Nadesico Fan Fiction ❯ A Day in the Life . . . ❯ Mid-morning . . . ( Chapter 2 )

Luna Akari's day continues! She'll be doing various technician-type stuff, and more of the main cast will show up in here . . .
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2: Mid-morning . . .

It was slowly but surely nearing 10 AM . . . we were doing Aesti maintenance for the past two hours or so, and as we finished with that, Seiya was sending people off to do work in other parts of the ship. A group went to the bridge, another to the galley and rec room, and yet another group was sent around the ship making various small repairs wherever it was needed.

Seiya walked over to where I was putting some finishing touches of paint on Akito's Aesti. "You almost done with this?"

"Yeah, it just needs a tiny bit more paint right here," I replied as I gave the paint sprayer's trigger one last pull. Pink paint covered the formerly gunmetal grey spot on the Aestivalis, and the mecha looked good as new. I turned to Seiya and said, "There, all done. Now, what did you need me for, boss?"

Seiya regarded the datapad he was holding. "Erina and Prospector have been complaining about the comm signal to Nergal HQ; it keeps getting loads of static and in some cases it doesn't want to broadcast at all. I want you to go see what's wrong with it, but hopefully it's something on Nergal's end of things."

"Okay, I'll go check it out. And please tell me only Prospector is waiting for me in the transmitter room . . ."

Seiya smirked at me and I groaned. "Sorry Luna," he said, "Erina's down there too. Oh, and you better hurry, she didn't sound too pleased!"

I cursed as I grabbed a toolkit and headed for the transmitter room. "Seiya, I'll get you for this sometime in the near future, you can count on it!" I shouted back to him as I ran. The transmitter room was something of a long distance from the Aesti hangar, and I got to thinking about Erina on the way there.

Erina Kinjo Won. What can I say about her that hasn't already been said, and most likely in much nastier terms than I'm prone to use? Practically no one on the ship liked her, except for Nagare Akatsuki, and everyone suspected they were both spies for Nergal. Erina was one of those corporate power players that refuse to take no for an answer, and doesn't care who or what she hurts on her way to the top. I admired her tenacity, but other than that, I thought she was truly a cold and heartless bitch.

I finally got to the transmitter room and went inside. Like Seiya had said, both Mr. Prospector and Erina were there, waiting for someone in maintenance to fix the transmitter or whatever else was wrong.

"It's about time Uribatake sent someone down here; we've been waiting for an hour!" Erina shouted, clearly disliking not having priority when it came to ship repairs.

Prospector was a little more understanding. "Now Erina, surely you realize Aestivalis repair holds top priority? The signal to Nergal isn't all that important in the grand scheme of things; it certainly can't protect us from the Jovians, while the Aestis can."

Seeing something of an opportunity, I continued. "He's right, you know. If the Aestis weren't in tip-top shape, this boat would've been destroyed 10 times over! You should be glad we take such good care of one of our greatest weapons against the Jovians."

Erina glared at us both. "Yes, yes, I understand; now could you just get on with fixing this thing?"

"Sure thing, ma'am." I opened the comm console access panel and looked inside. To a casual observer, it might have looked as if nothing was wrong, but I could see the problem immediately. Some of the I/O lines had gotten knocked loose somehow, probably during one of the Nadesico's recent battles. "Well, that was easy enough to find, but fixing it's another matter entirely."

"What do you mean? What's wrong in there?" Erina demanded.

"There's a bunch of loose wires in there, they're probably what's causing all the static and signal loss," I explained. "As for fixing it, I could just plug everything back in, but the next time this ship gets knocked around in battle, they might come loose again. It would probably be better to solder the things into place, but that'll take a while."

Erina looked annoyed. "And just how long is 'a while'?"

"About an hour, maybe two."

"Forget it then!" Erina ordered. "I'm already half an hour late making a report to Nergal; just plug the wires back in!"

I had half a mind to start arguing with her, but when I saw the look on Erina's face I realized there was no point in trying. "Okay, just don't come whining to me if this thing goes down after a rough battle with the Jovians!" I reached into the console and starting putting the I/O lines back in order; it took me about 20 minutes to get all of it right again but I succeeded. On powering the console back up and calling Nergal, the signal didn't show a trace of static or instability.

"Good job, technician. You can go now." Erina ordered. I shrugged and turned to leave, knowing she didn't want me there while she spouted off her secrets to her superiors.

Prospector stopped me at the door for a moment. "Thank you for your time, Ms. Akari," he said rather politely. I smiled at that; he was one of the few long-time Nergal personnel I actually liked.

"No problem, it was a relatively easy fix. I still say I should have soldered it, though. Oh well, I'll get around to it eventually. See you around, Mr. Prospector!"

I left the room, somewhat eager to get out of there and away from Erina. Sighing slightly, I called Seiya on my communicator to ask for another job to do. Amazingly, he didn't have anything for me, so I decided to hang out in my quarters until lunchtime.