Delanna and I managed to pull off a long distance relationship all through college; I on Luna and she on Mars, and as far as I know, we both remained faithful to each other that whole time. Once she graduated, we were free to be together at last, much to her father's chagrin.
I hadn't realized it when we first met, but Delanna Troy was a member of 'the' Troy family. Her father ran Panda Freight; the biggest transport company in the system. Had she not chosen to hitch her wagon to me, she could have been next in line to run the company while I would likely have gone into the military, and then maybe joined SecFor, but we changed each other's life-paths forever.
Penthorpe Troy was not happy that his little girl was hooking up with a Lunar to begin with, and he certainly did not like when she refused his offer of an office job. Instead she insisted that we both start at the bottom as transporters, but Delanna Troy was not one to lose a fight when she set her mind to it.
It was our first run, and it should have been a simple one. We were to transport a shipment of Cerulean Ale to Adams Station. This was long before we would buy the Russian Unicorn; instead we were in a tanker vessel with the creative name of CCSV PF-1138. The ship smelled like it had not been thoroughly cleaned since it was first put into service, and I still wonder if Mr. Troy assigned us it to try and change Delanna's mind. It didn't work.
We were only about twelve hours out from Adams Station, and I was back in the mess hall eating some of the previous night's soyloaf for lunch while Delanna was watching the control to make sure the ship did not suddenly decide to lose our route and send us in the wrong direction. The life of a professional spacer is nothing like in the vids; we spent most of our time doing almost nothing. Boredom is a good thing though, since excitement means something is going wrong.
“Hey, Zane,” Delanna called over the comm system, “I'm getting an alarm up here; I think we have a water leak or something. I”m going to go check it out.”
“I can go,” I said.
“No, finish your lunch; it's not like we can go that off course in five minutes.”
Delanna was not the only one that frequently did not obey orders. I checked for the alert on the mess hall info screen and saw where it was. Delanna beat me there, but it can't have been by much, as she was just staring at our problem curiously.
What she was looking at was a steady dripping of bright blue liquid from the seam between two of the ceiling panels. I knew instantly what it was, I could smell it; it was our cargo: Cerulean Ale.
“What the frass?” Delanna said.
“Did we have a debris strike?” I asked.
“No, and it should be venting into space if we did, not coming in here.”
“A rupture in the tank maybe?”
“Lift me up so I can look.”
We could have just went to get a ladder or something, but it was still early enough in our relationship that any reason to hold her in my arms seemed like a good one. I wrapped my arms around her waist, and lifted her up.
She reached up and pushed on the panel. It didn't move at first, and I could feel the effort she was putting into it. Finally the panel slid to the side a little, and we were both drenched in a spray of Cerulean Ale that had been pooling up there. Cerulean is one of my favourite beers, but that doesn't mean I wanted to bathe in it.
I staggered backwards, slipped, and fell, bringing Delanna down on top of me. She knocked the wind out of me, and the floor slamming into the back of my head made me see stars.
“Are you okay?” Delanna asked, rolling off of me.
I told her that I was, and I went to get a ladder so that we could get a better look. The hole in the tank was small, but it had probably been leaking the entire trip. The fact that it took that long to set off any alarms did nothing to boost my confidence in that vessel.
We were able to patch the hole, and stop the leak, but by the time we finished we had been absorbing the ale soaked into our clothes and breathing the fumes from it for so long that we were absolutely tanked.
Delanna was not a big drinker, and the ale really hit her hard. She spent the next little while in the head being sick while I held her hair back. We let the computer keep flying the ship since neither of us was really in any shape to be in charge of it.
When we got to Adams, we stayed in our quarters with the lights off while our cargo was pumped out. We both had horrible hangovers, but Delanna, being smaller and not a big drinker then, had it worse.
“Hey,” I said quietly in the darkness (she had even stuck a shirt up to block the light from info screen).
“Wha?” she muttered.
“I got us a bottle of champagne to celebrate the completion of our first run,” I said, “Want me to go get it?”
Delanna didn't say anything, she just punched me.