| Mr. Damon Meets E.D. |
| Summary: | There's a new Deck-Engineering Liaison in town, and it's Endymion Daeras. Wait, was there ever an old one? |
| Date: | 05 Nov 2041 AE |
| Related Logs: | None. |
| Players: |
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| Hangar Deck - Port - Midship - Battlestar Cerberus |
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| Post-Holocaust Day: #252 |
| The single largest rooms on the Cerberus are the hangar decks. Each flight pod consists of two stacked landing bays with adjoined decks and hangars, which along with computer-assisted landings results in a faster Viper recovery rate. Mirror images of each other, these two huge areas are located on the flight pods. The inboard sides of the deck, closest to the ship's main hull, are lined with parking and maintenance bays for Vipers and Raptors based aboard the battlestar. The outboard side of the deck contains the launch tubes used by the Vipers for standard deployment. Huge blast doors seal the deck into four sections, each one containing an elevator that leads up to the flight deck directly overhead. The fore-most section contains an elevator system that leads towards Aerospace Fabrication. |
| Condition Level: 3 - All Clear |
The Deck is alive with metallic clanging and hydraulic hissing, interspersed with the beep-beep-beeping of forklifts being driven in reverse and the earsplitting din of engines being fired up. This, to Damon, means everything is going as it should be. He walks the hangar floor dressed in his orange coveralls, his ear protection worn around his neck. The clipboard under his arm is consulted here and there, he stops to chat with some of the workers briefly, but generally, he's just walking and watching.
A body of canvas and grease seems to just pop into existance. She might have always been there, or by the Gods emerged from shadow and dirt. She stands before a Viper, her arms crossed over her head with each hand holding the opposite elbow— you would have this kind of pose if you were guarding your head against rainfall, but it doesn't rain here. Her stormy eyes are focused on the details of the ship, as if trying to remember the face of a new friend. She is unaware of the Chief for a few more heartbeats, but then she slowly rotates her torso about and she looks at him with that blank stare. And then she beams— perhaps a bit too friendly like between two professionals.
What… the… As Damon makes his way around the Deck, he catches sight of Endymion and her odd pose. He snags one of the Petty Officers nearby and points to Endymion with a questioning look, getting only shrugs in response. Not one of theirs. Her blank stare is mirrored, plus a bewildered blink at the unfamiliar face; the friendly smile actually makes him reel back in surprise, though he nervously smiles back when he recovers. "Hi. El-tee." He looks her over with a confused look, though his tone is friendly enough. "Please don't take this the wrong way, but who… are you?"
Her expression turns rapidly toward calculating to acceptance with another smile, and she drops her arms. Her stance in that uniform is comfortable, almost casual despite the environment around her. She itches idly at her cheek as if considering something, and then she replies to his inquiry with ease. "Lieutenant Junior Grade Endymion Daeras," she pauses, realigning her thought processes to continue onward, "Deck-Engineering Liaison." She turns back to regard the Blacknight before her, pointing at it deliberately. "Just looking around. I promise I won't touch anything." And she shoves her hands into her pockets with a sheepish smile— perhaps she has already been given a few words about jabbing at things without permission.
"Oh," Damon says, a small frown flickering momentarily. And then the 'Deck-Engineering Liaison' sinks in. "Oh! Right!" he says, his tone going from confused-but-friendly to fully welcoming. "I think we've sent memos to each other through other departments - I recognize your name. Sorry, sir, I didn't recognize you and someone had told me earlier that you were here, it just completely slipped my mind." He offers his hand to shake. "Petty Officer First Class Andreas Damon. I'm the acting Deck Chief at the moment. There anything I can help you with? If I recall correctly, you're newly transferred in?"
Military protocol seems a little lost on her, for she shakes his hand with a bit of exaggeration— almost as if she has taken dramatized courses in proper social interactions. She drops his hand after a moment, nodding with his words. "No need to apologize, Mr. Damon… I didn't broadcast it and I sense you were not gifted by Delphi sight, so you could have not known. Its not as if we exchanged photographs in our correspondance." She pockets her hands once more, finding an interest in gripping the inner seam of her pockets. She nods her head to his question. "Mm-hmm. I'm earnestly just getting a feel for the place… its so much bigger here than on the Corsair." Then her mind slips sideways a bit. "I bet when it gets really quiet, the acoustics are perfect enough to create harmonic echo…" Then she settles her gaze back upon him.
Damon chuckles and gestures to the hangar all around them. "Sir, I challenge you to find a time when it's quiet on the Deck. I imagine, though, that you'd have to have a hell of a voice to be able to fill this kind of space." He hooks his thumb into his toolbelt, letting his left hand fall away to his side. "Just Damon if you don't mind, El-Tee. 'Mr. Damon' is what people used to call my father, and it just sounds weird to be called that, y'know? Anyway, it was a bit of a shock for me to get used to the floor here on Cerberus as well. I came from older model ships, and this old beast dazzled me when I first set foot on her. But she's a hell of a ship, and we've got a hell of a Deck crew here."
Her nose wrinkles up as she smiles, and there is the faint twinkle of a star in her gray eyes. "As you say, Damon. You don't have to call me El-Tee all the time either… my father liked calling me Demi, my mother hated the childish way it sounded. My mentor on Capirca called me Eee-Dee." She hesitates a heartbeat, looking a little lost in her own thoughts before she snaps back around to the here and now. She smiles, but the expression barely takes hold at her eyes. "Its all going to take some getting use to…" Then she takes a casual step forward so she can look fully across the deck. "Tell me about her… Cerberus, that is."
"Well, I wouldn't wanna bring back potentially painful memories by calling you Demi, but I'm also kinda hesitant to call you by the abbreviation for erectile dysfunction," Damon says with a crooked grin. "And I imagine you know most of the technical specs for Ceberus - Mercury-Class Battlestar, pride of the Fleet, cutting-edge of Colonial military technology." He lists off the standard list of statistics and numbers like he's done it too many times before. "Here on the Deck, we don't pay all too much mind to protocol except when we have to. We get the job done and we treat each other as equals as much as possible. So you'll have to excuse us once in a while if we forget to pay proper respects or slip up and get crude and foul-mouthed without realizing it."
Endymion pinks abruptly at his interpretation of E.D., and she gives a casual shuffle of her feet to try to alleviate that embarrassment. She smiles all the same, and when he begins to talk about the ship, she tilts her head up as if to get a look at the subject which they speak. She nods her head a bit with each detail. "She definitely is a beautiful specimen, and it sounds like you all take good care of her— she'll return the favor." And then she levels her gaze back upon him, and she gives him a lopsided grin. "I'm not one of those Officers— Hell, I never dreamed of being onboard a Battlestar, or at least not one that wasn't being drydocked or retired." Her shoulders sag and rise in something of a shrug. "I'm just here because… this is where I'm suppose to be, I guess. I'm just here to get the job done," she concludes, using his own words.
Damon looks embarrassed when Endymion blushes. That would be a milder example of speaking freely on the Deck. It's always difficult to gauge how people will react to certain things. "She's done good by us so far," he agrees. "So what's your background on this stuff?" he asks, gesturing to the Vipers and Raptors around them. "Vipers and Raptors are our bread-and-butter, of course. We're also continuing to work at reverse-engineering Cylon technology off of captured ships and contributing work to the freighter that we salvaged and repaired off of Aeriolon. There's lots of work being done between the Deck and Engineering on those fronts, which is, I'm assuming, where you come into play as the liaison?"
As they both share that moment of embarrassment, Endymion actually looks comforted by it. Her soft smile returns, the faint dimple on her cheek appearing with the curve of lip. Then she nods at the ships. "I'm familiar with the Vipers and Raptors. I had studied them closely during my graduate studies— my mentor was actually hoping to have a prototype commissioned, so we were to study the current aircrafts." Then she pauses, her brows lifting as her head nods. "You got it. Though, I feel a bit like a Picon out of water— I haven't been able to see more than the reports, which hardly sates me." She dimples once more. "If you think you could handle it, maybe you could field some of my questions? I don't want to keep you from your rounds."
"For sure, El-Tee," Damon says, adding a slight emphasis to her rank. So he still hasn't quite yet figured out what to call her. "How's this sound? You look around here and talk to your people in Engineering. Then we'll figure out a good time for us both to just block off a few hours to go through everything so we're on the same page. And if you're like me at all, you'll want to actually see and touch the stuff instead of just reading reports or looking at blueprints." He gives her a grin. "I'm simple - things are what they are, and ships ain't specs or drawings. So I get hands-on. We can go over to the freighter and take a look there as well. How's that sound?"
The El-Tee beams at Damon, a touch of hungered curiosity in her gaze. She claps her hands together once with a hint of childish excitement. "Wonderful! And yes… see and touch is key." She grins, and then offers out her hand to him. "It was a pleasure meeting you, Mr. Damon." Her eyes glint with delight. "I look forward to working together."
Mr. Damon? Touche, El-Tee. With a nod and a grin, Damon shakes her hand. A firm quick shake, businesslike and authoritative. "I do as well," he replies. "This'll be interesting. Let me know when is good for your schedule, and we'll run through all that stuff, yeah? At your earliest convenience." He gives a little wave and continues on with his walk-around of the Deck, occasionally looking back over his shoulder to see what Endymion's looking at. It's good to observe and prepare for the future.