"Don't you worry yourself doctor, leave it to me and my crew. In the meantime, relax, get comfortable. You are welcome here as long as you wish, and I am sure Dr. Adric will be thankful of your help and company."
Riss nodded his head in agreement walking down the hall with Admiral Vir. He was still wearing the pink coat he had stolen from the station. He had no idea whose it was, all he knew was that he had actually grown rather fond of it. It was very comfortable, and he had no trouble admitting that. Admiral Vir rested a hand on his shoulder.
"What about the Vrul council?"
"I am afraid that is an issue not so easily dealt with right now. We know, and I am drafting a letter to send to the UN president and the GA chairwoman to meet me and see what can be done, but this is bureaucracy and unfortunately that means we can't just go in guns blazin'. So as I said before, rest, relax and get to know the crew a little."
-
This request would turn out to be easy enough as the crew was friendly and tended to absorb newcomers like some sort of alien gelatin bent on world domination consuming everything in it's path. And, when they weren't being stalked or hunted or kidnapped or some combination of the three, the crew of the omen had their daily routines and hobbies, which they liked to participate in.
Down in the rec room, Maverick and Ramirez had returned from their training simulations and were now playing videogames. The two of them stood in the large circles, tethered to the ground wearing VR body gear groping around like a couple of old fogies without their glasses.
"Ramirez where are you/" Maverick growled, "We have enemy coming in at two o clock."
"Sorry, just got distracted."
"by what!"
"Your Animated ass looks really good in those tactical pants."
"Lord help me."
"What, just calling it how I see it."
"Does your endless flirting never stop."
Ramirez swung in a circle holding a fake rifle in his hands, "No, no it doesn't. It is an integral part of my personality."
"One of these days I am going to flirt back and watch you die of a heart attack."
He grinned, "But that leaves the open possibility that you might consider flirting with me. Which means deep deep deep deep down, you like me."
"Yeah, I am about as attracted to you as I am to moldy cheese."
"Wow, you really must like moldy cheese, OUCH! You shot me!"
"You were being a dick."
On the other side of the room Jack Wilson, their new xenobiologist had commandeered one of the Finnari to examine =. He was always doing this, going around the ship trying to make friends with the alien so he could get a better look at them. So far he had gotten almost every extraterrestrial accept a Celzex who, despite remaining relatively cordial had no intention of allowing any human or alien to know their physical capabilities, which they planned on keeping to themselves.
Of course, the Finnari had been happy to agree on condition that he get a hug or something, and Wilson had agreed adamantly that if that's what it took he would do it. Now the Finnri was half lounging in his lap, cuddling up to the human as the human spent some time examining one of the Finnari's hands, and drawing diagrams in his notebook. Everyone else could see that the Finnari was just enjoying an excuse to cuddle with someone. The finnari were always making excuses like that, insisting that people looked cold to spend some time stealing warmth from a human. Anyone sitting on the couch and watching a movie was free game.
It wasn't totally unheard of for one of the Finnari to crawl in bed with a crewmember, which was not strictly advised in most circumstances, but most of the crew didn't mind all that much. Maverick, though she would never have admitted it to anyone, enjoyed the company f the Finnari because, she was of the opinion, that Admiral Vir kept the ship to cold, and she had trouble falling asleep at night without some added warmth.
This was a secret that she planed on taking to her grave.
Dr krill had announced that he would be in his office working hard one some new paper or another, and he had done it in such away that alerted the crew to the fact that he was not, in fact writing another paper at all. The embarrassment came through in his pompous announcement, and though they didn't know what he did while alone in there, they didn't want to find out.
Speculating was more fun.
"He's got antenna pics of hot Vrul women."
"he gets high, somehow."
"How?"
"I don't know, he listens to psychedelic music or something."
"No, certainly if he is in there, he is plotting universal domination and murder."
"He is trying to figure out how to paralyze all of us so we can never move again and cause him undue trouble."
All this speculation was, of course, founded for he could have been doing any of those things. Krill, on the other hand, found his sins even worse, almost unspeakable. And so he went into his office, shut and locked the door and looking around to make sure there wasn't someone waiting in there hiding from him. When that didn't prove to be the case, he opened the bottom drawer on his desk, removed a stack of boring medical files that he was sure no human would be desperate enough to snoop through and revealed....
His stash.
Hidden away like any teenage boy's adult magazine collection.
Accept these were no adult magazines.
These were, in fact.
Young Adult fantasy and adventure books, you know the one that have a reading level generally no higher than seventh or eight grade and generally tended to include, dragons, or wizards, or angels or spies or something of the like. The kind of books that most human children could eat up in an hour or so, and the kind of books that it took krill less than twenty minutes to read if he was trying hard enough. But no, he wanted to savor them, and instead took a seat in his chair, turning on his sunning lite, got his mug out and poured a glass of warm sugar water before sitting and sipping at his drink as he enjoyed his book.
He had little hidden compartments all over his office for his more unusual hobbies that he would never let anyone see.
His crafting drawer was probably one of the most embarrassing things on his person, and he hid his little animal cutouts under his desk as well as a veritable mountain of origami cranes he couldn't bare to part with. He was trying to learn more complex origami, but it was taking him a while and he was rather frustrated that he could be foiled by the simple human ability to fold paper into shapes.
He though t he was being sneaky of course, leaving all of his other less embarrassing hobbies out on his desk, which included his chess set and his rubix cube, and a set of moderate and very tasteful puzzles that stimulated the intellect, but of course no one believed him all that much.
Dr. Katie saw right through his bullshit, but then again she was the one that had purchased him the construction paper for his unofficial birthday as well as the glue sticks.
Dr Katie was taking the day to herself, and had spread a box full of those battery powered tea light around her room and was doing her nails. She kind of wished they had baths aboard the ship, though alas that was not to be. She would take a scalding shower later that would peel hr skin off her bones, and that would have to do.
Instead she sat there watching videos on cake decorating and slowly working her way through a bag of chips. Dr Katie didn't bake cakes or anything in her spare time. In fact, she was a terrible cook, but she did find soemthing very satisfying about watching other people make the cakes, and in the dim light of the tea lights and the stars shining through the window, she found herself content and relaxed.
Across the ship hidden away in a small alcove to preserve his thoughts, cannon was sitting with his back to the wall with a notebook in one hand and a set of headphones sitting on his head. He was listening to some of the music Narobi had suggested for him. He would never have admitted it to Sunny, but her music wasn't really his thing. Yeah it was good for when you were fighting or psyching yourself up to fight, but he just didn't want to listen to a cacophony of guitars and symbols when he was trying to relax and think.
The notebook he was holding was full of songs and poetry he had written during the quiet and the dark. Most of It was subpar and mediocre in his opinion, so he would have never let anyone look through it, however there were a few more polished pieces that he would probably give to the crew to make sea shanties or chain songs with. He leaned back against the wall and breathed in slowly happy for the peae and quiet unaware of the light echo from down the hallway where Narobi had set up camp in one of the maintenance tunnels where it was also quiet and dark.
She could meditate and do her yoga here pretty easily, while watching bad TV She loved watching horrible people be horrible on television, even though she knew it was scripted and all fake, there was something about watching other people have horrible lives that made her feel nice, warm and fuzzy inside. It helped her to remember how good she had it most of the time. Well, all the time actually. No one knew much about her past, and she planned on keeping it that way, but most people would be shocked if they learned what sort of family she had really come from. She wasn't sur ethe UNSC would ever have hired her if they had known about it.
Or maybe they would have, who was she to guess.
Plenty of the Omen crew spent their off days alone and in hiding from each other, relishing the quiet, and the fact that they weren't in some sort of life threatening danger. Of course the omen crew was a friendly group of people, but that didn't mean they were all just raging extroverts like their captain, the vast majority of them weren't. once Ramirez was done playing his games with Maverick, she would probably vanish somewhere to draw or write soemthing in her spare time.
He would head up to where all the other extroverts were congregating in the mess hall, where there were plenty of games to keep them occupied.
Admiral Vir was up there now running a Poker championship using M&Ms and crew duties as the poker chips.
They played Risk, and battleship and connect four.
In most spaces, games like this might have been left alone while the crew went to do more adult things, but by pure accident they had found that it was a good boost for morale, and a reason to convince the admiral to requisition more M&Ms.
Admiral Vir was totally winning until he judged Etium's bluff incorrectly and the little Tesraki cleaned him out. Tesraki were annoyingly good at gambling so the Admiral had had no chance. The Tesraki sat over his prize quite proud of himself and ate one of the M&Ms forever pleased that Tesraki were able to each chocolate, if in small doses.
Admiral Vir didn't mind losing but kept his eye on the door hoping to see a familiar face walk through and join them Sunny for her part had her schedule that she liked to follow, spending the first part of her day in usual meditation or prayer before going down to work on some of her projects. She would do that for a few hours before coming up to find Adam who, she knew, needed to spend time with her even though he would never say it.
Adam liked company, and he especially liked her company.
He tended to get all wilty when she didn't show up, though she was grateful he gave her the time to do what she needed to do on her own before coming to see him. On days where she wasn't interested in talking to people he still allowed her to avoid them, though he would check on her at least once. Occasionally she would take him up on his offer and just not show up, but on most occasions she would sigh, suck it up and go to visit him late at night knowing she didn't have to but knowing it would mean a lot to him.
Waffles and Jeffeery hung out where the food was, less for Jeffery's sake and more for waffles who knew that someone was bound to drop something sooner or later, and it was her duty, as the closest person to the floor, beside the weird fuzzy Celzex, that is. Jeffery and her had come up with a sort of system, he could eat any of the fruit that fell on the floor and she would eat everything else. The two of them would work together to try and beg it away from the crew. Waffles was probably better at begging considering her big eyes and fluffy tail and the way she tended to press her ears back against her skull when she was hungry, but there was just something So Funny about Jeffery trying to copy her that made the rest of the crew feel sorry for him and throw him some snacks on an occasion.
He was quite pleased with himself in this way.
Jeffery spent a god portion of his time with waffles, wrapped around her like a feather boa, or curled up between her paws, while she occasionally used her long pink tongue to lick him, but there were other occasions when he liked to attach himself to a single person that day. He would crawl up to where someone was standing or sitting and crawl to drape over their shoulders. He would not take no for an answer and so they would have to suffer with him sitting on their shoulders for most of the day.
Some people intentionally tried to get him to do it, and it generally worked if they had a piece of fruit to entice him every few minutes or so.
Conn of course was his usual self, going around the ship to see how many people he could annoy, though he enjoyed bothering the Admiral the most since, the man could hear him mind to mind. He especially liked letting everyone know that they had a daughter together. He liked bringing that up to sunny most of all and asking her if she was jealous. As far as he could tell she wasn't though she did her best job to ignore him.
Anyone who was knew on the ship would probably know within the first few minutes that Eris existed.
Conn tried to make it seem like he was just being an asshole, but really he sort of just wanted to brag about the fact that he had a daughter, sure he hadn't actively participated in making her, but no other Starborn in the galaxy could claim what he could. Only the queens could claim that prize.
Accept for him because he was special.
Each and every member of the crew had soemthing to do and hobbies to pursue on a day like this, though they were always sure that there would soon enough be some sort of crisis or kidnapping they were gong to have to deal with.
They were sure of it