Admiral's Advice

Posted on 27 Aug 2014 @ 8:44pm by Rear Admiral Lirha Saalm & Rear Admiral James Hurin

1,254 words; about a 6 minute read

Mission: Episode 06 - Legend of Souls
Location: USS Galileo - Deck 2, Administrative Office
Timeline: MD 07 - 0745 hrs

[ON]

Sitting in her private office, Lirha leaned back in her chair and yawned. It was early and she was tired, and thanks to the constant cooing and chirping of tribbles throughout the night in her quarters, she'd barely gotten a combined two hours of sleep. At 0700 she'd decided to start making her rounds through the ship and had been alarmed at what she'd seen. The small, furry creatures were literally everywhere and there hadn't been a room she had inspected which didn't have its walls littered with various colored balls of fluff....including her own administrative cubicle where she now situated.

Enough was enough, she'd decided a couple minutes ago. As much as she'd liked to have kept the infestation under wraps and sort it out on their own, that likelihood was severely dwindling and she now had an obligation to inform her superiors of the peril now facing Galileo. Dreading the call she now had to make, she touched the screen of the LCARS console in front of her to bring the black screen to life, then initiated a communication link with Task Force Command. Patiently and uncomfortably, she waited for Admiral Hurin to appear on the screen.

James smiled as the screen came on. He was sitting at a desk with stars in the background. "Commodore, Saalm. This is a pleasant surprise! How is the mine investigation going?"

Lirha did her best to smile in return despite the admiral's pleasant nature. Being the bearer of bad news was never easy for her, especially when she knew she was probably going to get chewed out in a matter of minutes.

"Hello, admiral. The investigation is progressing...although slowly. We seem to keep running into a mix of uncooperative Cardassians and malfunctioning equipment." She then paused and nervously rubbed the back of her green neck. "I actually have something else to report..some bad news. It appears Galileo has been infested with......tribbles," she motioned with her hand to the wall behind her so Hurin could see the fluffy creatures slowly crawling all over it.

Hurin's face went from pleasant to one of near-horror as he instinctively performed a facepalm. "Oh. Shit." he said quietly after letting his hand fall down to his beard while shaking his head. "Honestly, I'd rather you tell me you were dealing with an invasion force of Borg, or ghost ships...or anything but tribbles."

The commodore wholeheartedly agreed and drooped her head a bit with embarrassment. "Yes. I suppose it is my fault, really," she began to explain while trying her best to avoid her sister from getting in trouble. "A few months ago during shore leave, I took a small group of our officers back to my homeworld, Rigel VII. While we were there, we visited a tribble farm and several of us ended up...adopting a few of the creatures as pets, then brought them back aboard Galileo. Recently one of them was accidentally left unattended for most of the day, and managed to somehow escape from its terrarium and into the ship's ventilation system, after which it made its way to the mess hall and began to feed and reproduce."

James pinched the bridge of his nose and shook his head slowly while listening to the commodore's explanation. Once she was finished, he sighed and looked back up to the screen. "Lirha, how many thousands are on board the Galileo right now? I ask because when I was on the Kennedy, we had an incident that involved those fuzzy miscreants. We had to eventually lure them into Main Engineering with a buffet and then jettisoned the core and decompressed the entire engineering deck, sending them out into the vacuum of space."

Lirha's eyes widened with mild horror while she listened to the admiral's story. Decompressing tribbles into space and killing them seemed so wrong on so many levels...but apparently it had been deemed necessary for the safety of the ship. Or so she sincerely hoped.

"Well... I do not have an exact number because they keep multiplying so quickly...but if I had to guess," she paused and rubbed her chin in thought while her eyes looked up at the ceiling. "Maybe a quarter of a million. Possibly more," she guestimated.

"Well, maybe put them into a few storage crates and beam them into the tunnels and introduce them to the Cardassians??" He replied with a smile.

She couldn't help but let out a light laugh at the playful suggestion. It was a relief to know that the admiral at least had a sense of humor about the critter debacle currently taking place on her ship. At least, she though it was humor.

"I would love to but unfortunately many of our subsystems are being affected and several of our secondary ship functions are offline. Our engineering teams are doing their best to clear out the tribbles from our power manifolds and relays, but we do not have enough personnel to keep up," she explained in a more serious tone. "Our CMO is working with her staff to try and curb their reproduction rate, but...progress is slow. And in the meantime, the tribbles continue to multiply."

"I feel bad for you, Lirha." James stated as he shook his head. "I once heard that tribbles and Klingons can not stand each others scent. Maybe if you fill your ship full of Klingon musk, they will move out? Of course, we'd have to scuttle the ship into the closest sun."

The Orion shook her head at that unpleasant notion. "I am not going to abandon Galileo...especially not for a tribble infestation." She and her crew had been through hell and back over the past year in space, and somehow they had managed to survive renegade Klingons, rogue Borg, and a plethora of other obstacles. Surely a non-sentient species such as tribbles would not be their downfall. "We will do our best to contain them but we may need a decontamination team to assist us once we return to port."

"Happily. Whatever you need. You sure the Cardassians won't want them?" he asked jokingly.

"I would rather not start a diplomatic incident on my watch, but...I will keep it in mind," she replied with her own half-jest. It was probably easy for Hurin to find the humor in the situation, but for Lirha who was stuck on Galileo and watching the infestation worsen every day, it was hard to not feel worried and stressed. "Anyway, I just thought you should be aware of our situation. I will keep you updated on any new developments, of course."

"Thank-you, Lirha. I appreciate it, and seriously...if those fuzzy sex addicts get too far out of hand, you report to DS-Nine for decontamination. Hurin out."

Lirha watched the screen go black and quietly sighed to herself. She hadn't expected the admiral to be as calm as he was about the problem, and it unnerved her for some reason. As strange as it sounded, she almost would have preferred to get a proper tongue lashing which might have cleared her head a bit and helped her to focus on a solution to the problem. Now, however, she supposed she and her ship were on their own to sort out this furry epidemic.

[OFF]

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CDRE Lirha Saalm
Mission Advisor
USS Galileo

Rear Admiral James Hurin
Commanding Officer
USS Nimitz
[PNPC Quinn]

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