Practical/Math

Andy beat me to it and kicked off this RP. It was great getting back in the saddle again and I had a lot of fun doing this. Thanks, Andy!—Maer

Friday, 02 Feb 2525
Trans-U class, Delilah
Somewhere in the Black
09:50 hrs, ship's time

Valentine Quick stepped across a string of loose baling wire as he walked down the Deck 4 hallway towards the room that Vikki Tikhonova had chosen for her voyage to Anson's World. Val's first instinct was always to reach down and pick up or move the wire, but so much of the ship seemed to be held together with that wire that he was afraid what might happen. Better to leave well enough alone. Val kept reminding himself that the ship would only be around for a couple of weeks anyway. Assuming they got through the situation, of course.

He stopped in front of the door and knocked crisply. "Ms. Tikhonova? Do you have a few minutes for me?"

Vikki jumped at the noise, nearly ruining the line she was writing in her journal. Ms. Tikhonova, came the voice through the door, properly stressed on the second syllable. Normally, Vikki would have to correct people on it. Interesting. She closed the pages on her pen, set it aside, and opened her door.

"Sir?" She stepped back, unsure of the situation and falling back on her manners. "Please, come in."

"The sir is unnecessary." Val smiled slightly as he walked past Vikki into the sparse room. "To be honest, I'm honestly not sure what the right protocol is. One of the reasons why I wanted to steal a few minutes of your time."

He moved over up to lean slightly up against one of the bare walls, looking comfortable in the casual standing position, arms crossed in front of him. "It's an odd situation, isn't it? You're technically passengers but I seem to have commandeered you as crew."

"I don't mind," Vikki said quickly. "Whatever is necessary to survive, I'll do. Protocol can wait." She looked down at the deck, painfully aware of what she'd just written in her journal: I've killed someone ... God knows what I'll accomplish tomorrow. She looked up again. "If I'm crew, what position do I have on it? I think it's pretty clear that Poco's the engineer. Right?"

Val freed a hand to make a sweeping motion, dismissing her concerns. "I'm not really going to be too concerned about positions. I'm sorely underqualified to be captain on a ship, but here we are. I think the most important thing is that we just do whatever tasks we are best suited for as efficiently as possible. Lord knows this ship has enough things wrong with it for twenty engineers, much less two."

He looked at her, his eyes quickly moving across her, seemingly taking her measure. "What tasks do you feel suited for, Ms. Tikhonova?"

A quick pause and another interjection. "And because it smoothes things out, feel free to call me Val when it is just the people that are serving as crew." He then briefly flashed a charming smile, but a polished one, a well-used weapon in a social armory.

Ah, there you are. Vikki might not have had wide experience as a traveler abroad, but some things were recognizable no matter where one went. She'd grown up in the Core, true, but on the poor side the Core rarely acknowledged. She went through her memories and matched what she could to Val. Smooth operator, for one. Facilitator. Face Man. She felt no menace off him, however, so despite his familiarity with Triads and gangsters, she didn't think he was one himself. Steady. Dependable. Diplomatic but honest. Practical, she added.

Aloud, she said, "I'm not exactly sure what I'm suited for, never having been on a ship before. Never really having left home before, actually. But ...," she frowned at the deck again, then looked up. "Mostly I invent things. Or take things and try to make them work better. It's ... it's a game I play in my head. 'How does it work?', 'What's it good for?', 'Can it be improved?', 'What else can it do?'. That sort of thing. I'll be honest, Delilah can use a lot of work in those areas just to get her up to code enough to sell. I'm willing to do what I can to help you accomplish that. I'm not entirely sure how, given what we've got right now to work with, but then again, we've only just started. For all I know, there's a machine shop buried in the clutter here that would make fixing the ship a snap."

She privately doubted it but couldn't help being upbeat anyway.

"You know the saying: 'There's gotta be a pony in here somewhere.'"

He nodded slowly at Vikki as she finished talking. He stood there for a minute, clearly processing the information he had been given, not afraid of a conversational silence. He then smiled softly at her again. "Don't feel bad about having never been on a ship before. The flight that brought me to Persephone a couple hours before we took off was my first flight in space in over a decade. Went from passenger to captain in under a day. We seem to have a swift promotion path here on the ship."

Val walked over to the desk and ran his finger across the closed journal. "Are you a note taker or a journal keeper?"

"Both." Had it been any other day, she wouldn't have minded that he'd noticed. Knowing what lay on the page should he open it, however, made her want to snatch it away and hide it somewhere. Vikki refused to give in to it. There was no point in denying it. Val had already seen it and she'd have to trust he'd respect personal boundaries. Vikki kept her chin up and her gaze direct. "That one's my journal. I find it helps me stay focused. How about you? Do you keep one?"

"I do," he acknowledged. He then stepped away from the desk without opening the journal. "I'm a people watcher by trade and I try and write my experiences with them down so I won't forget. Never know when I might need to remember how I handled a particular situation." Val settled back in against the same wall he had just come from.

"So," he said calmly, "I've seen the white board with the list of things to do. I'd like you to make a similar list by taking stock of what our assets are on board ship and make a report back to me. I'm not sure whether the ship will be around for much longer, so I don't yet want to start repairing things that won't matter in a couple of weeks. Sound reasonable?"

"Before I say yes, I need to clarify something," Vikki said, internally relieved that Val didn't pry. If he were willing to respect her privacy, maybe he would be willing to be candid even if she were rude. "What's your goal for this ship? Sell her? Bring her up to code good enough to scrap her? If I knew that, it would help me better prioritize that list."

"I have a life to return to, Ms. Tikhonova. This ship was unwanted and the faster I can get rid of it, the better off I will be. As is, this unplanned detour to Anson's World is going to cause me problems. Due to a hazardous waste notice, the ship is unsellable and unscrappable in the Core. Hopefully, that won't be a problem further out. Mostly, I just want to know what we have available in case of another emergency."

A brief pause as Val thought of something. Better tell her before she finds out on her own and gets sick. "I would stay away from the engine itself, if you can help it. It is the source of the HWN and from what Doctor Grace tells me, it's quite dangerous."

You didn't quite answer my question, Vikki thought at him. Then again, maybe you don't have the answer for it, yet. "I'll get that list for you as soon as I can," she promised. "But what about Poco? I might be able to stay away from the engine room, but he can't. Not if he's the engineer. Have you told him yet?"

Thinking about others was a great way to take her mind off herself.

"He's on my list. You were the first on my rounds. Which reminds me." He stepped in a little closer to her, not enough to be threatening, but enough to move the conversation to a slightly more serious footing. He wanted her to understand that this was important to him. "The list is nice, but the main reason I came by was to clarify how I plan to work on the ship." He waved a hand up and down the decent quality suit he was wearing. "I'm not a captain, so I plan to trust my subject matter experts on board to do what they need to do without me standing over them or giving them a lot of orders. But when I do give an order, I'm going to expect people to snap to. So here's my first and hopefully last order for you. Make sure you stay away from that crate of weapons in cargo. Under no circumstances should anyone be messing with them. Understood?"

"Understood." Vikki's insides jumped, but she stood her ground when he stepped closer. "I won't touch them. What are we going to do about them? We can't just dump them ... can we?"

"I don't know. What I don't want to do is make a hasty decision. So I'm going to think about it." He hadn't wanted to be here, to be responsible for these people, this ship. He had more than enough responsibility back home. But he'd be damned if he'd let anyone's impatience or curiosity (including his own) get them all killed. "It may be just as simple as landing on Anson's World and letting the shipment get unloaded. Let whoever is smuggling have them and be done with it." He didn't think it'd be that simple though.

"I ... ," Vikki faltered and bit her lip. What she was about to say might make Val angry but she couldn't in good conscience stay silent. She took a deep breath and continued softly. "I'm not ... I'm not very experienced in how things are run out here, but ... Isn't passing the buck what got the Verse into the mess it's in? If the weapons were to go to the good guys, why the subterfuge? If they're going to the bad guys—and everything makes me think that they are—then how many people are going to be hurt because we looked the other way? I'm not ... Please, I just want to understand what the right thing is to do. I'm not going to bring this up with anyone else. I'm not trying to mutiny or anything. I just ... just want to know what you, the man in charge, really think about this."

Val sighed slightly and stepped away to sit down on the simple bed. "You don't mind, do you?"

"No. I'm sorry. You're a guest. I should have offered first off." Vikki nodded and waved him to it, even though he'd already taken a seat. "Please do."

She put her back to the wall and got comfortable. She had a feeling she's be standing for a while.

"Thanks," he said. How to phrase it so he didn't sound like a heartless bastard? "Ms. Tiknohova, life is about responsibilities. And my first and immediate responsibility, despite it being unexpected, is making sure the people on this ship stay alive. And from a specifically selfish viewpoint, I need to stay alive to get back to my responsibilities in my other life. So if I can think of a way to be a hero and not risk everyone's lives, then I will gladly do so. But I'm not going to get four real, tangible people killed in the present to prevent any number of intangible, unpredictable deaths in the future."

You can't argue when you're dead and you can't fault his wish to avoid that argument. After all, you did peg him as practical. So why did she feel disappointed that she'd pegged him right? She sucked in her lips to avoid blurting out the counterarguments that rose irrepressibly in her head. She knew they were futile. His math, however brutal, was sound.

"All right," she said when she could trust herself to speak again. "Hand-off on the weapons. We're still stuck for the container, though. It's in the one we need to store our meds in. We can't let the weapons customer make off with it, too. Maybe we could transfer the meds to another one? I know it's an extra expense but ... maybe we can do it?" She sighed, already discarding the suggestion. "I'm overthinking it. Sorry. It just ... Yeah."

She shook her head and spoke to the deck, not wishing to see disapproval in Val's eyes. It mattered to her that he thought well of her, though she couldn't say why. Yet another thing to make sense of in the Black. "The learning curve is pretty steep out here. Don't mind me. I'm just getting used to the angle."

"I do understand, I promise. You wouldn't be volunteering if you didn't want to help people." He stood up and walked over to her, putting his hand on her shoulder. "If it helps, I think you and Doctor Grace will help more people long term by staying alive and doing your charity work."

Val walked over and stood in the open doorway. "In the meantime, I do appreciate your helping out with cataloging the mess my father left behind on this ship."

She looked up when he touched her, surprised at the contact. He appreciated her efforts. He was counting on her to do her part. Common sense urged caution, despite. Remember, he's a facilitator, a smooth operator. He's telling you what you want to hear so you'll do your job. And yet, he'd made several admissions that put him at a disadvantage. If he were really playing her, why make them? The unknown variables of the situation opened up a bottomless pit of uncertainty that threatened to swallow her whole. She couldn't let it get her. She had to believe he meant to do the right thing, however much he could. And that meant she has to do what she could do, however much she could. After all, didn't she start this conversation by saying that? "Whatever's necesssary, I'll do. Protocol can wait. And it's Vikki, by the way. Calling me Ms. Tikhonova makes me look for my mother."

She smiled up at him to let him know she really didn't mind.

"Ok, Vikki it is." A place where casino protocol had bled over into his personal life (what little of it existed, anyway). He never called people by their first names unless they specifically asked. And he didn't mind. It kept some distance between him and the customers. Made it easier to do his job. He wondered if calling people by their first name helped or hurt a ship captain. Not that it mattered. He'd play the captain role as if he was a floor manager. Kept things simple.

"I think I'm going to track down the good doctor next. Have you seen her around?" He was leaving Ms. McAlister for last. She was the one he most needed to work with him and not against him. But he was having a hard time figuring out where he stood. That's why you have the conversation...

"I'm ...," Vikki blinked, realizing she didn't know where Grace Tian had gone. Too wrapped up in yourself. You should have paid better attention. She sighed. "I'm not sure which unit she chose or if she's in it right now. I'd just keep knocking until you find her. Meanwhile I'll get started on that list."

And so saying, she pulled a blank notebook from her bag and waved Val through the door. "After you."

He nodded and walked out the door. "If I hadn't said it already, I apologize for the state of transport and I appreciate you working with me to make the trip as smooth as possible." Make sure the customer knows that the situation was unintentional. Thank them for their courtesy. Make it work in your favor. He had done this type of thing so many times that the words were swimming in him like the blood in his veins.

"Nichevo." Vikki shook her head. "It's not your fault. And pazhalusta, you're welcome."

"My ship, my fault. But we'll get you there. And we'll deal with all the unexpected surprises." He nodded briefly at Vikki and then wandered down in search of Doctor Grace.

HOW TO SPEAK RUSSIAN

Nichevo = Ничего = Nee – cheh – voh = It's nothing. Sound clip
Pazhalusta = пожалуйста = Pah-zhahl- stah = (intj.) Please!, If you please!, You are welcome!, Don't mention it!, Forget it!, Pray! Sound clip

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