Chapter 6

Jack pulled his clothing from the washer in a hurry, having an hour to dry out his uniform and be on the bridge for his watch. As the clothes spilled onto the dryer, immediately his heart sank. All of his whites were now a blasted tie dye of pink, red, blue and purple.

‘What is this...?’ He said in shock.

“What the fuck?” He rummaged through his clothing and stared blankly at it, on the verge of shock. “How did...?” As he glared at the catastrophe before him, he noted the presence of an odd article of clothing. “Panties?” He frowned as he picked up the undergarment “They’re panties.” ‘Not my panties ... well no shit, you don’t wear panties.’ “They’re panties ... not my panties but they’re panties. How the ... what the?” He stared at them, mouth agape, and spoke in a bit of a disbelieving tone.

The door to the laundry room opened behind him and Kazlaena stepped in.

“Um, ‘ey Jack. I umm...” She saw his clothes and went silent.

“Are, eh, are these yours?” He held out the panties.

“Um...” Kazlaena swallowed hard. “ ... oh no, oh no.” She looked at the laundered catastrophe before her and brought her hands up to her face. “Oh Jack, I’m sorry. Many sorries. I cannot believe I left sese be’ind.”

Jack felt the disbelief and frustration subside and started to laugh. “I didn’t know Vandeans wore such colorful undergarments.”

“Jack!” She cried out. “Sat’s embarrassing.”

“Sorry.” He handed her the undergarment, along with another that had hidden in the bottom at back end of the top load washer, out of sight of her short stature.

“I will um, get you sa new close next time we dock, ok?” Kazlaena took the undergarments and gave him an awkward look. “Sorry again, is um, sere anysing I can do now?”

“Nah.” Jack shook his head. “Mistakes happen. Don’t worry about it.”

“I um, ok.” she said meekly as she rushed away from the continuing embarrassment.

‘Oh boy,’ Jack sighed, ‘Proculus gonna be pissed about my choice of clothing.’ He looked for the least colored shirt and thought, ‘fuck it. If I’m gonna have to wear this then I might as well go all out, besides, might be good to see Prim Proper Prockie blow a gasket after so long away. Could borrow a shirt from someone but ... naaa.’ Jack smiled, turning his attention now to find the most extravagantly ruined shirt. ‘This should be good.’

Heading Y- axis from Artema system Timestamp 7 / 4 / 2296 23:45 Sol standard time

Jack gave himself a good look over in the full body mirror, located on the inside of the door on his wardrobe. He was wearing his deck department uniform, black polished boots and black pants with a crease down the front, held in place by a clean white belt. On his belt he carried a small caliber kinetic pistol to handle potential intruders, a small emergency O2 inhaler and a holster carrying his comms as well as a pouch for his ship wide radio. Normally he would have a clean, white shirt with black epaulets on both shoulders that contained his rank. Today, however, he was faced with a disastrous laundry mishap that left him in a streaky, multi-colored shirt.

‘Should I be doing this?’ He pondered momentarily, repressing the desire to stop when he considered this was as good a way as any to get back at the overzealous Proculus.

Jack ran a lint brush over his pants one last time to get a few rogue floating hairs, then gave himself a nod in the mirror. He exited into the hall and headed for the stairwell to go up level. A voice called out behind him and made him stop abruptly.

“Jack?”

He turned around and saw Pri Zoak leaning against the wall, looking like hell in the best manner a Sikar’Sezar could. She was of a reptilian species, somewhat prehistoric raptor-like, angular head, long narrow snout, with a sizable mouth filled with sharp teeth. She was about five feet eight in height, taller if one considered the bright blue feathers that projected off her head. She had heterochromatic eyes, one a brilliant jade color while the other was a deep aquatic blue, both struggling to stay open. Her head was covered in a light brown, soft scaly skin that ended at the base of her neck. Her body donned short, fuzzy cream hair on her chest, stomach and inner legs with brown, slightly longer hair over her arms, legs and backside. The most prominent feature on her body were black stripes over her arms, legs and torso. Short blue feathers projected off the backs of her elbows and off the end of a lengthy tail that drifted behind her to curl upward and avoid touching the ground. She wore a sport top, covering her shallow chest with modified sport shorts to accommodate her tail. Jack saw her bare feet, sporting three equal sized toes with modest claws. She usually wore sandals when off duty or a composite boot that withstood the punishment her clawed feet could dish out when on duty.

“Pri!” Jack walked up to her with a smile. “Hey, you ok?” He gave her a concerned look.

“Am ok. Recovery from generous alcohol malaise yet eludes me,” She pushed herself up into a more dignified position “That aside, your dress leaves more to be desired.”

“Yeah, laundry accident.” Jack smiled.

In the custom of a respectful Sikar’Sezar greetings, she set her hand on the center of his chest while he set his hand on her chest. They then bowed heads to their own chests so that their chins tapped each other’s hands. She then pulled him in for a hug, as she was prone to do, greeting as close Terran friends would.

“Thoughts grow warm at visage of old friend, returned at long last.”

“I missed you too. Wanted to see you earlier but was informed you were ... recovering...” Jack smiled and touched her cheek momentarily. “Thought it was best to let you rest until you’d regained yourself.”

She smiled, blinking away some blurry vision. “Games of drink and joke grew long into night. Tolerance was surpassed. Now debt must be paid to master of bottled merriment.”

“Just, eh, careful if you’re due for duty yeah? Don’t want the Procondant ripping into you.”

She burst out laughing at his remark. “Understood. Now, you cannot wear disaster shirt to watch. The outcome would not be favorable for you, or anyone, as ‘procondont’ would sour in mood.” She struggled to say. “Would see said individual ‘rip’ into you, as you say, for lack of dress code.”

“I got no choice, no time to hunt down a proper shirt.” He pulled back but felt her weight leaning on him and she stepped forward.

“Apologies.” She pulled back and rubbed at her eyes. “Head spins like whirling top. Now follow, my shirts should yield favorable outcome.”

Jack wrapped his arm around her to give her some support as she directed him to her quarters, helping her through the door. He could feel her slightly warmer body as it fought against her movements to seek recovery from her hangover. She had a large frond plant in a planter to the left of the entrance, aided in growth by a sunlamp shining down off her equipment locker. Her well-kept bed was on the right while a desk sat on the opposite side of the room with a bioluminescent Terrarium on the workspace. On her work desk sat a canted drawing board with a stool while a painter’s easel stood beside it. Upon the drawing board was a work in progress, looking like the beginnings of a greyscale jungle landscape. She had a few drawings on her walls, in that uncolored, hand drawn format. Most depicted landscape as she was fond of drawing that more than people. She had a variety of paintings as well. A few were of space scenes, suns with rings, planets with many small continents, broken moons, unique stuff that was not usually the space norm.

Over her bed, against the wall, hung a woven tapestry of sorts. Awash in blues and greys was an image of her in her battle dress, wearing a red and tan dress uniform. The tapestry also contained a collection of battle honors she had obtained as a Hastar for the Sikarran Empire and for the League. Her tours of duty centered mainly around deployment to the Emmivak front on the galactic southeast of League space, a savage gulf of space between the Orion Spur and the Perseus Arm. Emmivaks were a horrid looking, semi aquatic race that consumed organic races like a ravenous hive. League warships were in constant battle with Emmivak ‘water ships’, organic void ships that contained water inside that the Emmivaks would inject into League ships to conduct boarding actions. Many crew members simply drowned long before they would face the rending limbs of an Emmivak soldier class. When they invaded a world, they deployed several ‘ocean ships’ to flood the planet, drowning many and plucking survivors off high perches with bio engineered ‘skyrays’. Emmivaks were not the most frightening thing out there in the void, but they were a strong contender. Jack knew of the effect they had imprinted in Pri, having stayed the night with her on more than a few occasions. Situations where she went through a bout of battle fatigue or nightmare disorder often attributed to combat with the Emmivaks. He thought momentarily of the times he had found her in a dazed state. One was in the laundry, holed up in a corner, staring intently at the door. When he entered, she seemed confused, then broke down, which told him things were serious, given a Sezars culturally indoctrinated belief that emotions were shameful to display before others, lest their opponent seize an advantage. Another night, he had stopped for a quick visit, departing briefly to get something to return to her, finding her trying to pull her spear off its ornamental plaque. She started going on about defending the ship as he restrained her while she repeatedly said she was certain an attack was imminent. Jack had stayed, holding her gently from behind as they sat on the floor while she wept into her knees. She recounted nightmare after nightmare even he could scarcely imagine.

“I have clean shirts. Should be suitable to our task.” She gently broke from his grasp and made her way to her wardrobe situated beside her bed.

Good thing deck and stewards’ departments wear the same shirts, Jack thought.

“You been steady, Pri?” Jack asked as he looked over the varied plants in her terrarium.

“Content. On course.” She replied as she looked through her wardrobe, removing a pressed white shirt off a hangar “Staying busy.”

“Nothing new to report?”

“Negative.” She turned to face him.

“Keeping busy with your drawings?”

“Indeed.” Pri walked over to him and held up the shirt. “See ‘fucked’ shirt replaced with appropriate one.”

“Uh.” He studied her shirt for a moment, wondering if it would fit.

She was nearly the same size as he was and of a like build. Her shirts were not custom tailored so chances were good they would fit.