The sun was just beginning to rise as Sabatine pulled her head out of the number three plasma motor and wiggled her helmet off her head. The world turned from the monocrome read out of her stress display back to the brightening colors of the normal human optical spectrum as the filter lifted away. Her prelaunch inspection had found a small pit in the throat of the unit, it was probably nothing but there was a small chance it was a casting flaw that might, at any moment cause the thruster to rupture. The ship could function with is remaining seven thrusters but there was no point in taking a chance like that when there was a fleet base with a full maintenance inventory to hand. The crew had grumbled that it was unnecessary but they were mostly just surly that leave had been canceled. Sabatine had loaded the unit onto one of the diesel powered trucks the locals used for fetch and carry and set it back to the yard office before replacing the unit with a new one. A two hour job even with three experienced spacers to help her. Maybe the yard would scan the thing and find it was ok and issue it to another ship, maybe they would pawn it off on civilians for a few extra florins, as far as Sabatine was concerned they could throw the damn thing in the ocean so long as it didn't put her ship or her people in danger.

"Caparelli, call chief Savachev and tell her we are in the green here, tell her I want her to run up the pump and light this one first when we star the power up to give it a few extra minutes to heat."

"Yes ma'am," Caparelii replied knuckling his forhead with a greasy hand. He was a wirey power room tech short and with a touch of the little man syndrome that made him a terror for bar owners. Those were civilian problems though and he was as fine a wrench as they had on the Vickie.

"Anything else she already knows that I should be telling her ma'am?" Caparelii asked, completely dead pan. The other crewmen tried with various degrees of success to conceal their snickers. Sabatine arched an eyebrow and placed her hands on her already grease stained uniform.

"Yeah, tell her to call me the next time she needs a personel detail, I have a few thoughts," she replied, a slight grin on her face letting her spacers know she was joking. Caparellii made a saulte to a point well scored and scuttled off to tell the already overworked and over stressed engineer that this little last minute project was finished.  

"Uh Ma'am?" a voice came from above her. SHe glanced up to see Howarth's head protruding from an access hatch. 

"What is it spacer?" she asked expecting another last minute problem that threatened to delay their lift-off.

"Uh that reporter lady is back Ma'am she uh.. she said the new Lieutenant invited her and I mean we had to let her pass?" Howarth asked, his tone turning the statement into a question. Sabatine stared at him in shock. Kaiden was bringing a doxy and a reporter on board? She reached for her commo helmet to call Captain Micha but froze. It wasn't technically her decision and if the captain had a problem with it he would chew Kaiden out for it himself.

"Right, well whatever the XO says right?" she told Howarth. An alarm pinged on the ships internal PA.

"All hands, stand by to close up shift, lift off in 15 minutes." Well, no time to worry about it now.