Maintenance | Farscape

"C'mon, buddy, you could at least give me a clue here."

At the annoyed drawl drifting out of the open access panel, Aeryn slowed her pace. Curiosity made her pull to a stop beside the hole. Tools and wires were scattered in a haphazard mess on the floor. A familiar jacket tossed over a toolbox confirmed who was responsible for the clutter.

Bending down, she peeked into the little maintenance duct. And there he was. Lying on his back in the narrow tunnel, with a light in one hand and a soldering tool in the other, John was seemingly in the midst of an argument with the DRDs gathered around him.

"Look, I'm not asking you to fix the wiring for me, I just need to know when I've found the right lead," he grumbled at the one with the broken eye stalk. (Personally, she'd never understood why he hadn't asked Moya to repurpose that DRD into a new working one, but John had this odd habit of befriending the little drones which she would probably never understand.) "Maybe you should tell Moya that if I don't get some cooperation here I'm not gonna fix this thing at all. See how she likes that."

"You do realize you're arguing with something that can't actually respond?" Aeryn asked, smiling teasingly at him.

Startled, he almost dropped his tools. Sitting up, he grinned back at her with that welcoming smile that always seemed to come so naturally to him. "Hey, how did the trip to Kolanis go?"

"Decently well, I'd say. We managed to trade all of that useless ore for several crates of food and medical supplies." She shot him a wry look as she gestured at the general mess around them. "I take it the repairs are not going as well as could be hoped."

"Nah, I finished the necessary repairs two arns ago," he waved a hand dismissively. "But D'Argo and I got to talking about the life support system and I had this idea for raising its efficiency." Shooting a glare at the little DRD, he added, "Someone isn't giving me a whole lot of cooperation here, though."

'Well, let's hope you get it reassembled before we lose breathable atmosphere," she said, only half-joking. She trusted his mechanical skills for the most part — considering he'd only been in this part of the universe for a couple cycles, it was truly impressive how well he knew Moya's systems — but his knack for getting sidetracked was a persistent cause for concern. "Good luck."

She pulled out of the access panel and stood again, brushing some machine oil off her arm. As she continued her way down the corridor, she could hear his voice returning to the previous argument.

"Look, I'll point at each wire and you just blink once for 'yes' and twice for 'no'. Got it? Hey, get back here you useless little droid..."

Shaking her head, Aeryn smiled softly and turned the bend towards the crew quarters. Some days she was convinced their human shipmate was completely out of his mind. And it was perhaps a bit concerning how much that really didn't bother her anymore.

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