The deck plates felt hot as lava beneath Jugal’s feet as she shuffled nervously by the access door. It was a fallacy she knew, spurred by a sudden nervousness at their secretive task. The floor surface was no hotter than anywhere else on the ship, but she couldn’t seem to keep her heels fixed on the ground. Regulations chanted in her ear with Gregorian rhythm, citing the myriad of rules the trio were about to break. All the lines that she, newly minted Ensign Jugal Teym, was about to cross.

“Will you stop with the shuffling?” Hirisi snapped in a breathy whisper.

“Maybe we should just go back to the Chopshop.” Teym pleaded, her teeth gritted tighter than a Ferengi child’s grip on their first slip of Latinum. “There’s a reason there are rules against this.”

“Worried the captain will find out?”

Teym thought for a moment, was it simply that she was afraid to make a bad impression on her new boss?

Mostly, she admitted silently, a small spark of frustration igniting in her heart at the older woman’s astuteness. Did she really know Teym so well?

“No,” she lied. “It’s very dangerous.”

“Jumping into an elevator shaft with nothing to stop us but the gravity field at the bottom? Yeah, probably dangerous.” Hirisi laughed. “But do you want to tick off another box on your bingo sheet?”

Teym looked down at the small pad that hung in her hand. The words ‘Take the jump’ flashed in large orange letters. The second of the new arrivals’ communal tasks to complete before the crew of Typhon would consider them fully fledged members of the ship’s tight-knit crew.

Jump down the Valkyrie lift shaft that ran from the ship’s vast hangar bays to the landing module on its stomach.

What a way to make an impression, Jugal silently bemoaned.

“Hijin touched the dent in the hanger bay. We have to take the jump.” Hirisi winced as the small silver tool in her hand sparked. “God damn these access panels are hard to get into.”

“Almost like they’re not meant to be accessed?” Teym sniped. It wasn’t often that she got a quip in at anyone’s expense, and she wasn’t going to let the opportunity escape.

Hirisi turned slowly, her piercing emerald eyes cutting a canyon through the bulkheads with laser focus. When they fell upon Teym’s fragile form, the young woman could have sworn she melted a few inches.

“Was that… sass, Jugal Teym?” Hirisi spat, the sibilance of the words drawing her upper lip back to reveal two sharp canines. Teym shuddered involuntarily as Hirishi’s sharp mohawk seemed to flex in the still air of the corridor.

Suddenly, with a serpentine jolt, the muscular woman took two long, effortless steps across the deck, her tall form unexpectedly cobra-like as she rose over the tiny ensign. If she had a hood, it would flare and ripple with a deadly poison.

“Did you sass me?” She bore her teeth once more as her lip curled upward.

All courage slipped from Teym’s body, pooling at her feet along with any warmth she had felt in her earlier moment of worry. She shivered inwardly once again but held her footing; she was no longer the panicked cadet she had first been when the pair had been introduced. She was an officer of Starfleet now, and she had to learn to stand her ground.

Now seemed as good a time as any, even if it might be the last.

Hirishi stood stock still, her gaze boring an extra pair of holes in Teym’s skull.

“Not sass.” Teym announced meekly. “Just an observation.”

The Orion woman’s eyes flared wide, revealing seemingly endless spans of china white eyeballs that accentuated the dark emerald rockpools at its centre. Teym felt the last drop of her internal warmth drip onto the deckplate, hanging from her precariously thin and unexpected nerve.

A hissing of large hydraulic doors cut across the treacle-thick silence, and Teym risked a glance around the tall woman’s angular body to see the cargolift shaft doors beginning to slowly fall asunder.

“Whatever you two are chatting about can wait!” Rommigan called out as his golden head appeared from inside the slight gap that had formed between the large security doors. “It’s almost time for shift change.”

Hirisi shot Teym a final sharp warning look before turning on her heel and walking casually towards the golden-skinned man.

“The grav system is all working?” She asked as she began unbuttoning her uniform jacket.

“Elevator pad is on the bottom floor, I’ve tricked it into thinking there’s a valkyrie on the pad and I’ve engaged the gravimetric safety field,” Rommigan confirmed, waving a small tricorder in his hand. “It’ll definitely catch you.”

“Not too quickly, I hope, I’m fairly attached to my body in it’s current configuration.” Hirisi hovered at the edge of the open shaft, its dim blue lighting silhouetting her as she flexed her arms like a high diver. She slipped the tip of her boot over the edge, dipping a toe into the waterless well.

“Worried?” Rommigan smirked.

“It has been recently pointed out to me that this is dangerous.” She tossed her jacket into the open shaft, where it hovered hummingbird-like in the still air before disappearing out of view into the depths.

“When has that stopped you before?” Rommigan needled.

Hirisi shrugged nonchalantly before turning back to look down the corridor towards Teym.

“See you at the bottom, Ensign.”

With one confident step, the dagger form of Lieutenant Hirisi fell forward and began to plummet downwards into the cargo shaft.

Teym raced forward to the edge where moments before the Orion woman had stood, her eyes wide as they charted her path down the stygian portal.

Hirisi fell for an age, her slender form spinning like a bolt loosed from a crossbow as she plummeted with ever-increasing speed. Faster and faster she accelerated, giving even the quickest starship a run for its money.

“What if it doesn’t catch her?” Teym whispered from the safety of their lookout.

“It will,” Rommigan replied, his voice wavering with a small doubt. He glanced at the panel nearby and saw the gravity brakes were active, micro tractors were standing by, and inertial dampers were online. There was a whole system designed to catch falling objects just like this.

“Well, not exactly like this,” Rommigan mused aloud.

Teym drew in a sharp breath as Hirisi closed the distance to the base, her speed increasing and distance shrinking in equal measure.

“Nick, she’s going to crash!”

“No, she won’t.”

“Nick!”

“Wait for it…”

Milliseconds later, the olive arrow of Hirisi’s body suddenly stopped, mercifully suspended in a transparent, gaseous, blue-toned buffer.

As if she were simply slipping off her bunk, Hirisi effortlessly swung her legs round and alighted delicately onto the grey deck plate with an angelic calm.

“Shitting hell!” Teym cried into the mouth of the long cylinder, her voice echoing off the metallic walls into a chorus of expletives.

Hirisi looked up at the faces that peered over the room edge, grateful that they couldn’t hear the pounding of her heartbeat or the frantic cursing she had muttered on her journey down.

“That was incredible!” Rommigan shouted, his musical timbre resonating down the blue-tinted well with a strange polyphonic tone.

“I thank you!” Hirisi replied, offering the pair a deep bow.

Above her, the red-shouldered form of her uniform jacket fluttered delicately towards her, the fabric tumbling and twisting in the breezeless shaft. With a long arm, she plucked it from the air with one effortless swipe and slung it across her shoulder.

“Now, does anyone have any ideas how to get back up?”