“You’re only five minutes late. Go check the chief - she’s hurt.”

"Sorry, I got held up in customs," Dr. Ibarra replied, the attempt at humor half-hearted and hollow. She hefted up her medical bag, apparently christened as the ship's new medic, and set to patching the chief engineer's bleeding head.[hr]The next several hours were a blur. Dr. Ibarra and the rest of the engineering department scrambled around the broken ship repairing whatever systems were currently threatening to kill all the passengers. By the time they were no longer in immediate danger, Itxaro was covered in blood, soot, and sweat. The emergency stimulant she'd taken had long since worn off, and Dr. Ibarra barely made it to the medical bay to receive proper treatment for her wound. The floor was slick with blood, the room crowded with wounded crew and civilians seeking some kind of aid from the overburdened medical staff, but she was lucky enough to get a proper stitch job on her leg by a droid. Not the best bedside manner though. 

Itxaro escaped it into the rec room and collapsed onto an empty couch next to a hot tub - a [i]fucking[/i] hot tub, she simply couldn't believe the decadence of these corporations - and rested her exhausted body for some time, but her mind continued to race. She felt equal parts horror and relief at the mission's failure, and the relief only made her feel sick to her stomach. The ship was trashed, the FTL drive seemingly a failure, and she could soon return home. Disappointed, yes, with only a fraction of the knowledge she'd set out to obtain, but home nonetheless. She'd gotten to know the surviving engineering crew by name only during the frantic repair, but they all seemed brilliant in their own fashion. [i]Wish we had the chance to work on a USASR ship together instead of this fucking death trap.[/i] She was silently fuming about the hack job the Tamerlane Corporation had done, splicing alien warp drives onto a human vessel, and she assumed with a dramatically shortened project timeline that left little room to prevent accidents like this. [i]Don't know what I expected from capitalists, but certainly not this level of incompetence,[/i] she thought bitterly as she closed her eyes. [hr] Itxaro barely had a chance to rest before a call for all ship personnel was made. She cursed and hauled herself to the conference room, squeezing between crew into the dimly lit and hazy space. Itxaro was surrounded by faces only known to her through minimalist Tamerlane dossiers, but she quickly focused her attention on Kadıoğlu as she began to speak; the woman had a commanding presence, that much was sure. 

As Kadıoğlu's speech continued, Dr. Ibarra felt a sinking feeling that she wouldn't be seeing Cuba anytime soon. She didn't claim to be a great read, but Itxaro believed the commander was hiding something from them. [i]Why bother with repairs when we should just be evacuating, waiting for a rescue? Shouldn't someone have arrived by now?[/i] Whether this deception was intentional or not, Itxaro understood. Sometimes the truth hurt. Itxaro wouldn't make her suspicion known - not now, anyway. However, something had been gnawing at her since she'd boarded the ship, and when the commander opened the floor to questions she was the first to step up, quickly introducing herself before addressing Kadıoğlu. 

"Commander, whoever attacked the Jotunheim is well-organized; do we have a contingency plan in place if they arrive before help comes?" Dr. Ibarra, normally confident and boisterous, felt self-conscious addressing the crowd of strangers, though she tried not to let it show. Of the three languages in which she was fluent, English was the weakest, and she was unaccustomed to the formal and rigid command structure she assumed the Jotunheim's adhered to. That, and ship-bound firefights had haunted her dreams for the past ten years. Not exactly an easy topic to talk to a crowd about. "I'd like to suggest some kind of defense perimeter with armed guards, whoever is able. Maybe we can rig up a simple security system if resources allow." How much an impromptu militia would help against the vicious fighting force she encountered at the airport would help Dr. Ibarra didn't know. At the very least they might be able to alert the others since most of their sensors were down.