists in a puzzled frown at the garish glowing shirt in the bunk. Yup, that's Captain Makinen's bunk alright. "Frakking tourists," he mutters under his breath, before eyeing Leyla anew as she mentions the lot of the Corp. "Never does get better. Just gets quieter for little stretches. Good news being that civvies hate stirring up shit when there's actual danger around. They'll wait until it's safe to start bitching about how they don't need to follow rules."
A twist at the waist, to pull one of the ashtrays closer to her. See? Leyla's a considerate smoker and doesn't routinely go around ashing on the floor people have to walk on. A deep inhale, before she continues, "I think he was stockpiling for his retirement, and he managed to save a few when he was conscripted into service." A glance, down at the floor, before she looks back up, "They expect the world to go back to the way it was, and they don't see that things aren't ever going to be the same again. It's like they forgot how lucky they are they're even alive to have the arguments they're having."
Constin snorts flatly, once. "Never understand it," the marine notes plainly. "Some folks just think they deserve better than everybody else, and I just don't frakking get it." A shake of his head, and short, bullish exhale through the nose. "Anyhow. Obliged to you for the time, sir."
"Neither do I, Sergeant. Neither do I. I suppose that's why we're military and they're not." The great divide between those who follow the rules and those who believe they don't have to. "You're more than welcome, Sergeant. I'll let Mark know you were looking for him, see if he can't get to see you when he gets back. And please, call me Sweet Pea or Leyla." But she does rise to her feet, out of respect for the man, as he makes his departure.
"It ain't just civvies, sir," Constin adds, bone-dry. With those unexplained words, he nods once, shortly. "Obliged for that as well, but to that last: seeing as how I'm in uniform, I'll settle for 'sir'." He gives a smile, in the manner that people smile because they know its what the other person is expecting. It looks forced.
There's a moment, when Leyla looks down at herself, before she looks over to the big man, "So am I." Well, she is, it just isn't her uniform. At least it goes with the right division, "This is my home. If we cannot be human beings in our own homes, well…" Leyla doesn't return the smile, seeing it for what it is, "As you were then, Sergeant."
Leyla's line of 'so am I' draws a short sniff of unforced amusement, before he adds, "This is damn near as human as I get. Everybody's got their way, I guess. Sir," he offers in parting, before turning toward the hatchway out.
As human as he gets? That, again, causes Leyla to look down at her 'uniform', tugging it closer around her as she settles into the smoke, enjoying it while it lasts. And as the Sergeant steps out, she answers, to herself, rather than to the big man who's already walked out, "Me too….me too."