How long had she been awake? How long had she been watching him? He felt his ears get warm and managed to mumble a thanks for the time before Zilah slipped away. Quen was resolutely determined to forget the entire night. Nothing good had come of it. Not to mention, he was a little upset that sheâ€™d just gone and fallen asleep on himâ€¦ At least he knew where the wrist piece had gone to. He thought to ask her what sheâ€™d done with that slip of paper. It had been important to him.<br/><br/>After a momentâ€™s hesitation, he went first to the med bay and rifled through the stock until he found painkillers. He knocked cursorily on the shower door, â€œPainkillers on the bed. I need to check the hull.â€ Donâ€™t go anywhere, he almost added before thinking better of it, because, what good would it do?<br/><br/>The locker where he stored extra air canisters banged shut in the corridor. He made sure the belt was secure, stuffed four into their loops, and checked to be sure they were secure as well. A second check of his helmet and air supply and he felt as ready as he could without knowing the scope of the problem.<br/><br/>He could get this over with, go back to work, never talk about it, and no one would be any the wiser. That seemed like the best plan now. The quicker he and Zilah parted ways, the better it would be for the both of them. Maybe he could get her to just give him the information he needed and then drop her off somewhere convenient.<br/><br/>Even if he could just disappear, she wasnâ€™t the type of person to do it with. She wasnâ€™t his type at all. He was starting to think, trying to think, that it was a good thing sheâ€™d fallen asleep. Zilah had been drunk and he hadnâ€™t. If they had had sex, would he even be able to look at her? It just seemed wrong somehow to have wanted, even for a second, to take advantage of her intoxication.<br/><br/>Quen climbed down into the engine core proper, where there was no artificial gravity. His stomach took longer than he did to reorient itself to the sudden zero-g. He was used to the feeling, and pulled himself hand over hand through what was easily the largest space on the small craft.<br/><br/>The patcher stored in its case would have been too heavy for him to move elsewhere, but in the weightless environment, he tapped it easily into place next to him in the alternate airlock. The air hissed out and both he and the machine were let out into the void. The damage was more extensive than heâ€™d imagined, but it was mostly cosmetic.<br/><br/>He plugged the machine into its port near the outer airlock door and tethered himself to it, reaching for the rungs lining the outside of the ship. A few had been knocked loose, but only one had come off entirely. Sheâ€™d ruined the Agniastra, inside and out. His ship, his home. Not that he had time to be angry with her.<br/><br/>On reaching the worst of it, and the location of the computer core, the smart little bot snaked out a probe and blew short bursts of compressed air across the hull, reporting and marking the exact location of the hole. Normally, this was then reported back to the ships AI. The bot and computer could do it without supervision. But without that, it queried him countless times while he watched it coat the place and a good amount of the metal around it with a flat black substance that hardened on contact.<br/><br/>In its entirety, this took him a little more than half an hour, including packing the patcher back into its case and refilling the air canisters in both his belt and the machine.<br/><br/>It wasnâ€™t a good patch job; it was only meant to hold in vacuum, not even through atmospheric entry. However, it would keep the ship, now unregulated by any higher intelligence, from slowly venting all the air into space in its appallingly simple actions. Nothing on his ship ran correctly for very long without the chimp, and that was irritating. He didnâ€™t even know how to fix it.