Heelies, wheelies, roller-skates, rollerblades, skateboards, scooters are prohibited in the halls and in the cargo bay, the last time someone tried it, they almost fell on top of the airlock button and killed us all...
***
Several Years Ago
Two weeks out into his first voyage in space, two weeks as the captain of his own actual ship. Did he wake up every day giddy? Did he sing in the shower out of delight? Did he play the empyreal march as he walked down the halls and onto the bridge? Was the imperial march mostly ruined by the fact that he was skipping the whole way?
He would deny the answers to most of those questions if directly asked, but it was understood, and today he thought his entrance onto the bridge deserved a little more flare.
An important fact about Captain Vir.
As a child he had unusually large feet, which luckily for him had stopped growing early on, and he had eventually grown into them. That meant that he was wearing a size 12 freshman year of high school, which was a site to see considering he had been about a foot and a half shorter than he was now and much skinnier. However, the good thing about his poor days as a gangly clown-footed, thirteen-year-old.... He still fit into his old shoes.
And that meant.
His old heelies.
To say that particular item of clothing was vintage would be a bit of an understatement. The design was basically ancient dating back to antiquity. Most kids had hover shoes these days, even most cars did, so wheels were entirely last epoch, however, he had seen images of some in his mother's old textbooks, where she had studied 21st century fashion. The 20th and 21st century was popular in Mericanda that year. A lot of scholars would tell you it was because the years following world war two and before world war three were, with some exception, the most peaceful years that developed western civilization ever had, and now denim and flannel, leather, and varsity jackets were back in style as an attempt to bring back the good times.
Adam himself was lucky since he had been born in the actual most peaceful time in earth history, following the end of the PanAsian war, and so when he asked his mother for a pair of wheeled shoes for his birthday, she obliged. Now about a decade old the shoes were still in pretty okay condition. He played with them as he walked down the hall, getting a small running start and then gliding for a bit across the floor.
He was wobbly ad a bit out of practice, but it wasn't too bad.
The bridge of the harbinger was just up ahead, and right on cue the imperial march started.
He entirely intended to wheel into the room all slow and menacing with his hands behind his back, but his enthusiasm got away with him. Instead of the slow gliding entrance he had intended, he came rocketing into the room arms flailing over his head and screaming incoherently as he flailed around. At one point he lost his balance and slammed stomach first into one of the bridge railings feet slipping out from under him.
He found himself draped over the bar like a wet towel as the crew staired on in awkward silence.
Two things Adam had learned since becoming a captain. People take cues from other people, and the environment of the room entirely depends on how the most powerful person behaves . So if he wanted to be embarrassed he would have to act embarrassed. If he wanted this to be funny, he had to laugh, that was the rule. If you do something stupid and act embarassed, other people will be embarrassed for you. Do something stupid and laugh about it, other people will lik you more.
At this point on his ship, the crew didn't know how to take him yet.
A lot of them had worked under captain, now Admiral kelly, on the last voyage, and she had been a hardcore badass. Adam had contemplated trying to be a badass and then remembered who he was and gave up on that idea almost immediately.
"Come on guys, Don't just leave me hanging out to dry."
He thought the pun was rather clever, but it went over like a lead balloon. Still when he stood up and wobbled a little on his old shoes, he saw a few smiles around the room. He flipped the music off and glowered at them, "Come on, that was funny, but it hurt a lot so don't make me do it twice."
There was a mild chuckling about the room that grew into snickering.
"That's better." He commented on gliding over to take a seat in the captain's chair of his ship. He loved this chair. As captain it had been his right to choose the type and design of the chair. A part of him had wanted one with all the bells and whistles, blinky lights and and a forest, but all of the cool TV captains had had simple chairs, so he was going to have to follow tradition.
"Report." he ordered
"All clear, captain, engineering reports engines are running at full capacity. Our next warp is scheduled in an hour or so and should only take us a day or so to complete. Adam nodded, the warp didn't have to take a day or so of course, its just doing a fast warp would pull a lot of energy from the core and potentially strain the engines, so a slow warp would have to do."
He sat on the bridge and listened to his crew, gave out some orders,and did other important captainy things before lunch.
When he got down, a certain marine had saved him a spot
Adam got along more with the marines than he did with the officers.
He wasn't really sure why, but he had a guess that the marines were more willing to do stupid shit with him than the officers were.
Ramirez waved him over, annoyingly handsome as Ever, Adam wondered, not for the first time why the man had become a marine where there was clearly room in his career for modeling or something similar. And it wasnt that Ramirez didn't know that he was hot because he definitely did. He had never seen a man with that kind of confidence, with the confidence also being warranted.
He slid into the seat next to his marine friend and Ramirez immediately leaned over to examine Adam's shoes, "WHat do we have here, are those wheels on your shoes."
Adam grinned and pulled one of the shoes off, "Indeed they are."
The marines' dumbassery radar started going off, and soon he had a small contingent of marines around him examining his old shoes.
"Wish I had some." A marine commented.
That sort of devolved into Adam promising to let the other men borrow his shoes and take them out for a bit of a test spin, and from there things devolved into doing races down the hall to see who could go the furthest, and then that turned into a group of marines finding ways to attach wheels to their own shoes to give them an edge over Adam, and eventually that devolved into turning the cargo bay into a bit of a skate park.
Nothing useful was being done that day, and anyone with Even a hint of dumbass in them had appeared from the woodwork to see what was going on.
Now a hint of dumbasarry was.... Well it existed in most of the crew.
Adam had been allowed to pick his own crew, which had been a terrible terrible mistake, because his two greatest qualifiers were competency and their individual scores on the Comic-7 close quarters cooperation inventory. Or that was one of its more official sounding names.
Basically the Comic-7 measured a mixture of humor and agreeableness from the five factor model of personality to determine who wouldn't suck to spend extended periods of time with. What Adam didn't foresee was this strategy turning the Harbinger into an intergalactic clown car.
And soon the entire cargo bay was awash with people doing stupid things on wheels. They sat on each other's shoulders, they participated in jousting matches using broomsticks. One woman had attached a pair of wheels to a box and was using it as a sort of rolling fortress.
It was basically all over when engineering showed up having rigged together a multilevel rolling crate castle that was basically impenetrable.
Adam and Ramirez were the first to attempt a frontal assault on the castle. He really had no idea whose idea it was to let Ramirez ride on his shoulders, and the answer to that question would remain unknown in the chaos that followed. They rolled forward charging at the castle with a battlecry.
From above engineering pelted them with pencils and pens and anything else small and projectile shaped they could find. It was one of these pencils that slipped under one of Adam's wheels and caused him to lose balance. One leg flew into the air a they rolled in a tight circle. Ramirez flailed his arms, and Adam flailed his arms until they were spinning and flailing together picking up speed as they careened towards the nearest wall....
And the airlock controls.
Adam really did try to move, but in doing so he inadvertently caused Ramirez to tilt in the opposite direction.
Adam fell and so did Ramirez causing the two of them to slam into the airlock console at just the wrong moment pressing the open buttons for both airlock doors at the same time.
Now you might think that this was a horrible idea, considering that opening both airlock doors at the same time was a bad idea. However if there was, say a fire in the cargo bay, it was possible from the bridge to open both airlock doors to suck the air out and snuff the fire. However when designing the ship, there had been some failure of oversight when they neglected to consider that was a control that should only be used from the bridge.
Red lights flashed overhead.
Double airlock engaged.
Whatever merriment had held the crew just moments before was sucked out rapidly with the first bit of air as the airlock doors cracked open.
Someone screamed, and then the air was rushing around them in a whirlwind of flying papers and pens as the vacuum of space began to incrementally pull them towards the opening airlock doors. First it was just wind, but then one of the crewmembers lost her footing and began sliding towards the airlock doors. Others followed after rapidly gaining speed on their wheels.
One of the men grabbed a crate bolted to the floor, and the frist woman to fall grabbed his legs, than someone grabbed her legs.
The screaming intensified. Ramirez grabbed onto the console and so did Adam. The airlock was cracked a foot now.
Air was rapidly pouring out.
Overhead the life support warning system began to blare,
Adam and Ramirez exchanged only a glance before, together, Ramirez managed to leverage Adam upward.
Despite the air pulling him backwards Adam was able to push with all his might and slam his fist down on the lock button.
Lights continued to flash overhead.
The wind died down.
Someone slipped inching towards the door screaming all the while before.
The airlock slammed shut.
Paper and people fell to the ground and the room was captured in a silent tableau of wide eyed panic.
Sitting next to the airlock door a crewmember hyperventilated and scrambled backward.
Adam was the first one his feet, "Is everyone okay!" he turned his head in either direction, and went to the aid of the crew member who had been closest to dying in the vacuum of space. He knelt in front of them, "You okay,/"
They continued to hyperventilate and Adam patted them on the back, "Deep breaths, you're alright. Everyone is alright."
That was one of the first of many apologies Adam would have to make publicly to his crew, and also one of the first safety hazards that their head engineer Narobi would have to fix.
To open both airlocks at the same time now required the override of two officers on the bridge and a sequence code that only the higher officers knew.
For the first few weeks Adam lay awake at night imagining what would have happened if someone had gotten hurt. The nightmares that followed were just as bad leaving him awakening in a cold sweat.