Aboard Hamilton Station, Part 3

Habitat Engineering's responsibilities encompassed the bulk of the high-priority maintenance duties aboard the Hamilton. While we did have a Maintenance department, they handled custodial duties and non-critical electrical and plumbing systems. If you spotted someone working on an exposed bulkhead, it was probably Maintenance. If you spotted someone head-first in the fire-suppression system, keeping the panel propped open with a wedged-in screwdriver, then it was probably someone from HabEn. There was a lot of crossover between our departments. A lot of HabEn's personnel had worked in Maintenance at some point in their career, and vice-versa. It was for the best that we got along, since we tended to work with each other more than any other two departments, except for maybe Security and Administration.

When we weren't putting out fires both literal and figurative, HabEn personnel tended to be fairly easy to get along with. As long as you were good at your job and didn't mind a little bit of gallows humor, you could fit right in. I didn't have any experience working on stations when I got the job on Hamilton. I had started in the Martian shipyards, back when engineers were in high demand because of the fighting around Ganymede and Europa. We had a lot of people coming from the colonies to find work, and it was the first time I had been around anyone that wasn't from my rock. By the time I transferred to the Hamilton I knew my way around an Olympus-class battleship like it was the back of my hand. Work around a station had a completely different dynamic, almost entirely due to the enclosed atmosphere. Since you were also living with the people you worked with, you either built camaraderie with your co-workers or you seriously floundered. I've met a few outcasts and loners on the Hamilton, and they were some of the saddest sacks in the solar system. This wasn't a position where you could afford to be antisocial.

As the ranking HabEn staff member I had a handful of additional responsibilities stacked atop my normal duties. Half of my time was spent supervising the other engineers and sending reports up to Admin, and the other half was spent making sure that the station didn't explode in a spectacular fashion. I'm exaggerating a little, but not by much. The incident with the space rock was atypical; my job normally doesn't get as interesting as that. I was back to making my rounds in no time.

                            

"Bhatia, is this duty report accurate?" I looked up from my tablet and, judging by Bhatia's amused reaction, I probably looked more than a little surprised.

"Have I ever submitted an inaccurate report?" he replied. Smart ass.

"How the hell is R&D pulling this much power? The solar banks won't-"

"I know, it's ridiculous. They've tripled their consumption in the past week. Tripled, Vee." He looked as annoyed as I felt. "When I went down there to ask about it I was turned away by the officer at the door. They said that access to the labs is restricted, and that Admin said that HabEn is only allowed in if we're specifically requested or if there's an emergency."

"That's unacceptable. They're directly interfering with our job and with station safety. If we're not allowed to go in to service the labs..." I trailed off once I realized that I was ranting. Bhatia knew exactly why this was a big deal, he was an engineer. "Just keep things from blowing for the time being. This kind of output isn't sustainable, and I'm going to make sure that both Admin and R&D understand that."

"Good luck, Vee. We're not the only department they've been stonewalling. Priorities have shifted to that stupid rock, and I don't think they're changing any time soon."

"Cynthia will listen to me." I hoped. I wasn't exactly in a position to be making demands of her. "She's a stickler for protocol. I'm sure if I start citing regulations to her she'll buckle."

"I'm surprised she's made as many concessions as she already has. You think she'd be the first to bring violations up."

"Yeah, unless someone higher up is telling her to ignore them." I let out an exasperated sigh. This wasn't going to be a fun conversation. "I'll talk to her and at the very least figure out why their energy consumption is triple that of any other department."

"I appreciate it. You know us, Vee. We'll make things work until then."

"I know you will." I approved the report on my tablet, having had flagged it as 'urgent'. That way I knew that Admin would have to look at it. "I'm not going to endanger the station because of a souvenir we found."

Aboard Hamilton Station, Part 2

The cantina was starting to get busy, the shifts having just rotated. About a quarter of the station was clocking out at the same time, which meant a lot of people with some time to kill and some extra money burning a hole in their pockets. I knew that some of the crew sent portions of their paycheck back home to their families, and others saved up for when their contract was over and they decided that the spacer life wasn't for them. The career crew, though? They were the ones who partied the hardest. There were only a few places to spend money on the station, and if you didn't intend to drop cash in the commissary or the cantina that usually meant that you were looking forward to some kind of extended leave. I once saw someone blow through three months of pay after spending a week in the Jovians. Those casinos were downright predatory, but I was never one to lecture people on how they spent their cash.

I had considered a transfer to Titan once upon a time. The hydrocarbon mines are always hiring, and it would be nice to feel solid ground under my feet again. I had opted to stay on Hamilton because I didn't want to put any more distance between myself and Earth. Things were rocky back then, but we thought we could make it work.

"What'cha drinkin', Vee?"

Agustin had sat down across from me and I hadn't even noticed. Wow, maybe Cynthia was right about me being inattentive?

"Oh, uh..." I raised my glass so that he could see for himself. "Orange juice."

"Orange juice?"

"Yeah, they keep it on hand for like, screwdrivers and mimosas and-"

"No no no, I get why they have it." Gus pointed an accusatory finger at me. "Why are you drinkin' it?"

Normally I'd get nervous if a security officer was confronting me, but since it was Gus and it was over my choice of beverage, I felt no need to be especially polite.

"What, am I not allowed to drink juice like a grown man? Who are you, the Juice Police?"

"If I was, I'd put you away for a long time. I'd probably get a promotion." He reached for his own drink. "They'd make me Juice Detective."

"I fear for the safety of the public, Gus. It's bad enough that they let you carry a gun and a badge here."

He laughed and sipped from his glass. Gus was probably the least uptight security officer on the station, something that I'm sure has kept him from getting a promotion. Not that he seemed to care. From what I've learned about him during our time together it's that if Gus had another option, he would have taken it by now.

"Hey, at least Security has somethin' to do now, thanks to that weird space rock that Salvage brought in." Gus was drinking every time he took a pause. I guess he had big plans for tonight. "They're keepin' it locked up tight. The goin' bet right now is that it's Martian."

"It's not Martian," I said, maybe a little too quickly. Gus raised a brow.

"You get a good look at it?"

"Yeah... Yeah, I saw it. They had to clear it with HabEn before they could bring it into the station." I wasn't sure how much of this I should be sharing. Probably none of it. This sort of talk would just fuel wild speculation, and word travels fast on stations. "But, uh, it didn't look Martian, that's for sure. No angles, just... smooth. Not Venusian either. It's a xenoarchaeologist's dream, not that I would know much about that."

"Well whatever it is, they've got two officers watchin' the door to the labs, plus a couple of checkpoints set up at the pod entrances. Full containment procedures in place, and the captain has been overseeing every step of it. Probably the most work I've done in months. They're takin' it serious. This thing isn't gonna give us some space disease, is it?"

"We ran it through decon and it's not putting off anything that would make R&D concerned. It didn't set off any alarms, and even if the station's sensors sniffed something out it would let us know immediately. It's safe, Gus." I finished my orange juice. "I cleared it myself."

Aboard Hamilton Station, Part 1

"Good afternoon Vernon. The time is 0700. Your shift begins in one hour."

I cracked a bleary eye to spot the blinking red alert-light on my bedside console. It was part of the automated wake-up call, something to make sure that I didn't sleep in after partying too hard the night before or... whatever. Bluh. This was actually the least intrusive setting, too. I know some other people in Habitat Engineering have their consoles blast music to get up-and-at-'em. That sounded like a good way to end up having to explain a broken console to Maintenance. I was never a morning person.

"You have one urgent message from Cynthia Ballesteros. Would you like to listen?"

Starting the day off with an emergency? Well, if it was an actual emergency they wouldn't have let me sleep until my alarm. Hell, Cynthia probably would've sent Security to haul my ass wherever she needed me to be. I kind of had a tendency to drag my feet.

"Yeah, go ahead."

No sense wasting any more time. I swung my legs over the side of my bed and rubbed the sleep from my eyes, spotting my discarded grey jumpsuit crumpled on the floor. Cynthia was going to give me shit for having a wrinkled uniform, I just knew it. Her voice came on over my console as I was zipping myself up.

"Vee, I need you to haul over to Receiving once you're awake. Something just arrived and we need to take a look at it before it's handed off to R&D."

Huh. What could've been brought in that HabEn needed to examine? The closest thing on our schedule wasn't for another week or so, when the new HabPods were supposed to arrive. But that would be a pretty cut-and-dry installation, nothing that I needed to trek down to Receiving for. Well, at least it wasn't a fire. Could be worse.

                            

"Hey Vee." Cynthia gave me a nod when she saw me shuffling off of the lift. She was already outside the entrance to Receiving, arms crossed, a tablet in her hands, looking as dour as ever. "Have a rough night?"

There was the jab at my appearance that I was waiting for. Whatever, if she actually cared about the grooming standard she would've reported me a while ago.

"Oh, you know me. A real... party animal."

That at least managed to get a hint of a smile. I could really turn on the charm when I wanted to. Or at least that's what I liked to tell myself.

"By the way, I heard about what happened with-" Cynthia started, but I didn't let her get very far.

"No, it's-... I'm fine." I cut her off. I already had something prepared for this. "It was a long time coming. Long-distance things never work out, y'know?"

Cynthia nodded.

"Yeah, I know. Still doesn't make it any easier."

"No it, uh, it doesn't." I cleared my throat a little. Talking about my personal life with my direct superior wasn't something I wanted to be doing.

"Well, I have something that should take your mind off of things for a little bit." She walked over to the door and tapped her hand against the lock panel, which caused it to open.

I followed her into the hangar-like accommodations - tall ceilings, fueling stations, cargo haulers, a dozen or so personnel buzzing around. In the center of all this were a handful of people from R&D, I could tell from the diagnostic equipment and the way they handled themselves. They were gathered around... something. It was large, a couple of heads taller than I was, oblong and reflective, shimmering wherever the light hit it. I must've been staring for longer than I realized, because Cynthia decided that she had to grab my attention again.

"Pretty, isn't it?" she said, managing to sound as unimpressed as ever.

"What is it?" I finally managed to say. I was awestruck. I had never seen or heard of anything like this.

"One of our salvage teams brought it in last night. They said it was just sort of floating in empty space, they stumbled upon it out of pure happenstance. R&D have been all over it since then. Results have been inconclusive, but as far as they can tell it's pretty inert. Some background EM fields, but its so weak that it shouldn't even interfere with your personal electronics."

She handed me the tablet she was holding, which was displaying all of the preliminary data that the scientists had gathered. It all looked pretty innocuous, if it wasn't for the fact that it didn't answer just what the hell this thing was.

"So, you need someone from HabEn to give the all clear before we bring it into the station?" I said, glancing up from the tablet to look at the... thing, again.

"You got it, Vee." She gestured to the team working around the object. "R&D are dying to get a closer look at it. They're thinking it's not a natural phenomenon."

"Alien in origin?" I'm sure she could detect the incredulity in my voice.

"Potentially. We won't know until they get it into their lab and run more tests. What do you say?"

I looked back at the tablet, at the rows of diagnostic data, the spectral analysis, researchers notes. This could be a big find. I was feeling a lot less sleepy that I was an hour ago.

"Yeah... yeah, just make sure that they follow the proper decon procedures and take the necessary precautions before they introduce it to any of our systems. I don't need it shorting anything out or, I dunno.. exploding."

"They'll be careful, Vee. Salvage teams bring stuff in all the time."

I handed the tablet back to Cynthia.

"Not like this."