Exploration Fleet (Treasure and Appletree)

"Anything at all that doesn't look like a polar bear in a snowstorm," Eamon said, using some English words rather than the Zebek language as he didn't know those words. They'd never come up in casual conversation before now. He grumbled softly as he dug a small metal device no bigger than the tip of his pinkie out of his pocket and carefully clamped it between two of the wires he held. "Aright, did that do anything?" he asked, keeping his attention on the wires. "At least this time the coms aren't screaming at us."
 
“Pardon me?” Kal could deduce that the words Eamon had uttered were in his native language, which he unfortunately had no knowledge of. That in itself didn’t necessarily bother him, but they had been two core parts of the sentence and without them he couldn’t actually follow what Eamon wanted to tell him. He supposed ‘Anything at all’ would have to do.

At the engineers prompting he replied, “I’m afraid not.” He took a quick moment to look away from the dizzying display of black and white pixels and blinked rapidly, trying to rid himself of the optical illusion that was all but convincing him that the screen was expanding to encompass his whole vision.
 
Eamon didn't bother trying to explain about polar bears or the expression. He wasn'tsure how, and he had other more important things to do. He reached up and swapped Kal's wire with one of his then tried the clamp again. "Okay... now?" he asked cautiously when the coms did not scream again.
 
Kal was about to ask again what Eamon was trying to get the laptop to do, but any further explanation was made unnecessary by the fact that the screen he had been directed to watch did indeed change quite remarkably. To his eyes great relief the screen was now smoothly black with what looked like code scrawling itself across the screen at a formidable pace.

“Yes!” he exclaimed, surprised that it had (to him) been so easy to fix. At least he hoped it was fixed. Who knew what that code was attempting to tell them.
 
Eamon jerked around and grinned. "Finally! I knew it had to be one of these. Okay, hang on." He quickly adjusted the clamp and added a rubber tip that sealed itself over the exposed wires. Then he took Kal's wire, twisted it a bit, connected it to another wire, and added another seal. Once everything was properly seal off, he turned to the laptop and started making a few notes.

"There, that should work," he said. "Go out into the hallway, there's a com about two doors down. Use that to call the captain as a test and report back."
 
“Of course.” It hadn’t been phrased as such, but Kal decided to see it as a request and responded accordingly. Leaving Eamon, who seemed to have already forgotten Kals presence in the room, bent over the laptop, he proceeded out into the hall and quickly found the intercom as the engineer had described.

He pressed the button and used the voice command to activate a channel.
“Kalukan to Captain Frayne. Captain, I believe Eamon has fixed the coms, please respond at your convenience so we may check the connection.”
 
There was a long moment of silence, then Frayne's voice filtered through the com, sounding a little tinnier than usual, but it was clear. "Captain Frayne here, Kalukan. I read you. Thank you for your assistance."

Eamon was busily trying to make a few last adjustments to the system before he disconnected the laptop. He'd have to do more fine-tuning once they were finished with their current mission, but for now it seemed to be working. He just had to wait for Kal to come back with the final word. He found himself crossing his fingers and muttering hopeful thoughts to himself. No wonder the Zebek thought he was crazy. He was beginning to think he was crazy.
 
“Thank you captain. I am glad to be of help.” Kal ended the connection and made his way back to the storage room turned communications workstation. Leaning against the door, he reported,
“Everything seems to be working, although the transmission is a little warped.”

Seeing that the laptop was now closed and tucked under Eamons arm, he added,
“If you are finished here, perhaps we might head to the hangar and you could explain the process that needs to be done to properly install the ARM clasps? I believe we should be dropping out of warp very soon.”
 
Eamon breathed a sigh of relief as he finished detaching the laptop then tucking all the wires back into the wall. "It'll do for now. He stood and reached up, patting Kal's shoulder. "Nicely done! Now let's get to the hanger. We can't be too far from Jepison, and Captain Frayne can delay them only so long."

He started trotting down the hallway, figuring Kal could easily keep up with his long legs. He was on a mission! A smaller one inside the bigger mission. To fix the coms then to fix the grappling thing on the craft. One down, one to go.
 
Kal was rather bemused both by the fact that Eamon seemed so engrossed in the simple task of packing up that he had obviously hardly listened to a word Kal had said and that he was being praised for being a glorified hatstand and errand runner.
He also felt a little ridiculous, seeing the human have to actually reach up a considerable amount to pat his shoulder. Eamon carried enough presence in his small body that it was easy to misjudge his stature when not seeing him standing next to a concrete reference point.

A wry smile tugging at his lips, he followed the engineer down the hallway, marveling at the personality that could switch so fast between grumpy growling and an accurate impression of an excitable puppy. He was getting the feeling there was no point trying to get much information out of Eamon right now. He would just have to roll with the punches, as the archaic saying went.
 
Once they reached the hanger where the pod sat patiently waiting, Eamon tucked his laptop under the manuel consol - used in case of emergency with limited range and manuverability - and turned to the pod. He didn't say anything at first as he walked around the smaller craft. Then he turned to Kal.

"Okay, you've dealt with this thing more than me, but it's more or less shaped the same as our bigger craft, right? Right. I've never dealt with this ARM thingy, but I've read about it. Using the pod as our modle, where would you suggest we put the attachment point on the craft?" He took a deep breath and looked at Kal expectantly.
 
Kals brow furrowed slightly as he studied the pod. Making a few allowances for size and functionality, it was quite a good model of the main ship, though he questioned Eamons assessment of his knowing more than the engineer about either vessel.

After completing his own circuit around it, more to give himself time to weigh the options than really inspect it, he ventured “Considering our structure and accessibility, it would be most beneficial for us to affix the point somewhere around here,” he indicated the top of the pod, just above where the tail flared into the main body, “However I have no knowledge of how agile the ARM is and if the Station would be able to reel us in adequately enough to allow for unloading. Perhaps a point lower to the side might be preferable for them.”
 
Eamon rubbed his chin for a moment as he debated. Then he pulled his tablet out of his back pocket and opened up a picture of the ARM. "Hmm... It doesn't look like it would be very agile... Alright, we'll ere on the side of caution and put the attachment here." He pointed to a spot on the side, Kal's second choice. "If the ARM is agile, it should reach. If not, there will be no danger of knocking off part of our tail if it misses or something."

Stuffing the tablet back into his pocket, he pulled out a small clamp that was to scale what they would be putting on the larger ship. He held it up to the pod then started muttering measurements to himself and checking a few angles. After a while, he finally nodded to Kal. "Alright. If we both go out and you pilot this thing, I can do the whole spacewalk fun and attach the clamp. You can keep an eye out for anything that might go wrong. Sound fair?"
 
Kal shuddered at the idea of losing part of the ship's tail. Quite apart from the fact that the structural integrity of the hull was the only thing keeping them all alive in here; the tail was, as he understood it, vital to the ships capacity for flight and maneuverability and not easy to fix or replace. He did not fancy floating around in open space waiting for someone to save them. What a way for his first mission to end that would be.

“Of course.” He agreed readily to Eamons plan, quite glad he wasn’t going to be the one with only a flimsy suit for protection out there. With a quick glance at one of the screens against the wall to check the time, he added, “Do you need any further assistance preparing? We should be dropping out of warp in the next few minutes.”
 
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Eamon considered, looking down at the tablet in his hand. "Um... no, I should be able to figure out the rest of this by myself. I need to get this properly attached and the signal clear... but as long as I don't run into any snags, that should only take me ten minutes. Maybe you should check in with Frayne, I mean the captain, but I think you're good to go."

He turned from the ambassador, muttering softly under his breath as he worked out what pieces he'd need as he wandered toward the back storage containers where the pieces he needed would be housed. He set the tablet down on the console as he passed and opened one of the cupboards - the Zebek told him they weren't cupboards, but they were close enough for him.
 
Seeing that the engineer was once again wholly engrossed in whatever he still needed to do to get the ARM working, Kal didn’t bother with a reply or farewell as he ducked out of the hangar. He would be back soon enough anyway. The human really did make ignoring or forgetting decorum rather easy. Kal still wasn’t quite sure how he felt about that.

On his way to the bridge, he passed Ahara, looking marginally more awake than earlier, busy making breakfast in the galley. Having learned by now that she didn’t like getting interrupted while working, he merely nodded in passing and got out of her hair.

Stepping onto the bridge, he stood to attention (decorum was so much more natural around the captain) and reported, “Captain. Eamon is preparing the last adjustments for the ARM. We should be ready to start assembling it shortly after dropping out of warp.”
 
Frayne breathed a sigh of relief at Kalukan's report. "Well done, Kalukan," he said calmly. "Jepison contacted me only seconds before you arrived, and they are anticipating our arrival. I alerted them to our... setback with the lack of clamp for the ARM, and they assured me that this is not a new problem for them. In fact, they seemed rather surprised and pleased that we were already making preparations to adjust for the problem."
 
Kal inclined his head at the praise despite feeling that it should be directed more at Eamon than himself. The engineer was the one doing all the work after all.

Hearing that the station was used to ships not being prepared for their archaic tech made him breath a sigh of relief. Their whole planned maneuver was loosing some of the risk factor he had been tring his best not to think about too much. It sounded like the Jepison workers would know how to deal with suboptimal grip placements. The chances of their loosing their tail to a failed docking felt slimmer at least. That the captain had been able to communicate with the station was also a reassurance. Eamons quick fix of the system seemed to be holding up.

“Unless you need my assistance with anything else, I will return to the hangar to await our drop out. What is the current ETA? I can inform Medic Ahara on the way down. I believe she wanted to help the station medics with the unloading.”
 
Frayne nodded briskly to Kal. "We should arrive in 5 minutes and counting. Please ensure Medic Ahara is prepared, then you and Eamon are to focus the entirety of your attentions on fixing the clamp. Dismissed." He turned away, his shoulders slightly more stiff than usual. The anxiety of their first mission, no matter how simple, was weighing on him. No matter how simple the mission, a lot of things could go wrong, and it was his job to try to plan for each thing that might go wrong and have a backup plan. Now he had so many plans spinning in his head he was starting to make himself dizzy.

~~

Down below, Eamon had finished fixing the clamp intended for the craft except for one item. He slipped down to the cargo bay and fetched a single hand-lift used for shuffling the cargo about. There should have been another. According to the manifest, there was another, but unbeknownst to him, the loading crew had accidentally taken it, leaving them with just one, and now he had left Ahara with none.

Completely innocent of any malcontent, Eamon headed back to the bay where the pod sat waiting. He used the lift to maneuver the clamp closer to the pod and carefully positioned it so the pod's weak gravitational ray - mostly intended for such things as collecting specimens or wayward spacewalkers - could pick it up and carry it for him to where he needed it to fix onto the craft. Then he went about the painstaking check of his spacesuit. It was a far less bulky thing than most human spacesuits as far as he could recall. In fact, it was surprisingly thin and sleek, not at all bulky except for the bubble head at the top for his, well, his head. In all honesty, he would have preferred the bulkier spacesuit. That would have made him feel safer.
 
“Of course sir.” Kal retraced his steps and found Ahara sitting at the center table in the galley, abesntly spooning her breakfast as she read something on a tablet. Before Kai could catch a glimpse of what the small screen was depicting, she had noticed him and laid the device face down so he could no longer see. It astounded him again and again how hard it was to surprise their medic.

Ahara wrinkled her nose with the first few mouthfuls. Too much spices. She really was out of practice actually making good food. Ah well, it wouldn’t kill her. Despite the scouts' silent footsteps, the shadow his tall form cast as he appeared in the doorway was enough to alert her to his presence. Thankfully he got right to the point.

“Medic Ahara, good morning. We will be arriving in the next few minutes, if you wish to prepare for the docking.” All he got in reply was a nod, but that was enough for him. As he was about to head on, a thought struck him and he turned back to her. “Eamon and I will be doing some adjustments to the hull once we drop out of warp. I doubt anything will happen, but I assume it’s better you know beforehand in case something does happen to go amiss.”
Ahara raised an eyebrow, giving the sprout a sceptical look. “Surely you two are not so incapable as to bungle something like that.”

Kal shrugged, overlooking her thinly veiled jab at their competence. “I should hope not. But I am no foreseer of the future and would prefer to be prepared for any eventuality.”

“Yes yes, quite the scout you are. There are enough people in Jepison in need of medical attention. Don’t go adding more to that count.” She flipped over her tablet and refocused her attention on the text, clearly indicating that the conversation was over.

“Of course, Medic Ahara.”

---

Back in the hangar, the first thing Kal spotted upon entering was the cobbled together clamp they would be affixing to the hull. Seeing it properly for the first time made all the aesthetic sensibilities he possessed cry out at the thought of adding this thing to the sleek hull of the ship. Reminding himself that it was not meant to look pretty but be functional and that they were fortunate to have an engineer capable of throwing something like this together at such short notice, he moved around it and slid into the pod to start it up. He left the pod open as he waited for Eamon to return from wherever he had wandered off to.
 
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