Season 1 Episode 05: The Engineer's Escape Pod

Who's in charge?

A light blinked on mechanic mate Berlin's panel, and she heard a beep.

“Carol,” she heard Steve’s voice over her headset. “Have you shut the door on your pod yet?” She could hear him breathing heavily and running.

“I was just about to,” she replied. “Where are you?”

“Headed down to you.”

She suppressed a giggle as she tried to picture Steven Holbrook bouncing through the ship.

“This isn’t your escape pod, Steve.”

“I know, but don’t close the door 'till I get there. Don’t say anything out loud either, but this is gonna be a sketchy evac.”

"Of course," she sighed and shook her head. She definitely would not discuss any “sketchy evac” in front of all the frightened and injured people settling into their seats behind her. She welcomed the ship engineer’s help, of course, but with word of their relationship beginning to spread and she and Steve ending up aboard the same escape pod where he didn't belong, it would appear conveniently unprofessional. Other pod commanders needed his skills more than she did, especially with a sketchy evac. Unlike the various stewards and other crew members who she knew were hurriedly combing through flight manuals, she already knew how to fly an escape pod and even found quite a few of the items on the checklist in front of her annoyingly oversimplified.

She looked around the pod for an empty crash seat to mount beside her in the co-pilot's position and flushed as she imagined Steve sitting in it. She moved her hair to drape over her shoulder on that side.

"Mount an empty seat there, please," she ordered one of the more helpful passengers. "There's a tool kit in that cabinet over there."

She considered the possible command conflict. The ship's engineer, as a command staff member, clearly outranked a mechanics mate, but his command authority over her department was a gray area. Even though her first and only command had started just fifteen minutes ago as an escape pod pilot, she fully knew where the bear sat on the pecking order issue for this situation. She just wasn't sure how authoritatively she could explain that to the sweet man who had so fully enslaved her heart. She hoped he understood his place so she wouldn't need to flick him on the nose.

She thought it was sweet that he'd want to jog clear across the ship to be with her in this emergency, but she wished he'd just gone to the four-person escape pod in The Hole. The anomaly that had unceremoniously chucked them out of hyperspace had left the state of the ship in quite a dangerous mess, and her portly boyfriend was in no shape to run so far. She pulled up the ship's internal cameras on her tablet and browsed through the corridors between her and The Hole.

"Ste...umm...Mr. Holbrook, what's your status?"

"Almost there," he said, panting.

Worry surrendered to annoyance. She would need to talk privately with him later about risking his neck so recklessly to be with her. If the artificial gravity were to fail again, he'd be stuck somewhere, spinning helplessly, and miss his ride.

“Welcome aboard, sir,” she said through tight lips. She'd seen him arrive on the cameras and met him at the hatch, which she closed and sealed behind him. Then she beat him to the command console, sat in her command chair, and pointed at the newly installed copilot seat.

He smiled at her uneasily, sat down, and immediately began pushing buttons on her navigation console.

“Ok,” he said, “I’m here.”

“I can see that, but you’re...” Carol started to say as she looked to see what he was doing.

He looked at her and pointed to his earpiece.

“Yes, Captain,” he said into it.

Well, that answers the question of command authority. Carol flipped her head to put her hair behind her again and then leaned back in her seat, folding her arms.

Her earpiece beeped.

"Escape Pod Commander Berlin,” it was the Captain's voice.

“Yes, Captain?” replied Carol, sitting back up.

“Continue with your command checklist, but relinquish your navigation duties to Mr. Holbrook.”

“Yes, sir,” Carol answered with a smile.