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Nicolas Lepage

Educational Lunch

Nick was still a little confused about the end of his conversation with Amanda. He was glad he had helped her...somehow. So now he was sitting at the table, lost in thoughts while chewing his sandwich. He was glad he still had some time to go over some of the reports Mimi and DJ had sent in and also some of the results of his own research. So he reached for the PADD that had lain forgotten on his tray during his talk with Amanda and started to read.

 

The Promenade food court was not somewhere Aegis's cargo chief, CPO Rosalind Wills, normally ate, as it was noisy and crowded and she could generally get enough of that down in the cargo bays. That being said, it was also a change of scene and one she felt she could use. She'd now spent a considerable amount of time having to work around the presence of that...thing...still lodged in one of her bays smelling up the place, and when you added in, on top of that, the trickle-down from what by all reports was an intended mutiny, it just generally tended to make the whole business headache worthy. Almost makes me miss the move to the Mercury...

 

The foot court was more crowded today even than usual, and after her stop at the replicators for a sandwich and black (very black) coffee, it took her nearly five minutes to spot what was apparently the only available open seat, at one of the small tables scrunched up against a corner. One of the seats was already taken, by a man it took Wills a few seconds to identify as the Chief Medical Officer, Lepage.

 

Eyeing her tray for a moment, she pondered the feasibility of getting it off the Promenade and the pleasantness of trying to eat it standing up and then shrugged, making her way over to Lepage and his empty chair. "'Scuse me, sir," she said, tempering her usual bluntness in proportion to the number of pips on his collar. "This seat taken?"

 

Without even looking up from the PADD, Nick grunted and waved his hand in a motion for her to sit down. When he had finished reading the paragraph he finally looked up and greeted the newcomer with a smile. “I apologize, Chief. Needed to finish reading that sentence.”

 

"Engrossing reading, eh, Doc?" Wills said easily, sliding into the seat with her tray and picking up her sandwich to take a large bite out of it.

 

“Yeah, it’s basically stuff about our new resident down in cargo bay 3. We’re trying to find out more about him…not even sure if it’s a ‘he’ actually,” Nick answered pleasantly, trying to make conversation. He had a feeling he had already seen the CPO somewhere but wasn’t sure where.

 

"Oh, God..." The frustrated sputter was out of Wills's mouth around the mouthful of roast beef before she could stop it. "That monstrosity...you don't have any idea when he's liable to be evacuated, do you? It's putting a bit of a damper (not to mention a stink) on cargo ops."

 

“That ‘monstrosity’, Chief, is…well was a living being. I know the smell can be a bit…irritating but I fear you’ll have to live with that a little bit longer. We have only just started our research. We’re getting some promising results, though. A DNA profile, blood composition and the analysis of membrane proteins and various enzymes have yielded some interesting information.” Nick tried hard not to sound irritated. Why was it that everything people didn’t know or understand was automatically called a ‘thing’ and if it scared them a ‘monstrosity’?

 

Wills sighed. She'd woken the blue-collar in him up and clearly she wasn't going to get much sympathy. "Really?" she asked, and was somewhat pleased with herself that the sarcasm in her mind stayed mostly out of her voice. "Like what?" She admitted privately to being somewhat curious, if only on the level that she hoped they were at least accomplishing something useful by keeping it there; if he told her they'd spent that time learning fascinating things about what it ate and how large a litter of little...things...it might produce, she might have to go order something more potent than the coffee.

 

“Like, for example that the Athra are likely to have originated on a world with very low gravity. Their erythrocytes, red blood cells in humans, blue in this species, use Osmium instead of iron to bind oxygen. Osmium is the metal with the highest density. Also, their hematocrit…the proportion of blood volume occupied by erythrocytes is 76%...in humans it’s only 38-48%. That means they can bind more oxygen, which in turn means they don’t have to breathe as often. So they can survive in the vacuum of space. Well, their reinforced shells help, I guess.” Nick didn’t care whether the CPO was really interested. This was the perfect way to sort through all the results and help him realize what they actually implied.

 

"Must come in handy," Wills said dryly, taking another bite of her sandwich. Most of this was going over her head, though she got the general gist enough. "So we're basically talking a giant, vacuum-proof bug, then? Exoskeleton and all that?"

 

Nick nodded, glad the CPO was still with him. “Yeah, and the shell was even reinforced with some kind of metal. I hope someone in science will be able to identify what exactly it is. On the inside the Athra look pretty much like your average humanoid. Nervous system, blood vessels, organs…all there, looking slightly different but there nonetheless. But on the outside they were made to spend a considerable amount of time in space. That’s amazing if you ask me.”

 

"It's not bad, sure," Wills said agreeably, finishing off her sandwich. She had a feeling it would, in some other life, have been actually a pretty interesting topic, but she just couldn't get herself riled up over organ orientation in something that had crashed through the wall of a painstakingly organized system. "Wish it'd picked a different area of space to spend a considerable amount of time in. But I guess that's neither here nor there."

 

“Well, Chief, I’m sure the Athra wasn’t too happy our paths crossed either. And the outcome for this one was much more unfortunate than for you or me.”

 

"Suppose you've got a point there." Wills slouched back in her chair for a moment, giving herself a moment to digest, then eyed her empty plate. "Place makes a good roast beef," she said after a second's pause. "May have to come here more often. If you'll excuse me, Doc..." She pushed herself to her feet, twisting to wrench a crick out of her back, and picked up the tray. "Gotta keep moving. Good luck with the...ah...thing." She paused, then quirked a slight grin at him. "Or the living being. Or whatever it is."

 

Nick rose as the CPO got up. “Thanks, Chief.” He smiled and shook his head as he sat down again to finish reading his reports.

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