trans_9 | Never let them tell you that it's all the same... [Open]

The door to one of the Sensorium pods has been propped open with a brick taken from the city level; it leads into a small vestibule with 'airlock' doors, set up to block out the outside light.

Past that, one can take a few steps into the darkness, eyes adjusting—and feel the weight lifting as the gravity drops to nothing, and there is only a soft floating against the stars and galaxies that stretch in every direction.

The air is thicker, almost fluid, body temperature, enough to make the boundary of the skin seem to almost fade a little, and there's absolute silence but for one's own breath: it's like stepping into a supremely thorough sensory deprivation tank, but for the stars. One could imagine floating peacefully in space, overlooking the whole universe.

Near the entrance (now hidden from the inside), only a dimly-outlined shape against the sky—as there isn't enough light to really see her properly—is Luly, curled up against herself in the zero-G environment, eyes open but unfocused and her red wrap trailing around her a little.

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Spaurh finds herself inside and for a moment, all she can do is smile to herself in satisfaction as she watches the stars. Her kin. Her home.

She does not indulge in the notion of "homesickness" of course. That would be utterly ridiculous and not worth her time. Instead she lets herself drift for the moment, taking in the view. She hasn't noticed Luly. Yet.

Luly is sneaky! Particularly now, using her control over the little simulation to nudge herself around behind Spaurh despite the zero-G.

She reaches to poke the other woman right in the middle of her back. The froce might well give her away in advance, but with the way the denser, warmer air confuses perception...

Spaurh does detect something at the last moment and she starts to whip her head around. However, she's free-floating in zero-g and she can't precisely turn on a dime. She gets poked, and manages an indignant snort before she sees who it is, "...ah, Lieutenant. How are you?"

"I'm okay," Luly say with a little shrug motion. One of her hands grips onto Spaurh's shoulder—not (solely) to be familiar, but so that she can orient herself around into a more face-to-face position. Well, if Spaurh doesn't get in the way of the action, anyway. "What about you?"

Spaurh doesn't completely mind the physical contact, although she pulls away slightly after Luly's oriented herself. She glances back up into the stars, then back at Luly with a small smile, "Still bored. Still trying to exist on this ship...."

"Aren't we all," Luly says with a smile back, folding her arms across her chest.

Her head tilts back, looking at the stars. "What do you think of it?"

Crosses her legs and lets herself drift, glancing back to the rather magnificent view, "Of the view? Very beautiful. Reminds me of home. Or did you mean the ship in general?"

Luly loosens her arms up, stretching them behind her head in a 'lying down' pose. "Both, I guess," she says, mental map reorienting so she's now looking 'up' at Spaurh instead of 'forward'.

The Abh hmms softly and shrugs, "Like I said - the view is nice. Reminds me of home. The ship? The sooner I get back to my real place in the universe, the better. This place is... tolerable, at best."

She rearranges herself into a "sitting" position.

Luly nods, and lets out a little sigh. "Yeah, I... nngh, I could stand if I had my doc around, I guess. But I don't know if he could."

Spaurh raises a brow, "You have a personal physician?"

"Every Engel pilot does. We're valuable assets." And prone to issues of whatever kind, Spaurh might well infer. Particularly with that incident Luly had in the mess hall...

"Well, I suppose that would make sense, if you can't afford to lose pilots... I'm rather glad we don't have to operate like that. The cost would be enormous if we gave every shuttle pilot their own doctor to look after them."

She contemplates this, running over the math in her head. Yeah, way too expensive, especially if she were actually running it as a business and not throwing money into the Abh war machine.

Luly snorts a little. "Engels aren't shuttles. We've got... they're maybe a third of our superheavy deployments at most. Think, ahh, most cutting-edge war machine on the battlefield." And it is, after all, a conflict on a single planet. "A good doc's still a hell of a lot easier than what it takes to retrofit an Engel for a new pilot."

"That's a bit different from our fleet," Spaurh replies, still drifting in the darkened room, "we have so many different classes of ship... although training an effective crew takes time, we have the population and the resources to replaced quite a few of our losses. But nothing is quite so valuable as to render it necessary for special attention."

She taps her chin, "Different philosophies and strategy, I imagine. Then again, your people still fight ground wars, so I'm not sure what can be expected of you..."

Luly sticks her tongue out at Spaurh for a second.

"An Engel already has a support crew a dozen people thick just for maintenance. One more..." She makes a little shrugging motion. "But it's, the pilot and the unit have to be thought of as one piece. It's with how the control system works, to get the quality out of it that lets the Engel do its thing, you can't just hot-swap."

She trails off into silence, looking out at the stars.

Spaurh waves a hand dismissively, "Of course, logistics mean more than tactics and strategy. But still, that's someone who could be used elsewhere. As I said, differences."

She watches Luly for a moment, "And now what are you thinking? Don't tell me you're going to start getting dull."

"Yeah, but we've got plenty of doctors." Luly doesn't want to talk about how all the ones who deal with Engel pilots are trained psychiatrists, too...

"I was just thinking about how I'm going to get Lafiel's revenge at you so she'll ease up a little on me about that outfit," she says lightly.

Spaurh chuckles, "She deserved it. She's an Abriel."

Really, that's all the explanation she's going to give on that subject. She reorients herself into a more comfortable position, "Besides, if she wants 'revenge', she ought to do it herself."

"Probably, but I'm sure it's in the nature of nobility—" (she waggles her fingers at the air) "—to make people do stuff. So watch out for yourself." She grins.

Spaurh actually chuckles, "I'll keep that in mind... In the meantime, I'm afraid I'm simply going to have to keep on being bored out of my mind."

"Oh, there's got to be something that could keep you occupied." Luly waggles her eyebrows lewdly at Spaurh. (Where did she even learn to do that, anyway?) "There's always the historical standby..."

Never let them tell you that it's all the same... [Open]

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