“Hey, room,” she called out, her voice sounding even more exhausted than she felt.
“Receiving,” the room’s automated systems replied, in the same accented voice as the station’s main computer.
“Lock the door to my room.”
“As you wish,” it replied.
Getting off the suit was a somewhat involved process. The front of the suit overlapped, closing across the left breast with some heavy duty closures. Once the front was open it was just loose enough to get it past her shoulders, then it was just a matter of slowly peeling it down her arms and body. Once her arms were out getting it down the rest of her torso and legs was easier.
She had already been sweaty before the session in the gym, so lying back down with her skin directly on the sheets was unappealing, especially with her spare bedding already in the bin to be washed.
With another groan Morgan forced herself to her feet, staggering over to the tiny bathroom attached to her bedroom.
The room was slightly more than a meter wide and long, twice that tall. Shower, toilet, sink with a mirror. That was it, but it was private. Morgan had taken a few minutes one day to check in on her room onboard the Fate of Dawn. Six bunks in a small room with drawers built beneath each, a bit of desk space with a screen and keyboard for each. There was a room across the hall with machines to clean normal clothes as well as skinsuits, and bathroom, both of which were shared with another six bunk room.
The bathroom had four toilets with some semblance of privacy, four sinks, and in two corners a pole with four shower heads attached. Everyone stayed on station while in port.
A quick shower got the worst of the grime off, followed by an even quicker toweling off. Morgan crashed back onto the bed, a slip thrown on almost as an afterthought.
Her damp hair was getting the pillow wet, but she didn’t care. She had let it grow longer than she had growing up. Even so it was still short, not even reaching her chin. The pillow would dry out before she got back to bed that night, to be sure.
Morgan dozed for a bit. By design, the workday ended three hours before the school day ended. In Haruhi’s case it wasn’t quite formal schooling as of yet, getting out an hour earlier, which left Morgan maybe a half hour for a nap before the little girl got back, thanks to Morgan’s gym time.
It felt like her eyes had barely closed when the uplink chimed; ten minutes to Haruhi’s return.
Morgan grumbled, turned over, and ignored it.
The uplink was unperturbed by being ignored. It simply waited the requisite five minutes, and then blasted the chime at three-fold volume.
This did the trick, waking Morgan up forcefully, followed by her jerking upright to stop the offending noise. Her head bounced off the roof of her bunk. Thankfully it had clearly been designed by a genius, since the ceiling at the head of the bunk was just as padded as the mattress was.
Morgan rubbed her forehead and wondered when she’d gotten out of the habit of lying still when she woke up long enough to figure out where she was. She’d have to get the habit back – her bunk on the Fate of Dawn had no padding besides the mattress, and even that wasn’t all that much.
Rubbing her eyes Morgan quickly threw on a dress she’d rummaged from the drawer under the bunk. It hardly mattered which one she’d grabbed. Gathering up her boots and discarded skin suit she walked to the door, only to remember that she had locked it. Dumping the skinsuit at her feet she walked the few paces back to the bunk, grabbing the pistol from the table and depositing it in the other drawer under the bunk, the one that locked.
“Room, unlock the door,” she said, giving the computer only the time it took for her to walk back to the door and grab the suit to comply.
The suit washer took up its own room, sandwiched between Morgan’s room and Gertrude’s. Its door didn’t open automatically, due to the potentially dangerous nature of the machine to wandering children.
“Washroom door, open up.” Almost by default, Morgan spoke politely to the various computers she interacted with on a daily basis. Except this one. This one had some kind of fault in the programing, or sensors or something, the end result of which was it didn’t recognize Morgan as authorized for entry. Maybe she wasn’t tall enough for the parameters, or her voice was too high pitched, she wasn’t sure. She’d put in a request to get it fixed, but the request had been routed to the Daystar Fading’s maintenance list, and well, they weren’t around to do anything about it.
She’d considered fixing it herself, but most of her training in was in physical systems, not computer programing.
“Access denied.”
“This is Crewman Morgan. You know blasted well I’m allowed in.”
“Invalid biometrics. Access denied.”
Morgan tossed one of her boots at the door’s speaker. It bounced off with a satisfying thud. It didn’t help, of course, except in that it freed up her right hand to activate the door’s thumbprint scanner.
“Do you recognize that?”
“User Black recognized. Access granted.”
Morgan knew her next request wouldn’t do any good, she’d tried it four times already, but the slim chance something would happen made her persist.
“Add the person standing in front of you to the authorized list.”
“This door is unable to do so. You do not have the proper permissions.”
“Tell me who does.”
“Authorized maintenance technicians, Chief Gertrude Suoh, and Crewman Morgan Black.”
“I’m Crewman Morgan Black. You’re scanning my thumb right now.”
“Unable to verify.”
“One day, door, I am going to dismantle you.”
The door didn’t respond. Pity. Telling her that would be wrong or that it would void a warranty or something would have made her feel a bit less stupid for being at war with a freaking door.
Shaking her head Morgan went in, dumping the suit in the waiting washer. If Gertrude had still been in port she’d have needed to wait for hers. The cycle took long enough that you couldn’t run it twice in the same night. Gertrude had departed with her ship a week previously, so there was no need to wait.
Honestly Morgan thought she’d taken her departure worse than Haruhi had, at least so far. Morgan was bracing herself for the inevitable tears as the little girl figured out just how long her mom was going to be gone.
As if summoned by thinking of her, Haruhi burst through the quarter’s main hatch, a miniature whirlwind of papers trailing glitter and sparkles. She barely paused long enough to take her shoes off and put them on the rack next to the door. Was it craft day again already? Morgan tried not to wince, thinking of all the floating glitter getting pulled into the air systems, all over the furniture, their clothes. She wished the teacher would tone it down, just a little, but that wasn’t much more likely than her wish to own her own starship.
“Welcome home, Haru,” Morgan said, bending down to scoop the girl up in a hug. “Ooph. You get much bigger you’ll need to pick me up.”
Haruhi giggled, hugging Morgan back. She held up the solitary paper that hadn’t slipped from her grasp onto the floor.
“We drew the sky today, Aunt Morgan!”
Morgan looked at the drawing, nodding appreciatively. It was just a black piece of paper with glittery stars added, but for a four-year-old it was hard work.
“Oh, that looks wonderful. Should we put it up with the others?”
Haruhi nodded vigorously, so Morgan walked over to the blank wall they’d dedicated to Haruhi’s exploits. At the moment it only held a few drawings and paintings secured to the wall with simple magnets, but Haruhi still had most of ten months to fill the rest up. The starscape got a good spot along the top edge, next to a drawing of their house on Zion. At least, that is what Haruhi said it was. It was house-shaped, at least.
“There. We’ll leave that for your mom to see when she gets back. Can you go wash your hands? I’ll have dinner ready soon.”
“Okay,” Haruhi said as
Morgan let her slip down to the floor. She padded off to the other side of the quarters that held the open kitchen, the main bathroom, and Haruhi’s bedroom.
Morgan took a moment to straighten one of the drawings that had slipped a bit, and then followed after Haruhi, headed towards the kitchen. By the standards of space the quarters were really quite large, though still small compared to Gertrude’s house planetside. The main room acted as study, living room, and dining room, with the wash and two main bedrooms on the left, the aforementioned bath, kitchen, and child’s room on the right. Behind the bathroom, accessible through the kitchen, was the storage area, mostly for food, but with some other things thrown in. That front wall opened onto the corridor, of course, and the back wall had no adjoining rooms, just some more storage spaces recessed into it.
The kitchen capacities, small as they were, far outstripped Morgan’s abilities. Gertrude had taught her a few things over the past few years, but boiling noodles and opening pre-canned sauce was about the most complicated thing Morgan was confident enough to try.
This wouldn’t have been a problem if it was just Morgan. She was perfectly fine repeating the same three or four dishes pretty much forever. Haruhi, however, was rather pickier than Morgan was.
Fresh foods were also harder to get on the station, the proximity to Zion notwithstanding. Things like fruits and vegetables were simply too bulky to bring up in quantity and spoiled too quickly once there.
Heavy use of hydroponics was the obvious solution, and each ship had its own bay large enough to support the crew while on their routes. For a station as big as Takiyama, however, the capacities of hydroponic bays were pressed to their limits.
The long and short of it was that even with one of the largest hydroponics bays in the system, or even the nearby systems, roughly half their meals came from dehydrated or frozen sources.
Tonight it was to be dehydrated. This suited Morgan’s exhausted state just fine. Open the package, pull out the dish, put it in the machine, wait. That was it.
The food was blander than fresh, some of the flavor was inevitably lost in the process to remove all the water, but at least chicken nuggets were one of the options. Haruhi liked those.
While the machine worked Morgan pulled out plates and such, putting them on the small table bolted to the wall just outside the kitchen.
“Haruhi, it’s just about done. You finished washing your hands yet?”
“Yep,” Haruhi said. She had made a detour into her room, and had grabbed her kid-proofed tablet uplink, already loaded up with one of the educational games she liked.
“Haruhi,” Morgan said, stressing the syllables.
Haruhi tried to look innocent, sitting at the table, the tablet placed on the plate.
“Come on now. You know the rules.”
Haruhi continued to feign ignorance, though she did subtly turn the audio off.
“If I have to take it, you won’t get it back until tomorrow.”
Sighing dramatically Haruhi hopped off the chair, dragging the tablet off the table loudly.
“Be nice,” Morgan admonished, shaking her head slightly once the little girl had disappeared into her room. If her mother had been here, Haruhi wouldn’t have dreamed of trying to bring her game to the dinner table. It wasn’t surprising that she was pushing boundaries, but Morgan hoped she could get things worked out before they got out of hand.
As Haruhi clambered back up her chair the machine beeped. Food ready. Morgan grabbed the mitten and pulled out the hot plate.
Sliding it onto a cooler plate Morgan got it onto the table. There wasn’t much room on the table left, but she managed to fit a pitcher of juice on there in the space Gertrude’s plate would normally take up.
“Okay Haruhi. Do you want to pray?”
“No.” Haruhi was pouting, her arms crossed over her chest.
“Come on Haruhi. You know your mom wants you pray at each meal.” Morgan wasn’t sure what to do if Haruhi kept up with her pouting. Morgan knew the form the prayer should take, but she didn’t think she should offer it if Haruhi refused – she’d never gone to church with Gertrude and Haruhi on Zion, mostly because of work but also because she didn’t feel comfortable attending for something she didn’t know or believe in. It was important to Gertrude, though she hadn’t talked about it much with Morgan. She supposed she’d be learning a bit more now; she’d be taking Haruhi herself to church the next Sunday.
“Not gonna.”
“Don’t you want to say thank you for the food?”
Haruhi just grunted.
“Okay then. I guess I’d better put the food away.”
“Humph.”
Morgan slowly picked up the plate of food, standing up in an exaggerated fashion.
“No. . .” Haruhi said, reaching out for the plate.
“You sure? If you aren’t hungry. . .?”
“No. I wanna pray.”
“Good.” Morgan put the plate back down and then bowed her head.
Haruhi’s prayer was basically unintelligible, but sincere.
The meal was eaten mostly in silence, but not an uncompanionable one. Haruhi was mostly just interested in getting her food eaten and back to playing her game, and Morgan was enjoying the quiet and chance to relax.
Haruhi dashed off for the couch as soon as she had finished her food, leaving the cleanup for Morgan. Well, she was a bit young to be helping with that yet.
Morgan had the plates in the sink, the water running, when Haruhi looked up and glanced at Morgan’s bedroom door.
“Your uplink,” she said, looking at Morgan and pointing back to her room.
Turning off the water Morgan could hear it chiming too. Grabbing a towel, she quickly headed over, drying her soapy hands.
“Uplink, answer incoming call,” she said as she walked in the room, waiting a few seconds before continuing, “This is Morgan Black.”
“Chief Nakamura here. We’ve had a breakdown in the hydroponics bay on the Fate of Dawn. The irrigation lines are all non-functional. They have to be repaired before morning or some of the seedlings will start to die. You’ve drawn the short straw.”
“Sir, I’ve got a young child here. There isn’t anyone to watch her.”
“Leave her with the neighbors. Every other person in our crew has pulled emergency duty already in the last few months. Except you. Get it done.”
The line cut off before Morgan could so much as ask “what neighbors?”
Technically there were some people still in her block of quarters, spouses of the Daystar’s crew. Morgan knew none of them enough to trust Haruhi to their care.
Though. . . the water lines. That would be a long involved process, to be sure, but a lot of it would be on the external pipes, in the hydroponics bay itself. It would only be a few hours until Haruhi would need to go down for the night. If Morgan took her along and let her bring the tablet to help keep her occupied, she could do the stuff there until Haruhi got sleepy. Then Morgan could return to the task once Haruhi had fallen deeply enough asleep. Haruhi had always been a good sleeper, and her waking up in the night was quite rare.
She could even tie her uplink into the system in Haruhi’s room, keep an ear on her at least.
Not ideal, but until she actually got to know her coworkers – and Gertrude’s for that matter – there were only so many options.
At least it wasn’t a job that would require her skinsuit. She could end the wash cycle early if she had to, but putting on a wet and slightly slimy skinsuit was gross.
Quickly Morgan went and changed into one of her sturdier pairs of coveralls, though not the nice ones. Anything involving hydroponics invariably ended up with fertilizer somewhere on her. No such option with her boots; she only had two pairs of those. At least she could seal the cuffs around the tops of the boots and keep the laces clean.
“Haruhi, we’re going to go for a little walk. That sounds like fun, doesn’t it?”
“Where are we going?”
“
It’s sort of a park. It will be nice and quiet, and you can play your game until you get tired. Do you have your socks?”
“Yes,” Haruhi answered, then looked down. “No.”
It took a few minutes to find the one missing sock, followed by Haruhi needing to use the restroom, a few minutes convincing her to wash her hands. The usual. All told it was closer to an hour later than not when they got to the ship’s docking ring, Morgan having carried the already slightly tired girl about halfway.
Compared to Steve, the Fate of Dawn didn’t look like much from the outside. It had no mushroom head, nor massive engines. It was still more or less a cylinder, with cargo spaces on the outside and the crew areas in the core. Smaller EM engines were placed at strategic spots around the hull, making the ship more agile, but slower to speed up and slow down. It was not a ship that could venture beyond a planet’s orbit, or go much farther than from one gate to another at a time. It would look somewhat like a giant butterfly in flight, thanks to the two large radiator wings extending from the midpoint of the cylinder. The wings were swept back to keep the ship’s profile smaller and help it fit more easily in docking slips. This was also to allow stations to pack in ships more tightly, without the massive wasted space that perpendicular radiator wings would cause.
It was newer, for what that was worth. Every ship Morgan had ever seen was newer, so it wasn’t exactly a large point in the ship’s favor.
The dockmaster raised an eyebrow as she caught sight of Haruhi. Morgan just shrugged as best as she could.
“What else do they expect me to do, ordering me to fix the hydroponics bay after school gets out?”
The dockmaster gave Morgan a rueful smile, but didn’t say anything. She did wave them onboard, and then turned back to the novel she had on her screen.
The nature of the problem was, sadly, obvious once Morgan got into the bay. One of the primary pipes had burst, perhaps from a section freezing. It would be a simple fix.
The Long Black (The Black Chronicles Book 1) Page 21