Jerry Rooster cigars were, without a doubt, the best cigars a guy could find. They were also against O.E.R. regulations since Jerry Roosters were made in the same style as old school cigars so they smoked like chimneys, which was apparently unsafe cause they'd mess with the life support or something like that. Clint didn't really remember the exact reason why they were against the rules; but hot damn, he could really go for one right now. And no matter how much the regulations encouraged it, Clint was not going to start using those new smokeless cigarettes. He'd rather go down with a ship than look like he's sucking on a lollipop.
Clint patted the box shaped object in his jacket's breast pocket, savoring the little rolled up beauties. Not right now, of course. Clint was sitting at the ship's main control console, he couldn't exactly light up right there and then. The Captain was right there on the bridge. Instead he stretched his arms out and yawned while he watched lines of light blur across the screens showing the ship's exterior as it traveled in FTL. They still had a few hours until they got to O.F. Nucleus. Maybe he could sneak a Jerry once they were station-side. That'd be nice.
He studied the screens around the pilot's seat, more out of boredom than actual concern for the ship. On the readouts were everything from the status of the ship's engines and hull integrity, to the individual readings on life support and artificial gravity in individual parts of the ship. A good pilot had to know what was going on with the ship, inside and out. Otherwise, an uninformed decision could be catastrophic. If they were losing hull integrity, he needed to know. If there were fighters buzzing around parts of the ship, he needed to know. If the engine was leaking coolant even a little, he really needed to know. A ship attempting to enter FTL with a coolant leak would pretty much destroy its engines... along with all the engineers in the engine rooms. And when you're in deep space you really don't want your engines to blow up, because the only lucky ones on board will be the engineers who died quickly.
Speaking of engines and coolant, one of theirs seemed to be acting up a little. He watched the temperature reading on the ship's status monitor rise slightly above normal levels and then fall below normal levels. He'd expected as much from a new engine and he would've been surprised if it didn't happen. Temperatures would shoot above and below normal levels when coolant flow wasn't adjusted correctly. Most new engines are pretty well tested, but the necessary adjustments came during its first long voyage when the need for them popped up. This was nothing but a minor hiccup and a slight coolant flow adjustment should fix it. Not to mention leaving it like this could cause overheating in the long run.
He pressed a button on his console that connected the pilot straight to the engineering department. Ships often connected the pilot to engineering, a product of the "pilot needs to know" philosophy.
"This is Helmsman Commander Everman, ya'll got a ghost in Engine 2."
'Ghost' was the spacer shorthand for the symptoms of maladjusted coolant flow. Clint was still working on getting rid of spacer-talk in the O.E.R since nobody else seemed to get it, and corrected himself,
"Engine 2 needs a coolant adjustment, check your temperature, over."
You can take the spacer out of deep space, but you can't take deep space out of the spacer.