| The Mystery Deepens |
| Summary: | Damon and Cilusia chat at work about how strange Parnassus Anchorage really is. |
| Date: | 10 Apr 2041 AE |
| Related Logs: | Fireworks Have Been Canceled Part II |
| Players: |
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| Repair Bay - Hangar Deck - Battlestar Cerberus |
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| 10 Apr 2041 AE (Post Holocaust Day: #42) |
| When engines need to be rebuilt or other heavy but short-term work needs to be done, this is where it happens. Large, red hand-mobile cranes are situated along the wall beside stacks of toolchests. Carts with various computers and electronics are dispersed around the area for quick access. A very conspicuous yellow locker at the rear holds a sizable amount of firefighting gear, as well. Sturdy metal stands are available to hold all sorts of parts from gun systems to the FTL drives of a Raptor. Big enough to accommodate quite a few Vipers and Raptors at once, this area see's extensive use and is usually attended by at least one crew at all hours of the day and night. |
| Condition Level: 3 - All Clear |
Two nights have passed since the turret-salvage EVA mission. Damon has managed to get his hands on the Raptor camera footage and has been going over it again and again, leading to him being late for his shift today. Sloppily dressed in his coveralls - donned in a hurry, looks like - he comes into the repair bay to begin his workday. But he looks like he can barely even keep his eyes open.
"What's shakin' turkey bacon?" Cilusia asks Damon as he enters into the repair bay. She's at her workbench (what else is new?), with a flight suit spread out on the surface. There are a variety of things laid out about it, most of them hooked up to very specialized instrumentation to check the suit's pressure systems, self-sealing inner-layers, stitching, and just about everything else. While some of those machines run their tests, she leans forward over the bench, shaking her hips side-to-side slowly, humming.
"You mean besides being almost ten minutes late for my shift?" Damon asks, trying to pass it off with humor. "Not too much. Chief's not around, is he?" A nervous glance about the bay. He doesn't see Atreus, but Deck Chiefs sometimes have a way of not being seen when they don't want to be. "I was lookin' over that flight footage from the other night, lost track of time." Picking out a Raptor next to where Cilusia works, he starts reading over the attached report to see what needs done on it. "I gotta say, seeing myself flying around in space from another point of view really makes me wonder how the others manage not to laugh their asses off the whole time we're out there."
"You just need to practice your gymnastics, you know. In the pool. Go on and do some jumps and spins and shit." The way she grins smugly suggests that she's adding 'And I make that EVA shit look good.' "Also, no, haven't seen the Chief in a little while. He forked over a memo to me about getting a civvie setup in deck footage, then a jock brought me his suit claiming the hardseal wasn't solid. So now I get to check that out. Plus, we have a bunch of Raptors and Viper sitting out there with bits of shrapnel in the skin that we have to pull, and camera footage…turrets that aren't at all what we were expecting. Good lords."
Damon finishes with the clipboard and places it back, rolling over a dolly with his foot and sitting down on it heavily. "That's just the thing," he mutters as he scoots himself over to the toolbox and rummages for the exact wrench sizes he needs. "What the frak was going on out here? Armored turrets that self-destruct?" He shakes his head, slowly sliding himself underneath the Raptor. There's a dull sound of metal on metal, and then a sharper CLANK! followed by a "Frak!" Damon rolls out again momentarily. "Apparently, someone already loosened the bolts on that panel…"
Even though he can't see, Cilusia shrugs her shoulders. "I have about as much frakkin' cluse as you do. Less, even, since I haven't seen half the shit that went down on this boat. Those turrets were frakked all to hell from the start though. I just hope we have enough cam footage to figure it out." Not as if they can go back out there and pull in one of the turrets or one of the mines, seeing as how they went BOOM. "Oh yeah…I might've already loosened one of those panels," Cilusia says to Damon, with a little smirk, turning over her shoulder and winking. Might have, remember.
Damon sits up on the dolly and shakes out his wrist. There's a red line across all four fingers on his right hand. "Might've," he echoes sourly, pulling a face. He twists the wrist about, making I'm-in-pain faces. Maybe exaggerated, maybe not. "Well, the schematics were, what, five years old?" he asks, scooting his dolly over to grab some water. What's wrong with taking a break… at the very beginning of your shift? "So those turrets have been armored and upgraded since that time. But why?" Tossing the little paper cup away, he returns underneath the bird and pries off the already-loose panel. "And why would someone have 'em self-destruct if the targeting circuitry was removed?"
"I can't imagine a turret is really effective if they have the targeting systems removed. Maybe it's a way to keep them from being salvaged, one way or the other." Meaning, us or them. "Or maybe the targeting routines were not so routine? Some secret that the Cylons weren't supposed to get ahold of, you know?" Of course, that means the armor maybe should've been a bit tighter, not so many gaps in the plating, and that the targeting circuit boards shouldn't have been that easy to get to. "Or maybe it was the turret itself…maybe there was some secret inside that we didn't want to get out."
"No, well, obviously not, but…" Damon tap-tap-taps around a bunch with his wrench, sounding out the plates. "That's a lot of work and resources to secure some turrets, y'know what I mean?" There's a grunt, a slight hiss, and then the sound of a socket wrench hard at work. "Not to mention they had mines with depleted uranium shrapnel guarding 'em. What are the turrets for, anyway? We're way on the frakkin' other end from the Armistice Line." Not that that fact managed to stop the Cylons from attacking anyway. "This place just gives me all the wrong vibes. Especially when we're inside."
"Yeah? I don't pretend to know what the frak's up with this place. I leave that to the brains upstairs," she says, pointing at the roof of the repair bay with her rather, ah, cruel looking needle, the sort that's used to patch up flight suits. "I tell them what I find out and what I know and what my opinion is, for what it's worth. They make the decisions. Not much else for me to do. Sure, it's strange to high heavens, but why isn't really for me or you to figure out. We have other responsibilities."
There's a long pause from Damon before he answers, the socket working and working until he gets his part completely loose. "Don't mean I just turn my brain off or something," he says, coming back out from underneath. He's holding a piece of the exhaust manifold which is completely blackened. "Hell, they don't even know what's going on half the time." Getting up off the dolly, he clunks the piece down on his workbench. "We're the ones who've been going in and getting the salvage. We're the ones who jumped out there and grabbed the circuit boards. Command don't hold the monopoly on mystery around these parts."
"Fair enough," she starts, but soon hisses out and pulls her hand back from the suit, shaking it out. "Gods frakkin' damnit!" Cilusia says to the suit, before ripping off a fairly colorful string of Scorpian curses and insults. "Pricked myself with the godsdamned needle!" she explains, without being asked, putting the finger in her mouth to suck off the little bit of blood from the needle stick. Sheesh, if only she had a simple little thimble!
Damon chuckles quietly as Cilusia exclaims, back at the toolbox. "Good thing it's you doing that and not me," he says over the noise of wrenches and screwdrivers being moved around. "I'd put five needles through my hand in less than ten minutes." Re-armed with a new set of finer tools, he returns to the workbench to tackle the exhaust manifold. "Then again, I've stabbed myself with a screwdriver before. So maybe it's all the same thing in the end, anyhow."
"Screwdrivers tear skin though. Needles go right through." She's working the collar of the flight suit, double-checking and reworking the stiching around the metal collar that ensure hardseal between helmet and suit, making sure there's no way a leak could be in the fabric. "If this don't fix it, I'm going to have to hunt down this jock and snatch his helmet. Godsdamned, I do not want to rework the seals on a flight helmet today…" she grumbles, but it's mostly just puffery. If it has to be done, it has to be done.
There's a dim light that flickers behind Damon's tired eyes. "Shit." He suddenly sits up straight, blinking. The tools drop from his hands as he stands up. "I gotta get changed." A glance is cast to the wall clock - he breathes a sigh of relief. "Okay, good, I've got time. No wonder I hadn't set my alarm for the usual time." His gloves are hastily removed and tossed onto the workbench. "I gotta report for an appointment in, like, fifteen minutes. Oh frak, my alarm's probably been going off for a solid ten minutes in the bunks." It's probably been smashed by now. To Cilusia, he says, "Er, just - when Nikolai comes in, can you tell him to finish up what I started here? Thanks." And he's on his way to the hatch.
"Uh…sure?" she says, spinning around to look at Damon. All she gets though is the hatch clanging shut behind him. "Well…that was strange…" she muses, shrugging some, and going back to leaning over the suit and finishing that up.