<em>"No, Miss Ibara.  I would however, find it to be an exceedingly tedious waste of my quite valuable time."</em><br/><br/>Raine's eyebrows shot up, obviously surprised he had heard her.  Looking slowly over her shoulder at him, "It's Ee-ah-bra, not Ibara, FYI."  She looked back at the Zarr, making a big deal of rolling her eyes, then subtly stuck her tongue out at the Captain while he was engrossed in a surely amazing conversation with the Admiral.  It definitely wasn't meant to be insulting; Raine just liked to play.  A child at heart.<br/><br/>Grinning to herself, she turned back to the Zarr.<br/><br/><em>"I am adept at spotting what plants hold medicinal properties and what plants are or can be seen as toxic to some or all species.  I can act in a very small capacity as a healer, or midwife, and I can occasionally act as translator for any and all languages.  And why where you chosen for this...settlement?"</em><br/><br/>Just like a Zarr, sounding so clipped and formal, as if reading it off film.  Raine nodded, her curiosity piqued, but the female returned the question before she could reply.  She grinned and tossed her chin sociably.  "I'm a mechanic.  You break it, I fix it."  Raine leaned a forward conspiratorially.  "Honestly, though, I don't know why they chose a deadbeat like me," she said in a confiding voice.<br/><br/>And then the Captain began his speech, or debriefing.  Whatever.  Raine turned away from the Zarr slowly, placing her back on the smooth metal wall between her cryo tube and the adjacent one.  The officer began his spiel.<br/><br/>Raine remained respectfully quiet throughout, except for when he reported on shorted out circuitry on one of the terraformers.  Most importantly, she was a mechanic, not an electrician.  First her name, and now her profession?  Raine disliked him already.  Now everytime someone's PDA or comp started making funny noises and sparking arcs of electricity, it would wind up in her shop!  Not to mention, how did a circuit board short out when it was safely packed away in storage?  Even then, why did they<em>have</em>terraformers?  This planet was supposed to be 100% hospitable.  This ship, after all, carried a colonial party, not a terraforming company.<br/><br/>After the briefing, Raine considered stomping up to the officer and do...  well, something.  She decided against it, returning her attention to the Zarr, picking up as if there had been no interruption.  "So, ya, I fix shit: buggies, plows, harvesters, cars.<em>Not</em>an electrician though.  Bad experience with a cable and a fork when I was a kid, ain't happening..."<br/><br/>Her voice trailed off when she realized she was starting to ramble.  Moving to avoid an awkward silence, the woman held out her hand, hardened and toughened from years of working with vehicles, but still distinctly feminine.  "Name's Raine Iabara."<br/><br/><div align="center">*   *   *</div><br/>After the briefing, Jonn briskly left the deck.  He had lived on this ship for several years, and knew its intricacies well enough.  He headed up, towards the central axis about which the<em>Traveler</em>rotated, where the gravity was nearly nonexistent.  Like the barrel of a musket, the starship had a long, straight tunnel running from bow to stern.  It was roughly three yards wide, and served as the ship's main travel corridor.  Most of the ship's compartments branched off from it.  In zero-g, a person only had to brace themselves on any of the thousands of handholds lining the tunnel and shove off.  Depending on one's tolerance, it was either amazingly fun or sickeningly disorienting.  Either way, it was quick, easy, and virtually effortless.<br/><br/>The officer pulled himself into the tunnel, automatically reorienting his up and down  After doublechecking the map printed on the wall next to the opened hatch, he grabbed two handholds and bunched his legs underneath his spread arms.  Coiled like a spring, he judged the distance to his destination and the required angle.  Carefully, he let go of the handholds and immediately pushed off from the tunnel wall, heading "up" the tunnel towards the ships bow.<br/><br/>After a few seconds, the tunnel begin to spin around him.  Although air resistance slowed down his rotation, the ship kept spinning around him.  A few moments later, he determined he was moving to fast.  Jonn reached out an arm, stretching his long fingers until they brushed against the wall of the tunnel.  The friction slowed him down significantly.  Jonn easily caught a handhold next to a hatch labeled "Han. B, Off. Quart." and used his momentum to swing into the open hatch.  "Below" him, a dozen other figures - other crewmembers - glided up and down the tunnel.<br/><br/>While "up" and "down" in the axis tunnel were towards the bow and stern, respectively, the compartments around the central axis used the outer hull as "down" and the ship's central axis as "up".  Like cryogenic sleep and maneuvering the axis tunnel, getting used to the various orientations present in the starship was just another leap and bound that so many newcomers to space flight got stuck on.<br/><br/>Jonn pushed himself through the hatch feet first, then followed various ladders on the decks until he reached the outer compartments.  Here, rotation maintained a solid 0.75 G, perfect for sleeping quarters, exercise, and sports.