| This Tape Will Self Destruct… |
| Summary: | A secret meeting. In a secret location. On a secret project. |
| Date: | 28 Sep 2041 AE |
| Related Logs: | All Areion related logs, particularly We're All Friends Here & Seven-Point-Fives for Three |
| Players: |
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| Deck 8 - Empty Hold |
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| There used to be much stuff here. Then it all got used up. Now it's empty. Mostly. |
| Post-Holocaust Day: #214 |
Marko sets up his and Leyla's first meeting in an out of the way compartment near the Hydroponics lab. He's got his laptop computer set up, along with a scientific calculator, a few pens and a pair of spiral bound notebooks that still have a few blank pages in them waiting for when she arrives. Table and chairs as well, of course, as he's sitting in one at the moment, going through a file folder and tapping at his keyboard.
Leyla's making her way onto deck 8, passing easily by storage, ducking just around the corner from hydroponics and moving into the appointed meeting location. She's no idea why her ECO has asked her down here. But, true to her word, she does trust him. SO when he sent the message, she responded. Not with running, or with any look of anticipation, but with the same measured calm with which she always moves trough the ship. Anything else would just be…inappropriate. But, finally, she arrives, using the knuckles of her left hand to rap on the bulkhead to announce her arrival. "Flasher." And his name following after.
"C'mon in, and shut the hatch, if you please." Marko replies. "Grab a chair. Got some water and coffee in those thermoses." he adds, gesturing towards the pair on the far side of the little table. "Was gonna go ahead and get Money Shot in here, but she's tied up with something." he adds. "Boss just handed me a new project, wants you to help me out with it. How good are you with flight evaluation data?"
Boots in, hatch closed, seat taken. But nothing for her to drink just yet. She does settle as comfortably as she can, leaning forward, forearms resting on her knees, "Yes, she's tied up with a lot of things lately." But that's all she's going to say about that. Her primary concern is the business at hand, "One of the best in my class at the Academy."
"Well, take a look at these." Marko says, passing the folder over to Leyla. "Trask wants us to start building a performance model based on them." he explains. "This is also strictly between you, me, Apostolos and Trask." he adds. "Hence the secrecy."
Leyla accepts the folder. A flip of the cover and she's looking at the readings for a viper. Top of the line, just a hair above. A single gloves fingertip as she starts at one column and begins to work her way down. "These from the other ship?" Leyla may not fly a Viper, or rather, may not have flown a viper since Flight School, but this is what she spent four years of her life learning how to do. "Designer, engineer, pilot, fabricator?" She calls off the potential job titles in the order of the names Marko puts forward.
"Eh, kind of half-engineer, half-designer." Marko replies, taking a swig from his omnipresent water bottle. "I think what Trask wants us to do is get a sim ready based on you and Apostolos' evaluation of the flight data." he explains. "Then I get to plug into one of the Viper sim pods. From there, they go on to fabrication and all that fun stuff. I dunno what kind of timetable we're on, but expect it to be tight as a frog's ass and that's watertight."
"I'll get started on it right away." Whatever else she might have going on, if Trask wants it now, Leyla will do everything she can to get it to him now. "I'll need a few hours to give you a preliminary evaluation, then I'll need access to a computer to start plugging in all the parameters and running them in real time."
Marko smiles and swivels his laptop around, pushing it within reach of Leyla. "Here, use mine." he says. "I'll sign another one out of ship's stores for your personal use. Damn…Sorry, Sweet Pea, I should've thought of that." he adds, wincing at the oversight. "But, good news is, file transfers on these babies is dead simple." he grins. "Just be sure you create a new directory. Should be plenty of memory."
"Well, it's not really your fault. I don't usually use computers much." Despite the fact that her life would be much much much easier with them, she seems to love the simplicity of pen on paper and does most of her work long hand. Instead of pictures, Leyla has mathematical proofs tacked up on the walls of her bunk. Another reason why no one's ever bothered to bunk with her. Her wonkness might rub off on them, "But in this case, it'll be easier for everyone to keep up." Which is simply a fact of life. the computer will cut out each of the group having to crunch numbers and look up theorems in their heads or their spare time. "You've got a modeling program here as well? Just right off the bat, I want to see about testing the shearing forces on the spaceframe."
"Yeah, I've got my old copy of Tangara loaded on it." Marko replies, nodding. "Should be in the taskbar. Pretty good program, little out of date, but frak it, it works." he shrugs. "I've got my disks with me, remind me and I'll load it on to yours when I get it."
"Any way you can get it a bit more up to date? Make it closer to what we're running now on the ship? Unless you mean the program itself is out of date, and not the ships you can design into it." Look, she's just the physics nerd here, not the hacker! Don't judge her. "I'd appreciate that. I'd like to plug in the numbers, run some 3D modeling, marking for displacement vectors, shear strain…looking at deformation characteristics…" Go, go power nerd! "Right," Leyla sits back, still going over the paperwork, as if she really can't help herself, "You know I seriously considered not accepting my commission, just so I could…well, it doesn't matter now."
Marko chuckles and shrugs a little. "The stuff they're using on board for modeling's a hell of a lot better than Tangara, but I kept my copy 'cause I've been using it since I was about, what, twelve?" Marko replies. "My sideline for hacking was trying to develop games. Never was any good at the games thing, but the hacking…well….That, I had down pretty good." he explains with a grin. "Tangara's just easier to use than the really high-end stuff they have now." he explains. "I like it better for thumbnail sketches, 'cause you can shift things around on the fly real easy-like." he says. "So you could…?" he asks, cocking his head a little.
"Well, I'll let you make the call. if you think this will work well enough for me to run accurate demonstration scenarios for the three of you to look at, then I'm fine with it. I've used the program a few times, or did, when I was in flight school." Leyla's already booting up the program, refreshing herself. Multitasker ftw. "So I could work in the dirt in engineering. I could have been happy doing nothing but crunching numbers all day. When I first heard they were putting me in the pilot pipeline and not ECO, I almost did. Pens never let me live it down. He knew how much I wanted to to be an ECO."
"Worked out for the best, far as I can tell, when the fit hits the shan, you're the one I want driving the bus." Marko replies firmly. "The fact that you can do my job as well just means we won't miss anything." he smiles. "Engineering's interesting, but code-wise, it gets a little boring." he shrugs. "There's not a lot of flexibility with those systems. They work, or they don't. This job's more like what I used to do, being creative to solve problems."
"Thank you. I mean, I like it now. But then, I thought it was the end of the world. I didn't want to be the one driving, I wanted to be the one scanning, looking at the numbers, doing the calculations. That what made me happy. It was what I was good at." Still, she's happy enough with this little project, "I'm glad you're in my backseat."
"Glad to be there." Marko replies, saluting Leyla tiredly with his water bottle. "Nothing's the end of the world." he comments, chuckling softly. "Not even the end of the world. I mean, we're still here, right?" he smiles a little. "And..I have eight packs of fresh skivvies, at four pairs per pack." he grins. "They can talk about that one hundred percent water reclamation crap all they want, I swear, there's still lime in the wash water."
"You look like you're about dead on your feet, Flasher." Leyla pauses, actually pushing the laptop away, before she turns to face, fully, the ECO sitting almost across from her at the small table. "So you got the underwear because the water has lime in it?" There are some things about Marko Scaurus she simply isn't ever going to understand.
"I got the skivvies 'cause they haven't been washed forty-eleven times, Aydin." Marko chuckles. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to go there." he adds, hanging his head a little. "I am about dead on my feet. Been playing with the guts of the Virtual Heavy Raider and working the hydro lab." he says, stifling a yawn behind his fist. "So, do you know what the story is with the hydroponics thing? I heard they're gonna shift it off-ship." he asks in a tone like a father inquiring about a possibly sick child.
"Oh. Right. I got new ones too. They're pink plaid." There's a look of abject horror that passes over Leyla's face at that. Moving on. "That's part of what they want the freighter for. I don't think they'll get rid of the hydroponics here, but there's no more room for it on the ship, and they want to expand it to make it large enough to feed the fleet, civilians and military." Leyla nods, shutting down the computer and tucking away the readouts, "I don't think Lunair has anything to worry about. Her garden isn't going to be moving off the ship. They're just trying to make a bigger one." But that doesn't seem to be the pilot's primary concern, "You need to hit the rack. I'll let you know as soon as I get the data input."
Marko laughs a little, nodding. "See what I mean?" he replies understandingly. "Oh. good. We lose that garden, we might just lose our minds. It's about the only peace we get on this tub." he smiles. "But having it expanded would be great for everybody." he adds.
"Well, with any luck, the freighter will pan out, and we can see how her garden grows on different soil." But that said, Leyla rises to her feet, "So, how do we do this…walk out together, or go out one at a time so they won't know we're hiding something?" There's more than a bit of humour there. "You go fore, I go aft?"
Marko laughs. "Eh, in case you haven't noticed, this isn't exactly the busiest area of the ship." Marko replies, pushing off from the table and standing. "If you need to keep that file, put it someplace nobody's gonna find it. Otherwise, lemme have it. I've got the perfect place to stash it."
"Well, it makes it a bit more exciting, doesn't it?" But she'll allow that, "I've got a good place for, don't worry. You'd be surprised where you learn to hide things back home." Actually, it's probably not all that clandestine, or exciting, but knowing Leyla, it will be secure. "Give me a couple of hours to input all the data, and I'll have it back to you when you wake up."
"Sounds like a plan to me." Marko replies, nodding. "If you need any help with the software, the full manual's on the drive. But, like I said, please make a new directory. It'll make it easier to copy on to your laptop when you get it. My main drive's kind of a puzzle box." he chuckles sleepily.
"You are such a back seat driver. Get to the rack. The sooner you get to sleep, the sooner you can get your files back." Yes, she's going to hold them hostage. And, apparently, she's going to settle back into the chair she only just recently vacated. Might as well work here, since it's already arranged.
"Never let it be said, I don't listen to my pilot." Marko replies, drawing himself up to a formal salute. "Don't stay up too late, yourself." he adds as he starts to toddle off.