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Routine Maintenance

By Psion

For Fat Bunny Week 2019

A Hearth Star Story

After the battle for Iron Pecs, Commander Bael Longfoot and the crew of the Silver Pantry had resumed their original duties for the time being. Which meant it was back to transporting military supplies to the GalRep garrison on Lighthouse Station. Fortunately recent improvements to the station's facilities meant the Pantry's cargoes consisted more of weapons, ammunition, and spare parts then of basic necessities but the routes and routines were otherwise the same.

Overall Bael didn't mind, a return to boring duties was nice after their last assignment and there were rumors that things were going to change very soon anyway. The Space Fleet engineering officer didn't know what that meant but she decided to avoid speculating on it.

The crew had been granted a short liberty after they finished making their delivery to Lighthouse Station and Longfoot had decided to take the first watch on the ship, staying behind while the others visited friends and hopefully didn't get into too much trouble. Ambling along the quiet corridor connecting the various areas of the ship, she used the time to get caught up with paper work and routine maintenance. And of course have some fun of her own....

She was down in the cargo hold, an hour before her date was supposed to arrive dockside, inspecting the hold one last time when she spotted it. A verm, one of the common rodent-like pests of space ships and starbases, stared at her defiantly before scampering into a maintenance duct. Grumbling, the plump pear-shaped rabbit ambled after it, Omni-Fork already in hand, before getting down on her hands and knees to crawl in after it.

Overconfident, the verm hadn't scurried too far into the duct work ahead of Longfoot before it caught interest. All she need to do was crawl in a little deeper and reach in... and quick as a blink she speared the verm with her Omni-Fork, popped it into her mouth, and swallowed. That was one of the perks of ship maintenance, all the little snacks scurrying around.

Pressing her hands against the side of the duct and pushing backwards, a small bead of sweat began to form beneath her blond locks when she encountered resistance and found that her broad hips had finally gotten just a little too wide for the maintenance duct. Too many days of pulling rank to get Ensign Cheddah off of leftover disposal duty so she could have seconds and thirds had finally caught up with her. She tried to not imagine what she must look like from the outside, fat butt and thick legs clad in Space Fleet black kicking helplessly.

After several minutes of fidgeting, she stopped and took a deep breath. There had to be a way out of this, she just needed to think for a second. Sucking in her stomach didn't help, there was simply too much Lapeen to make things that easy. There might have been something in her pockets except she couldn't reach them. She had her Space Fleet badge which functioned as a communicator and her Omni-Fork. She could call for one of the crew to come back and help pull her out but personal pride shot down that idea, she survived her topsy-turvy career in the Fleet by learning to rely on herself. After Cyptal Bargebottom, this was nothing. She needed to figure out how to get out of this herself.

Cleaning the saliva off of her Omni-Fork, she switched from its default mode and squeezed the handle to extend a magnetic replusor. Reaching behind herself the best she could, Longfoot pointed her tool at the hardware keeping the access panel fastened to the wall. All she would need to do was disassemble the frame and give herself a few extra centimeters. Screws began to clang against the ship's deck as Bael began to try wiggling again. Encountering less resistance, she tried pushing again, and popped free landing on the deck floor with a gentle thump.

Groaning, she climbed back to her feet and quickly put the access panel back together. When she was finished, she ambled back to the upper level of the ship to get cleaned up. By the time she finished, Robert the station's librarian had arrived dockside.

Bael greeted him at the airlock and escorted him aboard. "Glad you could make it. How is the library?"

"Oh boring as usual. No one has done anything particularly exciting since we burned Iron Pecs to the ground. I've finished restoring the last book I was putting off."

"That's a good thing." She smiled as the two of them made their way towards her quarters. "It means we have time for other things."

Other things like working off some of that extra weight... She thought as her smile broadened.