2952-04-24 – Tales from the Service: The Postmaster's Special Delivery 

Petty Officer Samuel Planque was waiting barely five minutes when Lieutenant Langer returned from within the ship bearing a tool-bag and a pair of EVA suits. The sly grin still had not faded from his face, and Samuel decided he did not like that look. 

“Duce’s bunk is on deck three, portside.” Langer gestured to one side, as if this explained his intentions. “About twenty meters that way. I’ve already had the ship vent the compartment for maintenance.” 

“What for?” Samuel glanced between the titanic package beside him and the suits slung over the lieutenant’s shoulder “Oh. Oh, no, sir, don’t you think that’s taking-” 

“Relax, we’re not going to take anything apart besides the viewpanel plug, and I supervised putting them all in before we made the Gap crossing.” Langer tossed one of the suits to Samuel. “The skipper wanted me to check them for fatigue during the next patrol anyway. I’m just starting early. With Duce’s.” 

Samuel caught the suit and winced. His EVA certification was technically still valid, but he hadn’t been topside in a suit since he’d made Petty Officer, more than a year before. “We’re both over-qualified to do hull inspections, Lieutenant.” 

“Then it’s a good thing we’re volunteering to do this on our down time.” Langer stepped into the lower half of his suit and pulled it up to his arms. “Go find us need at least three tethers while I call the port controller for access to the service airlock.” 

Samuel sighed, dropped his shoulders, and started rummaging through the storage compartments around the dock-side end of the umbilical. Since this was a Navy dock, his access keys unlocked everything, and soon he had set out two thruster packs and several coiled tether lines, each with a mechanical claw at one end and a sturdy clip lock on the other. He attached one of the tether lines to his own suit before he even shrugged it on, and then passed one over to Langer, who was muttering something into his comms earpiece. 

Evidently, the controller didn’t ask too many questions; a moment later, Langer was finished on the comms. “All clear.” He pointed to the crate on the wheeled dolly. “Can you get that down to the service airlock by yourself?” 

“No problem, sir.” Samuel grabbed the dolly’s yoke and pulled it around toward one of the big lifts at the center of the docking hub, conscious of the way the suit’s collapsed helmet bounced against his back as he did. Though light enough, the insulated, airtight EVA suits were uncomfortable things to do any sort of manual labor in; Samuel was sweating by the time he manhandled the crate into the lift and it began to move down. 

There was nobody on the lower level, so Samuel was spared having to explain what he was doing. The entire space below the main docking deck was littered with unused machinery, piles of spare parts, and unlabeled crates, enough that he was briefly tempted to wonder if anyone would notice if he simply left the crate in some corner. 

Before he could do more than wonder, Lieutenant Langer appeared from a ladder-way off to one side. His helmet was already on, but not sealed. Squaring his shoulders, Samuel flipped his own suit’s helmet up, listening to its stiffening ribs snap into place before lowering it over his head as a wobbly, clear-fronted bubble. One by one, the various indicator lights around the margin of the faceplate came online before his eyes. Those which monitored pressure remained solidly red, since Samuel had not tightened any of the suit’s pressure seals. 

A few minutes later, after Samuel and Langer had helped each other seal up and check their suits, they manhandled the crate off its dolly and into the service airlock. Unlike the ship’s hatches, this portal was large enough to accommodate it Langer’s bag of tools, and two spacers quite easily. Langer pressed a button on the back of one suited wrist, and the airlock began to cycle. 

“Should only take us about ten minutes.” Langer’s tinny voice over the radio still carried much of its sly satisfaction from earlier. He hooked his tether to a carry-handle on the crate, then clipped a second tether to his belt. “One clip for the payload, one onto the hull.” 

Samuel nodded and affixed his first tether to the crate. He wasn’t keen on the idea of letting the troublesome package tumble off into space with him attached, but they were working on a ship in dock; there was little likelihood of anything tumbling in just the correct direction to float past all the station’s various extensions, arms, antennas, and other sprawling fixtures, and that assumed they sent the crate tumbling to begin with, which they didn’t intend to do. 

As the outer airlock door ground open, Langer led the way out onto the station’s hull. Samuel followed cautiously over the threshold where artificial pseudo-gravity reached its end, and made sure he had one magnetic boot securely affixed to the threshold before he stepped out into the zero-gee environment beyond. 

“I can’t wait to see the look on his face.” Langer muttered, possibly not realizing his comms were active. 

Samuel checked that his own radio was turned off. “I can’t wait for this to not be my problem anymore.” He grumbled. Langer might technically be right about them not doing anything worth getting in trouble, but he didn’t like any of it, and couldn’t imagine there not being trouble, somehow. 

As you might imagine, Mr. Planque was quite right, which is why he sent this story in. Langer’s decision to entomb the gigantic package directly in the tiny crew bunk-space of the package’s addressee caused no small amount of trouble, but most of it was for the prankster who managed to get himself shipped a package nearly the size of his own crew quarters. Planque lost his postion as the ship’s postmaster, but after this, it seems like that came as something of a relief.