Weeding out the Negligent

Posted on 04 Sep 2014 @ 9:51pm by Petty Officer 3rd Class Ellsworth Hudson & Petty Officer 1st Class Pieter Van Zyl Ph.D.

3,650 words; about a 18 minute read

Mission: Episode 06 - Legend of Souls
Location: USS Galileo - Deck 3, Cargo Bay 1
Timeline: MD08 - 0900hrs

[ON]

Without much of an office, per se, he often had to make due with what was available to him, so Ellsworth had found an acceptable perch on top of one of the lower cargo containers in Cargo Bay 2. It had taken a bit of work to haul his short frame up there, but now he was comfortable seated with his back leaning against some higher stacks of containers. The PADD in front of him displayed the ship's inventory database, but he was only just now turning his attention back to it. He'd spent the first hour of his morning daydreaming about the night he'd spent with Grayson, wrestling with whether it had been too fulfilling or even appropriate. But for now, he had dived into the database, which seemed to be undergoing frustratingly constant revision with the tribble epidemic. He was quickly running out of places to store things, and he'd fallen woefully behind on the associated paperwork.

He was broken out of his analysis of the paDD when the doors to the Cargo Bay swished open and a tall, broad man entered, looking incredibly annoyed.

Scanning the room, it took Pieter a few moments to finally catch sight of the yellow uniform several stories up.

There's the little rat,' he thought to himself. This was what happened when you put children in charge of sensitive information and cargo. He looked down at the small box in his hands, a fresh wave of anger rising inside him. He finally put it down on one of the large cargo containers before speaking.

"Petty officer Hudson," he signed, taking a step back so that Hudson could see him more clearly.

Ellsworth caught movement out of the corner of his eye and felt a good deal of anger entering the cargo bay, which was curious. Most people didn't come into the cargo bay angry. They usually came in here curious, looking for something. He put down his PADD and rolled over, laying flat on his stomach to peer over the edge down at Pieter. Oh, Great Fire below, what the hell is he doing? he thought, watching him sign. He vaguely remembered learning Federation Standard Sign Language during enlisted training, but he'd only barely passed it. And that was months ago!

"Uh," Ellsworth began eloquently, bringing his hands up in front of him and looking at them as if they were foreign tools. This was going to be difficult. He started off just trying to make a sign, but then his mind finally kicked in. He wasn't blind, right? He could probably read lips. "Can you understand me?"

Pieter looked at Ellsworth as if he'd grown another head. 'What the hell is he doing?' he thought to himself as the boy started to wave his arms around before seeming to give up. Watching him curiously, Pieter saw his lips move into the phrase he was used to seeing before they finally showed up on his glasses.

Looking even more confused, Pieter finally looked down at his wrist to check in case his VOICE was malfunctioning. Checking through the options, he finally made a frustrated face.

The mute button was on.

Resisting the urge to roll his eyes at himself, he turned the volume up to 75% before trying again.

"You are Petty officer Hudson." The tone of voice of the device coming from Pieter's wrist was calm, almost drone-like in how monotonous it sounded. At least, that was how it was always described to Pieter himself.

"Correct?" he asked, just to check.

Ellsworth looked from the VOICE device to Pieter, then repeated the action. He'd had a sheltered upbringing and equally sheltered training in Starfleet, so Pieter was definitely the first person with a hearing disability he'd ever encountered. For several long moments Ellsworth just stared in curiosity, puzzling out the purpose of the device and what it must be like to exist without hearing. He finally blinked and recalled the question.

"Uh, yeah. Yes. I'm Petty Officer Hudson, but you can just call me Ellsworth. What can I do for you?" he asked, smiling. He didn't need to be an advanced telepath to feel how angry this guy was, but he wasn't sure what else to do but smile.

"Petty officer Hudson," Pieter began, using his title for emphasis. What was the Fleet coming to, if petty officers looked and acted like teenage girls? He would expect such unprofessional behaviour from the new officers the Academy seemed to be pumping out daily, but not from an enlisted!

"Do you mind telling me what that is?" Finishing the sentence with brisk, precise movements, one of Pieter's arms swept to the side smoothly to point to the small container he'd brought.

The box itself was nothing spectacular, just your standard container for transporting biological material. The only thing that set it apart was that the top was open to reveal what looked to be a withered weed.

Ellsworth looked a little taken aback, like he wasn't sure what to do with the other man. He was so stiff and mechanical, a lot like the device that spoke for him. And why was he calling him 'Petty Officer Hudson'? No one ever called him that except Lieutenant Zhao. Or sometimes K'os, just for fun, when they were rolling around in the sheets together. He got easily distracted by that particular thought, though K'os suddenly looked a lot like Grayson in his mind, and ended up grinning stupidly while following Pieter's gesture toward the box.

"I don't know, something dying?" Ellsworth asked, lifting an eyebrow and turning up his nose. He could sense already that wasn't the answer the guy was looking for, so he hastily added, "I can scan the label if you'd like a more specific answer, though."

Pieter took an audibly deep breath in order to calm himself down, unaware of how hostile it sounded to his fellow crewman.

"You do that, Petty officer," he encouraged. "And wipe that smile off your face, this is serious business."

Ellsworth clamped his mouth shut and tried to match the seriousness of Pieter's look, although it really just looked like he was mocking him. He spun himself around on the cargo container and draped his legs over the side, struggling to slide off the top without ending up in a crumpled mess on the deck. His boots finally hit the floor and he grabbed up the nearest scanner. Without meeting Pieter's eyes - feeling his anger was enough, having to look at it would only make it worse - he scanned the label on the unassuming container then looked at the display.

"It's, uh," he stammered, trying to puzzle out the scientific name of the planet. He turned the scanner so Pieter could look at it. "How do you say that?"

Pieter gave the young man a judging look. "It's an Aaamazzara evening primrose." Saying the scientific term would be lost on Ellsworth, Pieter realised and just outright refused, instead going for the colloquial term.

"Do you know why it's called an 'evening' primrose, Petty officer?"

Ellsworth laughed loudly and openly, partially from amusement but more out of nervousness. Even with the VOICE device smoothing out the usual intonations, he knew why people asked questions like that. It was always a prelude to trouble.

"No. No, I don't. I just store stuff. I don't really know anything about plants," Ellsworth admitted, taking a sudden interest in the state of his boots. He didn't even remember the plant, much less moving it around or doing something that would kill it, though the manifest did have his name plastered all over it.

"Look at me when I'm talking to you, Hudson. You are a Starfleet enlisted officer, not a four year old boy caught with his hand in the cookie jar."

Ellsworth looked up with surprise that quickly changed to outrage and then withered into compliance from the look on Pieter's face. Hearing the monotonous tone of the machine and then feeling the anger caused a little bit of a disconnect for him, one which would probably have brought shame upon him if any other Betazoids were around. He'd come to rely far too much on his ordinary senses to process information.

But more importantly, he hadn't been spoken to like that since boot camp; evidently, he'd been lulled into a false sense of security by the rampant informality aboard the Galileo. He'd assumed - incorrectly, it seemed - that everyone in the real fleet evinced a spirit of easy-going camaraderie and all that yelling and discipline from training was just for show.

"Now that I have your undivided attention, let me continue. It's called an evening primrose because it requires very little light," Pieter explained and, although the voice it was spoken in didn't show any emotion, the way the large man moved his hands quickly and forcefully, the emotion was clear.

"That means that, for it to thrive it needs less than twelve hours of light a day. It needs to be stored at no less than eight degrees Celsius and no more than twenty. The light source should be no less than six metres away from the plants." Pieter looked over at the plant.

"Does that plant look like it's thriving, Petty officer?"

Ellsworth cut his eyes to look at the plant. It certainly didn't look like it was thriving, but then again maybe it was just a really ugly plant. "Um, I don't think so, but really I don't know anythi-"

"No, it isn't. And do you know why?" Pieter asked, cutting the man off. Whether it was intentional or if Pieter simply didn't notice Ellsworth's talking was a matter of debate.

"It isn't thriving because, instead of finding this specimen and nineteen other specimens just like it in those conditions, I found it on the top shelf in Cargo Bay 1, three feet away from a light source, which was burning away at it for two days straight." Forcefully lowering his arms when he finished the presentation of fact, Pieter took a step towards the Betazoid, towering over him.

"The instructions for how these specimens are to be handled are on a paDD attached to the specimens so would you like to explain yourself, petty officer, while I'm still in a good mood?"

Ellsworth's eye twitched once, the only physical symptom of all the rebellion boiling up inside of him at the moment. Everything he could try to think to say for himself started off with "Now you see here" or something equally confrontational, a confrontation he recognized he would lose. But that didn't really seem to matter much. Where did this guy get off storming in here telling him how to do his job? Did he have any idea what it was like trying to keep track of everything on board an enormous starship in the middle of a tribble epidemic? So some plants died. Big deal. Plants die all the time, he thought.

"Well," Ellsworth said, doing a poor job of keeping his voice calm and measured. "I guess I didn't see those instructions when I authorized the move for those containers." His jaw set and his eyes darted from side to side; he was running out of things to say. "I mean, can't you just replicate more of them or something anyway? It's just a plant."

'Just a plant? Pieter thought, now looking thoroughly pissed off.

"Don't you think that, if I could replicate it in the first place, I wouldn't need it to be transported over?" Pieter asked rhetorically of the petty officer. He couldn't believe someone so negligent and green had been put in charge of something as delicate as cargo management on such an important ship. The Fleet really was going to the dogs.

"As for not seeing the instructions, what the hell do you do all day, then? Reading instructions and making sure everything was where it is supposed to be, in the proper conditions, is your entire job." Pieter was outraged. He was angry about losing his specimens (they were vital in some pharmaceutical research he was conducting), but what really set him off was how lightly the young man in his presence seemed to regard his duty.

"And what if, tomorrow, you don't read the instructions on how to store biohazard materials and an infection spreads? What if it spreads to you? You would care to open both eyes then, wouldn't you? Because unless something seems to be biting you on the ass personally, you don't care enough," the botanist furiously signed.

"That's the only explanation I can see here, and it's absolutely unforgivable, Hudson. What do you have to say for yourself?"

Ellsworth had tried to open his mouth and say something at several points, but it was clear that the other crewman wasn't interested in hearing excuses. He hadn't really thought before speaking, otherwise he probably wouldn't have made the replicator comment. And he was always careful with biohazard material! Real stuff, important stuff, always got double checked. Plants hardly seemed as important, especially not when they were obviously so touchy.

The dressing down had thoroughly drained his belligerence, though; now he just felt like crying. But he didn't. He bit his lip and focused very hard on not crying, because this guy seemed like the sort to just take that as encouragement. "I think you've about covered it all," he retorted. "I'll file a requisition to get more..." He paused, trying to think of the stupid plant's name. This seemed like a horrible time to betray that he hadn't really been paying all that much attention prior to the yelling, but he couldn't for the life of himself recall the name. "More of those plants, when we're near a supply depot that has them."

"You do that, petty officer, and in the meantime, I'll be filing a formal complaint to your department head," Pieter informed him. Behavior like this was unacceptable from an officer in his position. He didn't care if Hudson was transporting toothpicks, cadavers or crates full of puppies, they all deserved to be looked over with proper care and responsibility. He wasn't about to tolerate mishandling cargo from the quartermaster of all people! Some cargo handler chucking boxes around, sure, but not the man in charge.

Hopefully the reprimand will be good incentive for Hudson to pull his head out of his behind for once and act like an officer.

Ellsworth's mouth fell open in shock and disbelief. "Wait, what? A formal complaint? I just accidentally misplaced some plants! There are tribbles everywhere, we don't have the luxury of putting everything in its own precious little stasis field at something-something degrees Celsius and light that mimics an Altairian sunset or whatever! You can't file a complaint against me, I said I'd get you more of those things!"

Ellsworth wasn't sure whether to panic, be enraged or just run out of the cargo bay. It was unthinkable that someone would report him to his department head over some stupid plants. Sure, sure, maybe he'd been a little negligent. Maybe he figured that PADD has been full of all the same nonsensical storage instructions as everything else and didn't read it. Maybe he'd bypassed an inventory flag or two just to authorize its transfer. But so what? That didn't seem like a complaint-worthy offense!

"This is your job, petty officer," Pieter stated, frustrated. How could this be so hard to grasp? "This is a science ship with scientific cargo, which is your responsibility. Don't use the tribbles as an excuse because, two days ago when the plants arrived, the tribble infestation was minor at best."

"I can put in a complaint and I will. This type of behavior from a quartermaster is unacceptable," Pieter said, taken aback by the comment on what he could or couldn't do as the superior officer in this situation. "In Cargo Bay 1, I found the microbiologist's cargo didn't seem to be mishandled. Do you want to tell me why that is?" Pieter had his suspicions, but he wanted to hear Hudson confirm them.

Ellsworth recalled that particular bit of cargo well because it had scared the hell out of him. Some sort of bacterial cultures that caused something called Rakaelian flu, which the cargo manifest had been quick to point out was thus far extremely difficult to treat and almost always fatal. It had been kind of hard to miss with all the alerts attached to the manifest and the biohazard emblems plastered all over the container itself.

"Well... They're biohazard. Some kinda bacterial culture that causes...Rakta...Rikka.... I don't know, some kind of deadly flu or something," Ellsworth said, as if that was explanation enough for why he'd take more care with some cargo than with others.

"So it was important? And my cargo wasn't? Just because a certain piece of cargo doesn't have a big, flashy sign saying 'I kill people' slapped to the side of it, doesn't mean it isn't important," Pieter argued. He'd planned to study the Aaamazzara primrose to see the perfect conditions in which they could grow and bloom constantly throughout the year after their petals were proven to have a compound that could be used to treat a hemolytic infection currently running rampant on Myos III. That was equally important in Pieter's mind but, judging by the complete lack of logical thinking in the boy in front of him, he refrained from cluing Hudson into that.

"All cargo is important, that's why there is one person on every ship hired to just oversee that part of ship's operations. On the Galileo that's you, Hudson. This isn't a cruise ship and you're not on vacation. You're a soldier, and it's time for you to start taking your job seriously."

Ellsworth looked properly chastised. Of course all cargo was important, but sometimes some cargo was more important than others. Some cargo had a lot of bells and whistles and flashing lights, and some just looked like plants. Naturally, one looked far more important than the other, and, honestly, Ellsworth had felt out of this depth from the moment he'd stepped foot on the ship. He'd been pressed into a job for which he wasn't ready and shipped off without sufficient training; at first he'd thought he would learn as he went along, but now he wasn't so certain.

He broke eye contact with Pieter again, casting around for something else to look at. A quartermaster on a task force flagship, barely holding it together... It was a wonder something like this hadn't happened way before now. What was he even doing here? Every report he'd ever received from the Betazoid Ministry of Education was lurking off in the corner of his mind: "poor critical thinking skills," "short attention span," "underdeveloped math & science skills," "problems with authority," "demonstrates poor self-control." He could feel the self-loathing welling up inside of himself already, as if the botanist's words were a drill centered over a pressurized reservoir of insecurities just waiting to be released.

"Yes, of course, you're right," Ellsworth said, fighting off the oncoming emotions. He'd be damned if he was going to cry in front of this asshole.

Pieter nodded, satisfied with the officer's current behavior. It was the proper response to the situation, unlike his previous outbursts of emotion and excuses. That was how it was done - if you make a mistake, you take the criticism and move on, making a decision to do better.

Still, the young man looked a little more under the weather than he'd expected. 'He'll get over it,' Pieter reasoned and nodded to Hudson.

"This time the damage was minimal, Hudson," he signed. "You won't let it happen again." That was as comforting as Pieter was willing to be.

"Carry on, Hudson." Finishing with that, Pieter gave Hudson a stern nod, took the primrose before walking out of the Cargo Bay, towards Operations.

As soon as Pieter was gone, Ellsworth threw the cargo scanner toward the door he'd passed through, angry tears appearing in the corner of his eyes. It landed a few meters short of the door and skittered uselessly across the deck, unsurprising given the lack of strength in his arms. He'd had something far more dramatic in mind - the cargo scanner striking the door and shattering into a million pieces - but even if it'd made it to the door, it probably would have just bounced off. Stupid Starfleet quality standards.

He wiped quickly at his eyes before tears started streaming down his face and groaned, trying hard to clamp down on his emotions. You shouldn't cry on the job. He'd basically "heard" everything Pieter had said - if you make a mistake, you take the criticism and move on. He'd just expected the criticism to be a little more reasonably delivered. And what was he going to say to Lieutenant Zhao, anyway? No one seemed to make a mistake on this ship. Or anywhere in the fleet.

He turned to leave the cargo bay then did an about face. He sighed and slumped his shoulders as he remembered leaving his PADD up on the cargo container where Pieter had found him. The last thing he wanted to do was climb up there. He scowled at the container, silently cursing it for its height, and started to kick it. But then he stopped himself. There might be something important in there.

"Ugh," Ellsworth said aloud, moving to scale the container. "Stupid ship. Stupid job. Stupid Starfleet. Stupid plants."


[OFF]

PO1 Pieter Van Zyl
Botanist
USS Galileo

&

PO3 Ellsworth Hudson
Quartermaster
USS Galileo

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