| Coincidence and Comets |
| Summary: | Drink and cigars. The hangar explosion and its causes. People on comets. Another night in the Pilot Berths. |
| Date: | 2041.05.02 |
| Related Logs: | None. |
| Players: |
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| Pilot Berths — Naval Deck — Battlestar Cerberus |
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| Post-Holocaust Day: #65 |
| The battlestar's pilots call this place home. Bunks line the walls with grey curtains to cover their sleeping areas. Lockers sit between each pair of bunks and a round metal table sits in the center, furnished with simple but comfortable steel chairs. A hatch at the rear of the room leads to a communal head. |
| Condition Level: 3 — All Clear |
Home sweet home. Tisiphone's seated at the table nearest her bunk with a small but thick black-bound book opened and overturned in front of her. Beyond the book is a corked and unlabelled glass bottle mostly full of some clear liquid; next to the bottle is one of the mugs drawn from the stack over on yonder counter. She's leaning forward, elbows propped on the edge of the table, slowly peeling medical tape away from one of several squares of gauze on her forearms. Fresh bruises, forearms that look like a large cat attacked her — someone had a good day.
McQueen arrives from the Deck 4.
McQueen has arrived.
Completely and utterly dripping with sweat, one Lt. McQueen wordlessly makes his way in, his flight suit pulled down to his waist as he plods straightaway to his locker, thumbs hooked in the tied-up sleeves of said flight suit and proceeds to fiddle with the lock. "What's this bloody nonsense then." He starts mumbling. Mostly to himself. Scowling at some invisible goblin, he starts fiddling with the lock more. It doesn't open. "All right, you bastard. Let's try this again."
"Problem with your lock, Sir?" Tisiphone's voice, oh-so-drolly, from her spot over at the table. Sleety eyes focus on the Lieutenant for two seconds, then three, before flicking back to the medical tape and the square of gauze. Pick. Pick. She winces faintly, but doesn't stop. "Sometimes they need a woman's touch." Smirk. Must be why she's not getting up to help.
There is a healthy dose of fiddling. /more/ fiddling, in fact, as McQueen goes through the motions of jiggling the lock. "You don't really believe that superstitious shit, do you? Come on, now." He says, with a subtle humor coloring his voice. Aha! There. *click.* "By your logic, I'm…" He doesn't finish the sentence, merely lolling his head for the express purpose of looking flatly at Tisiphone and directs his gaze accordingly. There's an edgy smile there.
By Tisiphone's logic, that would make Queenie… a recipient of a wide, toothsome grin and a deliberately drawn-out head-to-toe sweep with her eyes. Her hands tip outward, and bony shoulders jostle just a little. Who's /she/ to say, right? She's totally not judging. Totally. "Nice touch with your padlock," she replies, attention slanting back to her lightly-mauled forearm.
"Believe me, I'm not always one for the casual, sloppy application of overwhelmin' force, Ensign." McQueen states as he manages to pop the thing open swinging the door to reveal a relatively plain and spartan locker. Nothing but a duty patch and a few mundane odds-and-ends on the wall. "'The Shit happened to you, anyway?" He finally inquires, glancing back over his shoulder to get a better look at the woman.
"Yeah, I've heard you fly with all the style and grace of a Petrel." A light barb carried along in the sarcasm, there, though Tisiphone's eyes remain on her forearm. "One of the Vipers exploded in the hangar this afternoon." Casually stated, as if it's the sort of thing anyone should expect. "You didn't hear? Guess they had the mess cleared away by the time your CAP was over."
"Bite your tongue, Ensign. Bite your tongue." McQueen repeats these two statements in turn, sounding appropriately scandalized. "Next thing you'll say I'll be flying a /garbage scow/ somewhere." He delivers a rough snort as he manages to peel the rest of his flight suit off, after his boots, tossing the things into the locker one-by-one before stooping to retrieve said suit and hang it up. In turn, he starts to pull out his fatigues and a large duffel bag."And I'd heard about that. But that was /you?/ Frak, what is it with you and explodin' shit anyway?" He winces. It's a truly sympathetic look.
"It was nearly Lasher and Shiv. They were the ones headed out." Tisiphone stops scratching alongside an angry red gouge to run her teeth along her bottom lip. A moment later, she snags her mug and takes a gulp from it, setting her teeth as she swallows. "We were doing debris sweep on the deck. I noticed the smoke coming from Shiv's bird, came in to warn him and it blew. It's just some shrapnel. My cousins would be so-o-o proud of me to have some bomb-scars of my own." She twists a quick little smirk at herself as she says it. "Oh." She got ahead of herself in the storytelling, didn't she? "Bomb squad got called in, too."
This results in something pointed and interesting. "Cause determined? I was out on that exercise the other night with Shiv where our weapons were all," McQueen notes, wryly, "'mistakenly' hot. That's not a mistake that's made en masse." The look on his face as his own pale eyes drift down to eye the Ensign involves a pointed widening of his lips. Almost a sneer, as he shows his teeth. "Coincidences almost never exist, yeh?"
"Well, it couldn't've actually /been/ a bomb." Tisiphone reasons, meeting that wide sneer with a sort of puzzled naivete. "Must've just been the ammo cooking off that they wanted to keep an eye on, or- something." There are any number of things it could have been, but a bomb ain't one. Right? Right. "/Mistakenly/ hot? Crewman Bannik was telling Shiv to watch out for a trouble with the safety…" She slouches back a bit, puzzled naivete heading rapidly toward pensiveness. "What the frak's going on with our birds, man?"
"I don't know. I don't bloody well know." McQueen sharply shakes his head. "And that is /precisely/ what bothers me. One bird malfunctioning is a malfunction. Six is either colossal frakkin' human stupidity or…" He doesn't finish this statement right off, as he stops to actually tug his boots back on, hopping on one foot as he braces himself against the open locker door, doing the 'pants dance.' "Volumes n' volumes worse, yeh? I don't know how much elaboration is needed, here. Better to think it's malfunction."
"Wait, are you serious?" Tisiphone's been gulping alcoholic pine resin all evening; her thoughts take a bit of time to swim around and around before coming up to the surface for retrieval. She slouches forward again, elbows plunking back down onto the edge of the table, hands twisting inward to rest against her scalpfuzz. "Some sort of time-delayed 'frak you' from the- from two weeks ago? Or..?" She blinks suddenly, drawing her head back a little. "Are you just messing with me?" THAT's a possibility, too, after all — it suddenly seems to be a very plausible one.
Sitka arrives from the Deck 4.
Sitka has arrived.
"Ya, you know, there are mounds n' mounds of shit I'd joke about, feed you a line of bullshit about, but this one thing? I'm dead serious, Ensign." McQueen says, waving his hand as he finally settles into his boots, offering a surprisingly (and strangely) gentle smile, contrasting with the sneer provided a moment before. "Stuck launch tubes. Broken training safeties. Explodin' Vipers. Can you see the picture I'm paintin' here?"
Tisiphone stares hard at Queenie for several seconds, somewhere between intent and wary, then turns her head to stare back at the medical tape and gauze patched across her forearm. She starts scratching restlessly at the corner of another strip of tape. Takes it off us, precious. It burns. "But- some of these are /mechanical/ problems, not /electronic/ like- like Warday," she counters. "It's not something they could… /affect/. Unless it's like… frak, I don't know. Like a blight. Like the whole frakking Cerberus is rotten."
Sitka shuffles into berthings rather quietly, all told. No stomping about, no bellowing, none of the theatrics that accompany many of the younger jocks' egress into viper country. The Captain's headed for his bunk, fatigues-clad and damp haired like he just got out of a shower. Still possibly a little shellshocked from the events of the afternoon, he glances up at the pair of pilots only long enough to venture a halfhearted smile that doesn't even touch his eyes.
Still fiddling with his gear inside the locker, McQueen leans again, jiggling the latch. "Well, now that you put it that way —" He falls silent a second and observes, turning briefly towards Sitka, "Evening, Captain." Then over towards Tisiphone sharply. "You have a gift for ascribin' apt metaphysical qualities, Ensign. Don't know if you've ever been told, that. But I think it's not the ship herself that's sick. Just some of the people. Someone should speak to the MPs. See if we can pull some camera feeds."
Shellshocked. Ha ha. Ha. Yeah, not funny. Tisiphone glances over at the hatch opening and straightens up from her hunch-shouldered slouch, chin tipping up in silent greeting to the Captain. It only takes a few moments of inspection before she calls, "Drink'll take the edge off," to Sitka and pointedly drums ragged nails against the bottle. "A gift with 'apt metaphysical qualities?' Dude," she says as she looks back to Queenie, mouth suddenly split in a wide and rather odd grin. "You have /no/ /idea/." She starts to chuckle.
Sitka looks over again when Tisiphone mentions alcohol, blue eyes dragging from the young woman's face, down to the bottle in her hand. His smile inches cautiously wider, approaching an actual — if furtive — warmth. "Does that mean you're sharing?" he asks quietly, ditching his duffle bag by his bunk, and dropping down on the mattress with a creak of protest, in order to rifle about for his cup of used smokes.
"An here I was. Making a very basic call." McQueen says, with a sharp smile. "I probably don't have an idea at that, no." Bending down to lace up his boots, he continues to speak, after stopping a moment to yank the duffel bag to one side. "But you caught it. Sick crew, sick ship. Sick ship, sick crew. Sick people, sick planet. Sick planet, sick system. Sick system? You — Maybe I'm gettin' ahead of myself, here."
"I try not to taunt people within twenty-four hours of them nearly getting blown to Hades," says Tisiphone, reaching forward to drag the bottle back toward her, unhurriedly working the cork back out of the top. POIT. "Besides. Withholding alcohol in a time of need's a whipping offense." She snorts quietly at her own comment, then collects her own mug, knocking back the last splash at the bottom of it. She aims a grin at Queenie — or maybe just has her teeth set from that last fiery swallow — and says, "I'm familiar with the sentiment. Microcosm-macrocosm philosophy. Yeah." She changes the topic abruptly. "You want a splash, too?"
"Maybe a little, Queenie," mumbles the Captain half swallowed up by his bunk, amidst a thump and clatter as he succeeds in knocking something off his shelf in the search for his smokes. One's finally extricated, and there's another creak of his bunk as he climbs to his feet again. There's a book lying open near his pillow, spine up. "There isn't much sense in jumping to conclusions at this point, anyway." Which has the suspicious ring of a man trying to convince himself of that fact. Smoke in hand, he ambles on in closer to Tisiphone and her booze, a hand held out for the bottle— or the mug. Whichever she seems inclined to give. His hand? Shaking, just a fraction. The body's often slow to slough off things like narrow escapes from death.
Quinn arrives from the Deck 4.
Quinn has arrived.
"That's the long and short of it." McQueen says, as he stoops to continue fiddling with his duffel bag, boots now laced. He's quite intent on getting /somewhere/ but manages to get distracted with every sentence, really. "Microcosm/Macrocosm is one way to put it. I would just call it — systemic, though. Life, Creation, all things are like that. An action here creates a ripple there. But y' know what I am on about, after all, so I won't waste your time fillin' your head with my bullshit. And I'll pass for now. Thanks." Another brief smile and he whips his head upwards to study Sitka as the man rummages in his bunk. "Maybe. I'm talking less about conclusions and more keeping an eye out. You know how it is, you see."
"As above, so below, man," is the only answer the Ensign has for Queenie's words. They're said with an odd tone to them, though, as if they were more serious than she was letting on. After that, Tisiphone looks Sitka up and down. There's a pause on his outstretched hand before the sleety gaze flick up to his — or where it ought to be, as it'll doubtless edge away elsewhere in another round of Sagittaran Tag. After a few seconds she'll reach for her just-emptied mug and pour one splash, then another, into it. She wasn't joking by much to compare it to alcoholic pine resin — the smell is intense and very, very /green/. "Might want to take it with a bit of water," she says to the Captain, words quiet. "It's pretty shuddery, straight up." She turns the mug around in her hand, offering it up to him handle-first.
Quinn isn't feeling quite so crappy as she did yesterday, but she's still not nearly so young as she used to be and -completely- not able to drink the way she did on beltaine. She's going to be paying for a few days for that one. Still, she got through her shift and even home for a shower. Now she steps out of the head, in her loose off duty sweats, looking a wee bit ashen under her freckles with her red hair a damp mess of curls. She heads over to her locker, pulling it open to hang up her towel and hunt for her brush.
"Actually, I don't have the foggiest clue what you're on about," Shiv confesses to the Lieutenant, plunking himself into a chair once Tisiphone's foisted the mug off on him, and leaning it back precariously on two legs. Indeed, eye contact is shirked as it almost always is, and a few cuts and scrapes might be spotted on his arms, face and neck. Nothing more than superficial. "Mmf?" he murmurs on the tail end of her warning, tipping the cup back and quaffing the whole lot. Splutter, cough. "SHIT." That's right as poor Quinn walks in. That last, hissed word is accompanied by a thunk as the cup is slammed back against the table, of course.
"There's hope for you yet." The Lieutenant says towards the Ensign without really looking at her. Then to Sitka — Little 'accidents.' More and more of them." McQueen states, succintly and sharply. "But who knows? I might be just a fool." With that, he stoops down further and unzips the duffel, starts rummaging through odds and ends inside. Bits of clothing, gear, a towel. He squints down at it, frowning as his whole face contorts, clearly bothered by whatever's inside. As Quinn makes her way inside, he just calmly tosses out, ignoring the outburst, "Evening. Captain."
Tisiphone might not withhold alcohol from those who nearly died, but it doesn't mean she won't laugh at their sputterings on said alcohol — which she does, the sound quiet and rather sly. "I warned you, eh? Drink too much of it straight, you start sweating pure juniper. Better'n eating too much garlic, little harder to walk after, though." She turns the warm, amused gaze from Sitka over to Queenie, wondering, "The frak you looking for, anyway? Couldn't get your lock open, now you've lost your- whatever?" To Quinn, there's a moment's glance and a single, polite nod.
The drink pounding Sitka is doing actually does gain him a rather arched brow from Quinn. She just pauses, staring him over with an amused little wince…"Yer all drinkin' again? Gods…it was just Beltaine. I don't think I'm gonna drink for a month." Her voice rasps out, her Aerilonian accent almost fully in swing. Perhaps she's finally given up on hiding it. Maybe Beltaine taught her something. She then gives a brief nod towards Tisiphone in turn. "Ensign… LT. Captain…" She greets smoothly after her little teasing scold.
"Shit," Ibrahim repeats, quieter and somewhat awkwardly when he realises how loudly he sputtered a moment ago. He wipes his palm and then the back of his hand across his mouth, blue eyes slanting up toward Tisiphone from under those dark, brooding brows. "You could've, you know, warned me sooner." His tone's chiding rather than sharp. "Hey, Maggie." He turns to glance over his shoulder at the Harriers' Captain rooting about in her locker, then — undaunted — tips the cup back to catch the last remaining few drops of moonshine on his tongue.
"Could've, but didn't," is Tisiphone's cheeky reply, her toothsome grin turned back in Sitka's direction. "Take it with water next time. Water and lemon's best, but-" A shrug. Terrible citrus shortage in the galaxy, these days. She starts to slouch forward against the table, elbows skidding along the surface, until she ends with her arms folded around her head. Fl-l-lop. A moment later, it occurs to her to unfold one arm and reach for her cigarettes, the pack keeping her book and bottle company.
Quinn isn't coming -near- that stuff. She could practically smell it from her bunk. She gives a bit of a groan, shaking her head…"Maybe that's the stuff Penny was giving me during Beltaine. It's dangerous, Captain… don't trust it." She then flashes a smile towards Tisi as she continues to struggle with combing out her messy red curls…"Be nice to the Captain… us old folk don't quite have the staying power you ensigns do these days."
Tisiphone's grin is answered with a brief flash of the Petrel's eyes. Not quite a smile in them; the expression's more speculative than amused. After lighting his own stub of a cigarette, he skids his zippo across the table to her, still watching the younger pilot while he drags from his smoke. At mention of 'old folk' from Quinn, he finally breaks from his study of Tisiphone, and succumbs to a throaty chuckle. Sinking lower into his chair, he exhales a thin stream of smoke toward the ceiling. "Too late," he murmurs to the other captain.
"I couldn't begin to explain it." McQueen's now on some kind of grumpy-ass quest as he starts tearing through stuff, shifting it to and fro.
"Eh heh heh." There's Tisiphone's response to Quinn, her shoulders twitching a couple times with a near-soundless chuckle. She rocks her hand up on the edge of her palm and slaps it down, trapping Sitka's zippo against the table. WHAP. Pushing herself back up into a semi-upright position, she sets to lighting her cigarette, blowing out the first thick breath of smoke toward Quinn. She slouches the side of her face against one bandaged forearm, uses her other hand to slide the zippo back across to its owner.
Quinn wrinkles her nose a bit as the smoke comes in her direction. She doesn't even feel like a cigarette right now. She just shakes her head…"Never… drinking like that… again…" She shakes her head slowly, finally giving up on her hair and tossing the brush back into her locker. She crawls into her bed, not quite closing the curtain yet, enjoying the bit of conversation for the time being but a part of her is defintiely ready for rest…"And I tried, Shiv… you're on your own with the whippersnappers and their booze now. Good luck."
Marko arrives from the Deck 4.
Marko has arrived.
Shiv, too, looks like he could use a good night's sleep. His eyes are haunted by dark shadows smudged like soot, and his movements seem even more lethargic than usual. "Hell no," he tells Quinn, fumbling for his lighter and catching it up on the second try, "I think it's time for me to rack out. I've got, uh, an early patrol tomorrow." He climbs back to his feet, skims his eyes over Tisiphone one last time, then thumps off in the direction of his bunk with his cigarette still smoking between two fingers.
"HERE it is!" It's that battered cigar tube that McQueen was so frantically looking for, fished out of the duffel. He magically holds it up, aloft and pops the lid open to reveal a big fat stogie. An unsmoked one, this time. Propping it in his mouth, he hurriedly zips the duffel up.
"Pff." The sound of a lungful of smoke being exhaled, along with a bit of frustration. Tisiphone tips her head away from her bandaged forearm and scratches absently at her neck and up behind her ear as Sitka stands. The warm amusement remains as she counters his look with one of her own, mirth and alcoholic pine resin thawing sleety eyes. "Rest well, Ibrahim," she calls. "You wake up tasting like a juniper bush died in your mouth, it's totally my fault." Her grin threatens to split her mouth again, subsiding only for the sake of another drag off her cigarette — then immediately returning as Queenie's mystery item is found. "One of that fat frakker's?" she demands of him.
Quinn looks drowsily over to McQueen, smiling a bit as she sees what he's got…"Damn, boy… that's a prize… you should hang onto it. Gods know what you could get for it in a month or two…" She huskily calls over to him, though Tisi is getting quite a bit of a grin as the woman mentions how Sitka might taste. It'll be amusing to have someone share in her hang over, at least!
Marko meanders into the pilots' newly created shared berthing tugging tiredly at the steel ring of his flight suit. "Morning." he manages to get out around a mouthful of broad, sleepy yawning. "Anything happen around here earlier?" he asks, disengaging the ring and shuffling toward his bunk where begins to peel himself out of the thing. "Skipper, whatever it was I did that put me on graveyards last few days, I am truly, deeply, horribly sorry." he adds with a smirk.
"Mmmf," is about all Shiv has to say regarding the potent alcohol, as he crawls into his bunk and pretty much faceplants into the pillows. A brief moment or two of scuffling follows as he unlaces and kicks off his boots, and then a mumbled "g'night" is offered to the pilots at large, before he draws his curtain shut. Another day, another near death experience. This probably wasn't quite what he had in mind when agreeing to sign on with the Reserves.
"I'll /never, ever/ tell." McQueen's very sly, narrow-eyed response is tossed towards Tisiphone in a half-assed sort of manner. He starts to swing the bag over his shoulder as he stands straight. "Rest easy, Captain." To Quinn - "I'm not the 'investing' type, though. I think I'll enjoy it today." He turns to briefly nod at Marko as well.
If Tisiphone isn't going to be hungover in the morning, it's going to be a blessing from Dionysus Himself. She tucks her cigarette into the corner of her mouth and turns her empty mug around a couple times, studying it as it scrapes hollowly against the table, then impulsively reaches for her bottle again. "Lot of drinking and trying to forget, man, 's all you missed," she says to Marko, before she narrows her eyes at the Lieutenant what narrows his eyes at her. "It is, isn't it? He didn't slobber on the frakking thing already, did he? Or that why you kept it?" Grin.
Quinn looks up to Marko as he wonders in…"Hey, Flasher… you've either come just in time for the party, or nap time…I'm voting for the latter. Good night, kids… don't be too crazy…" And with that brief note from Maggie, the still somewhat hung over pilot reaches up and tugs shut the curtain to her bunk, following Sitka into dream land not too long after…
Marko returns Queen's nod as he finishes stripping off his flight suit and starts picking out fresh skivvies from his locker. "Heh, sounds like I missed the fun." he replies ironically. "However, _I_ was a witness to a rare astrological event." he says with mock pomposity. "So now I feel all special and warm and tingly inside."
"The beauty of it is, I can confirm or deny nothin'." McQueen repeats , with his stony insistance, as he starts fishing for a match. "Sometimes I utterly /hate/ that man." He insists. Waggling a finger, though, he turns on Marko. "I don't think you missed anything. And that's the thing about the stars. There's always something happening somewhere. I personally think at the other end of the galaxy there are people. Laughing at us."
"So bring it over here, I'll trade you a taste for a drink." Grin. Tisiphone makes an imperious little beckoning wiggle at Queenie and his cigar with her cigarette-bearing hand, scattering ashes down across the medical tape and gauze on her forearm. "Rare astrological event?" she says, distracted momentarily by Marko's words. "What? How's that?"
"I would." Trevor points at the stoge in his mouth, after he drags the match over, lighting it and filling the room with a trail of sweet-pungent smoke, "but I don't know if you want what I've got, you see." His words are a little mangled by having the object between his lips. "And what was that, yeh?" He points at Marko.
"Heh, hey, I didn't get to drink tonight, so at least gimme something to feel good about for sitting in a Raptor for four of the most boring hours of my frakking life." Marko chuckles. "Comet…let's see…" he says, picking out the knee board he'd forgotten was still attatched. "Comet 325AE4." he begins. "An ice, nickel, iron body eight klicks in length, two klicks wide with a icy tail approximately four thousand fifty two klicks long that passes this way on it's orbit of Cindar every four hundred twenty five years, three months and three point four days." he pronounces.
"And you were out there to see it," says Tisiphone to Marko, looking up from splashing another glurg of Mystery Drank into her mug. "Damn, man. That's great. The whole CAP chase it for a while?" She puts her cigarette down, picks the mug up, swirls the contents around a couple times, then narrows her eyes at Queenie. "Did I not just /say/ I did? Tch." An impatient clicking of her tongue, her grin gone a bit insouciant. "Bring. Here." Pause. It's perhaps a deliberate one. "Please."
"Maybe somebody is riding that comet. Laughin' at us." McQueen reiterates, after taking a cigar drag. "Oh, don't be like that." He adds petulantly at Tisiphone as he takes the cigar out of his mouth, post-puff and strolls catlike over towards her vicinity. "If your mouth erupts in horrible boils, don't come cryin' to me, yeh?"
"Heh, quite possibly, Queenie, on both counts." Marko chuckles. "Yeah, we chased a bit, but it was going at 'Sweet Juno's Pantry Drawer' miles an hour, so there was no chance of getting up close and personal." he shrugs. "Was something to do, and yeah, it was kind of awesome to see. Never even heard of the thing before." he yawns, stretching as he closes his locker door. "Computer knew about it, spat the data right out at me."
"Don't be like what?" The grin's visible in Tisiphone's eyes as she looks over at Queenie over the rim of the mug, even if her mouth is hidden. She tips back a quick sip, hissing in a breath through set teeth, then offers it out to the Lieutenant with a little wiggle. Go on. It eez delishus. "Take your moments of bliss where you can find 'em, man," she says to Marko. "Seriously. It's not like they're lined up for us out here."
And the Lieutenant's arm swings out in a quick arc as he hands the cigar over, just like that. "You're going to offer me that after what I saw it did to Captain bollocksed over there? I'm not /that/ stupid." McQueen chortles. "Well, maybe I am, after all." His askew face erupts in a cockeyed grin, his head drifting over to Marko for a second. "So, does that comet have some kind of significance, yeh?"
"No.." Marko shrugs. "Nothin' behind it but dust, nothin' ahead of it but a fly by of Cindar." he admits. "But it was kind of cool to see it. " he smiles a little. "It's like one of those Science Vision Channel shows they run late-night full of crap that asstronomers are all a-gog about, but no-one who doesn't have a mother huge frakkin' telescope from Hades will ever see."
No Mystery Drank? Tch. Tisiphone shakes her head faintly before she slides the mug back onto the table. As for that cigar? Snatched. "Mmn," is her first response, a pleased sound somewhere in the back of her throat. Must be thinking about the horrible boils Queenie warned her about. Then, more coherently: "Thanks, Sir. I'll always remember you fondly for this." She tries a very light puff from it first, appraisingly, then a proper one. Her eyes grow heavy-lidded for a moment, her smile almost dozy, before she blinks and looks up, offering the cigar back to the Lieutenant.
"I lied. It's my prerogative. And I guarantee you, this will neither be the first or last one I tell." McQueen says, smugly, and with that, he just swipes his hand outwards to reach at that drank. *Swipe*. Unless she stops him. If she /does/ not he proceeds to take a hit, but not before making another smart remark. "I think you'll change your mind about that too. Boils, you see." This said, he takes a moment to also weigh Marko's words. "Huh. So this comet. How far away is it, you think? In light years? Jumps?" He smirks a bit more, but for a second, it's less smug.
"Eh…lemme see.." Marko replies, chuckling at Tis and Queen's interplay while he fishes through his notes. "If I remembered my astrophysics correctly, and I like to think I did as much as I had to study for that frakking course.." he grumbles. "By now, she's about …" he pauses, doing the sums in his head. "Fourteen jumps in a Raptor, give a take a decimal or two…For the Cerebrus….about six…The little bitch is flat moving."
The sleet-blue eyes track the drink-swipe like an owl might track a mouse — okay, like a half-sauced owl might /mostly/ track a mouse — but Tisiphone doesn't protest. Hey, she was waggling at it him a moment before. Since he's distracted, she puffs again on the cigar while Marko does his calculations, and quietly smacks her lips a couple times, again growing heavy-lidded for a moment. "Thought it was a woman's prerogative to lie. Wait. This all started with me saying you needed a woman's touch to get your padlock open…" FULL CIRCLE. She stabs the cigar at Queenie with a soft, triumphant cackle. Hey, it all makes perfect sense in /her/ head.
"/Prerogative?/ That's a quaint notion. You're playing that card? Really, you are?" Trevor gulps down a snort and rumbles. "Can I borrow this? I think I have some paint that needs strippin'." Smiling tightly, he sets the mug down with a soft 'clank,' right where he stole it from. "You, Ensign, have a quick and brilliant mind. That's all I'm sayin'."
Moments pass, and he listens to Marko's narrative. "Huh. Do me a favor, if you would. When you get time, write down the coordinates of that comet's current location, yeh? I'm — call me curious. Don't call me superstitous, though."
"Will do, Queenie." Marko replies with a nod. "I've got the equation all set up. Just gimme a current nav fix for the ship, and I'll find her for ya." he says confidently, sounding interested in the prospect of having something to do. "Aaanyway.." he says, stretching mightily, "I'm gonna snag a shower and maybe some chow before I collapse." he says, shouldering his towel and a fresh set of off-duty fatigues. "See you all tomorrow."
Well, that's unexpected. A moment of seriousness swims lazily upward, pale brows knitting toward eachother. "Where the frak did /that/ come from?" she asks Queenie, slouching forward to rest her cheek against her forearm. The cigar is wiggled at him. This, too, eez delishus. Also, boils. "I mean- thanks, but." Aww. She's flattered, and trying to dodge around it. How cute. The parting comment with Marko gives her a successful foothold to dodge to, and brings her up out of her melting slouch a little. "Call it curiousity, because you don't believe in all that superstitious shit, right?"
"Thanks, mate. Seriously." McQueen offers, his face again screwed up in an attempt to be altogether too-clever. He crosses his arms languidly after shrugging the bag off his shoulders and letting it fall to the metal floor with a 'PLTHUD.' Watching Marko go, he then turns back and studies Tisiphone with a neutral blink. "Where'd what? Huh? Oh. No, I just followed your throught pattern. The one that made no bloody sense." Waving the issue off, he addresses the next question. "I don't believe in superstition, no. Do I believe a comet passing through the great big Architecture of the Universe like some kind of clockwork is significant, though? Short answer. Yes. Because, you see, it's all like" He suddenly hops forward a step and brings his arms together, lacing his fingers together with a violent 'CLAP' "This. Related. All of it. Every little bloody thing, in ways humanity tried to quantify since they were still frakking each other in bloody trees, and swinging from vines. There's a difference, Ensign. It's got /nuance/." He seems pretty proud of this assertion.
"Nuance. Nice godless way of puttin' the ineffable work of the Lords down to a single word, I guess. You taking this back?" Tisiphone jams the two thoughts together without any care for a proper pause or topic-shift. "Because it's really good. Like. /Really/ good." Another little puff, and a pleased sound somewhere in the back of her throat, before she wiggles the cigar back at the Lieutenant. "Of course it's all connected. Related. You're just- the comet's got you real interested. And the people on the other side of the galaxy, laughing at us." Which are connected in her head, at least. "What's up with THAT? Never figured you for that interesting a person before tonight." Ah, alcohol. Like Tisiphone needs any help being honest.
"I'm not saying I'm godless. I'm just sayin' it's frak-all arrogant to assume that we know who and what a higher power looks like. Even if we give them a name. An aspect. Each one of us is infinitely small in the eyes of the divine. When you talk about the work of creation like that, can you imagine what it would be like to be a consciousness that created the universe? Out there? As far as you go, stars, planets, void, maybe some kind of giant gaping arse farting Hydrogen for laughs," he pauses slightly for a breath, "The birth of everything. Everything. What kind of mind is there, at the beginning? We've stories to explain it, that were handed down to us, but I certainly don't think a God is an ordinary creature. Not like humans. Dumb monkeys that we are, right?" And then he just gives her the biggest shit-eating grin he can muster. "And I'll be taking that thing back," McQueen says in a ticked-off laundry list of statements, eyes glittering with amusement. "I don't know. The universe is a big place. You spend enough years out in a Viper cockpit on Patrol rotations and you start to crawl up your own arse thinkin' about these things. Especially out in space."
And with that, McQueen snatches the cigar and wanders off. Somewhere.