Bridgebuilder

Foothold



Despite being the largest structure they had, and having been started last, the Command building was finished first. It was pretty clear why as everyone piled inside for a lunch break: aside from the door, it was just walls and a roof. There were grid points everywhere for laying out the interior as needed, but the whole thing was still empty save for a couple of crates and the overhead lights. Didn't even have an airlock set up yet.

"As you all may have guessed because I told you as much at the last meeting, we got some pretty nice barracks. Officers quarters with two bunks each, so nobody has to relive basic training." Lieutenant Williams addressed the group, gesturing to her fellow Marines with her datapad. A couple of them chuckled. The twenty people that had come through the portal didn't make a big dent in all the empty space. "I have discussed it with Lan Tshalen, and she agreed - as part of this grand experiment, we're going to try mixing bunks. See if it works out or not. If anybody isn't comfortable with that for any reason, let one of us know immediately. Otherwise, grab an MRE and we'll be around to discuss it with everyone."

Alex was already perfectly comfortable with sleeping with- in the vicinity of Tsla'o, and a glance around the group said nobody was immediately put off by the idea. They were all getting their own bunk, after all. He shrugged and figured he'd get put in with Amalu. That would be good, they could be bros. He did realize that was basically magical thinking on his part, some wish fulfillment about being able to have friends again.

Probably end up with Tokona. Nice enough guy, but they had conflicting personalities from what Alex had seen so far. Probably stripped and remade his bed as soon as he got up every morning, at dawn, and then checked the folds with a machinist's square.

He ambled over to the stack of crates that had become the lunch bar. One of them was open, the boxes of MRE's already lightly picked over. The other set up with a beverage dispenser. The full size dispensers were sitting on sleds back in the Garage, waiting for the buildings to finish.

Alex flipped through the pale green packets, looking for something that seemed appetizing. Vegetarian Lasagna? Maybe. Chicken curry? He had too high a standard for that. Beef frankfurters? No. Sliced beef? A little too nonspecific. Spicy barbecue pork? It was probably a bad idea, but he picked it out of the stack.

"You were in the Navy, right? You've had these before?" Abbot enquired from behind him in line. Alex didn't have to look, Abbot was the only one with an actual British accent. "Do you know if any of these are... safe?"

"I am still employed by the Navy actually, but not enlisted or anything. They're all safe." He shrugged, the motion muted through the suit. "Except the frankfurters. Never tried them, but I've heard bad things. What you want to ask is, are any of these good?"

"Oh, well. Are any of them good?"

Alex had been issued these a few times while in training, neither the sweet and sour chicken or kebab meatballs had made any real impression on him. The beef tortellini were remarkable only because they were so bland. "Probably not. Five out of ten every time I've had them. Just pick whatever sounds like it might stick the landing for you personally and hope for the best." Alex grabbed a cup and opted for good old water. The suit had a mouthpiece to drink from, but knowing that urine recycle would be involved eventually kept him away from it for now and hopefully forever. Didn't matter that it was broken down at a molecular level as part of that cycle.

"Except the frankfurters." Abbot did not sound particularly hopeful as he started to pick through the crate.

"Right. And if you get a jalapeno cheese spread, save it. Soldiers love the stuff, it's practically money for them." That was a centuries old myth, but it was still true enough to be in circulation.

"Really?" He looked up, head comically small sticking out of the bulky Pacesetter suit.

"Nah, but it does have fans."

"Ah." Abbot picked something and followed Alex, stepping over to the beverage station. He leaned into the stereotype and got tea.

They moved out of the way of the flow of people, Alex picking a spot on the wall to sit - furniture was also waiting back in the garage so they didn't have dozens of grav sleds sitting around in the snow. "What'd you get?"

"Tuna Piperade." Abbot carefully lowered himself to the floor, the bulk of the suit doing him no favors. It was even bigger than the Marines' Landsknecht armor. He took a sip of tea, looking at the cup with surprise. "Didn't expect that to be passable."

Speaking of Landsknecht armor, Williams spotted them and made a beeline over. "Abbot. You're in Barracks two, bunk four. I have you in with Keya Samat. Any problems with that?"

He shook his head. "Uh, I- No, I don't think so."

"We're going co-ed?" Alex hadn't thought about it, but the male to female split was not 50/50 - Tilted towards women being the largest group, actually, so it made sense somebody would have to be bunking with the opposite gender. A little surprised it was Abbot.

"What?" John Abbot hadn't thought about it, either.

"Correct. Samat is female, is that an issue?" Williams got directly to the point.

"No, but how- It's fine, I've had women as dorm mates before." He paused and looked away, pensive for a moment before continuing quietly. "I have just now realized that I can't tell them apart as well as I thought."

"Ah, yeah it can be tricky at first. They're not the same as us. A good, but not definitive, indicator is female names usually end in 'ya' - not always, but a lot of the time."

Abbot squinted into the distance. "Oh, yes. Tsya is girl, so a name ending with 'na' must be male because tsna is boy."

"Right." Alex nodded along, not actually sure that was right. He ran those words through his translator real quick - it was. "Just to reiterate, it's not a hundred percent of the time."

"Sergeant Zenshen is one of those outliers, actually." The Lieutenant added before checking her tablet again. "Since I've got you here too, Sorenson... I have you in Barracks 3, bunk 1 with Lan Tshalen. You two are used to cramped quarters already."

"Oh." On the Scoutship? On the Scoutship, right? "Yeah, a Scoutship is pretty small."

"I've spent years on patrol frigates, which are not spacious, and I cannot imagine having to spend months on a ship that has a single head even if it is with only one other person." She tapped at her pad a few times, not paying attention to him at all. "No problems there? I figure you two are familiar enough with each other's race that you can take care of any social issues that might arise with the rest of the bunks there, as well."

"Yeah, I don't see why we couldn't. She's got pull with the Tsla'o and I'm, uh... I talk a lot." Alex shrugged again, not exactly sure what he'd bring to the table there for Humans, aside from being both Human and having a functional level of familiarity with the Tsal'o... Which was exactly what Williams meant.

Williams looked down at Alex, piercing brown eyes evaluating him with a little shake of her head. "Don't sell yourself short, Sorenson. You've been on their ships more than anybody. That's a lot of firsthand knowledge." With that she left, off to issue someone else their bunk. Probably Crenshaw, if she was going alphabetical by last name.

Alex and John sat in silence and ate. The spicy pork stayed consistent to what he was expecting - exactly middle of the road. Apparently the piperade was actually good, which Alex doubted but he might give it a try another time. Maybe even tonight if all the dispensers aren't installed in the mess before the storm picks up again.

Right now, the weather was still good, so back to work they went. The outer structure on the Barracks were complete, but the inner walls hadn't finished yet so everyone was staying outside for safety. Alex suspected it was so the people who had set up a shovel throwing competition wouldn't touch an extrusion matrix and wreck a wall.

Since he was the guy with the most advanced machine interface, he had been put in charge of the Groundskeeper drone. It was currently serving as a snow blower and carving a space for more modular building units - these would become the workshop and maintenance bay, storing tools, keeping their drones in good shape, housing the matter printers that were said to be coming along for expedient repairs.

Everyone else was digging out the path to where the building was supposed to go - and yes, Alex did pitch in because the drone was set to autopilot and didn't really need much monitoring.

There was a flat spot further up the hill that had been set aside for a hanger for the shuttle. His shuttle. Apparently a couple of grav cycles, too. There wasn't enough time to get that path opened up for the building units to make the trip there before the blizzard returned to full strength, so those would have to wait until after it had fully passed them by tomorrow.

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The winds were already starting to pick up by the time the first MBU settled into place, a chain of five more humming up the pathway just over the top of a thin layer of boot-packed snow. They were in place and linked together when the weather got bad, temperatures dropping another ten degrees and whiteout conditions returning. Wall extrusion could wait. The barracks and command were lit, a chain of lights linking all the buildings up the hill in the rapidly darkening evening.

Alex's guess about all the dispensers not being installed was correct. They had several Human made units slotted into the wall, and two Tsla'o dispensers shoehorned into the corner as well. He tried the tuna piperade.

It was good. Not great, but good.

Notably missing from the crowd in the mess was his bunkmate... Linda Zheng wasn't there, either, and Williams had ducked in only long enough to grab a stack of MRE's. He suspected those were connected.

Alex bowed out, actually feeling pretty worn down from all of that almost-manual labor. He left Abbot, Amalu, Crenshaw, and Zenshen at the table and waited in the automatic airlock that had been attached to the front of the buildings. All it did here was equalize temperatures a bit and blast excess moisture off the suits so they didn't track the outdoors, indoors. There would be time to set up a corridor tomorrow, but for now the airlocks kept things fairly comfortable.

Barracks 3 was about sixty meters away. Maybe. Could be a few kilometers, given how far he could see in the blizzard. The suit had several layers of imaging to help him, though, the string of beacon lights in particular made it easy to stay on the path.

Once inside, he was absolutely unsurprised to find Carbon still working, pad in hand, doing setup on a Tsla'o armor frame. An important piece of equipment if they wanted to get in and out of their suits. The underlying construction was very different from how the Confederation did it. "Hey, Shipmaster."

"Ah, Pilot Sorenson. How are you?" Carbon kept her professional sounding voice on. "It sounds like the weather has gotten worse again."

Linda's head had popped out of bunk 4, and it looked like she was about to say something before the conversational tone registered and she disappeared back to doing the final check of the build.

They were supposed to be avoiding 'Shipmaster' in favor of Carbon's actual title in Tsla. Alex had used Shipmaster exclusively the first six months he'd known her, of course, so it was a little callback for his Engineer. Zheng seemed to get that.

"I'm doing fine. The weather is absolutely miserable. I'm sure the snow will look beautiful once the blizzard is done, but until then it doesn't look like anything." He looked down the central hallway, a bunk room at each corner of the building, with a head and shower separating the two. Each half of the modular housing unit was the same, actually, one just faced the opposite direction so the open sides could connect. Each bunk room had its own Tsla'o frame in the fairly wide hall. Splitting the bunks made a bit more sense with that in mind.

He could just park his suit wherever and get out of it. Not so much for Carbon.

She looked up at him with a wry smile. "I am sure it will be."

Alex wanted to say something a little playful but his mind was helpfully screaming about how Linda was here too. "You guys need anything? Everyone else is still having dinner."

"The Lieutenant brought us some food, actually." She nodded at the recycler in the wall, the red light indicating it was currently breaking down all the packaging from dinner. "I am fine otherwise, and I believe we are almost done with this building. Linda?"

"I've got two traces to finish, and then I'm not running another diagnostic for at least eight hours." Came Linda's reply from bunk 4.

"I feel you. If I ever have to operate a shovel again, it'll be too soon." He chuckled at Linda's response. "I say that knowing full well I'm going to be running a shovel all day tomorrow."

They both got a laugh out of that. Carbon quiet and earnest, and a single sarcastic exclamation from Zheng.

"I'm gonna go ahead and unpack. Unless I'm summoned, I am not going back out in that weather tonight." Alex hitched a thumb into the bunk with the 1 next to it, that he would be sharing with Carbon.

Carbon didn't look up from her tablet. "Which bunk do you want? Top or bottom?"

"Uh." He dragged that vowel out for way longer than he would admit to. "I'm bunk agnostic. You can have whichever you'd prefer."

"See?" She said, looking towards bunk 4 before turning her attention back to Alex. "I'll take bottom bunk. I do not like the look of that ladder."

"Damn. All right. I'll get you whatever dessert you want when the dispensers are all up." Linda's response sounded dejected - but it was just a cover for the obvious amusement that shone through.

"Huh." Was... Was his wife making friends? And betting on the outcome of his decision making, something she would be way more familiar with than she was letting on? How delightful was that? "Well, top bunk it is."

Alex gave her a little bow and stepped into their bunk. It was a bunk, all right. The far end of the room was the two beds built into the wall, a capsule style setup. Rolling privacy shutters, a couple of drawers, all sorts of creature comforts built in. Two narrow wardrobes, a desk along the outer wall, and charging alcoves for two sets of armor. No dedicated recycler, but there was a washing machine and beverage dispenser as well. Pretty nice, for military barracks.

Unpacking was quick enough, and whoever had finished putting the bunk together had put sheets on it too. That was nice. He was going to bed directly, and as such just grabbed something to sleep in before parking his armor and drawing the privacy screen around the little cubicle. He wasn't going to be standing around with his ass out for very long, and he didn't care if Carbon saw that as she was already familiar, but it was impolite. Linda could be hanging out too, since she had to have a rapport going with Carbon, and he wasn't going to assume she wanted to see him naked.

Shit, did the Tsla'o views on bared legs make it in the updated primer? Had they even updated the primer with all those reports he had sent?

Should he just burst into the mess real quick with a 'Fellow Humans! Be sure to wear pants around your aliens!' warning? That would make him appear completely insane and he'd have to explain it to everyone. For that matter, had Carbon informed the great Tsla'o diaspora about how common short pants were to humanity? Hm.

Now clad in the custom fit flannel sleep pants - calling them pajamas felt oddly childish, even if that's what they were - and an old t-shirt that was heading towards threadbare, he closed his suit up in the alcove. Whoever thought to put a door on that, so there weren't headless bodies standing at the end of the room, was... Probably afraid of seeing a headless body standing in their room in the dark. Fair.

The door slid open with a quiet click and Carbon wandered in, naked as a jaybird. She gave him a smile, and gestured at the unused alcove as she headed to the bunks. "It is a shame that the suit frames do not fit into these spaces. It would be much more convenient, but the width is too great."

She proceeded to go get dressed like this was totally normal, pulling on the same sort of underwear and jumpsuit she had worn on the Kshlav'o. For the Tsla'o, this probably was totally normal.

"Yeah, it really is." So if she was getting out of her armor... Alex stuck his head back into the hallway, Linda leaning against the far wall still looking a bit shocked. "Uh, they- they don't see nudity like we do."

Carbon sucked in a breath through her teeth, then hustled back out to the hallway, shoving past him to talk to Linda. "I am sorry if I offended you, what Pilot Sorenson says is true. We do not consider being without clothing the same way a Human does. I forgot that our races do not necessarily view some things the same"

Linda laughed it off, waving a hand at her. "Oh no, no offense was taken. It was a surprise. I expected you to step out of that thing wearing a base layer of some kind, but it's not like we have one. Suddenly chatting with a naked alien was very unexpected."

Was this a place to pad out how he knows they sometimes wander around naked, or just leave it up to imagination? Zheng wasn't particularly suspicious about his knowledge and he was apparently the Tsla'o whisperer anyway. Alex let it go this time, keeping the awkward hot springs story for when it felt more necessary.

Carbon narrowed her eyes as she considered Zheng's statement. "We can wear some clothing in our suits if using them for short periods. I may recommend that we do so for the time being, as inconvenient as it may be."

"With how cold it's supposed to be? Everybody's going to be wearing their suits all day, that would be a pain in the ass. Don't worry about it. We can adapt." Zheng clearly didn't care now that she was past the surprise.

She tipped her head to Linda. "If you believe it will not be troublesome, so be it."

"Oh, when a Tsla'o does that nod-" Alex repeated the motion that Carbon had just performed, just a single nod, eyes closed. Unexpectedly enthusiastic about explaining this to a living person that would actually find it useful and not just dumping it into a file and wondering if it would actually be read. "That means they consider the topic of the conversation settled. You can immediately move on to something else, it's expected."

Maybe he was alright with being the alien whisperer.


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