Chapter 16
Restricted Maritime Zone BZE:4200.04
Cycle 6002.649.10.5W
Two days ago Ronnec had been wishing the two scouting crews from the craft, a pleasant exploratory mission. How had it gone so badly wrong? He was supposed to have guided them through a routine trip and it had turned out that coms barely reached into the cavern.
As that wasn’t bad enough only most of one party had made it back in close to one piece. For that alone, on any other ship he would have been ripped to pieces and demoted. Especially since he had overlooked the threat ratings Nyutri had presented on the big chickens.
Ronnec didn’t trust the computer and this ‘big chickens’ event was further solidifying it. What retard would present creatures somewhere between dinosaur era creature and genetically modified fighting mega emus, as big chickens.
To make matters worse, the party that hadn’t done any initial scouting was now gone without a trace. The cutoff point of the coms was bizarre and so they were out of range before their beacons could report. If only that was the worst of it.
The party that came back was not in the best shape. Nyutri who was usually all but indestructible was still recovering. Her team mate had reverted into a genetic killing machine after being hit by a new energy weapon. For some stupid reason he had then pulled a barbed rod out of her.
He had hoped this kind of talk was foolishness when he had worked for the council. But it turns out that they had potentially one of the most unstable bio-soldiers made, now loose on the island. Mean had been on the craft for years, why had no-one known? This was the type of surprise Ronnec liked to avoid.
Then to make matters worse the islands inhabitants had decided that it was the perfect day to wipe each other out.
There was also still the matter of the official inspector that they had locked up in the brig. It turned out that the captain had actually forgotten about him for a couple of days. But saying that he was starting to wonder if Dueliet was now taking the leading for diplomatic disasters.
He usually though Dueliet did a fine job and handled people admirably. She was way too loose with procedure, but mostly it worked out fine for the people involved. It turns out on the midst of meeting two new tribes, she had pretty much married Mean off. According to the computer chakranda was the most sacred marriage tradition of the lizard-people.
He wasn’t sure of the details but apparently Dueliet could be seen as having giving the crafts blessing for Nyomas mating request. The things that were being reported over the last couple of weeks were leaving him more and more agitated. There was only one thing to do.
Having finished the duties needed for the morning he took the opportunity to slip away to his sanctuary. He went to the crafts gym sorted a bottle and towel and quickly warmed up wishing for the worries that were piling up to disappear. There was no such luck, so he went to find a barbell.
The gym was actually the only place where he really got on with the rest of the crew. He had done power-lifting when he got an office job and it had turned into a growing passion from there. Now he would also help some of the crew train when they needed it.
It went without saying that he missed his girlfriend. It was embarrassing to say he missed his coaching sessions almost as much. Planning to peak, or balance lifts for steady performance gains or even just to chat about the basics when his head wasn’t in the right place was so energising.
It wasn’t just the training sessions and the discussions he liked. He really liked how the endorphin hit kept you positive and able to focus on pushing forward no matter what got thrown your way each day. Now as they were all trying to stay presumed dead for the time being, it was silly but emotionally the lack of contact for updating his training plan was strangely irritating.
For today he went back to the start of an old three day split. It was similar enough to where he was for the moment. With a few tweaks he had a plan again, though not tuned to the degree that he loved. In some ways it meant that he could focus on the moment.
Having the body form a strong shape as it responded to subtle cues. Then having the barbell slack disappear as he prepared. Then the neat powerful flow of action came when you lifted. Some days it was explosive movements, some days it was steady work to keep muscle stimulated and then there were the days when you went for maxs. Today was steady work.
His back wasn’t bothering him. It was working well after he warmed up. He had damaged and torn it badly when he started. He didn’t want to repeat that or the recovery time again. He continued to work through each pattern and then rest. Headphones playing proper workout music, compared to the upbeat pop rubbish that infected the crafts gym as well.
His back gave another slight message to correct from. It gave warning messages if needed, but these days his torso stayed long and strong as he lifted. That was another great thing. The growing appreciation you got of a decent hip hinge or other awesome movements of great posture.
Having completed the last set for the lift, he went through and completed two more five by threes for the remaining lifts. The funny thing is people always though he was aggro when he lifted, they didn’t realise how calming it was. And except for the ex military types, there weren’t many that lifted heavy.
It was a pretty uninspiring workout, but it was still over far too quickly. He warmed down, cleaned what he had used and packed up. On the way out Nudgy had a drink ready for him. She happily chatted wondering if the same drink would still do the trick. She commented that there wasn’t as much grunting and straining today.
He finished the drink and thanked her, handing it back to her in the kitchens side service area. She joked about liking to check out all the buff guys, but just seemed to like to play councilor to all the gym goers. He smiled and summed up that things were not going in a well organised fashion and it would be affecting him as well as others.
She seemed happy to hear his thoughts and wished him well for the rest of the day.
With that done he grabbed his favourite shower gel and freshened up. While having his quick shower several things popped up as he began to unwind after the workout. Bizarrely the most notable one was that he hoped they weren’t stuck out here for so long, that he had to start using crew made soaps again.
He knew he was supposed to like natural stuff and that it would be better for him. For some reason he just liked the nuke it clean approach. He felt it helped with personal interactions too and he already had enough potential issues in that department anyway.
Soon he was clean, fresh and in his officers uniform again. He headed around to the proper dinning area and requested lunch. With everything so out of control it was nice to be able to pick from a decent set menu. He got the grunt muscle option.
It was a nice simple feed . They carved him some nice bits of normal chicken, scooped on some brown rice and thankfully it looked like the crafts garden still had spinach to finish his plate. He turned down gravy and thanked the server. The cooks were offering a local flora menu which had many excited trying out new dishes and luckily had not given anyone food poisoning so far this time.
He must have been more stressed than he realised because he quickly scoffed the food, almost in a distracted fashion. He sat for a bit to let his body settle. He pretended to look over some notes while actually scrolling through old photos. After five minutes he had settled as much as he would. So he returned his dishes and cheerfully thanked the kitchen for such a nourishing meal.
He headed toward the bridge and turned on his com. He checked in with Dueliet. She laughed telling him he had better head to engineering and brace himself on the way there. The way she said that, meant that they were most likely cooking up another hair-brained scheme. They were probably just about to solve the islands problems in one go and were wondering if a fifty percent chance of destroying the craft was an issue.
He was not disappointed. The plan had come from the issue that over a day ago the computer had asked that they let Mean stay in unstable monster form, to start de-pointing the chicken-beasts for domestication. For the craft instead of having Mean rush back to be stabilised, it meant that they had to somehow make a ship size entrance into the main cavern. Then to top that off they had to navigate through the ancient jungle and use the tech on the craft to renovate the lizard-person temple.
Some how things were going okay as political co-operation began between the soft-humans and the lizard-people. The representative for the lizard-people had swung at the captain when he showed up hoping to assert dominance and use them for his peoples progress. The captain flicked his head just enough to dodge the blow. An efficient uppercut caught the lizard off-guard and left it temporarily dazed.
Then when the rest of the lizards spotted security going for their boom sticks, they quickly apologised for there tribe members behaviour and talks had begun in real. Well talks and translated clicks to be precise. The initial part of the conversation was about Mean.
The lizards were curious if they could all turn into monsters and control the blessing. How did he handle the blessing? How was he brought back last time? Could they make the lizards more like Mean?
Then discussion turned to Nyoma. How had she been healed? Would she be seeking a position in the lizard elite now that Mean was her mate? Could they make her stronger? Could she have Mean’s offspring?
The crew were unprepared for the lizard’s relentless curiosity. Gil was brought in. Once she was introduced as the priestess that had been assisted by Mean, their attitudes changed in an instant. They gave he some sort of half bow, chest bang salute. From then on they talked to her one at a time and were very careful to listen to and clarify every detail that she covered.
Thankfully that was yesterday’s conversation and now they were happily joining the chatter of plans with the engineers. The lizards were asking Gerney why they didn’t simply smash the entry wider and walk their craft in.
With Gil not here today it took repeating ideas three times for the lizards to grasp. That is unless it involved food, smashing or making families. If these ideas were not brought up regularly the lizards would make sure they were brought back to peoples attention. With the third repetition that the crafts oracle said doing that would make the area collapse on them, the lizards were finally ready to move on.
Martin wandered over to Ronnec and again performed his self-appointed explanation role efficiently. He summarised that the computer suggested the best way to upgrade the lizard-temple was to walk the craft to their village and work from there. While the lizards understood this, they didn’t understand why the softs wanted to modify whatever a tripod was, to cut a whole in the wall.
Ronnec raised his eyebrow and whispered back wondering what it was with engineers wanting to adapt the most dangerous equipment on the craft. He replied he was just glad that they didn’t want to experiment with the power core too. Martin smiled and cautioned him not to say that to loudly because it would definitely spark their curiosity even though it would be a far more complicated way of tacking the problem. Ronnec shook his head in disbelief, but then thanked Martin for his update on the situation.
Eventually talk moved on to site location for the chicken-beast cages. The ideas that got the most discussion were a site built into the caves or a site in a valley near the village. There was then more talk on whether one or both sites should be made and how they were positioned in regards to the lizard’s temple.
Talk moved on slowly and Ronnec now appreciated how well and simply Nyoma had communicated with them. It had definitely made getting used to lizard-people world view easier. He guessed it was universal, that the people that help positions of influence in any group tended to be more firmly grounded in their own view and way of doing things.
The new dynamic was that these lizards would slam fists on the table or stomp to illustrate anything from focus or excitement, through to frustration or disappointment. Ronnec did enjoy how it kept the engineers on their toes. They tended to get rowdy and opinionated when they were relied upon to solve crucial parts of problems in the situations they faced.
Overall most people were excited about the initial focus of cutting there way into the cavern to get to the village. Once there they would unload what they needed to, then set down. The area between the temple and the valley for the first chicken cages was deemed an acceptable spot for them to inhabit.
With that agreed, talks turned on what would be needed for the lizards and softs to best work together. Interestingly the lizards had spotted Martin’s ability to update people with information in a way that they understood and had pretty much demanded him as a part of their villages operating staff for the duration of the projects.
Ronnec smiled at the chubby man’s flustered expression and found a workspace that was clear amongst the groups of people involved in the conversation. He started drafting work groups and shift schedules while the captain and Dueliet handled the smooth progress of the conversation at hand. He let most of the conversation flow over him unless it was related to logistics or scheduling.
For the rest of the meeting Ronnec worked away, now drawing the odd annoyed look from engineers around as they often found his organisation of things difficult. A lot of them were more of the opinion that if you found something inspiring you poured all your effort into and slept later. If it wasn’t working for you they though it better to chip away at the project till things unfolded properly.
In some ways that summed up Ronnecs role on the ship creating a work flow structure to serve as a guideline to get things done. It felt like a lot of the crew though that his main role was to annoy them. He would often get comments about how could they do what hadn’t been figured out yet and the next moment complain about the lack of people an resources allocated for a project.
More and more one of his advisers comment was nagging at him. If he wasn’t appreciated was it time to move on? In some ways hiding out here inflamed the worries Ronnec had about his job. Worse still being considered dead, he couldn’t easily start applying for other jobs without endangering the crew. In some ways he now felt trapped. But he kept focusing an the work in-front of him as the meeting continued.
As he focused on his work perspective returned. He wondered how many of the crew were stressing about being cut off. He would pay a lot to be able to secretly chat to his girlfriend and reassure her that things were still just the usual level of crazy. How much more so must it be for the rest of the crew that had mainly come from troubled pasts unlike himself?
The meeting was wrapping up and groups were splitting off into their own little huddles. Dueliet wanted over to him with raised eyebrows and gave a dramatic forced exhale of breathe. She commented that it was going to keep them both very busy keeping this lot playing nicely.
Ronnec smiled at her and wondered how she was handling the distance from her boyfriend. Though they were close more out of old habits he didn’t act on his curiosity and ask. Instead he asked if she though she had a handle on making her new adopted kids play well in the playground for the next while. She laughed and said that she hoped so.
She nodded at his work and asked him how he thought things were shaping up. He swung the screen to let her have a look. She took it seriously and spent a good couple of minutes taking it in. After reading it she gave him a look and asked if she could guess what was staring her in the face after reading it. His job was to consider all the factors, he hadn’t gotten around to processing which ones would jump out to her.
She pointed at the roster and said that one work team had a very interesting combination o people grouped. He should of guessed, it was a people and relations point. He smiled and agreed. While it was an awkward combination it let the rest of the plan work well.
She moved back to the initial plan stage of the document and commented that there was a bit that she really liked. She pointed about the timeline priority structuring factors. His comment about treating Mean before he was taken over by a near unstoppable bio-monster was funny. A lot of people were worried about that and hadn’t been talking about it. This was a clever way of getting it into discussion.
Though she’d misunderstood his intentions he thanked her anyway. They talked more about the meeting. Bringing up bit that had worried them so they could de-stress without worrying the crew. Overall Dueliet summarised well that they were both going to be tested to the limit, making things work smoothly for the next while.
Ronnec agreed and said the only differenc was by the time these projects were done the crew might not talk to him any more. Dueliet laughed and said that there were always those like her, Gil and the kitchen staff that organised their schedule from the master one he put up. He would always have at least six people to talk to.
He joked that some days it was a toss up between her and the kitchen staff, for who he liked more. She commented that if it was just about people that he didn’t have to organise, why not the captain. He shook his head and said that he was even worse than her for ignoring procedure. It was stressful how he went about things.
He could tell she was slightly worried about this.
To lighten the mood he said at least she was making him look good at the moment. He hadn’t accidentally married any bio-monsters to lizards in delicate political situations. She laughed and punched him on the arm.
Realising the meeting was breaking up, she thanked him for sorting the work planning. Then called him a doofus and said she’d see him around.
Wehl 2025
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