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Ellen Fox

The Devil's In the Details (Steele/Fox)

“Ta-da!” Ellen said, swinging around the edge of the hatchway of the Arcadia captain’s yacht and scooting herself up into the main cockpit. “Told you I was on my way.” Dropping with a solid thud into the copilot’s seat, she grinned at Destry, who had already it seemed gotten herself set up with the main controls.

Truth be told, there wasn’t a hell of a lot to smile about. The maneuver that this yacht and the Arc’s other small craft were about to embark on was going to be the trickiest bit of power monitoring, split-second correctional action, and general equipment repurposing that Ellen had ever been involved in. If it didn’t work -- if the engines were allowed to short out, if the tractor beams or thrusters failed, if the ship pitched into something...they were stuck, good and proper. Ellen could call songs out of machinery most of the time, but she couldn’t make power appear where there simply was none.

But...it had never been Ellen’s approach to let herself get too bogged down in worrying about failure; if they didn’t manage it, they didn’t manage it, and over the course of the recent repair work she’d come to realize that the team of engineers she was working with was one of the best in the business. They’d manage. She was sure of it, and besides...it wasn’t every day you got to figure how to fly a Sovy-class from underneath her.

“How’s she looking?” she asked Des lightly, gesturing at the console in front of her. “All coming back to you?”

“She is gorgeous,” Destry answered, flashing a sideways grin to Ellen, before turning back to the controls. “Our counselor, who seems to have a very uncounselor-like knowledge of engineering, reset the interface for me so it would more closely mirror that of a regular shuttle. I guess he didn’t want to rely too heavily on my intuition, seeing what the stakes are,” she said wryly, entering the sequence to begin primary engine startup. “Can’t say that I blame him. Just getting her heated up now, Fox.”

Ellen nodded. “Yeah...pretty sure Lieutenant Sema’J was a wrench jockey in a past life,” she said cheerfully, switching the console in front of her to a more engineering-heavy configuration. “I have only the highest faith in your intuition and experience but I’m just as glad if you’re set up with something familiar anyway,” she added thoughtfully. “We’ve got a bit of a ride ahead of us.” Eyeing the console for a minute in silence, she tapped out a rapid fire series of commands, and then glanced over her shoulder as a low hum began to resonate through the shuttle. “I’m transferring power from non-essential systems into those critical for getting us fifty klicks from here.”

She patted the console affectionately and tipped her chair back, waiting for the systems to load up. “Been a while since we flew together.”

“Too long,” Destry agreed as she set up guidance controls. “And we sure never took off in anything like this. Seems a shame that something so pretty doesn’t get shown the proper attention,” she drawled. “She still practically has the shrink wrap on her.”

Ellen laughed. “And you claim you can’t see the magic in an engine,” she teased her friend, slapping her lightly on the shoulder. “I’m sorry to say we won’t really be exercising her -- it’s gonna be that steady surgical hand and not the lead foot that carries the day today.”

“Lead foot? I have no idea what you’re taking about, Lt.,” Destry grinned but then shot Ellen a very knowing look. “We see the engines through different eyes; to me they are a means to an end, but for you--when they leak fluid you feel as if your own heart were pumping it out.”

“So dramatic,” Ellen answered mildly, chuckling. Poking Destry good-humoredly in the shoulder, she moved to the back of the cockpit, quickly setting up an input stream for calls from the engineers currently getting prepped on the other shuttles. “And you know perfectly well what I’m talking about; I haven’t forgotten how you managed to run a perfectly good type-9 off its feet in the middle of the Martian desert.”

Destry’s eyes gleamed as she brought navigational and short-range sensors online, but her tone was equally mild as she replied, “Perfectly good? That thing was a death trap by the time our class got a crack at it. It should have had no trouble at all making the short hop to Mars. At least it failed on the way back and not the way there, or we wouldn’t have made it to the bar.” She released the lock on the pilot’s seat and kick swiveled it around to look at Ellen. “It was karaoke night, too. Remember?”

Ellen leaned back her head and gave a mock-appalled groan. “Oh, yes, I do...I insisted on singing that terrible Bolian pop number, too...” She shook her head, laughing. “That was a hell of a night. If it hadn’t failed on the way back, you wouldn’t have been granted the dubious pleasure of watching me try to replace the exhaust coil while under the influence of too much Saurian brandy, either...”

“I can assure you it was easier to listen to you sing that wretched Bolian ditty over and over while you labored to still that shuttle’s death rattles than it would have been to have you sober and bemoaning my heartless misuse of Fleet resources.” Destry smiled fondly at a sudden memory. “You started singing it again after we finally got back to the hangar, and I had a helluva time convincing the night watch that we were on a training mission.”

Ellen snorted, amused. “Probably not that hard a time...wasn’t Lars Whats-his-name still working night shift at that point? I’ve no doubt I reaped every benefit from your natural charm.” Tapping the console in front of her to save the settings, she returned to the copilot seat, waiting for the rest of the engineers to check in. “How’s he doing, by the way? Heard from him since the academy at all? Or is he still doing time?”

Destry turned her seat back to the controls, and straightened her spine, sitting as regally as any queen. “We only went out a few times, Fox, and in fact that was the night we met,” she stated with frosty disdain. “How can I be expected to know where he ended up? That was ages ago. And besides...he never did any ‘time’ as you so elegantly put it--he...was put on probation and assigned to security detail for some backwater outpost.” She leaned forward and started to run diagnostics on the attitude and lateral thruster arrays. “Huh. You know...I cannot remember his last name. I think he had blue eyes.”

Ellen chuckled. “He might have,” she said lightly, leaning back in her seat. She occasionally ribbed Destry for her seemingly unending stream of relationships with varyingly scoundrel-ish men, but she didn’t press too hard on the subject unless invited. “At any rate, I’m sure he was happy to keep quiet when Admiral Bridges wondered the next morning why shuttle four was smoking at the tailpipe.”

“Training missions can be like that,” Destry offered breezily. “I know you made sure the shuttle we used was in better shape the next time we headed for Star’s End.” She gave Ellen a half-grin before turning her attention back to the console as a chirp alerted that the diagnostics programming had run its course. “The devil’s in the details, after all.”

“That it is,” Ellen agreed, leaning her elbows on the console, flexing her fingers gently as she eyed the results of the diagnostics as well. “Looks like we’re about as set as we’re going to be.”

”Lieutenant Fox? This is Coleman.”

“Go ahead, Sparky.”

”Just wanted to let you know we’re all set to go on the lift shuttles.”

Ellen let out a slow breath and glanced at Destry. “Alright then,” she answered, slapping her palm lightly down on the arm of her chair. “Let’s start getting things into position.”

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