With her tail tip twitching, the rather bloated looking felitaur, Diane Rockhopper, finishes her communication, and ponders while the wall panel grows dark and blends in with the vegetation growing there. She turns and looks at her mate and grins a rather wide grin, tail tip batting at a vine.
Diane reaches over and scritches Shiran's earfans, "So, you still want to try and find something to do to help?"
Shiran mrrrrrles, leaning back into Diane, brushing her shoulder with a wing. "Of course. Since I'm to be here awhile, well..." He grins. "Can't just be hanging about."
Diane wraps her tail around Shiran's and purrs, "Well, I'd suggest you help at the adolescent training centers, but I don't think you'd go for that. So we need to decide. Do you want to work on the surface or on one of the orbital stations, say where I work?"
Shiran taps a finger on his muzzle, thinking. "Orbital.. above the air? That sounds good, but really, wherever is fine."
Diane snugs Shiran tightly, "Great. Let's fly over to the space field and grab a shuttle flight. Even if you weren't coming along, I'm not up to orbital flight for a while." and she gives her mate that rather fake 'and it's all YOUR fault' look while still grinning widely.
Shiran's earfans perk. "Oh, we get to ride?" He answer with a quietly thoughtful and dignified 'you mean I get the credit.' sort of expression.
Diane nods, "Of course. You're not designed to be in space without protection. While I may blame you for my waddling (another grin), but the last thing I'd ever want is to see you explosively decompress. So we ride. ;)"
Shiran chuckles. "I'd certainly hope not. Whatever that means, it doesn't sound good. Shall we, then?"
Diane nods, "I'll explain what a vacuum is on the ride up." She then half leaps/scrambles climbs up onto the roof in a very ungraceful manner.
Shiran follows behind, half expected to give a 'push' up if needed, ending up next to Diane on the roof. "You're sure you're okay to travel and so on? I mean.. well.."
Diane phews and nods, "My wings are a lot stronger than my legs, thank goodness. And I think I'll appreciate an afternoon in low gravity space. C'mon." and drops over the side of the tower's roof, waiting a lot longer than Shiran would probably prefer as she builds up speed and then spreads her wings. Considering she has the rough outline of a pregnant horse, she zips off at a good clip when she does start flying.
Shiran watches with some concern showing as Diane takes off; though he's done far wilder things, he's not sure if Diane's 'in shape' for them now. Once she's off, he plummets easily after, using a steep dive to build speed and brushing the treetops before pulling out.
Diane seems to enjoy the freedom from walking, and pours on the speed, as much as she can safely handle at this time.
Shiran cranks up a wing-wrap, pinions sweeping back and locking as thin contrails unroll from his wings; the dwagon follows, catching up.
Diane is purring loudly as she lands at the edge of the space field, albeit rather heavily, and stretches, looking back for her mate.
Shiran drops to a hard, fast landing, hitting the ground not 30 feet away, dropping to kneel before standing and folding the wings, brushing himself off. "Shall we?"
Diane nods and waddles fairly gracefully over to a shuttle where several other felitaurs are presently boarding, her tail swaying back and forth.
Shiran keeps close, folding his wings tight and crossing his fingers as to getting squished; he's constantly eyeing everything, as he's been doing since arrival.
After getting Shiran strapped down, which Diane seems to find humorous, the shuttle takes off and rockets back up into the sky and a good half hour later docks with an orbital ship building facility. During this time, Diane has tried to convey to Shiran what space is like, including the effects of gravity and vacuum.
Shiran divides his attention between the surroundings, the views, and the lecture; he seems to actually understand perhaps half of what is said; not bad for a Librarian from a bronze-age society.
The shuttle thunks softly against the docking port, and Diane unstraps her mate. "Well we're here. Remember, the station is kept at about 1/3 G in the outer rings.
Shiran chuckles. "So no sudden moves. Got it, I think." HE stands up, holding onto the couch in an experimental motion.
Diane's feet are adhering to the floor. She's designed for this sort of thing. "You can grab onto me if you want?"
Diane moves with exquisite grace in the low gravity, lending more credence to her mothers claim that they do much better in space than on land.
Shiran uses feet, wings and tail. "I'll learn. Where do we go?"
Diane watches the other felitaurs depart, and seems to glance at one male with a grin, then nods, "We'll head through the airlock and talk to the supervisor for my section. We need a lot more ships after all the destruction that has occurred lately."
Diane slinks out the airlock, walking daintily so as to insure her feet pads can adhere. The 'floors', 'walls' and 'ceilings' seem to be indistinguishable, and a couple of felitaurs are hanging from the ceiling.
Shiran tries a bit of drifting about, and begins drifting after the crowds. "Sounds good..."
Shiran uses his wings to maneuver, bumping up against a wall and grabbing hold.
Diane's tail reaches out and lassoes Shiran's paw, tugging him along, "C'mon kecharra. Let's get to work."
Shiran chuckles. "Right. The getting gets a bit more interesting..." He drifts free, then wingraps in air again, using small ''puffs' to propel himself gently down the corridor.
Clear 'windows' are located throughout the halls, showing felitaurs floating around in space, helping move massive pieces of ship hulls, weapons systems. And a couple are off to the side, doing some rather fluid, sensuous space 'flying', just plain having fun. Diane pauses a minute to watch them through the port.
Shiran stops, veering to press his nose gently to the window. "Ooooh./ They're going to put me out there?"
Diane frowns a bit, then shakes it off, "Doubtful. We don't have a suit that would fit you. Without that you'd be unconscious in seconds, and very dead in a minute or two. Course, we can have a suit made for you. It would be rather nice to be in space with you. C'mon. Lithu is up ahead waiting for us."
Shiran nods. "Perhaps down the road, then.. it looks like fun work, at least." Wings flare, a few puffs of air pushing him into a reverse bank as he continues poking his way down the hall.
Passing though yet another bulkhead, the passageway widens into a work area, and a felitaur with Siamese markings pads over, "Diane. You're here to work so close to your litter date? Well, we can use the help. We have several engine drives that need to be installed on our bigger fighters."
Diane grins, "That sounds wonderful. This is my mate, Shiran. He'd like to find something to do, he's a librarian on his world."
Lithu headrubs Diane, then does the same with Shiran, "Well, we can use the help. Anything special in mind?"
Shiran bobbles a bit before his 'attitude jets' bring him to a standing hover. He inclines his head, quietly. "At you service, sir." He leans in for a brief headrub, then settles back to watch the supervisor with detached curiosity.
Lithu nods, "Well, as a librarian, you can read. How good are you at organizing things?"
Diane's tail is flicking, you can tell she's looking forward to getting outside to work.
Shiran grins. "Quite. I've only a base familiarity with your computers, but I've also other talents you may have heard of."
Lithu chuckles, "Well, if we need to force an evacuation of the station, I'll let you know. As to your other talents, what do you think we could use?"
Shiran snorts. "Erph. I didn't mean that. I'm not familiar with electronics such as you use, but I have, mmm, a way with air and electricity. If you're having problems seeing what either is doing on one of those ships..." He leaves the rest unspoken.
Lithu nods, "I'll keep that in mind. May have you help Copernicus with that weird gate of his someday. For now, I'll assign you to Kejani Fireclad. You and she will be in charge of trying to keep all the numerous parts going to the right ships at the right time and in the right numbers. Kejani?!"
Diane hmms, "The Fireclad Clan?"
Shiran nods, and waits with folded hands, in the traditional manner of a Delevairan awaiting a new assignment; one of the few traditions he still keeps.
Kejani steps briskly into the room, "Yes, Lithu?" Seeing Shiran as she comes in she peers curiously at him for a moment, then faces Lithu.
Lithu purrs, "With your experience with our database system, and our friend Shiran's organizational skills, I expect you two to work together to keep things organized out there. I'm tired of having ships with engines pointing in opposing directions."
Shiran blinks, watching the new arrival with one eye as he watches Lithu with the other, while appearing to watch neither.
Diane hmms and wonders if Shiran is related to those chameleon dragons she's heard of while watching his eyes.
Diane purrs, "Well, that's settled then. Kejani, take care of my mate, ok?""
Shiran drifts up a bit while turning to incline his head to what appears to be his new partner.
Kejani nods at Lithu in acknowledgement, then turns to Shiran and Diane with a wink, "Gladly."
Diane bounds off happily to the nearest airlock after giving Shiran a deep kiss, and giggles as Lithu purrs, "Remember. No trapping any males inside the drive systems. We have to get these working fast."
Shiran blinkblinks at Diane as Lithu says this. "She does that?" He turns to Kejani, and sighs. "Well, th... you know the place. Where do we start?"
Kejani purrs back to Shiran, "C'mon, our destination is just up this way." She starts walking down the hallway slowly, waiting for Shiran to catch up."
Shiran doesn't really need to be waited for; a few small puffs from mostly-folded sails send him drifting after. "Ah. So what, exactly, are we coordinating?"
Kejani looks over at her new partner with a smile, noticing that he seems to be getting on well in the new environment, "We'll need to keep track of ship components and where they're going. Anything from main drives to weapons batteries or shielding components. We need to make sure the right number of components are headed to the right place."
Shiran mmms. "Sounds manageable enough.. I'm trusting you to know a lot more about the ships in question than I do, of course, and I'll need a crash course with your computers." The dwagon chuckles. "But I do have experience keeping records and so forth, and some experience in dealing with large fleets of surface ships, so I shouldn't be completely useless."
Kejani nods with a 'gryn, "I understand you have a history of weapons going the wrong direction, so we'll start with the basics."
Shiran sighs; it looks like he'd be rolling his eyes if he could. "Is there anyone who doesn't know about that?"
Kejani chortles, "Maybe your cub to be. Other than that, I think everyone in the Fireclad clan has heard about you. I received no less than fifteen warnings that I was going to be assigned the dwagon with no common sense. Don't take it too harshly, though; you haven't wrecked anything up here..yet."
Shiran grumbles as he walk. "No common sense? You try being left with a strange device and a hostile incoming group, and see how sensible you are." He seems decidedly grumpy about this subject, but calms at switching. "And it's not as if I could even try to lock people inside 'drive chambers'. What was that about, anyways?"
Kejani cocks her head and states in a way that only a felitaur could, "Oh our devices are perfectly normal. There's nothing strange about them at all. Don't worry about locking someone into a drive chamber. That was just Lithu telling Diane not to go picking on any males right now since we're on such a tight schedule. Diane has a mischief streak about her at times.
Shiran idly rolls to get a view out a window for a moment, then nods. "I'd noticed. So how much further?"
Kejani continues picking her way along the hallway as an intersection approaches, "This is it."
Shiran looks around. "This is which? Our space? Which way?
Kejani turns the corner into an area holding a large computer system and video monitoring equipment. There's some basic furniture (obviously designed to accommodate 'taurs) in front of different terminals.
Kejani settles in at the typical felitaur chair, which is a thick pad on the floor for her taur body, and an upright armrest that reaches about midway on her torso to lean against. She motions for Shiran to have a seat on her back and starts explaining what is going on. Within the hour they have started clearing up some of the congestion, and Shiran also gets to see the felitaur's in action, including his own mate pushing drives of immense size around rather easily.
Shiran watches the external fun with some interest. "That looks complicated. Why haven't you had help before this? Surely there are functionaries enough to go around.."
Kejani wells, "Our production levels have increased by about 1200 percent because of the damage from the war. We were okay before with the number of folks working..but now we're just running out of people."
Shiran nods. "I see. So where do you keep manifests, work orders, and so on in here. I assume they display on one of these..."
Kejani nods back, "We keep them in the central storage which is actually not on board here. That way we can interface with the data from any location." She smiles a bit at the dwagon, "So how did Diane get so lucky as to end up with a dragon as cute as you for a mate.?"
Group of felitaur's, apparently coming off shift, pad by with tails entwined as they glide along to one of the indoor arboretums for a non work period. Seems silly to call it a rest period.
Shiran nods, eyeing the screen. "So I need to learn these." He blinks at the following comment. "Mmmph. Now that's a long story.. we met when a bunch of 'students' came visiting with Copernicus. The rest, really was history."
As they work through it, Shiran and Kejani get a significant amount of work done over the next 5 or 6 hours. Finally, with a long luxurious stretch, Kejani purrs to Shiran, "Well, that's it for our shift."
Shiran blinks, settling back from the terminal. "Mmmmph. That thing's hard on the eyes.. already?"
Kejani smiles, "You can't work all the time. Everyone has to take some time to..uhm..relax. Ready to go?" She starts to pad back into the hallway, the end of her tail flipping mischievously.
Shiran stands to hover a bit, and stretches out to the wingtips. "Very.."
Kejani wanders along the hallway for a stretch, then says, "Okay..this is where we need to be." She hits a switch on the wall and a door opens. Motioning Shiran briskly into the room she follows after and suddenly closes the door behind her. She and Shiran are enveloped completely in darkness!
With the sound of yet another door hissing shut, Kejanni leaves Shiran in the dark, and with a thunk, the room he's in shudders for a moment, and before the inertial dampers kick in, the befuddled dragon feels acceleration of some sort.
Shiran blinks, looking around. "Ummm.. need to be where?" He blinks as the room moves around him for a moment, then stops. o O {Did I just get locked into a drive chamber?}