Alarms

*Beep beep beep beep beep...*

Oh-five-thirty.

Marisol had to eventually succumb to the rude chirping of her alarm; no amount of pillow muffling or pretense would best the little object’s persistent caterwaul. “Yes, master,” she whispered as her feet touched the deck. *Cold,* her mechanic’s brain observed. *Check the cabin heat distributor.*

*Beep beep beep beep beep...*

Some fiend had chosen to place the alarm across the room. As with every morning, Marisol cursed her own fastidiousness as sleep atrophied legs made their first wooden steps to quiet the annoying device. Under blessed silence she peeled herself out of the panties and one of Paco’s tee shirts – her preferred sleepwear. The sluggish journey into wakefulness was completed by slipping into bathrobe and sandals. Now ready, she climbed the ladderway from her crew cabin, toiletries swaying in a basket which bounced against her hip.

First stop, galley. Somebody aboard had decent taste in coffee, and had provisioned them with two or three aromatic roasts. She set the percolator to work before taking the stairs down to the shower room.

At this hour, Lunar Veil’s new mechanic could be certain of her privacy. Someone had removed all the shower curtains – for the life of her, Marisol couldn’t understand why. However, since the rest of the crew appeared to take this in stride, she wasn’t about to squawk.

She wasn’t squeamish about nudity…at least other people’s. Though she knew herself to be fit and the sight of her could still fire her husband’s ardor, she also understood that her body wasn’t that of a twenty-something. That, coupled with a standoffish crew, played into her discomforts at being seen au natural as she stepped beneath the shower jet.

The only other man who’d seen her in the altogether resided on this boat, though the flavor of those intimacies was punctuated in bloody gauze, scalpels, and pain. She touched the scars. Both lay in the small of her back, just above the outward curve of her bottom. Rifle bullets, fired by a sharpshooter whose intent was either a lingering death or a life without legs, children, sex. Dumb luck and *that other man’s* hand had saved her then. Today, as the water cascaded down her body, she once again pondered the cruelty that drove the trigger man from purposes of elimination to acts of wanton sadism.

There were other scars, the nips and dings of a life lived in the ’verse. The flat of her stomach still carried the hints of stretch marks from three pregnancies. Small burns…one didn’t cook a lifetime of traditional food without getting spattered…knife marks, and even the callouses of her former mechanic’s gigs all left their contributions. A small bite mark to her left breast, reminder of the passionate night that she and her husband were both pretty certain culminated in Maria’s birth. As she filled her hair with a thick lather of shampoo, Marisol smiled at the recollection.

All hell broke loose.

She flinched at the piercing bursts of the alarm.

*BEEUP…BEEUP …BEEUP …BEEUP …* echoed in the shower room. Marisol lurched from the stall, grabbed at her robe, using it to wipe the soap from her eyes as she burst into the guest dorm corridor.

*BEEUP…BEEUP…BEEUP…BEEUP…*

She’d managed one arm partway into a sleeve by the time she topped the stairwell, before setting off at a dead run on bare feet toward the engine room. Soaking wet and lathered as she was, she soon gave up all hope of donning the uncooperative robe, using it instead to towel herself as she sprinted toward the compartment. Through the viewport she could see that lights were on. The accelerator turned peacefully on its’ gimbals. No flames or smoke were in evidence…

*BEEUP…BEEUP…BEEUP…BEEUP…*

The heavy door glided open. Her first breath of air from within sent a chill to the bottom of her stomach as she stepped through, pausing to reseal the door behind her. A different klaxon added its’ own wailing to the cacophony of the engine room. And nearly buried beneath, the intercom rattled. Riley’s voice shouted over the little speaker. Marisol couldn’t make out the words, but the pilot’s tone was unmistakable.

“Engine room! Chavez!” she shouted above the alarms. “Fuel leak…reactor deck! Assessing now!” Without bothering to answer fresh barks from the com, Marisol grabbed a fire extinguisher and headed for the after hatch. As she bolted down the ladder, her eye took in the globular fuel cells, all serenely sequenced. Before them was the primary reactor, its’ thirty foot length an imposing dominance of the entire compartment. Her foot landed on the deck…and immediately shot into the air.

“Whoa!” she gasped, collapsing onto the hard plating. The sensation was immediate; a mild tingling set up shop in the balls of her feet and heels, calves, bottom, and shoulder blades. Irradiated fuel for the reactor had coated the deck on which she lay. Even now it sprinkled upon her exposed flesh. Her gaze was drawn to a high pitched hissing. Marisol counted, “One…two…three,” studying the damage. *”Chinga me.”*

*BEEUP…BEEUP…BEEUP…BEEUP…*