Row Row Row your Boat

Posted on Wed Oct 4th, 2023 @ 5:34pm by Executive Officer Kenneth McTigue & Passenger Emma Yonkers

Mission: Stories From The Expanse
Location: The Prize ship
Timeline: just after "The Prize"

After everything had settled down Emma Z. Yonkers had cut the control box off the cables that attached it to the control consol. It was her real prize. Sure the Ship she and Ken had boarded, taken, and defused, was a great prize too, but the control box... she was sure her armor's finger print was now firmly pressed into that button that had kept the reactor from going up.

"Ken... Um the rest of the crew here, I have no problem spacing, but the kid..." she fell silent as she looked at the kid who had first held the button on the box. He was floating with his mag boots the only thing keeping him from floating off. "I... I think he should be returned to his family..."

Ken was still staring at the monster that was the rigged drive. He had heard Yonkers but didn't have the mental bandwidth just yet as he reached on his suit and cut all the wiring that had made it an improvised explosive. He sheathed the blade and finally answered. "We'll throw the assholes out the airlock, then see if we can put the kid in deep freeze. I don't think we'll be seeing Ceres for a while, but we can at least have him be properly recycled."

"Well that fine, I hope his family learns about how brave he was at the end..." Emma spoke almost absentminded, as if she was covering how rattled she might have been. The combat and death, that was her bread and butter, nothing there that she hadn't seen before, but the kid... and the way he died, that... that bothered her the most. "so... where on earth are you from?" she finally asked Ken as if she could see him as something more then an earther, and more like fellow solder.

Ken floated up to the command deck from down below, still in his jumpsuit. "I'm from an island called Ireland. Galway to be exact." Ken answered as he stopped before Emma. He took the button box from her hand. "Eyes up marine." There wasn't gruffness in Ken's voice this time. "Go check the galley, how much water and food we have. I'll take care of the kid."

Her eyes were unfocused as she was thinking about everything, but when Ken ordered her eyes up, the primal training the Martian Marine Corps beat into her took over and Emma's head snapped up. "Aye food and water..." Her voice returning back to the softer more controlled tone. Pushing off from the console, she floated down the hatchway towards the mess. hopefully there was enough there to keep the two of them alive until the 'Tross came back for them.

Reaching the mess it didn't take her long to realize the ship was stocked for the crew to last their whole run, so the two of them should have been fine, and that Ken was trying to keep her busy. First she felt a spike of anger but that cooled with the thought she had done the same to marines in the past.

On the small bridge Ken looked at the floating corpse. A sigh escaped from between his as it struck Ken how the young died, and how as he grew older they seemed to grow ever younger to him. He started looking through some of the cupboards and storage places in the bridge, finding an old dirty towel. Ken stared at the towel, then the remnants of head the boy still had and wrapped the head with the towel. And with that attached to the body, it was still fairly conjoined for the coming trip. Ken floated the boy to the airlock and sealed him between inner and outer door, lacking a better place right now.

"Yonkers, what's our supply status?" Ken asked as he floated up to the galley and looked in.

"Well as long as you can stand red kibble and some can chicken, we can last a few weeks there." Emma paused for a moment as her finger raced across a digital display, "Looks like we might be hurting for water in three... four days, there might be a leak somewhere along either the main access line or the reservoir tank itself."

That last bit had left her a bit worried. "I think once we get the ship stable and secured, we need to figure out where the leak is and slap some sealant over it."

"Let's see if we have flight control first. I'll patch the hole after, and you can get on comms and start calling for help." Ken said as he joined her at the status reports in the galley. He then grabbed a clean-ish bulb and filled it up with water. "But first we hydrate." and then offered her one.