No dead weight.

Posted on 24 Feb 2014 @ 5:59pm by Lieutenant Olsam Mott & Captain Jonathan Holliday & Crewman Apprentice Sigrid Thelin
Edited on on 26 Feb 2014 @ 2:43pm

2,489 words; about a 12 minute read

Mission: Episode 05 - Solstice
Location: USS Galileo - Captain's Ready Room
Timeline: MD 38 - 1300 hrs

[ ON ]

Olsam had spent no less than ten or fifteen minutes coming up with his plan, mapping it out and reviewing any possible consequences. It seemed fool proof to him, so he donned his finest dress uniform and marched right down to the Alta Plaza Garden Cafe. He burst through the doors with all authority of a Fleet Admiral and stood a few feet inside, scowl on his face and hands on his hips.

"Where's Ms. Thelin?"

Karen looked up from the host stand and saw the Bolian standing in the doorway. Return patron's with that demeanor would get nothing out of a fellow server. With one raised eyebrow she crossed her arms and looked at him with a neutral expression. "I don't know who that is."

"How do you not know who that is...," Olsam leaned forward and squinted at the name tag, "...Karen? She works here! She's blonde, about this tall, nice nails..."

Sigrid saw the interaction after dropping off an extra sauce cup for someone and quickly made it to the host stand to help Karen out. "It's okay Karen, I can take it from here. Can you grab table seven another coffee and jelly for their toast?" She turned her attention on the Bolian with a dazzling smile while Karen very reluctantly left the host stand, burning a suspicious glare towards the Bolian before leaving.

"What kind of jelly?" Olsam asked, watching Karen disappear.

Sigrid recognized the man, their last interaction seemed to go by okay and hoped there wasn't a problem. "The red kind." She answered him brightly. She remembered his name from the bill he signed. "What can I do for you Olsam?".

"Huh? Oh, I was just wondering if you could leave for a little while. We have an interview with Captain Jonathan Holliday, the commanding officer of my ship, about your bartender application. Or...well.... Maybe not so much an interview, per se, as a meeting. About a completely unrelated topic, and he has no idea I'm bringing you. But I thought, 'Why not go pick up Sigrid and bring her to meet the captain?' Maybe he'll hire you right on the spot. Just say you don't know me, though, cuz I think he kinda hates me."

Her expression went from ecstatic to crestfallen while he spoke and when he was finished she stood there blinking. Sigrid was actually stunned for words, which did NOT happen very often. "You know what?" She thought very carefully about it. Stepping closer to the blue man she had a stern look of concentration. They were the same height, but with her brand new heels she looked down her nose making him have to look up at her. She pointed a freshly designed nail at his chest and tapped it once, then she smiled slowly. "You know what Olsam, I'm okay with those odds." In a whirl of blonde curls, squeals and high heeled clicks, she ran to the back of house. She was gone for only a minute but when she came around the corner she was changed in a new outfit. A dazzling matching purse and a sleek black tablet computer. She gave her best runway walk as she approached Olsam. "Let's do this."

=-=-=-=-=

"...and so then I told him he should be relieved of command," Olsam said, finishing up his story about Captain Holliday as the turbolift arrived on the bridge. He'd tried to leave out all the classified parts, but it seemed fair that she have some idea what she was walking into. "Of course no one agreed with me, cuz what would a doctor know about trauma!"

The Bolian threw his hands up in the air, exasperated, and then motioned across the bridge toward the captain's Ready Room.

"Officially, I'm here to give him a medical checkup. But I think we can make a sales pitch, too. And if he doesn't agree, I'll just slip him something to make him more agreeable."

Olsam pressed the door chime and waited (im)patiently to be allowed inside.

"Isn't that illegal?" she asked as she checked her makeup in a small mirror then reconsidered, "actually, don't answer that." She looked down and readjusted her bra to maximize her cleavage to her liking before putting the mirror away.

The Ready Room was it's usual hive of activity, even if it only involved Captain Holliday and a small armada of PADDS surrounding him and on every available surface. Thankfully they had at least been tidied into smaller piles, no doubt thanks to no small effort by his recently appointed Yeoman. As he heard the chime John looked up from his desk and the open comm channel long enough to open the door before returning to his conversation.

"..and if those goddamn engineers aren't back on my ship within the next hour I'll be coming to your office and I won't be playing nice. Good day Chief!"

And with one final flourish he slapped the comm channel closed, taking a moment to breathe before looking up at his visitors, one of which he knew, and the other which appeared to be a civilian.

"Yes Doctor...apologies for the delay. To what do I owe the pleasure?"

"Oh, I'm here for your medical checkup," Olsam said, unpacking his medkit on the captain's desk without an invitation. "I think I'm on the schedule. This is my friend, Sigrid Thelin. She works at the Alta Plaza Garden Cafe."

"Howdy," she flicked blond curls over her shoulder and gave a small wave at the hunk sitting at the desk.

John looked visibly confused as to why the Bolian thought it would be necessary to bring a caf worker onto the Galileo. A starship was a restricted area at the best of times and letting a civilian simply wander into the Captain's ready room surely wasn't a sensible idea?

"Erm...hello Miss. Doctor Olsam...I trust you have a very good reason why there are unauthorised personnel in my Ready Room?"

Sigrid, with all the confidence of a snarling Haark, stepped forward before Olsam could reply and produced a datasheet copy of her resume. "Please excuse Doctor Olsam, Captain. I admit he should have communicated his intentions more clearly but he was trying to do something nice for me. I am applying for the bartender position on your ship and Olsam thought it wise to escort me himself to present my resume to you." She flashed her best smile at the man.

"I always have a very good reason for everything I do," Olsam said, detaching the sensor wand from the medical tricorder as he rounded the captain's desk. Naturally, he began to wave it entirely too close to the man's face. "It's true, I think she'd make a very fine addition to the crew. She has the Olsam Mott Seal of Approval and - trust me - when it comes to the service industry there's no higher praise than the praise of a Bolian. I have very exacting standards. Are you seeing okay, captain?" The wand came from the temple and practically into the captain's right eye.

John had to fight back the urge to punch the Bolian square on the jaw if he didn't remove the tricorder probe from such proximity to his eye. Taking a deep breath he decided to stick to the better side of his judgement and stilled his anger. Moving his head slightly to distance himself better from the tricorder, the Captain cleared his throat before continuing.

"Yes, my vision was unaffected by my assimilation...the medical teams managed to remove everything the Borg installed there at least. Why do you ask?"

John had memorised exactly where all the remaining implants in his body were located, what their function was and what the likely issue of their failure would be. He was forced to keep a degree of alien technology within his body, and this was something he simply had to live with.

"Bartender? Yes...the new facilities being installed. I had almost forgotten about it. I was going to ask Starfleet to assign a suitable crewmember."

"Oh, it's just your eye does this odd little twitching motion when I get near you," Olsam said, moving back to a more respectable distance while continuing the scans. "A crew member? I haven't met a crew member yet who's competent at tending a bar. Do you know what's involved, captain? The sheer level of expertise required? You can't leave something like that in the hands of a petty officer."

Attempting to be discreet, Olsam motioned wildly to Sigrid to elaborate.

She immediately started counting things off on her fingers without missing a beat to think. "Supply requisitions, supervising bar staff, planning and preparing menus, appropriate handling of intoxicated patrons, inventory management, ensure mise-en-place standards are met, anticipate unique cultural needs of the crew, ensure high standard of cleanliness, prepare duty schedules for the cooks and servers, I really could keep going." She smiled again, wishing Olsam would stop antagonizing the Captain further. The scar on his cheek was more visible to her now that he seemed flushed with annoyance.

Olsam looked surprised. "Huh. That really is a lot."

John really did have more pressing concerns right now. The Quartermaster had decided that it would be an excellent idea to remove the engineers from the Galileo in charge of refitting their phaser arrays so that they could service another starship. The Captain was of course less than happy to learn that deck four had been left looking like a scrap yard as the engineers had left in such a hurry. Right now he was more concerned with fighting than drinking. The hovering probe that refused to move away from his eye just added to his ire.

"I am aware of the duties involved. But Galileo is a starship not a pleasure vessel - civilian personnel are not expected to be assigned to a ship this small - in case you hadn't noticed we aren't exactly the most luxurious option in the fleet."

John was beginning to get frustrated as the medical tricorder continued to buzz around his head and neck, how long did it take to get a decent scan of his body? Unless he was the size of a small moon (in which case he really needed to address his fitness routine) there was no need for this degree of poking and prodding.

"Doctor is this really necessary? I feel fine."

Sigrid, who was trying hard to be unphased by Olsam's medical exam, wasn't sure why they kept referring to the ship as so small. To her, it was the largest thing she'd ever seen, let alone been on. She stepped forward and sat with plunk into one of the chairs facing the Captain's desk. "You're absolutely right, Capitaine." She pronounced it the way Vegan colonists did. "That's why, if you review my resume, you'll see I'm already a part of Starfleet's civilian corps. I've taken all the required classes to be on a Starship and I understand that this isn't a pleasure vessel. There would be drapery and better furniture if it were." She indicated to the uninspired office space. with a smile. "I have a knack for anticipating people's needs and putting them at ease, Capitaine, I should expect that to be an asset for this crew."

John was a little offended by her reference to the state of dcor in his office. Whilst Lirha might have preferred drapes and other soft furnishings had she been given access to a wider range of requisition items, Holliday preferred his office a little more functional. He had installed some small items of his own in the room to make it clear he was now in command but other than that he found it perfectly acceptable.

"Your logic seems....sound Miss Thelin. Are you prepared for service in space as opposed to working planetside?"

"Absolutely. A lot of people I've spoken to say they have a hard time keeping occupied when they work off planet but I'm also pursuing an undergraduate science degree on the side. I really don't think boredom or cabin fever is much of a worry to me." She crossed her legs, and smoothed the fabric of her skirt. Her eyes never left the man's face.

Olsam lifted both his hairless brows; undergraduate science degree? Huh.

"I think the Galileo would be the perfect platform for a civilian pursuing a degree in the sciences," he chimed in, trying to be helpful. He closed the medical tricorder and tucked it back in the medkit before analyzing some of the data on a PADD. "There's a great deal that can be learned from the other scientists!"

Sigrid broke eye contact with Holliday to look at Olsam with genuine surprise. "You have scientists?" Her attention returned fully to the other man and she clapped her hands together across her chest. "Oh Capitane, this is just a perfect match. If you accept my application I will not let you down."

John signed in defeat - it was extremely unlikely that he would be able to lose this debate to the annals of history without having to accept the case that was being presented to him. The Captain made a mental note to never get into any kind of debate with their new doctor.

"Very well. But I expect you to become au fait with this ship and procedures. I can't afford any dead weight in my crew."

Sigrid bit her lip slightly to stop a squeal of delight from erupting. She also resisted the urge to jump on the Bolian and give him kisses for helping her. "Thank-you!" She uncrossed her thin legs and reached across the desk to shake Holliday's hand. "No dead weight here, I promise you."

Olsam looked horrified at the thought of dead weight. He imagined a body slumped over the bar and patrons trying to coax drinks from it. He shuddered, shook his head and smiled at Captain Holliday. "Look at that! A new hire! Maybe I should just start helping Commander Blake with all the personnel assignments. We need more Bolians in the Engineering Department, and I have a lot of relatives..."

"That...won't be necessary Dr Olsam. Galileo has quite sufficient a crew complement. In fact I would suggest you keep your attention on the well being of the crew rather than trying to increase its number in future."

John accepted the hand from their new bartender with his usual firm handshake before making a mental note for Ops to assign her quarters somewhere on the ship.

"Speak with Lieutenant Kita - he is supervising the construction and stocking of the new bar."


Sigrid Thelin
Bartender
USS Galileo

&

Lieutenant JG Olsam Mott, M.D.
Assistant Chief Medical Officer
USS Galileo

&

CAPT Jonathan Holliday
Commanding Officer
USS Galileo

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