Alrick

Alrick is the Chief Electrical and Software Engineer and general handyman on The Ironclad.

Bio
(To be re-organized, cleaned up, and expanded upon later)

He's a big orca with dark green coloration instead of black. He's a little taller than Sofia, and about half again as wide (but can get wider), and he can easily lift with one massive arm what Sofia needs four muscular arms to do. His line was one of the more successful series of gengineered life forms, and it largely has to do with a more proper application of electrochemical adipose cells (thanks to prototypes like Cass). Their bodies are designed for hyper-retension of calories, both to fuel the tremendous amounts of energy it takes to use their muscles and power their large bodies, as well as develop an insulating layer of fat at a moment's notice.

In practice, most stayed on the orbital station on call. During this time, their food is strictly rationed to save resources, and their bodies are extremely lean with really defined musculature and very little body fat. When one's rotation comes up, they glut themselves appropriately before descending down the mine shafts to the hanging sub-orbital stations. Like Cassie, they're also able to discharge the energy stored in their body fat, although nowhere near as efficiently as Cass, and the ones coming off rotation shed their excess body fat this way before resuming their diet.

So, this is all well and good, if they're doing the work that they were specifically bred for. In cases like Alrick's, problems start to arise. He likes to focus in on delicate, tedious projects, preferring to work with his mind and his fingertips than his muscles, which involves very little physical activity. Coupled with the fact that moving through zero and earth-like gravity takes almost zero effort to someone adapted to deal with working normally beneath Neptune's surface, means that Alrick practically never uses the huge muscles his body fat is supposed to be used for. Plus, he doesn't have any foremen, overseers, or commanding officers to limit his diet, nor any other members of the same species onboard to cause a serious strain on matfeed resources, which has allowed his voracious gluttony to go unchecked, and on average he eats about half of his not-inconsiderable body weight in food every day.

All this adds up to a big, green whale that prefers to sit on his steadily-expanding ass building, repairing, and maintaining tiny, intricate circuits while shoveling junk food into his mouth and eating calorie bars as big as loaves of bread, and gets fatter and fatter over time. He prefers to work in hermetically-sealed rooms so he can alter the local atmosphere to the hydrogen, helium, and nitrogen-rich atmosphere he was designed to breathe so he can forgo having to wear his breathing mask-- both for comfort, and to make it easier to eat.

More than one instance of the blubbery whale getting wedged in a doorway, or in some extreme cases, clogging up an entire passageway, has led to a groundrule that he must discharge his excess energy into the reactor on a daily basis. However, once he gets started on something, he loses track of nearly everything else and almost never remembers to actually do this. And, due to the lax discipline and lack of a codified command structure on the Ironclad, his crewmates typically don't force him to do it until his girth starts becoming an inconvenience for them. So, he'll periodically waddle/squeeze his way into the fusion reactor bay and come out 10 minutes later as a ripped, herculean bodybuilder. He likes the attention that he gets during this state, as female crewmembers (and any other crewmembers that swing that way) can't keep their eyes off of him. But he also comes out drained and hungry, and after stuffing himself with a couple armfuls of food, he'll already be well underway to his new potbelly, and the cycle begins all over again.

Outside of sealed, environmentally-controlled rooms, he always wears a breathing mask that straps to his face and covers him from his snout to his throat. It steadily pumps hydrogen, helium, and some hydrocarbons sourced from some small compressed gas cylinders screwed in on either side, or from a much larger tank connected by hose that he wears on his belt or thigh. He occasionally puffs a small gout of chilled noble gasses from his blowhole, moreso when he laughs or is startled. He also designed another intake to feed a hollow tube through, so he can drink smoothies and milkshakes without having to take the mask off.

Despite his massive size, and the fact that he could crush even someone like Sofia into a medicine ball with his bare hands, he's very gentle and timid. Working mostly in isolation has led him to develop several slovenly habits which can put people off. When he realizes what he's done based on their reaction, he gets deeply embarrassed and self-conscious. But as long as someone doesn't mind or doesn't react in a way that he notices, he'll happily sit around in his underwear, belch, scratch his butt, dip fattening foods in other fattening foods, rest food and drinks on top of his belly when he needs both hands, and generally make a mess of himself. He almost never wears more than a pair of shorts, both because of said slovenly habits and him constantly needing to print bigger and bigger clothes as he outgrows them, but also because his body is designed for extreme cold, and as such, anything more than below freezing temperatures feels temperate at best, scorching hot at worst, and he radiates excessive body heat at all times. But, despite the elasticity and how convenient it would be for him, wearing skintight thermo-silica also makes him self-conscious, so he wears fitted shorts that are almost inevitably a size too short and offer plentiful plumber's crack when he sits down (but he'll hike them up if someone points this out).

Pabs does make fun of him for being fat, both because he's an easy target and also in hopes that enough embarrassment might motivate him to drain his body fat more often. But, much to pleasure and dismay, it doesn't. He sabotaged the schematics for Alrick's breathing mask a while ago and with the press of an easily-printed button, it will rapidly discharge all the contents of the gas cylinders, inflating Alrick into a gigantic, whale-sized, lighter-than-air blimp. Despite the embarrassment that this causes for Alrick, and his knowledge of the backdoor trigger that Pabs built into it, for some reason he's made no attempt to alter the design, essentially handing control of his breathing apparatus over to Pab. Why, nobody knows. He could fully intend on altering it but just keeps forgetting to get around to it, or he could be afraid that getting into a design arms race with Pabs would be too confrontational and he doesn't want to make a big deal out of it. So for now, the only thing keeping Pabs in check is Sofia.