RP Entry: Heavy Lifting

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As I've come to expect, Andy's just hitting on all cylinders on this one. Thanks, Andy!--Maer




Thursday, 04 Sep 2521
Kuiper II class, Summer’s Gift,
En route to Meridian
Blue Sun (Qing Long) system
2200hrs, ship’s time



We were thirteen days out of Pericles and the strain of having 30 people on a ship designed to support only a little over half that was taking its toll. I was running myself ragged just keeping up with the life support and recycling systems, trying to divert a little more power into them so as to allow 30 souls to continue enjoying luxuries like breathing and basic hygiene. As the sole engineer on practically every ship I’ve crewed on since the war, I was accustomed to getting less than the full 8 hours of sleep the experts insist on and I often voluntarily went without when engrossed in a project or a repair. This time, however, I went without from dire necessity and grabbed what sleep I could in the few stretches when the status boards in the engine room weren’t yarking imminent failure of our girl’s more critical systems. It was just during one such respite that I’d returned from grabbing a quick bite to eat and a fortifying cup of coffee in the galley when I came upon Joshua struggling one-handed with a load of laundry in the mid-ships lounge.

If anyone worked harder than I on this trip, it was Joshua. His arm and shoulder were still recovering from the hideous injury he’d sustained on Pericles and looking sharply, I could see Joshua was cheating again—he’d slipped his arm from its sling to free up his good hand to open the laundry room door. I took in the line of his back, the cant to his shoulders, and knew he was hurting. Quickening my pace, I wondered how long it had been since he’d truly slept. With 30 people to feed, he’s probably sleeping in the damned galley to get a jump on the prep work for breakfast. Aloud I said, “Need a hand with that?”

---

Joshua could feel every part of him hurting, even some parts he didn't think he really put a lot of strain on. But even more than the physical hurt, what was weighing on him was the fact that he had potentially really pissed Arden off. What right did he have trying to tell Arden how to handle the medical bay...how to handle patient treatment? But as usual, he couldn't leave well enough alone.

So when Rina came up behind him, offering to help, he almost refused. But then he thought better of it - punishing himself wasn't going to help him, the crew, or the passengers. Besides, why take it out on Rina? "Sure, that would be great," he said, putting the load down quickly, his muscles aching from the release. "I just overloaded it. Misjudged how much I could carry."

---

I perched the laundry basket on my hip and got that door open…and stopped on the threshold wondering where the hell I'd put it. The laundry compartment wasn't very big, basically a rounding out of a right-angle corner of the lounge and in the best of times there'd usually be some folded goods waiting on the tiny counter next to the stacked washer and dryer. This time the counter was stacked nearly to the ceiling with clean folded loads and the deck was carpeted with wadded dirty ones. And a quick look inside the washer revealed a wet load waiting.

I wedged the basket between the washer and the door jamb and swapped the wet and dry, got the basket load into the washer with the soap. Running low, I thought, gauging the level in the bin with a critical eye. I'll have to grab some more from our stores. Tossing the soiled stuff from underfoot into the basket to make some room, I merely commented, "Tell me if the loads are coming clean. If they're not, I'll see if I can't jigger the reclamation system again. Probably have to check the sanitizer, too."

I straightened and dredged up a smile.

"How're you holding up? Can I get you anything?"

---

"If you can find my sanity anywhere, that would be great. I have seemed to have misplaced it." He looked around the normally tidy laundry room and sighed.

---

"Try looking for it under your pillow. When was the last time you really slept?" I knew the question could be seen as callous, considering the condition overtaking our passengers, but to hell with it. Joshua was more important to me than any of them. I leaned against the washer, now thrumming on agitate, and crossed my arms to wait for his response.

---

"Good sleep or just plain sleep? Been a while since either, really." He ticked off the hours in his head. "Probably about 16 or 18, so not too bad. Nika is making me sleep some. Though it's never very deep." Joshua decided it would probably be smart not to mention how often he was sleeping on the bench in Botany Bay.

---

I listened to his figures and sighed internally. The man was getting more than I, but this wasn’t a competition. It made sense to have someone aboard less disabled from sleep dep than the rest of us. For some of our passengers it was already too late.

“No, not bad at all. Let’s keep it that way.” I stared pointedly at his empty sling, hooked a finger into it and jiggled it for emphasis. Memory of my delirium on Miranda flickered to the surface and for a second I saw Arden leaning over me with his scalpel. I shook the vision off. “I don’t think Arden can handle you in medbay on top of everyone else.”

---

Joshua sighed as she mentioned Arden. He had really been way too pushy with Arden. He got all defensive when people messed in his galley or Botany Bay, but yet he couldn't keep his nose out of Arden's med bay. Of course, people's lives (and religious choices) weren't on the line in his galley. Joshua wasn't religious as most people would define it, but he had some empathy with the passengers and the religious experience they were going through on their trip to Miranda.

"I'm not sure Arden would let me in the medbay now anyway."

---

"That's not what I'd meant," I said, biting back my annoyance at his tone. We were all tired and struggling with setbacks without our usual resilience, and I didn't want to add to Joshua's trouble by arguing him out of a sulk. Still... "If you were injured, he'd insist on letting you in."

---

"I know, I know. Just feeling like I can't talk to him these days without stepping in it."

---

"Then don't. Give him room. If he feels like talking, let him do it."

--

"Yeah, maybe. I basically just walked all over his domain and tried to kick him around."

---

"Are you going to do it again?"

---

"I don't know. I'm clearly a huge gorram busybody."

---

"Then say you're sorry," I said and pulled him close for a kiss. Kiss given, I continued. "And then go forth and sin no more. Or at least try not to."

---

He shook his head. "I'm out of place in this 'Verse, I think sometimes. I don't know if I think like everyone else."

---

"Thank God for that," I said fervently. "Seriously, Joshua, if you were like everyone else, you and I would never have clicked."

---

He smiled a little. She was right about that one. "I wonder how the bloody hell I ended up this way. Blue Sun's conditioning must really suck."

---

"Is that a trick question?" I grinned up at him and kissed him again.

---

He held on to the second kiss for a little longer, enjoying the quiet (if brief) break in the craziness of juggling 30 people on board a ship deigned to handle half of that. "I'm serious," he said chuckling as he let the kiss go. "How did Blue Sun end up developing a way too moral guy with all the work they did?" After all, unless genetics was all powerful, his morals and ethics should've been a reflection of what they wanted from him.

---

I looked past his shoulder forward and aft. We stood half in and half out the laundry compartment and the stacked units were going full blast keeping up with 25 passengers. And two crewmen in need of a little alone-time. The noise from the machines should give us enough cover and the door would give us a little more. I hitched myself up on the washer, pulled Joshua inside with me, and pulled the door to. It shut, barely.

Wrapping my arms around him again, I breathed in the scent of him and said into his chest, "I don't know. I just know that they failed to remove that last part of you that kept you human."

---

"Lucky for you, lucky for me, irritating for the people whose business I keep poking my nose into," he joked. "Eh, Arden will either forgive me or leave me stranded on Miranda." Miranda: Where Rina's lovers all end up. The minute he thought it, he winced a little on the inside and hugged her a little tighter as a silent apology for a remark she'd never hear.

---

I felt him go tense under my hands and I looked up.

"What is it?"

---

"Just a little nervous about Miranda." Nervous and excited at the same time, really. Miranda was one of those things that the rest of the crew shared that he didn't. And he knew it wouldn't be the same...but logic and knowledge could only control what he felt so much.

--

And now it was my turn to go still. God knew, I had reason to feel conflicted about going there. Reavers. Pax. Mike. What would I find when we touched down? Howling cannibals waiting to rip us to pieces or the silence of the grave? I remembered the desiccated corpses of Miranda's former inhabitants and tried not to picture Mike lying among them. After a month or so, there'd be little of him left if...

Stop. Just stop. You'll go insane.

But that little voice inside me couldn't resist adding: No, do go on. It's only fair. You put him there.

---

Joshua could feel her freeze and he didn't need his Reader abilities to know exactly what she must be thinking. There was a good reason he hadn't wanted to ask the passengers' leader about Mike where Rina could hear him. He rubbed his hand up and down her back and said, "I'm sorry, Rina."

---

"It's not your fault," I said, my voice going thick.

It wasn't. Not really. I'd put Mike on the path to Miranda long before Joshua entered the picture. Perhaps longer. I'd had ample time to think on what Mike had told me through the plexi of his cell, to think about the choices he and I had made as far back as the war. Had I been willing to pull the trigger then, could I have spared Mike whatever he endured now? If I had done as his men had suggested, had done it despite Mike's veto, could I have saved whatever killing Strachan had ruined for him? Could I have rescued that final inch in Mike that might have kept him from shooting You Ge twelve years later in Blue Sun?

Without Mike in front of me, there was no telling. And with Mike in front of me, with the dirt of Miranda beneath our feet, I feared what his answer might be.

---

"No," he agreed, "but I am still sorry. Not any less nervous, but still sorry."

---

"I know." I held Joshua tight and nodded into his chest. "Thank you."

---

"No problem. You can repay me by not being too harsh on me if I happen to die from mental overload when we land on Miranda." Joshua joked about it because that was how he could put some distance between the idea of it and him. Hopefully he could keep his mental door shut against all the death that had happened there.

---

As a joke, it fell flat but as a means to pull myself together before I lost it, it sufficed. Presented with a problem I could reasonably solve, I was able to change gears and get a grip.

“You have your meds,” I said, sniffing deeply and looking at him again. “Do you have enough to take them every day when we get there?”

---

"If we don't stay for too long." He looked at her. "How long do you think we're going to stay?" Joshua hadn't really thought that the ship would stay more than a day or so - just long enough to drop off their passengers and be off. Miranda wasn't exactly a Tourist Destination.

---

"I don't know," I said, thinking of our grounding two years ago. "The first time we went, it wasn't under the best of conditions. We'd fought the Reavers, took on damage, burned through atmo only partially repaired. Since then? I've heard the Reavers have been cleared from Miranda's skies—mostly—but there's no verifying that til we get there. From that point on, it's anyone's guess if we land in a condition to take off again or not. I just don't know.

---

He nodded in response. The idea of being stranded on Miranda hadn't occurred to him. If he had to spend too much more time with their passengers, he might go crazy, no Pax necessary. And Joshua was reminded again exactly why he was nervous. "Just...keep an eye on me, okay?" he asked quietly. "I can struggle handling 25 live people in close quarters. I don't know how I'm going to handle several million dead ones."

And the crazy cannibals were an added bonus, he thought.

---

"I will." I caressed his face and nodded. "Like a hawk." I knew the deaths of thirty villagers in Shepherd's Hope had been enough to make him violently ill. God alone knew how the deaths thirty million would affect him. Still.... "Do you think enough time has passed for the empathic residue to have worn off? I mean, it’s been over a decade since it’s happened. And I can attest for a fact that none of the dead we saw two years ago got up and walked again. It's creepy but after a while it gets to be part of the landscape. I know it sounds horrible, but the sheer scale of it numbs you to it after a while."

I shook my head and got myself back on track.

"Don't worry. I'll keep a sharp eye on you. I'll get Arden to stock me with patches and a dose of your meds. You know, I don't think you ever taught me how to dose you with it. Maybe that should change."

---

"How heavy are thirty million souls?" Not for the first time, Joshua wondered if he were less moral, more...flexible, if he might handle the psychic shock better. Or maybe, he thought, that's the price you must pay for the ability to invade someone else's mind.

---

"I guess it depends on who's doing the lifting." I searched his face, could see him thinking, and not for the first time I wished I could hear his thoughts. That being an impossibility I had to go on a guess and a hunch and hope I came close. "Are you worried for your sanity, Joshua? Or are you worried for your soul?"

---

"I'll be fine," Joshua said quietly, as he kissed her on the forehead as reassurance. "It's not like I'm religious. And I didn't have anything to do with Miranda."

Anything that Blue Sun had let him remember, anyway.

---

"Sanity, then." I smoothed my hands across his back and snugged in close again. "Do me a favor?"

---

"You know I will."

---

"Don't let me ...," I paused, trying to find the words to say it. Don't let me what? Obsess over Mike? Hare off in the wild hope of finding him? And really, once I found him, what could I do that I hadn't already done to him? Stab him through the heart again? Make things worse by trying to apologize? Apologize for not killing someone I loved? For making a life without him in it? Joshua had his reasons for dreading Miranda, for being nervous at what he'd find there. He wasn't the only one.

"Miranda's a world cursed with condemned souls. Thirty million of them were put there by Blue Sun and the Feds, but one of them's mine. Mike's not blameless in what he did, but neither am I and I'm partially responsible for it. Just ... promise me you don't let me obsess over it? Whether we're there for a day or a week or a month, Miranda bears watching and I can't do that if my head's somewhere else."

---

Don't let Rina obsess over her former lover. Check.

Conveniently, Joshua had his own reasons for making sure that didn't happen. Rina had chosen him and he knew that. But that didn't mean he was thrilled with the idea of her entering a situation where Mike would be on her mind all the time. There was being understanding, and then there was serving as a doormat. He wanted the former, not the latter.

"Giving me something to focus on can only help," Joshua replied, really meaning it. He was stronger than he had been, maybe stronger than he gave himself credit for. But anything that would keep his mind occupied away from Miranda's victims couldn't be bad.

---

“I’ll watch your back if you’ll watch mine,” I said, giving him a wan grin.

---

"I'll watch more than that." And Joshua grinned as his hand slid down and pinched Rina's oh so luscious behind. He was going to have to enter the real world again in a minute. Might as well take advantage while he had a chance.

---

I stifled a yelp and wrapped my legs around his waist and gave him a warning squeeze. A career of lifting heavy objects ensured I could put quite the clamp on if I chose.

"See that you do," I said and this time my grin turned wicked. "Don't make me hunt you down and remind you to keep your promise."

---

And Joshua gave her a final kiss, a nice long one that he could hold to the memory of when he was juggling the fifteenth meal of the day. "Back to the grind, then?"

---

His words meant one thing but I could already feel his body turning that meaning around. For a brief second I actually considered it before common sense vetoed the idea.

"Yeah," I sighed, the taste and touch of him lingering on my lips ... and elsewhere. "Pursue the other sort later tonight?"

That's assuming we both had the energy. The strain of carrying twenty-five passengers wasn't entirely on his shoulders. I was running myself ragged keeping our mechanical systems from collapsing under the load … when I wasn't helping Joshua from collapsing under his. He still had to baby his arm to avoid doing it permanent injury and I knew better than most the consequences for pushing it. So I helped him with the cooking and the cleaning and the tending of the hydroponics and all the rest of it. It left us little time for anything else.

And quite frankly, we could use a break.

---

"Yes," Joshua nodded. "As long as you don't get too angry if I fall asleep in the middle." The steward duties were physically exhausting and keeping his Reader door shut was mentally exhausting. At least they weren't producing any drama.

---

"Done and done." I gave him one last kiss and let him go. "But you better go now. Otherwise the laundry won't be the only thing getting lathered up in here."

---

He laughed at that as he wandered back out to the hallway, almost stumbling into one of the male passengers on the way. Time to do all the chopping for the next 24 hours, Joshua thought, as he made his way back to the galley where he spent most of his waking hours. Miranda was a long way away and at the moment, he had more than enough to worry about.

---

I closed the door just as the washer under me lurched to announce it was done. Judging my hands clean enough, I slid off and swapped the wet and dry loads and started folding. One less mountain for Joshua to climb, I thought, and maybe it would allow us that break we needed.

---


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