FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

~ With a yawn and some more scratching at his chin, Captain Kild flicked on the intercom microphone. His voice flooded the ship from the crisp crackle of copper cables. "Good morning, loyal crew of the Lopsided Tug, we are now on day fourty-three of our current jump. The night shift's report is, as noted in previous wake up announcements, currently nine days behind. Anyone who discovers what happened to the night shift will be given the remaining three inflatable beach balls that fell out of that defective crate last year.", pausing to review his data pad.

~ "I'll take the section reports before lunch. Today's focus is on... Comms. We're doing maintenance on communications systems. Make sure they're.. communicating. Communicably. We all know the drill, go through the manuals, and the engines keep turning... today's lunch will be Frozo-Packed sandwiches. 'Blue' flavor. In kinder news, Betsey has volunteered for dinner preparations, and we can expect something creative out of synthtaters and sliding jam. The desert will be...", he flipped through the tabs for the schedule, "..Ah! Flavo-Blam Flavored Beans. There will be at least seven colors, and...", pause for reading, "...three flavors. Be at your posts in half an hour.", flicking off the microphone as the wolf lumbered out of bed and towards a source of pants.

~

~ Wiggled up underneath the console and peering up into the guts of it, Tony tapped a blue cylinder with her spanner. It flickered back to light, and she could hear the whole console begin to hum as operations resumed. The wolf called out to the open comms link, "You were wrong; the blue one was loose. Not the red one!" She grinned as the commlink went silent while the cockatiel on the other end likely let out a belt of profanities. Moments later, calm as he could be, Sam replied, "Ah. You have won this particular bet, dear lupine. But would you care to wager on which antenna will have the hardest standing wave resonance?" The wolf could practically feel her tail already wagging as she started down the list in her head. The bird was crafty; there was surely some trick in this wager.

~

~ The ship was in as good a shape as any heavy haul freighter could be expected to hold to, and the routinue maintenance consisted primarily of verifying this status and checking appropriate boxes in forms and screens. With the conclusion of the afternoon movie, a very poorly acted action comedy they'd picked up on a wireless from a mining colony some days back, the crew settled down around the galley table with enthusiasm and interest.

~ Captain Kild dutifully issued each crewmember their appointed ration of what were basically packets of jelly beans, while Betsey brought out a bowl of main course, a bowl of secondary course, and several plates of the assorted leftovers from previous days out to the table. A decent spread, as always when the stoat got it in their head to prepare a meal. Everyone but Tony and Sam laid into the bowls of variously flavored and textured substances, while the pair we busy giggling and scooting colored beans back and forth into each others' piles. It didn't take long until Kild sat back in his chair and grinned, as though he were officiating the settlement of a day filled with bets and wagers of beans over the trivialities of ship life.

~ The captain cleared his throat, "Are you two... settled?", his fingers gesturing towards the two neatly arranged piles of beans. The wolf and cockatiel nodded like fools to meal's chief justice. Kild struck a bit of a noble pose, like he'd seen judges do in those movies about courts, "Then I declare your unlicensed illegal gambling debts settled. Let us eat!"

~ While Tony set to the task of loading up her and Sam's plates, the bird slid his pile of beans over and into the wolf's. To this, Betsey lost their remaining nerve and belted out laughing at the cockatiel. "You really do hate those things, don't you, Cheeks?", addressing Sam by his nickname who in turn replied with a vigorous nod. "I'd wish them out of existence, to the last one, if not for how much my pooch loves them." To this, Sam recieved a kiss from the wolf as the meal descended into a frenzy of anecdotes and consumption.

~

~ Deep in the cargo hold, tucked away to an unattended corner beyond some burnt out lamps the entirety of the night crew struggled in vain against its bondage. The solitary floor cleaning drone was helplessly tangled in the remains of a hammock it had somehow acquired a few decks upward as it softly crooned the song of a low battery tune that no-one would hear.