Doing all the heavy lifting

Posted on Fri Jul 4th, 2025 @ 9:51pm by Petty Officer, 3rd Class Kiyara de Vos

Mission: Remnant
Location: Hydroelectric Plant, Planet Surface
Timeline: 410
890 words - 1.8 OF Standard Post Measure

The pumps were active and automated, so there wasn't any real need for anyone to be there. Too much was riding on this to go wrong, though, so they had decided to rotate a watch at the hydro-plant to make sure everything was going along as expected. And so it was Kiyara was sitting there, on an alien planet, staring at a dull steady read out of the flow between the basin and their empty vats.

The source they had found was relatively clean too, though they were sure the anti-matter specialists still wanted to process and clean it. It wasn't her concern. They made a note of the flow-rate on the floor next to where they were seated. The pen that was gifted to them still worked perfectly. It had given them tremendous joy to be able to scribble personal notes on the backs of panels and inside maintenance shafts back on the ship. They had already left their mark here as well, though taking a bit more of a serious approach. Included the galactic coordinates of Earth, relative to the galactic core.

For the past two hours, though, they were bored.

Letting out a sigh they shifted. A moment later getting up from the ground. All of the read outs were holding steady. They went back into the control room and looked around the different controls that were in place. The engineering crew had hacked into it and used it to control the transfer. A red light was quietly beeping in the corner of the console. It was sending out an emergency signal. They had traced it to an empty building near a large population centre. Nobody on the other end to answer. They had added the cycling message to the linguistic database. Something for the comms people to nerd over once they went back on their ways.

They tapped the red light with the pen. It kept pulsing unabated.

Slowly they drifted over to the desk in the corner, the chair nowhere to be found. Using the pen Kiyara scribbled their name on the desktop. Then they pulled open a drawer that they had drawn open at least twice before. Only this time, perhaps due to the shifting light, it appeared shallower than it ought to be. Pressing down into the drawer a mechanical click released a double bottom.

"Awesome." Kiyara said to noone in particular. They reached inside and pulled out a glass flask as well as a couple of washed out photographs. They pocketed them, then swished the liquid inside the glass flask. Knowing there was definitely alcohol in there. The label on it was faded almost as much as the pictures. Both of them were perhaps something the science teams could enhance.

Sauntering back to the monitor they had set up they noted the flow rate on the floor where they had sat before.

It was stable.

Kiyara had grossly underestimated how much sitting around and twirling pens they'd be doing as a big important space explorer. The comm clicked softly in Kiyara’s ear, a reminder that even on an alien world, bureaucracy demanded check-ins.

“Specialist de Vos reporting in,” they said, eyes flicking lazily to the steady line of the fuel transfer graph. “All is quiet on the western front.”

A brief delay crackled in the channel before a voice replied, flat and mildly suspicious. “Specialist de Vos, please repeat.”

Nish sounded half-asleep, which meant she was probably in the shuttle still, legs on the console, waiting for a ping from the surface—or a reason to stretch.

“I said all is quiet.”

“You’re not in the west, though.”

Kiyara gave a small smirk. “It’s a quote. Or a book. Or a movie or something,” they replied, twirling their pen between thumb and forefinger like it might keep their neurons from dissolving out of sheer tedium.

“Right.” Nish didn’t end the connection. A silence stretched, filled only by the soft hum of automated pumps and the quiet ping of the plant’s recycled air.

“You sound as bored as I am,” Kiyara added, leaning their head back against the wall with a soft thunk. The painted surface was still warm from where the sun had touched it earlier, as if the building remembered a time it had real people in it.

“All the Glowsticks are running around playing explorer,” Nish muttered. “Someone has to stay behind and make sure the actual work gets done.”

Kiyara exhaled through their nose, amused. “If this is the real work,” they said, gesturing at the mind-numbingly steady readout on the screen, “then I think I might need to apply for Officer Acad.”

“Oh, come on. Surely it’s not bad enough to consider prep school,” Nish replied, tone brightening just slightly—her version of banter.

Kiyara tapped the end of their pen against their boot, then let it drop to the floor with a faint clatter. “That depends. Do you want to know the flow rate of our fuel transfer for the past two and a half hours?”

A pause.

“…Fair.”

Another silence.

"You know how to play Callsign Roullette?" Kiyara's voice belied the excitement at her own proposal.

Nish straightened up in her seat, pulling her feet from the console in front of her, "Do I know it? I practically invented it."