ELEVENTH WAVE

[astrogate]

CHARACTERS: any and all
LOCATION: Gravity Couches and beyond
WARNINGS: maybe some swearing, or even some violence, and more than likely some implied (and possibly explicit) nakedness.
SUMMARY: Another month, another jump, another round of new faces.
NOTES: Keeping up with the tradition and copy pasted like always from the last one


You wake up in darkness.


There's a breathing tube jammed down your trachea, and you're suspended in a tube of clear blue fluid. Upon registering your level of consciousness, the gravity couch drains the fluid surrounding you and retracts the breathing apparatus; the doors in front of you open, and you're deposited on the floor of a stark, sterile medical bay.

You are not alone.


There are others who have come before you, others who are awakening beside you. Some may be familiar to you, perhaps even friends. Others have much less amiable plans. Some are merely alien and inexplicable, but there are always those who might mean you harm.

After you catch your breath and your vision returns, you notice a number on the inside of your forearm. Maybe it's a familiar number. Maybe it means something. Maybe it's just a number. But the number—completely unique to you—is a tattoo, and it does not come off.

If you enter the room adjacent to the medbay, you will find a small locker with your number on it, surrounded by rows upon rows of identical lockers. Inside, you will find a few of your personal items, a communications device, and a ship's uniform in your exact size. The comms device is fully powered and connects directly to the ship's network; it's your only means of communication beyond physical conversation. Upon turning the device on, a neutral, automated voice will say, "Please take the blue lift to the passenger quarters." Any other attempts at communicating with the rest of the network are met only with static.

This is your welcome party.

Comments

[talkstoengines]

Kaylee obviously has similar priorities to Simon - as soon as she's out of the grav couch, she's finding a towel to wrap around herself and searching for Simon and River, a couple of extra towels in her arms, just in case.

She spots Simon first, worry on her face - the past few weeks have been tough, she's maybe not as scared now, but she's also a little less inclined to smile for the moment.

"Hey, Simon. Feelin' okay?"

[doc_pompous]

Upon learning that people did, in fact, disappear, and that nobody knew exactly where they went, Simon has wasted no time in worrying about what might happen should Kaylee or River vanish. So when he hears that voice shortly after falling out of a stasis tank for a second time, he can't help but be relieved.

It's good to know he still has friends aboard.

So despite the nausea and dizziness, he manages a smile for her.

"About as well as I could be," he says, toweling the goop out of his own hair. "Are you feeling all right? I can get you something if you feel sick."

[talkstoengines]

She manages a wry sort of smile - it's not that she doesn't feel it, she just has other things to be worrying about - like Simon, and River, and her other friends. "I've been worse. You don't have to give me anything, don't you worry about me. We should find River."

[doc_pompous]

He nods, already scanning the room for his younger sister. The problem with a ship as large as this, was that if River didn't want anyone to find her, it would be very easy to do. At least on Serenity there had been a limited number of hiding places for her--when she wasn't hijacking bounty hunter craft, anyway.

"We had some trouble getting her into the tank. It was…about what you'd expect. You know what she's like when she doesn't want her medicine."

The important part is that he'd managed to convince her to get in.

[talkstoengines]

Kaylee, already starting to look for River, pauses at his words, a worried look on her face. "She didn't hurt anyone, did she?"

[doc_pompous]

"No," he sighs, dragging his hand through his hair and shaking off any excess stasis fluid. "We've been lucky so far."

It does, however, remind him of another matter.

"I don't have much medicine left for her." And he doesn't really need to say more than that, because they both know what that means.

[talkstoengines]

Kaylee frowns a little. "And there's nothin' in the medbay that could work?" She knows it must be a long-shot - considering how far they probably are from where they belong, who knows what kind of ridiculous medicine they have here? But still.

[doc_pompous]

He shakes his head, indicating that he hasn't quite given up yet. "We're stocked, at least. There's medicine available, it's just a matter of finding the right combination. She's…very good at building resistances very quickly."

But Simon doesn't want to dwell on it, or, at the very least, unload all his worries on Kaylee when she has enough to be worried about already. So he tries to guide the conversation in a different direction.

"How are the shuttles? That's what engineer is working on fixing, right?"

[talkstoengines]

"I'm sure you'll get something figured out," she says reassuringly - after all, Simon is one of the smartest people Kaylee has ever known. Plus, she knows how much he cares about his sister. That combination must be unstoppable, right?

At his question, she shrugs. "Some of us are, though it's kinda slow-going. Not many spare parts, and we gotta reverse-engineer 'em, before we can figure what they need to work."

[doc_pompous]

"I hope so."

And he smiles reassuringly, if only to convince himself. After all, he's never stopped hoping that he can help River get better, that he can have his sister back, the way she was, no matter how difficult it is, sometimes.

Fixing shuttles seems just as difficult in different ways.

"Is it really that different? The engines, and the parts, and all?"

[talkstoengines]

"Kinda?" Kaylee tilts her head, considering. "It's tough to explain it. Even to other mechanics, really. I never saw machines the way others do, even my daddy, and he knows 'em like the back of his hand. But this whole place is just... different. Like it's speakin' a language I don't quite know yet."

[doc_pompous]

"If anyone can do it, it's you."

And he says that with all sincerity, because if Kaylee can't find whatever's wrong with the shuttles, Simon sincerely doubts that anyone else can.

"Casey, the, uh…Jayne lookalike, if you've met him. He was talking to me about the engineering crew. How are they? Do they know what they're doing?"

[talkstoengines]

That gets a smile from her - a great big one, because his words warm her up from head to toe in that wonderful tingly way that only ever seems to happen with him.

"I met Casey! He's a nice man once he stops pointing his gun at you... He helped me out last jump," she says thoughtfully. "Folks I've met so far in engineering seem okay. This fella Geordi, he's real smart, knows about FTL drives and stuff we don't even got in our world. Plus, he said he'd let me know if he finds any strawberries."

[doc_pompous]

As always, Kaylee's smile proves infectious, and for a moment Simon manages to forget all the things he's been worried about since arriving on the ship. He doesn't think he'll ever really understand her way with people, or how she can stay so eternally optimistic in such a situation, but it's easily the best thing about her.

He bites his tongue and tries not to make a quip about how she's probably said the same thing about Jayne on more than one occasion, instead concentrating on the other, slightly more important things. Simon doesn't know a whole lot about the mechanics of space travel, but he does know that faster than light is a big deal.

"Have you checked the oxygen garden? For the strawberries, I mean. We could go take a look, if you like."

[talkstoengines]

Her face sort of lights up at that - hey, it could be almost like a date, right? Like he's asking her out on a date!

Sort of.

Kaylee is very optimistic.

"I've been so busy in the shuttle bay and engineering I haven't had a chance to look around the oxygen garden much. That sounds like fun, though! Maybe we'll see Ianto's dinosaur."

[doc_pompous]

"Ianto's--"

Right. The dinosaur. Creepy, possibly lethal spaceship he can do. It's the aliens and the different worlds and the dinosaurs he's having a little trouble dealing with.

"Ianto's dinosaur."

[talkstoengines]

"Yep, he says she's real nice," Kaylee says cheerfully. When is she not cheerful? "Sorta makes me wish Wash was here. He'd love her."