There was sporadic laughter from points around the room, as though too many understood the reference - Business

There was sporadic laughter from points around the room, as though too many understood the reference. It was impossible to judge just how red my face became, though I am certain it conveyed an adequate betrayal of guilt. I weaved my way through the masses, nodding sarcastically, and joined him at his table.

"R.J.""Yes, oh grand marshal of this fortuitous gathering?""Later, I will kill you."He blurted out a laugh and pushed an empty mug and coffee dispenser at me. I poured and eye'd him threateningly.

"Nira was in here earlier. She looked very refreshed.""R.J., keep your voice down. So what about Nira?""Oh, just thought you'd like to know she was doing well, that's all.""Is there no damn privacy on this ship at all? How do you know about Nira?""Apparently she bumped into a nurse's aid while sneaking back into sick bay last night. When asked where she had been, she laughed and claimed to have paid a little visit to a Mr. Buck Rogers. Of course we all have no idea who that could be."

"Oh my god.""I'm sure it was heavenly, my amorous friend.""R.J., it never happened.""It makes me wonder why you've never been married.""R.J., it never happened."Of course not.""So why aren't we underway? What the hell's going on?""Oh yeah, you're gonna love this one. Guess who fucked up last night. I mean, really fucked up."

"No guessing games, please. It's too early.""How 'bout if I give you a big clue. It was Space Operations favorite daughter."

"Brandon? The child-queen of the analytical group? What did she do?""Like I was telling you last night, the scanners they took on board that ship really didn't pick up too much. What they did pick up seems almost undecipherable. Except for one thing, star charts. One of the scientists in ole', or should I say young, Maureen's group happened to notice a pattern in the alien gibberish that reminded him of star charts. Ms.

Brandon, who is always anxious to validate Space Ops undeserved confidence in her, decided it was the big break she needed to crack the code. The latest mapping we've done hadn't yet been imported into the analytical computer base, so Ms. Maureen races down to navigation and uses her rank to bully the engineer on duty into letting her have access to the ship's main nav computer. She inputs her alien star segment into the database and tells the computer to find a pattern match. The host computer goes away to do the job and never comes back. Whatever happened, it wiped out our entire nav database. The whole system had to be completely powered down and then rebooted. They're replacing the optical storage mediums with backups to get it back. And that my friend, is why you see this jovial crowd of first shifters celebrating around you rather than being at their posts.""Absolutely unbelievable."

"The nav engineer who allowed Brandon into the host computer is believing it, all right. He's suspended from duty until a hearing can be scheduled.""And Maureen Brandon? What about her?""Well, the fact that I've heard nothing at all leads me to believe it's as bad as it gets. There hasn't been any notice of a temporary replacement for her or anything, but I do know she spent most of the remainder of third shift in the conference room with a few department heads and security officers who had been awakened during their sleep shift. You would have been in on it except that you were on the EVA, and they thought you needed your rest. Little did they know...""R.J..."

"I was lucky. They kept me up all night using the job-continuity clause. I was updating documentation on my laptop when Brandon took off without saying a thing. Otherwise, I'd probably be getting my own special hearing for allowing procedures to be broken. So now they are saying that we won't be ready to go light until sometime around the beginning of second shift. 17:00 is what's being advertised right now. Because of everything that's happened, we haven't even pulled away from that alien piece of crap. It gives me the creeps. And, we have one extremely disgruntled CO on board right now. Nobody else better screw up."

"Jesus...""He had no part in it. He will not be at the hearing."I sat back, sipped the hot, black coffee, and felt a pang of sympathy for Maureen Brandon, probably now the former head of the Analysis group. In her overzealous desire to advance her cause, she had taken too big a risk and ended up temporarily stranding us. It is one thing to jeopardize ones self in the quest for knowledge, and quite another to endanger an entire ship's complement. Brandon had not only put us aground, but her own career, as well. I looked around the room at the laughing faces and ongoing debates.

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