Ninety-nine Units of Def in the Bay

[Rachel E Garrett 0]

Ninety-nine Units of Def in the Bay

 

She was in her element, yes she was, and it felt good! The bay was wall-to-wall Orbital Defense Platforms, neatly arranged by type and degree of maintenance needed. Next to each one, busy little bodies worked diligently, removing parts, examining them, then neatly sorting each as to usable, repairable, or scrap, in tidy bins located between the rows. It was enough to make an ensign proud, for sure.

 

For the first time ever, Rachel Garrett, J-tube rat, felt she had conquered something besides the dirt on her uniform. She was decked out in work coveralls, gloves stuck in her shoulder straps, padd in hand, feeling really important ‘cause it had just occurred to her that she was senior officer – oh yeah! Ensign Rachel E Garrett was senior officer among all these noncom grunts, and she was crackin’ the whip.

 

“Ok, folks! Listen up!” she had said, pulling herself to her full 5’ 3” height to be sure the team leaders heard over the din. Even Caelan raised a brow at that, but she mostly ignored it. He was junior to her by at least three days.

 

“We have over a hundred units here that need triage - or so says Lieutenant Coleridge. Which means we need to take an inventory, see what's usable and what's not, what needs to be scrapped and what can be… sold.” She double-checked the padd. Yeah, it said sold. Well, okay then.

 

When she looked up she realized the crews were actually paying attention; they were lis-ten-ing. To her. A new experience and a momentous occasion, to be sure. Regaining her composure, she plowed on. “So I'm here and Ensign Fletcher is here for you to report to. Get busy. Dress 'em down and report back… yesterday.”

 

From behind her came a, “Uh...yeah! What she said.” It was Caelan, chiming in.

 

“So, did I do good?” she asked after shooing the team leaders to their tasks. “Am I gettin' better?”

 

“You’re brilliant,” said Caelan.

 

She wanted to give him a high-five, but she wasn’t sure if he was serious. Caelan was so hard to read sometimes. No, he was hard to read most of the time. Just before they got here he had said something about Centurion Jorahl spacing us so they could get a new crew. Rachel had taken that as gospel, but he said it was a joke. Go figure. She decided to change the subject.

 

“So, you workin’ on somethin’ else, or this garbage?”

 

“I was s'posed to be working on this, but I just looked at the mess and couldn't bring myself to start.”

 

So he was less than enthusiastic, which made her feel a little less confident knowing that she was senior officer of something that didn’t make Caelan enthusiastic, which meant that this was probably the lowest heap of garbage and probably the least desirable assignment on the station. On the other hand, if they didn’t get this ‘garbage’ up and running so the station could be protected they would all be ‘garbage’ – or space dust – or both.

 

This made her feel a teensy bit better.

 

“So, where do we start?”

 

Good question. “Anywhere that they’re not working, I guess,” she had said pointing to the teams spread out among the units.

 

They both got to work until suddenly it occurred to Rachel that the place was a mess and wouldn’t it be cool if everything was neat? Well, she wasn’t sure His Highness would appreciate that kind of thing, but her OCD sure would. Her quarters might be in disarray with clothes thrown all over the place and stuff scattered here and there, but by golly, that wasn’t her workspace and workspaces needed to be neat, orderly, and above all clean! Yeah!

 

Within the hour she had every unit lined neatly next to, behind, or in front of the other, with collection bins between the rows and cleaning materials neatly secured next to the bins with the teams working like sons-o-guns.

 

Then, from somewhere along the line someone hollered loud and clear, “Ninety-nine!” Work stopped. Grins spread like wildfire.

 

What the? Ensign Rachel Garrett checked her padd. They were down to 99 units in the bay. Cool. Soon they’d be….

 

Before she could finish her thought a small bunch of hearty voices had started:

 

Ninety-nine units of def in the bay,

Ninety-nine units of def.

Ya break one down and toss it around,

And there’re ninety-eight units of def in the bay!

 

Gees…