talking in circles, point of confusion (part CXXXVII)

(Roleplay entry. Continued from part CXXXVI.)

Justine shook her head. "Something is definitely...odd here."



"Yeah," Emilly said. Then she grimaced at the eggs. "And I am not liking that we have these back suddenly...I thought you got rid of them!"

Justine shrugged, tapping her padd as the drones arrived, directing them to realign--and rebuild--the passageway. It didn't take that long, and she dismissed the maintenance team.

"I'm going in," she said decisively.

Emilly nodded. "I'll let you."

"We did burn out the infestation in Steam," Justine muttered as she took various readings around the plasma core. Emilly sighed.

"But not up here."

Justine looked up. "You know what would be cool?"

"What?"

"A fire extinguisher."

Emilly blinked at her. "We don't have fire suppression systems?"



Justine blinked back, then rubbed her forehead. "Right." She tapped a set of controls, activating the fire suppression systems. "I'm calling in a second repair team, and...oh dear."

"What?"

Emilly climbed up the side stairs in the room with the plasma core, reaching the catwalk, carefully following the curve towards the back of the core, and stopped dead. "What is--THAT?"

A spray of white forced her back down the stairs, and she watched as the crawling orange flames--somehow surrounding the plasma feeds into the core--died to nothing.



"I'm not sure," Justine said, "but it's out now."

Emilly nodded, moving back toward the nuclear reactor. Justine followed. "I'm calling in a second repair team. And then we'll see if we can get the systems back online."

Emilly nodded.

"So that's one less thing...do we just warn people to avoid deck 8 for now?"

Justine thought, and then nodded, and Emilly sighed, pulling out her padd. To all Gearhaven residents, she typed. "Avoid deck eight of Tannhauser Gate station for now, until we declare the all-clear...

She just hoped they could do that soon.

(Continued in part CXXXVIII.)