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“Yes, it is that time,” Quinn said with a shake of his head. “So, is that a yes?”
“Yeah, of course. Let me finish this. I’ll be down in a second.” She dropped back down into the machine, promising to be out in a moment. There was a safe way down, but she didn’t take the ladder on the back. She instead leaped down onto the treads and then popped off of those by scooting to the edge and coming down. Making a good leap, prepared this time, she reinforced her ankle from her last fall.
Quinn took the moment to practice something he’d seen Morgan do, rolling his eyes.
“Did you roll your eyes at me?” Catching it, Kira wasn’t chastising but felt a blossoming warmth for the man with the action.
“Yes.”
“And I can’t even be mad about it.” She sighed playfully, giving him what was supposed to be a mad face, but it only lasted for a few seconds before breaking. “Next time though,” she assured him, using her free hand to make an ‘I’m watching you’ gesture.
“I will bear in mind that I have a finite number of times I can roll my eyes sarcastically at your behavior.” Quinn snorted.
“You’re already down one.”
“And am I correct in assuming that I only get a finite number of times I can roll my eyes, but the number of times you can do things that will make me want to do so is unlimited?”
“You are.” That was what broke the dam of laughter which echoed down the hallway towards the mess hall as they stepped out of the lift. Kira couldn’t keep from doing so. Everything bright and loud and enthusiastic about her encompassed in how free it was.
Naturally, her laughter prompted his own, and he joined her. She thought it provided a glimpse of the sort of man he would have been without Paradigm’s influence. Then again, without it, he would have never been born, so it was impossible to say for sure.
He’d been so good at sharing himself lately that she almost felt bad when she took him out of the galley and they ate alone, having a picnic lunch, but she wanted him to herself for a second. To memorize as much as she could while trying to forget why she was doing so.
QUINN
After finishing calibrating the machines assigned to him, Quinn found and offered to help Kira finish her work. With his help running calculations, the work would take a minimal amount of time. Except he swiftly learned that Kira preferred her help in the form of small talk and not in him doing the work for her. Which he didn’t mind in the least. Even if their small talk was more her talking at him, as he occasionally thought of a good question.
Alec’s arrival with a question helped to distract him from being a sounding board to being useful to their engineer instead.
Quinn reviewed the testing algorithm on the machine. They had a testing sample of Listium to use. Despite that, it only calibrated to about 76% accuracy. Everything appeared to be in order. It didn’t take long for Quinn to figure out the problem, and he handed the solution to Alec with a slight smile.
“Could have used you years ago, lad,” Alec said, looking at it with a smile.
Kira popped up about the time that he finished, peering over Alec’s shoulder curiously. “I’ve told you I’d get a computer engineer on board, but nooooo.”
“I don’t need no bloody computer engineer.” Alec’s mustache ruffled itself. “Things were fine.”
“We’re both finished. Are we free to go, boss?” Kira asked.
Alec hadn’t even been looking up, nor did he when he scrolled to the bottom of the code. “Yeah, be gone, both of you.”
Alec’s dismissal was casual, which didn’t really surprise Quinn. He readily followed Kira out of the storage bay. The man’s affection, trust, and desire for her only seemed to grow by the day. Perhaps such seemingly boundless growth should have worried him, but it was the best he had felt in his entire life. He barely ever even felt considered the trauma of his upbringing anymore. It lingered those rare times he was alone in the wee hours with his thoughts, but those were becoming rarer in the last few days.
Kira wanted to check on the progress of the scans. It might not reveal much, but they’d not been to the bridge since that morning, so they made their way there.
What they found was not an unusual sight for Kira. Morgan had his feet up and propped as he watched information flash upon the HUD. Kira barely gave him a cursory glance as she asked, “How are things coming along?”
“Nothing so far of note,” Morgan replied, feet coming down, but he remained seated, his hands locked behind his head. “Not that we expected anything this close.”
“Still have to scan,” she noted to Morgan.
Morgan shrugged, getting up out of his seat to stretch. “Picked over already, no doubt.”
“Potentially, the route you took is fairly popular for deep space explorations.” Quinn had been involved in watching the calculations.
It was not outside of the realm of possibility that someone had jumped to the same star they had since Morgan had picked one of the brighter, and therefore closer ones.
“Most likely,” Kira agreed. “But we are doing it sector by sector. You’ve just sped up the process quite a bit.”
