Argument With a Friend

Month 16 Day 6

0058 Hours

Lt Cmdr Facchini, Engineering, St Elmo

It was the middle of the night, Stinky could tell by how quiet it was. Despite the various departments being open around the clock, they all got extra quiet from shortly after midnight until about 6 in the morning. Even the rec rooms and the gym. As if those who were still awake at those hours worried about waking those who weren't.

Stinky thought about asking for something to eat, wondered about the possibility of getting something a little heartier than a milkshake or a bowl of soup. Some movement at the doorway made him think the nurse had come in, but when he looked, it was Smitty, standing a few feet inside the room, staring at the redhead.

Another man, slightly older, came in and stood beside him. "She's not awake, Smitty," he whispered.

Smitty gave him a sharp look. "I didn't expect she would be!" he declared so quietly that Stinky could hardly hear him. "I actually came to look in on Stinky."

"I hope you don't call him that in front of his underlings."

"Of course not!"

"Good. He is awake."

"Oh. Good." Smitty turned his attention to Stinky's side of the room and approached him. "Good to see you with your eyes open," he whispered.

"I never dreamed if I ever had an emergency I couldn't handle myself, I'd be lucky enough to have you come in to fix it for me." He raised a hand in greeting, but they were both still swathed in bandages, and there was no way they could shake hands. "Now, tell me straight, how bad is it?"

"Well, it's not good," Smitty answered. "All your crystals blew, some more explosively than others. The power relays were all melted to sludge. You were right to be leery of those new relays; the labs say the innermost coating flaked off, and all those layers of materials were free to contaminate the crystals. I sent an order to fabrication to make a batch of old-style relays for us to install. Don't use those new ones anymore!"

Stinky shivered at the thought. "How many of the nacelles did we lose?"

"The north nacelle was the least damaged, but its bulkheads were warped and cracked. The other 2 had actually burst open. We've had to strip them all down and replace the bulkheads entirely. As soon as that's done, we can start going through the nacelle systems and rebuild those."

"And the diflaxibrophine that caught Red by surprise? Where did that come from?"

Smitty's smile faltered, and a glint of anger hardened in his eyes. "The pipes in the warp power alcove hadn't been properly evacuated and one of them ruptured."

"Oh. Bad luck. Especially for Red. I guess Lt Baker got overwhelmed, and evacuating those pipes just... slipped past him."

"Perhaps," Smitty agreed. "He's lucky the cracked pipe didn't rupture a few minutes earlier; it would have caught him full in the face."

Stinky's eyes widened, and he winced at the pain that produced. "You had him working in the alcove with cracked pipes?"

"He wasn't there at my direction!" Smitty declared. "In fact, he was in engineering against my orders! I'd also declared that alcove off limits until I could fix the cracked pipes! Which I did this afternoon. The last thing I told my people to do on my way to med bay with Colleen was to have Security take him to the brig "

"What do you mean he wasn't allowed in engineering? It's a blasted emergency! You need every engineer you can get your hands on! And Baker knows his stuff!"

"I know how much he knows," Smitty shot back. "He tried to transfer to the Fireball a few years back. Knew his stuff, yes, but it was his attitude I didn't like. I still don't like it, so I've got him working the same hours I do. He went to engineering when he should have been off, against my orders, and installed new warp power relays, as if he intended to install crystals and call the job done!."

"That's no reason to send him to the brig!" Stinky declared.

"Is this a private argument or can anybody join?"

Smitty whirled to face the other bed. "Colleen!" His voice was raspy with emotion.

"Yes, I'm still here," she answered.

"Sorry if we woke you, Red," Stinky told her. "I'm afraid we were having a disagreement."

"Yes, about Baker," she summed it up. "I'm sorry to disillusion you, Mr Facchini, but if Baker hadn't wound up in the brig, it would have been me. Well, except that I wound up here."

"Many women do not get along with him." Stinky nodded in understanding.

"I can't imagine why," Red said drily. "He pestered me ceaselessly at the Academy, nearly got me kicked out. He seems to have no understanding of the word 'no'. In fact, he seems to think he has a right to any woman's body."

Stinky remembered many of his female crew's complaints about Baker, and wondered if he should have taken their complaints more seriously. "Well, a young man finds himself with a beautiful woman..." He offered the same platitude he had offered so many times before.

"So, are you saying you condone his behavior, Mr Facchini? Pity. I was hoping I might like you."

"You can't really believe that!" Smitty told his friend. "A man's got to have self control, or he's no more than a beast!"

"But a beautiful woman—"

"Because she's beautiful, it's okay to rape her?" Red asked with acid in her voice.

"No, of course not, but romance—"

"It's not romance, it's rape," she returned, and he could hear anger in her voice now. "Because he wants it. He doesn't care if she wants it or not. His lust is all that matters to him."

"True, that's the attitude I saw in him," Smitty stated. "On a grander scale. All that mattered to him was how he was going to advance himself. Engineering is no place for giant egos. People have to work as a team."

"Everything okay in here?" asked the nurse that came in.

"Everything's fine," Smitty told her. "I'm afraid I had some rather bad news for Mr Facchini. We accidentally woke up MacDowell. But it's all settled now. I'll just leave and let them both get back to sleep."

Stinky raised a bandaged hand to catch his attention, wondered when the other man had left. "You've given me much to think about, old friend."

"I wanted to encourage you to get better," Smitty told him. "I'll check back in on you later."

"Smit," Red said timidly.

He turned to face her. "Yes?"

"I hate to complain..."

Smitty took a step forward. "I see Wilson brought your gravity unit. Are you having nightmares?"

"No. But my feet feel like... they're above me. She couldn't get the unit placed in the middle. I didn't think it would make much difference..."

"It's a matter of making the field form an unbalanced ellipse." He approached her bed, got down to the floor, and soon stood up again. "How does that feel?"

"Thank you. Like I'm actually laying flat. I'm sorry to have kept you from your bed. You must be tired."

"It was something I should have taught Wilson before now."

"If she comes again, I'll explain how you did it."

"You saw it?"

"I watched carefully."

Neither of them spoke for a moment, and Stinky wondered if Smitty was trying to think of something to say. In the end, the other engineer simply said, "I should go," and walked out.

Alone in the dim room again, Facchini wondered if the redhead knew who... "Psst! Red. You still awake?"

"Yes."

"Do you know who Mr Smythe intends to marry?"

There was a long pause before she answered. "Yes."

"He keeps forgetting to tell me. I'm dying to know."

A deep sigh. "It was me."

"Was?" the question popped out before he could think better about it.

"I... cancelled the wedding. Good night, Mr Facchini."

Poor Smitty. I wonder what went wrong between them? The fact that she's pregnant? Surprising, but you'd think he'd be happy about that. Never thought he'd be adverse to having a family.