Jumping at shadows?

Posted on Tue Nov 1st, 2022 @ 4:51am by Lieutenant JG Miraj Derani & Lieutenant Commander S'hib

Mission: Season 5: Time Warp
Location: Crawlsapce between decks nine & ten
Timeline: June 2397
1677 words - 3.4 OF Standard Post Measure

Miraj crawled into position over the air scrubbers set into the floor of the Jeffries tube between Decks nine and ten and collapsed down on them with a happy sigh. The huge open space of the promenade on Deck 10 meant the scrubbers had to work harder to cycle the air, even if it wasn't as concentrated with CO2 as the smaller corridors. As a result they purred like a sleepy kitten, a slightly high pitched happy rumble.

Miraj snuggled into them, finding peace as the ship rumbled against all her skin not covered by her cut off shorts and vest. "How are you, baby?" She stroked the bottom of the jeffries tube. "I know. I've been neglecting you. I'm sorry."

The buzz of the air scrubbers pulsed against her skin, stronger than the usual background hum, was soothing, lulling her and blurring out the stress of the last mission. "So we went to that planet attacking ships, and pulled the Jefferson back up. She's in a right state. You ships aren't meant to be under the sea. Salt and pressure aren't good for you. But the thing that really did the damage was getting a squeeze from some sort of amorous kraken. You should see poor Acheron. She's covered in gunk. I've had to ask some poor crewmen to give her a sponge bath, but I think they're going to need chisels now its dried"

"So I'm going to get back to working on the QSD stick conversion. Maybe some sort of cradle that comes out of the floor maybe. I don't know. What do you think?" She lay there quietly, cheek pressed gently against the scrubber casing, eyes closed, waiting for the answer to come to her.

The answer however, seemingly a question in itself, caught her attention as the usual rhythmic hum was interrupted by a sudden clatter; soft little vibrations echoing along the Elysium as if someone was tapping away with a hammer.

It was brief but noticeable, the sudden stop drawing even more of her attention towards whatever it could have been.

Miraj lifted her head and looked down the tube. Nothing on Elysium made that sort of sound. Nothing that was part of the ship anyway. She pushed herself onto her hands and knees, sighing a little as the warmth of the air scrubbers came away from her belly, and crawled slowly along the tube listening for the strange tapping, eyes darting to the bundles of cables and ducts that lined the sides of the tubes in case there was something hiding in it.

She was ten meters from the junction when she heard it again, just for a moment. Curious now she carefully crawled forward.

But now all she found was silence, even the hum of the scrubbers seemed to be elsewhere as she concentrated, edging forward slowly before her comm badge chirped impossibly loud.

Miraj gave an embarrassing squeak, and jerked back as if there was something alive underneath her. Then she realised what it was, and fished her communicator out from her where it was tucked inside her shirt.

"Miraj, are you busy?" S'hib snorted down the comms, his booming voice reverberating inside the Jefferies tube. "I just popped by your quarters but you weren't in..." He added, sounding somewhat deflated by the fact.

"Er, sort of," she whispered. "Not really. What's up?" She started creeping forward towards the junction.

"It's nothing urgent, just have a gift for you... I was supposed to give it to you a while ago but it wasn't ready... where are you by the way, it sounds echoey?"

"Uh," she stalled. She wasn't exactly supposed to be here after all. "Near the promenade?"

"Near the promenade..." S'hib repeated while rolling his eyes. "you know, I have a PADD on my desk dedicated to complaints from Ops and Engineering, apparently, they keep finding access hatches left open in very odd parts of the ship..."

"You wouldn't happen to know anything about that would you?" He added after a short pause, smirking to himself as he accessed a wall terminal to track her comm badge.

"It's not me. I close up behind me." Most of the time, she added mentally, trying to sound as innocent as possible when the commbadge could probably pick up the echo. "It gets draughty in here if someone leaves a panel open." She winced, realising she'd outed herself somewhat.

"Uh-huh..." S'hib frowned as he tapped on the screen, moving a thumb and index apart to zoom in, squinting at the deck plan as it shifted into the internal maze of access tunnels and maintenance shafts. "Draughty on the promenade." He said softly as something clunked heavily in the junction ahead of Miraj.

Her heart started to work double time, "S'hib?" She whispered. "Are you getting any life signs in here? Apart from me?'

"What?" He laughed before a voice inside his head whispered in a foreboding tone, reminding him of the reports mounting on his desk. "No, no I'm not..." He added, sounding concerned at his own statement "Why?" He added, now pacing very quickly for the nearest turbolift.

Miraj didn't dare take her eyes off the junction ahead, lit up by the small strip of LEDS that ran along the crawlways. "There's something in here!" she hissed, taking another cautious creep forward, torn between wanting to know what it was, and wanting to turn tail and run. "Help?"

"Yes yes, I'm coming... don't panic." He huffed while panicking himself, repeatedly chiming the door controls to the turbolift as he waited for a pod to arrive.

"I'm not panicking!" she squeaked, breathing fast, as she crept forward again. She was only a few feet from the junction, and she could feel cold sweat turning the back on her neck clammy.

"Well as much as the Ely is the pride of the fleet, she's still old... what makes you think there's something in there with you and... Deck ten, you know, not just the ship being old and creaky." He hummed, trying to sound nonchalant to calm Miraj as he impatiently waited for the turbolift to finish its agonisingly short trip up from deck sixteen.

"She's nine years old!" Miraj protested, her jittering nerves forgotten in the rush to defend the ship. "She's practically a baby. And I know this ship in my bones. That wasn't her!"

"Nine years or nine months she has been through a lot, she's just making noises you aren't used to..." He lied as he burst out of the turbolift onto deck ten, hurriedly marching past civilians and crew alike as he reached a concealed maintenance hatch that blended the Jefferies tube entrance into the curved wall aesthetic of the Hades Inferno nightclub.

Passers-by stopped, murmuring with one another as S'hib knelt down and hurriedly ripped the concealed cover of the hatch, tossing it to one side before opening the Jefferies tube and crawling inside phaser drawn.

Miraj was now maybe just three meters from the junction, and she couldn't make herself go any further forward. She was somewhere over the Koi pond, roughly level with the band stand. The nearest exit was back by the theatre, or forward, towards the junction. Growing up, shed never thought twice about something going clunk in a ship. But those ships were all wrecks, broken and dead in space. Elysium was vibrant and alive. There couldn't be anything good ahead if it was capable of going clunk "Shib? Where are you?"

"You know, there is a reason Sequus ships have maintenance shafts big enough you can walk in..." He huffed in response as he awkwardly crawled forward. "But I'm almost there... Junction is just up ahead on my left."

"I can feel you, you keep bumping the panels. Hurry up and get up here. We can box it in." She felt a lot braver knowing that S'hib was close. "Maybe I can flush it towards you?"

"I'm bumping more than the panels..." S'hib muttered through gritted teeth as he thumped along the grated crawlway. "Just stay where you are..." He added as more of a direct response to her question.

"Staying, staying. Just.... look lively...please."

"Red sands Miraj..." S'hib sighed as he opened one final hatch, revealing the last few meters of crawlspace before reaching the tunnel she was in. "There's nothing here," He snorted, continuing to thump along before his head finally poked out into the tunnel she was on. "You're hearing things." he laughed.

She glared at him as he came fully into view from beyond the intersection that had spooked her. "I wasn't!" she insisted. "I swear. It was totally there. Like someone tapping on the floor." Though she hadn't heard it since. Her shoulders slumped a bit. She had been very relaxed, spread out over the air scrubber. Maybe her mind had played a trick on her.

"Wait, tapping? like this?" He asked before running his hand over the grated floor, each hoofed finger clicking individually against the metal surface.

"Kind of," she said, a sinking feeling that she'd missed something obvious settling into her guts.

"Ok, We need to leave..." He snorted as he tapped his comm badge. "S'hib to engineering, I need you to recall any maintenance teams working inside the Jefferies tubes and to shut and seal every single hatch... I will explain later."

"Come on, you first." He said looking back at Miraj as he crawled to the other side of the T junction.

She didn't have to be told twice, and slithered past him on hands and knees. She was crawling as fast as she could without brutalising her knee caps. It was a long run to the exit. And it was far too close quarters to risk a site-to-site transport. "Sorry, knees," she muttered.

“You’re ok… just, no more crawlspaces until i say ok? we may have brought something back from the Jefferson.”

She looked back, trying to see past him into the gloomy space where she'd been alone with 'something', and shivered.

 

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