Last Voyage of Delilah, Episode 211: Crucible: Valentine's Flashback to Parth
At Andy's suggestion, this flashback was formatted more like an RP than the others in the episode. Nevertheless, I loved doing it. Thanks, Andy!—Maer
Wednesday, 18 Apr 2525
Somewhere on Parth, Bellerophon
White Sun (Bai Hu) system
Vikki was finally fed up: after months of making do and putting a good face on it, she was finally tired of the hot water crapping out in the middle of her shower. Especially now, when the hot water would soothe the ache from her injured arm. She shivered under the spray as she raced through a quick rinse and jumped out to dry off and dress. She grabbed her rattiest clothes and, properly garbed for a dirty job of crawling through Delilah's innards, Vikki got to work. For some reason, one of the Freddies had seen fit to install the water regulator so that it was only accessible from inside the portside bilge tank. It would be a stinking wet slog to get to it.
At least it's big enough that I can stand up inside, Vikki thought as she eased into the cold nastiness of the bilge. Her nose wrinkled at the smell. I won't have to swim in it. Flameless lights were a plus, too. God only knew what would happen if she'd had nothing but a carbide head lamp to see by. She worked as carefully as she could when she applied her tools. It wasn't entirely to baby her injuries. She didn't want to throw any sparks and ignite any of the inevitable gasses that built up in the tank.
It took some doing, but after about an hour of finicking work, leavened with a fair amount of good natured cursing, Vikki emerged filthy and soaked from the thighs down, victoriously carrying the regulator. Once she got it to her machine shop (and washed her hands, thank you), she examined it and saw that it was shot.
Completely. Irreparably. Shot.
I'll have to fabricate a new one, then. Hmm … Vikki pulled her pipe wrench off the rack without even looking and took the regulator valve apart. She broke it down into its component parts and measured them, making notations in a neat hand. When she was done, she debated retaining the regulator housing for the new parts she'd make …
No. Start over fresh. It'll be a solid replacement instead of a make-do repair. Hmmm. I'm gonna need a good grade of steel.
If there was one thing Delilah had plenty of, it was solid metal scrap. Trick was, Vikki mused as she made her way through the stock she and Poco had laboriously sorted and graded, almost none of it had a clear origin. She could only estimate its composition and structural integrity for the job. She would have to fine tune her analysis once she had it on the drill press and the lathe. Only then would she know for certain if it could handle the stresses of fabrication. She put on her heaviest shop apron and gloves and grabbed a full-coverage helmet with face shield. If the metal was going to shatter in her hands, she wanted some protection from the shrapnel.
The first piece she drilled cracked before she'd gotten all the way through. She wrote the deficiencies on it with her grease pencil as a warning and went back to the scrap pile, wishing she had some vanadium steel. The second and the third tries ended same as the first. She was luckier on her fourth: the metal held true and she got the housing fabricated. Pleased with the metal's performance, she went back to the scrap pile to find more of it.
Now for the valve work…
Her meticulous nature served her well. Her measurements were accurate. She spent the next hour and a half boring the valve chambers in the internal block, humming as she worked. She had a project taking shape under her hands and she was being useful: all her pain and irritation fell away until even the smell off her bilge-soaked clothes ceased to matter.
Val had been watching Vikki for probably close to a half hour now. He had come to check in on her progress on a couple of things and found himself standing in the doorframe, caught up in watching her work. There was something about the way she just took stuff that Val had written off as useless and put them to work again. He found himself smiling, almost despite the focused mood he had been in before stopping by.
He approached a little closer and waved to try and catch her attention. He didn't want to startle her, but without any sort of gear, he didn't want to get too close and end up losing an eye or something.
Vikki didn't see Valentine so much as sensed the room change with his presence. Despite her resolve to let go her feelings for him, she found it hard to ignore him pinging on her personal radar. He was, she decided, like an extracted tooth: a necessary loss she couldn’t refrain from touching, even though she knew she'd feel nothing but pain.
She was at a critical point in her task and could not stop to acknowledge him. Vikki kept her hands steady and bored down to the micron she needed, then carefully raised the drill bit free of the metal and shut everything off. The drill whined as it spun down and Vikki turned her back on Valentine to set the part aside … and to get a firm grip on her feelings. Vikki placed the finished part just so on the work bench and turned around again, her self-control screwed in place.
"Hi, Val," she managed to chirp, raising her face plate and stripping off her gloves. "What can I do for you?"
"Show me what you're doing?" It wasn't an order as much as it was a question born of curiosity.
"Sure." Vikki beamed at him, unable to squelch the happy little glow in her chest created by his interest. "Our water regulator's shot. That's it over there." Vikki pointed at the old one, clearly too corroded and cracked to function. She picked up the housing and the valve block she'd just made. "This is the new one. This, the valve block, goes inside the housing and the valves line up. See?" Suiting action to word, she turned the block in the housing to align it and she peered at Valentine through it. "The hot and cold water flow is controlled by the valves. There are several all over the ship, but this one is to the crew showers and it crapped out." She nearly finished the sentence with on me, but stopped herself in time. The imagery that came with the words would have crossed the line she and Valentine had drawn between them.
Val smiled at her and asked, "And you just made that? Out of the scrap metal we had lying around?" Val still, even after several months flying, still found the process to be a black box. He asked Vikki to create something and she would just do it.
"Yep." Vikki grinned at him and seeing the curiosity in his eyes, she added, "I have to make a valve for the block. Wanna watch?"
"Yes, absolutely I do." Val found Vikki's enthusiasm to be infectious. That was one of the reasons he liked her so much, he guessed.
"Okay. Put this on and stand over here." Vikki handed Valentine a pair of safety goggles and led him to a safe viewing distance. She picked up a smaller cylinder of metal and centered it on the lathe. "I'll need to shave this down to the diameter I need." She consulted her notes, dialed in the measurements, and checked the position of her stock by giving it a spin. It wobbled minutely and she turned the lathe off to adjust it. Another spin, another adjustment. Third time was the charm. "I know it might seem silly to be this picky about it, but the better it's aligned the better the final product. It's a structural thing. Step back."
She gave Valentine fair warning, spun up the lathe, and set the blade. A high pitched whine stabbed the air as the machine cut a curling metal ribbon off the cylinder. Vikki made sure the blade ran smoothly on the trolley, leaving no flaws in its wake. A shiny metal ribbon, a fraction of a millimeter thick, dropped into the shavings pan below. It was already halfway full. When the blade had traveled all the way to the other end, she reset the depth of cut and started over again. Vikki raised her voice over the noise of the machine.
"You don't wanna cut it all at once. Steel isn't cheese. You gotta shave it til you get there."
Val was a details oriented person, so he felt comfortable with Vikki's preciseness, but he also knew something fundamental: Vikki could show him how to do it but he'd never be able to do it quite like her. He kept watching as she kept working.
It wasn't long before the valve was finished to Vikki's exacting standards. She dumped the shavings into the recycling bin and started on the second valve of four. As she spun the block to check its alignment, she spoke without looking up. "Do you think we can set aside a little money into a materials account? This steel is okay for now but I would really love to buy stock knowing the grade and composition beforehand. If you need to, just deduct it from my pay? I don't need much. I'm not exactly a shopaholic or anything."
"Vikki, considering all you do for this ship, and all you're going to need to do for her, a little money set aside for materials is the least I can do." Why would she think she would need to deduct it from her pay? He tilted his head slightly, as understanding slowly came to him. She really didn't know.
"You don't realize, do you?" He waited for her to turn around from her valve to look at him.
Vikki's brows rose for a second, truly puzzled, before turning back to the valve. Two more inches and she'd reached the end of the blade run. She gauged his tone and decided she could wait a minute before the next pass. She turned the lathe off and stepped back so she could talk without yelling.
"Realize what?" she asked, raising the faceplate so she could see him clearly.
"How amazing what you do is, Vikki."
"Oh, um, you're welcome. I'm glad you like it." More than glad, actually. She was intensely elated, even though she regretted the reason why. Vikki's teachers and mentors had said as much to her many times through the years. Hearing the words from them felt less like a compliment paid than an affirmation of an assignment completed, of a job well done. Hearing the same words from Valentine, however, put them in an entirely different category, a territory Vikki knew she couldn't explore. And yet ... Is he flirting with me? I thought we had an agreement that we wouldn't go there.
Flustered, she lowered her faceplate and put her hand on the power switch. "I'll just have this done in a jiff and I can show you how it goes together."
She still didn't get it. Val put his hand on hers, stopping her from turning the power on, and then he used his other hand to flip up Vikki's faceplate so he could see her face. "No, Vikki, it's not just that I like that valve. I just want you to understand....everyone on this ship is special, they all have their own talents." Val wasn't so sure about himself, at least not in context of the ship, but that was something altogether different. "But the rest of us fix or fly or operate what's already there. You create things. That's its own type of special. And I just need you to understand that."
Suddenly aware he might have crossed over a boundary he shouldn't have, he removed his hand from hers. What was he doing?
"Oh," she said, heart in her throat and barely able to breathe. Valentine's hand was warm and heavy and not at all unpleasant. It sent a tiny thrill up her arm and down her spine. Vikki curled her fingers into a fist, lest she do something rash with them. Then he took his hand away, taking the warmth with him, and her lungs worked again. Her wits returned a second later. "It's okay, Val. It's just what I do. It's like how you can read people at the casino. It's just right there in front of you and you see it and you know." She shrugged and turned on the lathe. "Right now, this piece of metal is telling me that it's got a couple of millimeters left before I free the shape it wants to be."
He nodded, trying not to make it any worse than he already had. That was the way with him and relationships. Always picking the wrong ones...or the right ones that he couldn't have. He couldn't even think about being with Vikki because there would come a moment if he chose to try. That moment when he would have to be a ruthless bastard to get something done and she would see it...or be hurt by it. That's what life was. Trying to go as long as you could between the moments where you were forced to hurt people.
"I shouldn't keep you. You have plenty to do."
She saw something shift behind his eyes and she bit her lip. Was it something she'd said? Before she could stop herself, she heard herself say, "Val? What's wrong? Are we … are we good?"
She stood frozen at the lathe, the noise of the machine and the danger of the spinning metal disappearing from her consciousness as she waited for his answer.
"We're good, Vikki," Val reassured her. He had gotten good over the years at that calm reassurance. "I just remembered that I needed to go check in on Poco."
He started to turn to go, then turned back and gave her a reassuring smile. "But don't forget what I said. Don't ever doubt it."
"Okay, then." Relief made her knees weak but she remained upright. She'd been irrationally afraid that she'd insulted him when he was only trying to be nice. She returned his smile and said, "I won't."
He turned and headed away from Vikki, headed anywhere that he could get himself together. Anywhere that he wouldn't be tempted to say something that he shouldn't.
Vikki watched him go and thought perhaps she hadn't ruined things after all. Glad she hadn't hurt him and relieved that things between them were still good, she turned back to the task at hand. The valve still waited to become the valve it was meant to be. Donning her gloves and flipping down her faceplate, Vikki set the blade to the metal. Another ribbon, another millimeter, another piece of the Universe set free.
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