"Good morning, Kleppie, isn't it?" Kavi asked.
Kleppie smiled. "Yeah, it is. You helped us the first day, with the zero G lift, remember. I got sick." Kleppie blushed and wished suddenly his mouth knew when to stop. What a bonehead thing to say.
Kavi laughed. "Yes, I remember. You've adjust now, though. I've seen you go up and down." She giggled nervously and blushed herself. "I'm Kavi," she said after a moment.
"Yeah, I'm here for treatment."
"Okay."
Kleppie took off his shirt so she could inspect the fading rash on his back. The most awkward member of the American crew tries to flirt with the most awkward member of the Consortium crew, he thought.
"You are looking better now," she said. "I don't think we need to do a tank session. Just let me put some cream on and then you can have a blue treatment."
"Your technology is amazing," Kleppie said as she worked. He remembered his talk with Hornbeck yesterday. "Umm that zero g lift, do you know how it works?"
"Sure," she said. "They just have conditional holes in the gravity plates beneath the ship. It's in the schematics."
"Umm, okay," Kleppie replied, not sure he'd actually been told anything. "Do you know how the artificial gravity works?"
"Yeah, I studied physics for awhile before healer's training," Kavi said and she launched into a long explanation that was definitely over Kleppie's head. I am way too dumb to be a spy, he decided.
She walked him down to the blue room. "It was nice to talk to you, Kleppie," she said at the door. "If you wish to talk again, you may."
"Yes, I would like that," Kleppie said. He smiled and watched her depart, realizing he did very much want to talk to her again.
#####
"Oh my god, you've got to see this," Kleppie greeted Dan as he entered their quarters. It was roughly two in the afternoon and Dan's day was over.
That morning after breakfast he'd gone to see Cheyenne. He found her not only awake but out of the tank. Her healers wanted her body to adjust to supporting itself. They had just finished covering her wounds and helping her clean off and dress.
She was still weak. She had walked a short distance to the nearby bench and sat, but Lana said that was enough for her first day. In the future they would push her to do some physical therapy.
They had talked about nothing. He'd told her he was back on duty. She was surprised but he told her the Captain was right, they needed something to do.
After his visit he had his medical treatment and his session in the blue room. Then came lunch and his language class, Consortium. Captain Lannister had created more than a half dozen classes. Everyone had to do something. Dan understood and agreed, the men needed something to do with their time. They also needed some way to keep up the discipline in the ranks.
The Consortium language class was the smallest and it made Dan sad. Those with the least radiation sickness, or the worst machismo, were bullying their way through PT or hand to hand combat. The rest of the classes were absolute BS, clearly only offered because someone had the skill to teach it and they needed something to do.
Learning to speak Consortium, on the other hand, seemed like a real game changer to Dan. These Others were obviously here to stay. Why not learn their language?
Some avoided the class because they were lazy and cooking, naval history, or pottery classes were a lot easier. But mostly it was bias. The men still worried that we would end up at odds with the Consortium again. The patriotic thing to do was to hold the others at bay.
Until evening anyway. After the evening meal, every common area on the ship would start to fill up, Consortium and American alike would drink Soma Achi Chai, a herbal beverage with effects similar to marijuana. Lectures on fraternizing were like pissing in the wind.
Dan didn't know how they did it. Radiation sickness was doing a number on him and by mid afternoon he was wiped.
Dan looked inside the small fridge they had in their room. Seeing nothing that looked appetizing on his stomach, he grabbed a nausea can from the counter instead and went to see what Kleppie thought was so amazing.
Kleppie, Madsen and Jensen were hunched over the table at the back, but they scooted to make room for him. Jensen tapped his slate to activate it and then projected a grid work of icons in the air above it. "Do you see it?" he asked.
Dan shook his head no.
"A big system wide update, according to Holi," Kleppie said. Kleppie mimicked the lilt of Holi's voice when he said the name. "Big update, done partly for us."
"What I am looking for?" Dan said.
Jensen pointed to a small familiar green robot in the corner of the grid work.
"Is that what I think it is?" Dan asked.
"Sure enough," Kleppie replied.
"Their computers are so advanced," Jensen said, "that instead of trying to integrate them with our networks, they just designated a tiny piece of their network to accept binary code, and uploaded this." He touched the icon. The holographic display dropped to the surface of the slate and morphed into a standard earth side tablet display.
"What can it do?" Dan asked.
"Supposedly," Kleppie said, repeating himself for emphasis, "supposedly, there's a portal between networks and we can access the earth side internet through this."
"Supposedly?" Dan echoed.
"We haven't tried yet," Jensen said. "It just came online this morning."
"Well, are you?"
Jensen nodded. He pushed the icon for Skype. He started typing.
"Dude, they could be capturing your password or something," Madsen said.
"I don't care," Jensen replied. Dan had a sudden premonition of what was coming. Skype ran through it's connection and as soon as it came up Jensen was dialing his wife's number. They all watched as the phone rang.
"Hello?" a female voice said on the far end. Jensen just stared at the slate, his mouth slack. "Hello?" the voice repeated.
Dan nudged Jensen. "Nicole?" Jensen managed to croak out.
"Yes, who is this? Ron?" she sputtered as she realized who she was talking to you, "is that you, Ron?"
"Yes," Jensen replied, "it's me."
"But you're, they said..."
"I'm in space. On board one of their ships. They just did something so our networks could connect and, well, I had to try."
"Oh my god, Ron, I thought I had lost you. Then they said you had survived but I wouldn't get to see you or talk to you for six weeks."
"Nicole," he interrupted. "I love you."
Dan could see tears in the corner of Jensen's eyes. He heard the crack of emotion in Nicole voice as she answered. He patted Jensen on the back affectionately and stood. He climbed into his bunk, their conversation still playing in the back of his head as he lay down.
"You were on the injured list," Nicole was saying.
"Aww, don't worry. Lost a few teeth is all. Their healers slapped some goo over it and stuck these black patches on, barely even hurts. How's Carrie?" Carrie was Jensen's infant daughter.
Dan would dig out his slate later, call his mom and let her know he was okay. Let Jensen have his family reunion, then let Madsen call his mother who had cancer, Dan could make his call later, after a nap. Mom would understand.
He woke once to hear the men discussing their new connection home.
"I am just saying," Kleppie was saying. "It would be easy to call up central command and give them whatever secrets about this vessel."
"Unless they are monitoring for that?" Jensen ventured.
"What secrets?" Madsen argued. "They have round windows up here, sir. Our quarters are just as small and sucky as on our ships, Sir. That's right, they eat three meals a day, just like us. We don't know any secrets."
"Yes we do," Kleppie replied, "you ask directions and they pull up a map that's practical a spec sheet on this whole ship. You show the slightest curiosity and they'll talk your ear off."
"They're mostly civilians on board," Jensen said. "I don't think they even think about security."
"The way I see it," Madsen opined, "there are two possibilities. Either they really think the conflict with us is over or they think they are so much more advanced that even knowing everything, they'll still beat us."
"Which do you think it is?" Jensen asked.
"Both," Kleppie replied. "Heck if they wanted to, they could take that radioactive ship of ours and drop it anywhere. Drop it right on Bejing. Here you go, this is what you tried to do to Taiwan, suckers. That's what I would do. My point is, if they wanted to wipe us out, they could. The fact that they haven't proves they don't want to."