The feeling of soft fur against his palm as he reached down for the Bengal cat was promptly forgotten when the beast twisted around and lashed out. The sting of the needle claws was enough to make Reece curse vividly and yank his hand back away from Mowzer. Blood welled up in three fine lines across the top of his hand and he was reminded promptly that a cat with a lashing tail was nothing to mess with. It stung and he glared at the spotted cat as he found his way around Pauline's ankles. 

"You furry little bastard," he grumbled as he examined his wound. "This ain't over, buddy." 

The cat merely looked back at him, regarding him as a lesser creature with those cool golden eyes, daring him to come back for more. The pilot shook his bleeding fist at him and chuckled at Connor. Cats would do as they do he had learned and unfortunately forgot that not all were fat docile things that his ex had fawned over. 

"Yeah, that's no house cat," Reece said, looking up as Pauline noticed his wound and promptly took it upon herself to care for him.

He would not say no to a beautiful young woman tending the scratches so valiantly received in the line of duty. Reece had a feeling the cat believed the hangar part of his territory and once a feline got the idea in his head, it was hard to dissuade. 

"Miss Pauline Weber, I'm Owen Reece, pilot of that particular pod just outside. And I guess in charge of all these knuckleheads," he said, glancing at her pale blue eyes and admiring the fine cinnamon sprinkling of freckles across her nose and pink cheeks. As she washed the cat's scratches, he could not help but notice how her soft golden red hair was warm as a summer sunset and the glow of health and youth she had about her. [i]Too young for you, old man.[/i] He sighed inwardly, wincing when she applied alcohol that stung and finally applied the bandaids to cover the scratches. The sight of her soft pale hands against his scarred knuckles and the dusting of hair on the back of his hand made him smile though and he looked up from under a fall of his unruly hair, his eyes meeting hers briefly. 

"Thanks for patching me up," he said, flashing a grin at her, his solitary dimple showing beneath the salt and pepper scruff of his beard. "So a hold over, huh. What was your job on the second shift then? I didn't get a file for you." 

Reece would have remembered for sure if he had and he mentally checked why someone would not be allowed to go to sleep. His eyes moved down her body in a quick glance but she showed no signs of pregnancy though that did not mean much. She could be with child though he saw no ring on her finger and judging by the cross around her neck he would have expected her to be married if she was going to have a baby. Though those were old holdovers of Earth, things change when people are thrown together in desperate circumstances. Everything had changed no matter how much they tried to cling to their old lives with the holographic images of scenes from Earth or hanging onto wild animals that had no use other than they used to share the same planet. 

His attention was pulled away from his musings when she showed Connor the schematics. He looked over the engineer's shoulder and understood a little of what he was looking at though the formulas were beyond him. Connor seemed impressed and considering the blue haired kid was a certified [i]genie us[/i] he supposed that was good enough for him. 

"Well, Pauline," he said, shifting his weight, glancing back at the door to the office, "I'm willing to take the chance on you, I think we could always use another hand to turn a wrench and Second shift certainly left us with a pile of work to do. Not to mention if you could handle the running of the training programs. If Connor's alright by it, I'd be glad to have you aboard with Hangar Six?" 

Normally, he would have just made the call himself but Connor had begun to impress him and he was inclined already to give him a voice in who would be working with him. Of course, it had nothing to do with he would get to look upon the angelic form of the young woman. [i]Not at all,[/i] he blatantly lied to himself. He had read Deli's file as well, he knew she had a mechanical background in education along with her demolition training on the mountain but something was bothering him about her. She seemed too high strung and flighty and there were things that he needed to investigate first before letting her play boom-boom let alone give her any responsibilities involving maintenance of the pods. 

"I'll hand over cat removal to you," he said when Connor mentioned getting gloves. "Good luck with that." 

Reece flexed his hand and cut a glance at Mowzer who still sat beneath the chair, watching the people with a distinctly annoyed look on his face. "Enjoy it while you can," he muttered. He did not hate cats, he was ambivalent about them though they did remind him of his ex wife who doted on two lazy Ragdoll cats. This one was in another league all together and had hunter written all over him. It was too bad there was nothing for him to hunt in the spaceship. Unless rats hitched a ride and it would not be surprising if they had. 

He walked over to the bags of trash and he could smell the stench of decay and mold. Connor said it smelled like the mechanic had given up. 

"Smells like middle aged depression," Reece quipped and turned away from it, facing the knot of people. 

"I'm curious if he had personal reasons for his decline or if it was just the job itself," his grey eyes flicked back to Pauline's pretty face, "Did you know him, work with him?"