Subcommander Kimoa (Patreon)

Sorry I haven't taken suggestions, but I've just been working on Tori scenes like this one.

Big thanks to @Rick Griffin for helping to tweak my comedic timings. Comedy isn't my thing!

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Runo’oa winced, his cinnamon coat standing on end. His workmates turned and looked out the conference room’s open door. They couldn’t see Subcommander Kimoa from this angle but they could certainly hear him. “Ninety percent? Ninety percent?” howled the subcommander. “The reactor hasn’t performed this badly a single day in my whole life!”

All four engineers shared a silent look, then focused on the readouts displayed on the conference table’s surface. “Short of a full rebuild, is there anything we can do?” Runo’oa asked. “Can we tweak something to get a little more efficiency?”

“Well, titanium oxide is draining a little slow,” said Ishur. She tapped a readout. “Only ninety-five percent nominal. What if we boosted that to say … a hundred and ten percent of the usual flow rate? Might that buy us a percent or two?”

Nobody volunteered a guess. “Try running a simulation on your tablet,” the cinnamon geroo suggested. Looking about, he added, “Anything else we could try?”

Above them, a clanging rang out. Everyone looked up, but there wasn’t much to see, just a bunch of metal plates dropped into a supporting metal grid. Someone had been banging around in the overhead crawlspaces all morning, but that was hardly unusual. Of all the spaces on the ship, those surrounding the reactor saw the most maintenance.

The clanging finally stopped. Ishur opened her muzzle to say more, but the sound of metal striking metal returned with a fury—twice as loud as before, hammer blows repeating twice as fast. The engineers waited, tapping their paws, leaning back on their tails, checking the time on their strand, or just staring up at the rafters, waiting for the interruption to end.

At last, it did, and the only sound they could hear was the muffled panting of someone trying to catch their breath inside a cramped metal space. They waited, staring, wanting to make sure whoever working above them was done, then they looked across the table at one another and smiled. Runo’oa gestured to Ishur. She nodded, opened her muzzle…

Only for the banging to begin once more. Engineers dropped their tablets. They covered their eyes with their paws and groaned, but the banging just went on and on and on.

When there was finally another pause in the noise, Runo’oa immediately shouted out, “How big a monster of a kerrati is in our ceiling anyhow?”

The four engineers grinned, and a moment later, one of the metal panels shifted, opening up a triangle of inky darkness. Runo’oa could just barely make out a geroo’s eye staring down at them. “Um, hey,” said the voice overhead. “Um, squeak squeak,” he said in a very flat tone before the panel closed.

That got a shared laugh from three of the four, but the subcommander’s endless tirade was putting Runo’oa’s nerves on end. He sighed loudly, then shouted up at the metal panel, “Is everything okay up there? Do you need help?”

The panel opened. Above them, the voice managed, “No, it’s … sorry.” And the panel slid back into place once more.

Ishur pointed to the table display, and opened her muzzle just in time for the banging to resume. Bang! Bang! Band! A split-second pause, then, “Shit! Shit! Shit!”

Then silence.

Ishur didn’t even bother opening her muzzle this time, instead raising her paws in frustration. Runo’oa, his ears low in anger, shouted, “Damn it! Are you stuck? We don’t have time for this.”

The panel slid aside once more and the cinnamon geroo stared up into the eye in the darkness. It winked at him—or perhaps blinked? There was no way of telling when looking at only a single eye. The voice said, “Ah, that’s what your mate told you last night, wuzinit?”

Three engineers giggled, but the linings inside Runo’oa’s ears turned a darker red. “Seriously,” he growled. “What in the ancestors’ names is going on up there?”

“I think this cable’s too short,” said the workman overhead. “It might have pulled free from the AP-110.”

“Data cable?” asked Boro, the oldest engineer in the room. “Tell me you didn’t snap a fiber optic.”

“No, Pops,” said the eye. “DC power. You guys online?”

The engineers pulled out their strands, tapped at the screens and shook their heads. Ishur said, “Nah, I’ve got nothing. You guys got a signal?”

Runo’oa lifted his communicator up over his head, toward the rafters. One bar of magnitude flickered coming and going erratically. “I’ve got one, but it’s tiny.”

“Oh, I’m so sorry!” said the voice in the darkness. “But I suppose that’s why your mate has me over every morning.”

Boro covered a yarp of laughter, but the cinnamon geroo just growled. If it were physically possible for smoke to leak from his ears, it surely would have. “Are you actually…” Runo’oa closed his muzzle and spent an extra moment picking over his words to keep from opening himself up for another taunting again, “wedged in there?”

Overhead, metal groaned as a geroo tried to wriggle about inside a very tight crawlspace. The squirming stopped, and the eye stared down from the darkness once more. “Maybe?” he said. The briefest pause flittered by, and he offered, “I probably shouldn’t have let your mate cook me all those breakfasts.”

With fists at his sides, Runo’oa screamed up at the hole. “Would you get off my mate!”

From either side of the doorway, curious engineers peeked into the conference room.

“I do!” replied the workman in the ceiling, his voice even and calm. He explained, “That’s when she cooks me breakfast.”

Runo’oa was shaking, his paws clenched rigid into trembling claws, and he stomped around in a small circle.

“Seriously though, this cable’s too short, and I don’t think it was ever rated for use up here. I’m gonna pull it out and run a whole new line.” Something clanged, bounced, and dropped through the hole, landing on the display screen with such a loud report that Runo’oa was certain the glass would crack. “Shit!”

The cinnamon geroo picked up the object and turned it over in his paws for a moment. “You lose a … looks like a cable terminator?”

“Yeah, shit, can I get that back?”

Still fuming, Runo’oa glared up at the hole.

“Oh, come on!” groaned the workman. “You wouldn’t seriously get me in trouble over this. I’m trying to help fix it!”

“Hang on,” growled Runo’oa as he started to climb onto the table, but Boro grabbed his shoulder.

“You’ll break the glass.”

“One sec, one sec,” said the voice above the rafters. There were more sounds of squirming inside a too-tight space, and then a long, skinny grabber lowered down from the hole. When the tip reached chest level, four grabber prongs extended.

“Here ya go,” said Runo’oa as he held the terminator up for the grabber. The prongs retracted, snatching the dropped component, and then the workman overhead started reeling the grabber back in.

“Thanks,” said the voice, quieter now. “And, uh, sorry.”

Runo’oa sighed, taking a moment to cool off. Looking back up at the hole, he said, “It’s okay—”

The voice interrupted, “Sorry to break it to you, but your mate’s a terrible cook.”

Three engineers burst out laughing, not even trying to keep it in. From the way Boro was gasping for breath, he might even be having a heart attack. Runo’oa just stood with eyes closed, waiting for this whole interruption to finally be over.

The workman didn’t wait for his audience to cool, pausing only long enough for the laughter to quiet enough for him to add, “I shouldn’t eat it, but I don’t have any impulse control. Probably why I keep sleeping with her, right? Thank you and goodnight!” With that, the panel slid back into place.

Runo’oa drew a deep breath and released it as slowly as he could manage.

Ishur just smiled at him. “Why are you so upset about all this?” she asked. “You don’t even have a mate!”

The cinnamon geroo sputtered like a dying engine, only to finally manage, “It’s the principle of the thing!” He panted in frustration. “If I did have a mate, it’d be humiliating!”

The panel slid open one last time. “Funny, she said that too!” said the voice in the darkness before the metal square fell back into position.

Overhead, metal plates rattled as a workman squirmed though the access tube, the disruption getting quieter and quieter in the conference room until the workman’s progress couldn’t be heard at all.

In a back office, a metal panel shifted aside for a moment, then shifted back into place.

More squirming. Another panel slid open.

Once again, a thin and flexible grabber descended from the rafters. The grabber wires opened, and an orange tablet slipped from their grasp.

Plop! went a hot mug of tea as the pill disappeared beneath the surface.

Then, the cable retracted quietly back up into the ceiling, and the metal panel slid back into place.

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Reviewer's link: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1rJ3xcz2lYs41mbjbxhIYRJfkk3-F2-yMUTr2A3b2_Sg/edit?usp=sharing

Thoughts?