While the mice are away...

When: Five days ago

Hauling on a pair of skinny black jeans, Cass stood to button them and then strode across the room to pull the wardrobe open and grumpily flick through its contents, finally settling on a figure hugging vest top which she dragged over her head and tugged down before pulling her hair out from the back in a long practiced, easy movement
She stood in front of the mirror for a moment, narrowing her eyes as she twisted her left hand though a couple of bracelets and turned this way and then that, critically appraising her appearance as she smoothed down her top before finally turning away, grudgingly satisfied, to locate her boots
"Stupid smeggers" she grumbled to herself as she jammed her feet into her boots and began fumbling with the buckles
She couldn't believe that when everyone else was meant to be figuring out how to destroy the planet beneath them, all they were doing was gorging themselves and getting shagged senseless!
Every single guy on the ship!
Even smegging Seymour!
Jay’s antics, in spite of her feigned indifference to him, had been particularly hard to stomach and so as a result she was absolutely smegged if she was going to remain cooped up in her room with nothing to do but dwell on what he was up to for a single moment longer
Snapping the last buckle closed, Cass scooped her jacket up from the floor and marched towards the door
"Security override. Code three twenty" she grated and smiled thinly in satisfaction as Holly unquestioningly acquiesced to her command and the door hissed open
Strolling out into the empty corridor outside, Cass stopped and turned to look back into her room
"Well, come on then" she said and waited while one of her robots crawled out from beneath her bed to come pattering after her - Jay might well be away, but the ship was still a dangerous place, so she wasn't going out without protection

After picking up a pack of fags and a bite to eat on the promenade, for wont of anything better to do, Cass made her way down to Engineering where she inspected the damaged GDU and began work on manually rerouting some of the affected circuits in an effort to restore power to some of the more essential systems
The work was hot, dirty, and tedious but she found it enough to take her mind off things and, after an hour or so, she had succeeded in bringing a host of minor systems back online, including the air scrubbers and the water filtration systems, and had begun to investigate what had happened to all the failover GDU's
"What the smeg are you doing down here?"
Cass started and jerked around to find Katrina stood about ten metres away, aiming a pulse rifle at her - She hadn't heard her...
"Unit five cease!" Cass barked, her robot breaking off its attack at her command and skittering to a halt between her and Katrina, who in spite of her training flinched back in shock and surprise
"Smegging shit!" Kat gasped, training her weapon on the droid “That thing would have killed me!”
"It’s okay" Cass soothed "It's okay - It won't attack unless you attack me..."
"Are you absolutely smegging sure about that?" Katrina narrowed her eyes at the droid crouched before her
"Yeah, now just pull your weapon up nice and slow"
Katrina scowled at this but, faced with little choice, reluctantly complied
"Jay's right" she nodded as the droid settled into watchful passivity "You're too bloody dangerous to be allowed to stay aboard – just look at that thing!"
"Look, I wasn't expecting company" Cass protested "In spite of the work we’ve done to contain them, the Huzard’s still range down here, so I was just being careful. You've not bought Max have you? – It’s dangerous"
"Phi's looking after him" Katrina snapped, bristling at the suggestion that she might be so stupid "You still didn't answer my question. What are you doing here?"
"I was fixing stuff..." Cass gestured vaguely at the filthy machinery surrounding them
"Yeah we noticed life support had come back on" Katrina nodded "That's why I came down here to investigate"
"Well, I got all that sorted" Cass continued "But right now I'm trying to figure why all the failover GDU's have blown, and see if I can improvise something"
Katrina frowned
"I wondered about them" she said softly "Seems weird that they would all blow..."
"I think one of the force-feedback mechanisms might have got corrupted" Cass shrugged and turned to gaze back up into the arcane machinery above them “I’m just looking into it”
Katrina pursed her lips. This would need fixing, she realised; otherwise it would just blow the new GDU’s when they installed them
"What have you got?" she asked and stepped carefully around the robot to join Cassandra, the droids actuators whirring quietly as it shifted it's weight, quietly watching her
"Here, here and here?" Cass pointed to a series of scorch marks scarring the ancient, mould covered machinery above them "These seem fresh; I'm thinking it might be the flange manifold or the treadle?"
"Nah" Kat shook her head and squinted up at the criss-crossing pipework "That would have blown the whole crossbeam. It'll be one of the ion sumps; Dwarf class ships always had problems with them"
"You’d know better than me..." Cass murmured pensively "But I was thinking that if we re-phase the corrupted mechanism and then reroute the entire grid via the crossbeams..."
"We can use the feedback to inhibit the overhead load and provide power correction without even needing the GDU capacitors!" Kat nodded "Good thinking!"
"And then all everyone else has to do is figure out how to reduce the planet to a ball of molten slag and avoid creating a paradox" Cass paused and wrinkled her nose unhappily "...If they can tear themselves away from being shagged senseless"
Katrina gave her a sideways glance
"Pfft" she sneered "Men"

----------------------------

With the rest of the crew incommunicado, the two women worked hard over the next few days, rerouting the power grids and running test after test against their calibrations; Katrina only finally beginning the slow process of ramping the load up through the crossbeams when she was sure their work was satisfactorily complete
It took another long day of careful monitoring and bug fixing after that, but Cass and Katrina eventually succeeded in routing the entirety of the reactor’s output through the crossbeam’s and were finally able to say that they had restored full power to the Dwarf

"That was a good bit of work" Katrina said amiably as she leaned back in her chair in Engineering control and stretched "You did good Cass"
"Thanks" Cass smiled "It’s just a pity nobody else was around to see that I'm not the evil queen"
"Ah don't worry about Jay" Katrina smirked "I’ll put in a good word for you. C’mon - let's go get a drink to toast a job well done!"

----------------------------

Sat at a table in one of the booths in Parrott’s, Cass settled back on the banquet and stretched her legs out, watching Katrina as she walked to the bar
They had worked well together these last days, she reflected, Katrina slowly coming to terms with the idea that Cass wasn’t the devil incarnate, and Cass, in turn, having to accept that Katrina wasn’t just some dumb bint and was actually something of a gifted engineer
Cass wasn’t sure if they would ever be good friends, but in her mind, they had at least turned a corner in their previously frosty relationship, and as such it meant one more important person on her side in her campaign to remain aboard the ‘Dwarf
Katrina interrupted her reverie by arriving back at the table and banging a bottle of vodka and a couple of glasses down on the table
“So” Kat smiled “Let’s have a chat...”

----------------------------

Cass woke early the next morning with a painfully throbbing head and a mouth that felt like the bottom of a bird cage
She had absolutely no recollection of how she had made it back to her room or of how she managed to get undressed and into her bed – That had been one hell of a heavy night!
Groaning, she rolled over onto her back and clawed a few stray strands of hair away from her face
“Hi”
“Smeg!” Cass shrieked and sat up in a panic to stare down at Katrina lying next to her “How...?”
Katrina rolled onto her back and smiled impishly up at Cassandra
“How’re you doing?” she asked laconically
“Oh shit” Cass breathed, shaking her head in disbelief “Jay’s going to kill me...”