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Jun does not, in fact, very much like being assigned a new team right before a mission like this. Still, given that she's still fairly new at Warbird Securities - and their alliance with Starfarer, Tabbana Industries, and the others is even newer - she supposes it's to be expected.

A dysfunctional team, though, will not be enough to stop Decima, no matter how good the individuals who make it up.

So, she's making a point of meeting every single person at all involved with this particular endeavor.

(And, well. Springing a trap on someone like Decima. Not the boldest nor most foolish idea she's ever had, but if her team manages to pull through on their parts...)

Currently, she's just finished an impromptu meeting with a few other strategists over lunch - they're steadily getting less wary of each other, which is good. She's meandering through the ship, idly practicing the sort of spatial awareness needed for ideal teleportation, spinning through potential vectors in her head and stopping just short of materializing them.

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A tiny redheaded tech comes around the corner at an almost-run, juggling a pile of spare parts.  "Sorry, be just- oh.  Ma'am."  She tries to shift most of the heap to her left arm so she can salute with the other, nearly losing a spool of cable in the process.

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Serious nod. "At ease. Do you want help with those things?"

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The girl blinks.  "Um- no, ma'am.  I can manage."  She hefts the pile a bit and the errant spool bounces off a flange and falls into a more stable position.

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"Alright. Don't let me stop you, though - do you mind if I walk with you? You're not in any trouble, I just like taking time to get to know my crew - I'm Captain Park, if there was any confusion, I know the different securities companies don't always use the same rank indicators."

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She nods.  "Yes- I mean no, I don't mind, ma'am.  I'm Cass Lee, power systems technician second class."

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"Good to meet one of the people keeping us breathing! I'm having a bit of trouble placing your accent - you're roughly core, right?" 

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Cassie hesitates for a breath.  "Yes'm.  Ea-nasir most recently, and then before that Rhadamanthus."

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She vaguely recognizes the name Ea-nasir, doesn't really know the other one, but there are an awful lot of planets. "Ea-nasir... That's one of the more recent core ones, right?" As much as any core planet can be called 'recently settled,' at least.

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"Mmhmm.  'S got a pretty active star, you get auroras in the temperate zones sometimes.  Also a really big canyon."

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"That sounds pretty, though likely a headache for people designing electronics systems... Though I suppose the extra cost of solar flare protections isn't much for a core world."

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"Yeah, I think most people don't notice unless they moved there from someplace else, because you basically can't get unshielded comms unless you build them yourself because why would someone sell that, but when you actually look at the designs, especially for anything large-scale- there's a suspension bridge, apparently, that's big enough and far enough south they took thousand-year storms into account building it."

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"Interesting! I'm from Daebyeol, originally, though I've traveled pretty far and wide. We're in that awkward area between the frontier and the borderline-core worlds. Most of our odd engineering is fire-proofing things - the atmosphere's oxygen-rich, and the way storms fall most areas can wind up with some pretty major wild-fires."

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"Oooh, yeah, that must be tough.  An' it's not even the sort of thing that gets you tourists to help make up for it."  Cassie stops at a supply closet and dumps her armload of parts into a bin near the door, then starts sorting them into the drawers they actually belong in.  "Do you build underground a lot, or does that get you weird chimney effects?"

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"We mostly built in the wetter areas, and with materials not prone to catching on fire - there was an estate out floating on the lake I grew up near. Seasonal migration's also popular, sticking in the prettier and more arable parts during the wet season and moving to the less flammable parts during the dry - a few places just use cheap material for the houses they leave behind so they can rebuild easily. Underground has the problem of you might get trapped under the fire until it burns itself out, and most people are less tolerant of that than spacers."

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"Huh- guess so, yeah.  Never thought of it as being a spacer thing before."  Spools of wire go on a spindle, spindle latches back into place.  "That's, um- that taken care of, ma'am.  Did you want- um, I was going to head back aft?"

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"I'll let you return to your duties. Feel free to let me know if anything or anyone bothers you, though, or if you need something."

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"Oh- yes ma'am.  Thank you."

 

A few days later in a different corridor, there's a pair of feet sticking out of a bulkhead, and muffled grumbling and a series of tiny precise destruction vectors emanating from inside it.  Someone, presumably the owner of the feet, has stuck a hazard flasher to the top of the access hatch, but it seems to be in the process of slowly slipping off.

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Jun happens to walk by, re-secures the hazard flasher, and says, somewhat amused (and having telegraphed her approach), "Do you need any help with that?"

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"Nah, almost done!  Weren't you going down to- oh.  You're... not Nieve."  She worms most of the way back out of the bulkhead until she can see who she's talking to.  "Ah.  Hello, ma'am."

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"Hello! Sorry about bothering you, then."

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" 'S no trouble, it's been quiet this shift.  Finally got the chance to catch up on deferred maintenance."  She squirms the rest of the way out and stands up, halfheartedly brushing off her knees.

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"That's good! I've had something go horribly wrong because of a repair that got put off enough times to strongly appreciate maintenance. Let me know if the workload ever seems too high, and I'll press for more crew?"

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Cassie opens her mouth, closes it, covers it with a hand and glances down.  "That's- thank you, ma'am, I appreciate it.  I think we can manage?  Long as it's okay to be a little unorthodox."

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"That's good. And being unorthodox is fine - it's results I'm after, not an exact method, though any novel or risky experiments should be cleared with me first. If there's an emergency, though, and I'm not reachable, and the only possible fix is untested, well - use your best judgement."

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Cassie nods firmly.  "Yes ma'am.  Uh- this one is kinda novel, but it should be safe?  Mostly just-" she stops, reconsiders what she was about to say, then continues "far as I can tell the ship was built expecting to shut down the main engines for maintenance more often than it has been?  So you can't physically reach that conduit in flight without rerouting power around this whole section, but I can see it from here well enough to target just the buildup, so-"  She shrugs.

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