>>5207323>>5207400>>5207495>>5207559>>You spend time with Chief Holt…“Unami!” Holt waves from across the room. “C’mon over here!”
The chief and a good portion of the PUEXMech crew have commandeered a handful of tables close towards the aircon. Best seats in the house. Matter of fact, you heard them even before you entered the galley. They aren’t nearly as loud as the roughnecks on the Duck, but they’re up there with how many they manage to cram at the table.
They’ve shed their belts and braces, undone their jumpshits and tied their sleeves across their waists. T-shirts and sleeveless tops reveal an impressive collection of ink, with about one in every three or four spotting tats of all shapes and sizes. Between bites of their meals, they joke and laugh, snipe and gripe.
The simple enjoyment of a hard day’s work.
At the chief’s orders, a hole is cleared for you to enter. Nodding to a handful of familiar faces from the PUEXO bay, you settle in at her left side, and join the deckhands in some well-earned R&R. Promptly, you discover that the cafeteria culture between roughneck and deckhand is not entirely dissimilar from one another. Both seem to share in largely griping, joking, or playfully swatting at each other.
You fit nearly seamlessly into their clique, even if you answer in monosyllabic grunts or a few short words. The initial curiosity of your first meeting hasn’t quite worn off yet, but the crew seems to know better than to ask insensitive questions. Holt, for all her digging into a plate of fish with gusto, keeps a sharp eye on her subordinates.
Not that the exchange is so one-sided in your direction. In between bites of chicken and sips of scurvy-be-gone, the deckhands share a little about themselves.
There’s an even divide between those who signed on for prosaic and romantic reasons. Your fellow citizens of Babylnoia seem to lean towards the former. Once Carter finished his apprenticeship, he co-signed onto the Salvage Guild to pay them back for sponsoring his journeyman exam. Kiril had joined the navy after scoring high for it on the Mandatory Citizen’s Aptitude Test (MCAT). Mehra was an old friend of Captain Elishani, and came out of retirement for one last expedition.
The foreigners have more fantastic stories. Nasazi had left a young woman in the Galapagan Commonwealth with a swollen belly and an angry father. Sabine had run away from home, seeking an adventure beyond the Nordling Realms. The Andean Darius said that he woke up with a hangover in an immigration hauler bound for Babylonia.
But for all her outgoing and easy nature, Chief Holt is far more restrained than her subordinates. She mentions nearly as much as you do, sharing a common upbringing in Foggy Bottom. The firstborn daughter of a boat mechanic and a literal bread-maker, she knew from a young age that she was born to tinker. She has no grand dreams of rediscovering cybernetics or putting mankind back into space.
(cont.)
