All In The Name of Science...

Posted on 09 Apr 2015 @ 3:38am by Ensign Arandon Khnailmnae Ph.D. & Commander Andreus Kohl

3,112 words; about a 16 minute read

Mission: Episode 08 - NIMBUS
Location: USS Galileo, Arboretum
Timeline: MD -01, 1900 Hours

[On]

A wet hand appeared on the grass on the edge of the pond in the Arboretum. Digging into the verdant green grass, the arm accompanying it arched as it pulled a mass out of the depths of the pond. Waddling over and rapidly moving their heads to look at the mysterious hand at different angles, the Galileo's family of ducks was surprised at another occupant of their pond. After a moment they started to peck at the hand, which provoked a reaction from the hand's owner.

Bursting out of the water, Arandon's head and other arm collapsed on the edge of the pond, startling the ducks as he spat up half their home, heaving and gasping from the ordeal. Using what little strength he had, Arandon pulled his torso out of the depths of the pond and used his tired and strained legs to inch his collapsed body along the grass. Breathing for a moment, the Ducks quacked alternating between tones of concern over the damage done to their home and the state of the mysteriously large fish that had appeared on the grass.

Lacking the strength to pat their nibbling beaks, Arandon just said immobile for a few minutes, before turning himself over to face the artificial sun. He continued to cough as he recovered from his brush with the pond, waiting for what seemed like hours before moving, or more aptly, crawling to get the drainage tube.

About an hour later, recovered but still very tired, Arandon looked down at the empty two meter pond. Two meters, not one, two, thanks to an adjustable pond bottom. The Ducks were a little displeased at the uprooting of their home and occasionally one would come over to peck on Arandon's hands but a quick glare from him would frighten them off.

"Computer open a channel to the Nautilus," Arandon said in an exhausted tone, wiping some of the water from his brow. "Lieutenant Commander Andreus Kohl."

From one of the communications speakers hidden in the arboretum, a voice replied, "This is Kohl." The sensitive communications equipment picked up on the voice cleared its throat. "Go ahead."

"Can you hear me Commander?" Arandon asked, typing in some commands to the PADD he had next to him.

"I ca--" the disembodied voice of Kohl started to say, but he was confused when the voice he was hearing didn't sound like anybody aboard Nautilus "Is that... Is that Ensign Khnailmnae?" Kohl asked. "Yes... yes, I can hear you."

"Good, now can you see me?" Arandon asked, linking the visual sensors of the Arboretum's sun fixture to the subspace communications system. Looking up Arandon waved a bit, though it was more like a motion of hand drawing attention and less of a hello. He might have been immodestly dressed but his uniform was soaked from his excursion to the bottom of the pond and modesty was not a Risian trait.

The image of Andreus Kohl appeared in a partitioned square of the holographic sky. Kohl was similarly half-dressed, and made no effort to cover himself up. Kohl appeared to be sitting behind the desk in his quarters, where he was ostensibly dressed in his uniform. However, the black duty jacket was nowhere to be seen, and his crimson, high-collared tunic was open down the front. "Yes," Kohl said with some emphasis. He nodded too. "I can see you."

Arandon nodded sharply in affirmation. "Excellent. Now do you recall how we met?" He asked, getting up and moving to the other side of the pool.

The image of Kohl swept a hand to indicate Arandon. "You offered to help," Kohl replied, "my investigation into why the Gal's pond couldn't sustain the growth of a, uh, a mundane plant." At the time, Kohl had referred to the plant as Callitriche verna, and Arandon had referred to it as mundane.

"Exactly, a common freshwater plant was unable to grow in its optimum range despite no abnormalities in the regular water chemistry." Arandon explained, alternating between looking up at Kohl and the drained pond. "Which made me wonder, and after three days of detailed analysis I finally found an anomaly in the pond water."

Unclear on how he ended up on the receiving end of a detailed analysis about pond water, Kohl closed his eyes for a couple of heartbeats. He scratched the back of his neck, and counted to five in his head. "What was the anomaly?" Kohl asked, trying terribly, terribly hard not to sound annoyed. He opened his eyes wide and searched the screen for Arandon's form.

"In short, tribbles." Arandon said as he lowered himself down the ladder formed my indents into the wall of the pond lining. "You said when we first met that tribble hairs were caught in the filter, now the filtration system itself was clean but something was still causing a rash to appear under the wings of the ducks." Arandon said, his voice echoing off the metallic lining of the pond and his body no doubt mostly obscured from the shadows created by the depths and angle of the pond from the artificial sun. "I tried to wade in this afternoon but instead of being one meter as you described on our first meeting, the pond was... a bit deeper." Arandon gestured to his largely bare body but he didn't know if Commander Kohl could see that.

The biases in Kohl's concern became evident rather quickly. Rather than acknowledge the depth of the pool, or their earlier conversations, the only thing Kohl could think to ask was, "Are the ducks going to recover?"

Arandon did a double take for a moment, wondering if he had heard Commander Kohl correctly. "I... believe so, it's just a rash caused by a minor allergic reaction." Arandon didn't know what personal significance the ducks had for Commander Kohl but it was apparently greater than his concern for the health of the pond water. Going over that statement in his mind, Arandon perhaps saw why the Commander would be more concerned about the ducks, most humanoids tended to prefer animals over plants, and certainly over microbes.

"Well, now, that's a relief. I would hate to think anything else was lost to the tribble flood," said Kohl. "What did you discover," Kohl asked, "when you waded into the pool?" He waggled a circling, solitary finger at Arandon. Kohl was pointing at his bare chest in particular, but it was likely hard to tell when Kohl's image was up in the sky, and Arandon was so far from the hidden camera.

"Grime that had formed from a mixture of bacteria from Cardassian mining waste and Tribble hairs." Arandon said, kneeling down before the faint and spotty green blotches on the side of the metal lining. "Each time the pond bottom was raised or lowered it scraped along the grime causing some of it to be released, over all its not particularly harmful and easily counteracted by the filter, which is why it took so long to find it. Every time it was released the filter would take care of it but not before it did some damage, infecting the root structure of the plants and causing an allergic reaction in the ducks." Arandon explained, unsure if Commander Kohl would even be interested in that or in fact any of this, but he felt a need to inform him of the situation. Arandon was often driven mad by little anomalies and imperfections that refused to be solved or explained, and this was one of those times. Still if he hadn't gone digging earlier today, nothing might have grown or perhaps the reaction of the ducks might have grown more extreme, even fatal. That, if nothing else, certainly would have upset the Commander.

"Is there..." Kohl started to ask, but he trailed off when the words wouldn't come as quickly as the thought behind them. Any trace of his previous irritation was gone, as he considered the wider implications of what Arandon was telling him. "Is there anything we can learn from the pond while its in that condition?"

"Other than the fact that the pond has an adjustable bottom?" Arandon posed examining the extent of the grime. "Nothing I can think of, do you have something in mind." Arandon picked up on the Commander's more engaged tone and response, perhaps he saw something useful or perhaps had an idea.

Shaking his head, Kohl said, "Oh, no," perhaps a bit too emphatically. He shrugged and he frowned to further make his point. "I can't say that's one of my fields of expertise. It's just dirty pond water to me. ...If you can't learn anything from that particular grime-combination, I imagine you're putting in orders to have the pond properly detailed and repaired?"

"It's Cardassian industrial waste that mixed with bacteria formed on Tribble hairs, it's an effective herbicide but we're usually not in the business of killing plants. Perhaps Doctor Qellar will find it of use though." Arandon mused at the end, she was an agricultural specialist and one who thought on the 'grand scale', perhaps what they found here would have some use, just not on the Galileo. "So what is your field of expertise Commander?" Arandon said, looking up at Kohl's image in the sky. He certainly knew the Commander was no botanist but he never discovered what his specialty was.

Kohl's expression changed to one of puzzlement, but only briefly. He had so filled his head with thoughts of starship operations and battle tactics, that he couldn't immediately remember what made up his science officer cred. Eventually, Kohl remembered enough to say, "I studied anthropology during my first go-round at the Academy, and then I went back to study xeno-biology."

"Oh," Arandon said with a nod of his head in a slightly awkward acknowledgement, luckily Commander Kohl probably couldn't see it, still the tone was telling enough. "Have you always been a researcher then?" He asked, trying to recover from his earlier awkwardness which might have been seen as a 'looking down'.

"No," was all Kohl said at first. He had just gone through this the other day, baffled by how this was still --still-- a difficult conversation for him. And yet every time, every. single. time., he had no way to guess how a new person was going to react, and so he assumed they would all react as badly as Oren had done. Kohl could only hope that Arandon's disinterested reactions to most anything Kohl added to conversation would continue. Kohl said, "I've served Starfleet as a diplomat, a Chief Medical Officer, and as a Nurse Practitioner."

"That's quite the portfolio." Arandon said, his accent highlighted, though it was a bit appreciative, even though his accent was normally haughty when so clear. "So you're not a scientist then?" Perhaps his questions were impertinent but he was merely making conversation, or perhaps he had a point, but was doing a very poor job of getting to it.

Kohl held his breath. There it was; that was one of the dreaded questions. Kohl breathed out, and, oddly, the question came as a relief. "No," Kohl said, and this time it came out easily. "I'm really not. I'm a Starfleet officer, learning as much about starship operations as I can in a teal collar."

Arandon furrowed his brow trying to make sense of what Commander Kohl had just said. "So this position is a means to Command?" He asked. "Forgive me I don't quite understand."

"It's a means to service," Kohl said. He was sounding far more certain now than he had done before. His posture shifted, and his shoulders squared. "I'm giving command a try, but I'm here to serve the Federation. I go where they need me, or wherever strikes my fancy this week... But I think I would get bored doing the same thing every year after the other."

Arandon certainly didn't get bored of things easily, and certainly not in the span of a year. "I suppose so, I wouldn't though." He said, interjecting his own thoughts on the matter. "There's something about repetition and static environments that I find comfortable, desirable. Change isn't something I particularly enjoy." He said, his voice changing volume a few times, unsure about his level of openness.

"How are you coping with your new posting there, aboard Galileo?" Kohl asked. Rather than allow Arandon to answer, Kohl then asked the question he really wanted to ask. "Are you finding any difficulties?"

"Nothing new Commander." Arandon said, artfully avoiding the question, forcing Commander Kohl to think back to their first meeting.

Kohl winced slightly at that. Hesitantly, he asked, "Would the lack of facilities and biodiversity be considered something old?"

"Truth be told I've found that such things are as yet immaterial to my work here Commander, though I might be asking for one or two biodomes when we get to the 'deep space exploration'." Arandon said with a bit of a sarcastic tone, but one that was mixed with perhaps a genuine expression or attempt at humor. "I must admit I didn't expect my first deep space mission to be a War Game. Not much call for a Botanist." He said, using the indented ladder steps to climb back up out of the pond.

"Ensign Khnailmnae," Kohl said, using rank only because it would emphasize his point, "You attended Starfleet Academy, didn't you? You graduated?"

"Indeed." Arandon said, hoisting himself up from the ladder in the absence of a railing.

"And you're familiar," Kohl asked, "with operating starship sensor arrays?" Kohl spun his hand in the air, hoping Arandon would see where he was going with this line of questioning.

Arandon was a bit perplexed at the Commander's line of questioning and he turned around to look up at his face in the sky. "Why do you ask?" He wasn't quite proficient in starship operations, that is to say he could do it, but it was doing it step by step, reading off of his mental textbook.

Now, Kohl was getting excited. "War games could prove to be your perfect opportunity for a stretch assignment. Bridge service as the duty science officer, perhaps?" Kohl recommended. "You've got three science stations on the bridge over there. In the heat of a hunt, you could always use more eyes on the sensors."

"I think not," Arandon said very quickly, turning his eyes around the Arboretum, nonsensically looking for something to busy his eyes. He preferred what he did, 'menial' work, research. This entire assignment was not his choice and it had already produced fractures within himself without added duties on top of that. Lieutenant Faraday had called him 'brilliant' and instead of giving him more research opportunities, he had been shuffled to the Galileo, to 'develop as an officer'. Arandon realized that this was the opportunity that Lieutenant Faraday would want him to take but Arandon was through listening to the man, his work in the Arboretum was just as important. When the Galileo got back to science after this mission, perhaps he would think differently when facing the unknown, but for now, he was content to sit in the Arboretum and the Botany lab conducting evolutionary and morphological simulations.

As he wasn't privy to Arandon's motivations, the holographic representation of Kohl crossed his arms over his chest. It could be interpreted as an act of annoyance, or an attempt to appear professional despite his bare chest. "Excuse me," Kohl said in his newfound demanding tone as an Executive Officer. "You think not?"

Arandon looked up at Commander Kohl, a little perplexed at the sudden outburst. "Yes." It was almost like a question, and he was a bit confused as to what the Commander was getting at. Or perhaps he was offended that his advice had gone unheeded. And had he always been shirtless? Were it any other time Arandon would have appreciated the view of the Commander's physique but at the moment it added an almost poetic attribute. He was like a representation of a Human god; half naked, in the sky, and glaring down at an inferior.

At Arandon's taciturn reply, Kohl could only shrug, and scoff, and give up. Kohl swung his arms wide, and he said, "All right. Enjoy your pond then! I hope the ducks feel better." And even Kohl didn't totally understand what was getting him so irritated. "Can you-- can you speak with Lieutenant Nicholas about it? Ask him how you might best support the NIMBUS exercises?"

"Who?" Arandon said, walking over to the tree where the various pieces of his uniform were hanging, drying out.

His mien remaining low, and defeated, Kohl said, "Lieutenant Nicholas? Jared Nicholas?" --To Kohl this conversation was starting to feel like the Heather Sharpe shame-spiral all over again, putting his ability to communicate with anybody into serious question-- "He's your Acting Chief Science Officer?"

"Never heard of him." Arandon said with a completely sincere shake of his head and shrug of his shoulders as she buttoned up his teal uniform undershirt. Arandon hadn't memorized the Galileo's manifest and granted he was just a Botanist and an Ensign at that but surely he couldn't be that far out of the loop. Or could he? For a moment, Arandon tried to consider what he might have been left out of loop on, but quickly recognized the irony and futility of such an exercise.

"Then you're in luck," Kohl declared. There was the slightest hint of sarcasm in his inflection, but he was starting to find his charm again. Speaking with his hands as much as his lips, Kohl said, "You have the enviable opportunity of meeting Jared for the very first time. He's a good officer, kind and sincere. I went to his wedding! You should introduce yourself to him today."

"I'll try, I have an appointment to keep however." Arandon said as he turned his head up, finishing on the last button of the undershirt.

From his perch in the holographic sky, Kohl said kindly, "Don't let me keep you, Ensign Khnailmnae." --And he affected a professional timbre-- "I thank you for your progress briefing on the pond water."

Arandon gave a swift, professional nod and a pleasant, but not necessarily forced or insincere smile. "You are welcome Commander Kohl." He said, looking up at the image of the man in the sky.


[OFF]

Lieutenant Commander Andreus Kohl
Executive Officer
USS Nautilus

&

Ensign Arandon Khnailmnae
Botanist
USS Galileo

RSS Feed