They "Talk" in Shuttle

Posted on Thu Jan 8th, 2026 @ 11:12am by Chief Petty Officer Nish Karalo & Ensign Isaac 'Zac' Hughes

Mission: Royal Mail
Location: In shuttle
1727 words - 3.5 OF Standard Post Measure

"Is this a private party or can anyone grab a sponge?"

Isaac Hughes wasn't much of a pilot. At a pinch, he could point his nose in a direction and follow a predetermined flight path with the help of the internal navigation system, but he had no natural aptitude for plotting a course that wouldn't send him straight through a planet or three. He was a feet-on-the-ground kind of guy, and though it was also fair to accuse him of having his head in the clouds from time to time, that was more a floating thing than it was aerodynamic wizardry. For this reason, he didn't usually have much of a reason to visit the shuttlebay.

Or rather, he hadn't had much of a reason, once upon a time.

These days, it was starting to feel like a necessity if he wanted to hold a conversation with Nish that wasn't via subspace or from the other end of a corridor. There was no fault to be found in the fact that she'd found a niche, (which he liked to continually refer to as a Nish Niche because he thought it sounded witty and it annoyed her), that had kept her pretty busy over recent weeks. It was just that, after a while, it frayed the patience just a little to see the parade of people returning from the planet's surface only to watch her turn right back around to go get the next lot. Gate-crashing her final post-flight checks seemed perfectly reasonable. And he'd actually bought a sponge! The very epitome of a thoughtful man.

"I thought Nurse Daglish did the spongebathing," Nish was on her back beneath the main pilot panel in the cockpit. Her arm was halfway inside as she tried to reach, "But I could use your steady hand and dainty fingers." She waved him over to come join her on the floor. The thing about flying the same shuttlepod again and again was that you started to notice things. Things that other people didn't notice. That engineers couldn't trace back to actual technical faults but a pilot could swear was there. It was no point trying to explain it on the gripe sheet because she'd just get some sort of witty retort like 'replaced clicky sound with clacky sound'.

With an unnecessary amount of oof and an elongated, rather exaggerated, groan of effort, Isaac eased his ancient bones down onto the ground and, after a moment's pause, settled down on his back in an adjacent but not-immediately-helpful position. Legs crossed at the ankles, hands folded across his stomach, sponge still grasped firmly, he wriggled a little as if testing the surface for suitability and then hitched himself up long enough to drag a spanner out from under his buttocks. He held it up for examination, though they both knew by now that he was less dangerous with an actual scaple. Without much mind for how squished he'd just made things, Isaac peered into the offending panel and nodded, sagely.

"Ah, I can see your problem." A pointed index finger gestured towards the circuitry Nish was working on. "You've got an open panel there, any old klutz could stick his foot right in there."

A swift jab with her elbow should take care of the annoying buzz in her right ear, "You're supposed to have a steady hand, right?" she pointed at a loose hanging wire, that was supposed to be connected with one of the control panels, "The connection was wonky, so I unwonkied it." She showed her soldering iron. "Now I need to reattach, but it's pinpoint and..." she let the device softly shake in her hand to amplify the issue she'd been having. "I don't want to accidentally make a connection with the thrusters or something." She handed him the soldering iron and scooted over to give him some room to work with. "Can you handle this, or does it feel too weird without knocking someone unconscious?"

"You offering?"

A quick chuckle preceded the necessary wriggle into place, cut short by the fact that there was no such thing as a steady hand if your diaphragm was heaving. Isaac was getting used to this, having to snatch moments around the seemingly endless stream of work commitments because staying busy was just how Nish chose to cope with things. Productivity was one of the healthier options, at least, but it did seem to keep leading to moments like this; flat on his back on the floor trying to pretend he was an engineer.

A surgeon's precision came in handy, however, and the doctor's delicate fingers isolated the wire, tracing the line to the intended connection point and then contorting the soldering iron to an optimal angle before attempting the task. It wasn't strictly necessary, and wound up entirely intentional, but he poked his tongue out in concentration and waggled his eyebrows as the thin laser made contact with its mark.

"Maybe I should have turned to engineering, it's a lot less goopy." Still concentrating, he added vaguely, "Always seem to look better in the uniform too."

"I'm sure they wouldn't mind the extra hand down there. You could actually make yourself useful." Nish actually did appreciate his help and the way he connected it back in the panel was way better than she could've managed on her fifth coffee of the day. "I'm sorry for not being around as much." She didn't move, laying next to him on the floor of the shuttle actually felt quite nice. "I miss you."

"The universe just keeps finding ways to be inconvenient."

It was a slight understatement given the technicalities around whether this even counted as their universe, and though accidentally falling foul of alien customs had far better repercussions as far as Isaac was concerned, it still counted as an example of shenanigans.

"I know you'd like to claim that kind of power but I don't think you can hold yourself entirely accountable. Could maybe work a little harder on being less irreplaceable," he hazarded. "Crash the shuttle a few times, make them think twice about letting you drive."

It was all meant in good spirits, an olive branch to accompany the slight jostle of his shoulder as his quiet undertone conveyed a returned fondness. Jumping from one emergency situation to another tended to crowd both of their schedules, even if hers was more inclined to actually send her out of reach.

"I tried, but apparently this level of awesome doesn't rub off." Nish snuggled into his chest and let out a sigh that sounded like it had been there for weeks. "Here's to hoping there's clear skies ahead." She pecked a gentle kiss on his cheek.

"Sky? Remind me what that is again."

The world of ice and snow seemed like such a distant memory. Given the relative shock of having found themselves in an entirely different reality to the one they'd just got done obliterating, Isaac wasn't entirely surprised by the sense of detachment some of those early memories provoked. If he was honest, even the events that had lead to this, which was certainly one of the more pleasant outcomes, felt tinged with a surrealness that made him question if there really was a time where Nish Karalo had looked at him like he had two heads and asked for the real doctor.

Ah, memories.

And, of course, despite this recent mission's success, Zac himself hadn't gone planet-side. With everything she was dealing with, he hadn't begrudged Avira the jaunt and might even have admitted to a vague sense of second-class citizenship when it came to promoting his own needs over the top of the crew that actually belonged here. Professionally, he knew the flaws in that logic. Unfortunately, his training hadn't covered reality displacement.

"It's like those overhead lights in sickbay, but generally more blue'ish." Nish rolled further until she was on top of him, barely able to lay there without bumping into everything overhead. "Now that this is done, I think I might have ten minutes to spare." A crooked grin.

It was not, Isaac would have vowed and declared, his intention to continually wind up in this exact position in various places around the ship. Perfectly normal attempts to communicate, he would have argued, constantly hijacked by a force of nature and her incessant shenanigans.

As his arms settled around her, Zac's eyebrows bobbed playfully up and down.

"Ten whole minutes," he marvelled. "Why, Mrs. Hughes, you spoil me."

Nish pulled her head back a bit at that name, bumping into the console overhead. It didn't seem to phase her, "I thought we agreed you'd be Mr. Karalo. Can never have too many Karalos on the ship." She leaned back in and kissed him. She lifted her head a bit more carefully this time, "I think we should plan a date night. Like recurring."

On the contrary, Isaac suspected you could have too many Karalos on board and that, in fact, the number may already have been exceeded. This wasn't his own sentiment but the general gist of certain vibes he'd picked up on, which was a hard thing to argue against from a purely psychological standpoint. Life didn't really equip you for having to co-exist with yourself in cramped spaces.

Far better, probably, to focus on the distraction she'd set up for both of them. "Well, that sounds do-able. Depending," he added, "on your expectations. Are we talking shoes or no-shoes kind of date, for a start?"

"Psssh." Nish shook her head, "I don't busy myself with those kind of details. Just let me know when and where and what to wear." She then put an index finger on his chest. "Speaking of, take off this awful uniform."

Not for the first time, Isaac peered either side of him and arrived very swiftly at the understanding that he wasn't really in a strong position for negotiation. "Ah," he ventured, the expression in his eyes daring to twinkle just a little with fond amusement, "that kind of date." After a brief pause, calculated to provide ample time for his next query to land, he scrunched his face up and asked, "Can I keep my socks on?"

 

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