Where Do We Go From Here? (Part 1 of 2)

Posted on 27 Sep 2015 @ 12:23am by Rear Admiral Lirha Saalm & Lieutenant Benice Gyce Ph.D.

3,354 words; about a 17 minute read

Mission: Episode 09 - Empires
Location: USS Galileo, Lirha's Quarters, Deck 1
Timeline: MD 1: 1730 Hours

[ON]

After shift and not too long after the war games, Gyce found herself looking for any excuse to talk to Lirha. The problem was, she did not want to do so without good reason. After all, she knew the ship talked, and talked a lot.

After she let the butterflies out of her stomach, Gyce pulled her tactical vest down and hit the chime on Lirha's door.

"Lieutenant Benice, Ma'am. I have your new detail rotation," Gyce announced to Lirha fairly casually.

Inside her quarters, Lirha wasn't particularly in the best of moods especially considering which had recently transpired and the uncertainty surrounding current events. However, when the chime chirped inside the room and she heard the security lieutenant's voice through the comm, she let out a quiet sigh and tried her best to push the negative thoughts to the back of her mind for the current moment.

"Enter," she replied from her position on the couch, and then placed her PADD down on the table in front of her.

Gyce entered and limped rather stiffly to the sofa where she greeted Lirha with a warm hug.

"How are things?" the Bajoran began, for she did not want to jump into the real matter of her being there almost instantly.

Lirha gave Gyce a hug in return, one which felt warm and relaxing. Within a few moments, a small commotion could be heard in the other room, and Snuffles trotted out into the living room and waddled his way over to the Orion's visitor. With his baby tusks still growing and protruding from the ridge of his nose, he sniffed at Gyce's leg then began to lick and chew on the bottom of her pant's fabric with affection.

"Things...have been better," replied Saalm with a weak smile. "And you?"

"What the kosst!?" Gyce, startled by Lirha's pet, tried to pull away from the targ pup. This caused the pup to rip her pant leg even more. "Prophets' sake. Get it off me, Lirha."

It was too tempting to use her cane to swat it away. Gyce was well disciplined enough to know this was a pet, one she hopped was not too dangerous. Though it was putting her severely off-balance.

"Oh, he is just teething. Harmless, really," she said with a dismissive wave of her green hand before rising from her seat to go procure a chew toy from the replicator.

"Snuffles! Come here..." she waved the bacon-flavored bone in her hand, distracting the young targ enough for him to leave Gyce's pants alone and come bounding over to Lirha. She tossed the toy over into the kitchen, and within a few moments, Snuffles was happily content to growl and play with it in the other room leaving Saalm and Benice with a bit of privacy.

"Not everyday I meet a targ," Gyce half-smiled. Klingon pets were not normally ideal for non Klingons. But if anyone could tame one, it would be Lirha.

Once she got her bearings back, Gyce sat on the couch beside of Lirha and smiled, "To answer your question, this is a good day... Though I admit, I used that detail roster as a ruse just to come see you."

"I assumed as much," the Orion teased. Duty roster rotations were usually handled by the vessel's XO and CO if needed, and Lirha was a bit too high up in the chain of command to deal with such everyday micromanagement aboard Galileo. "And why is it you wanted to come see me?"

It would be better to blurt it all out. But Gyce could not. Bluntness was not always the best approach. You had to show care and respect as much as honesty, and that required tact. So the work-up first. Yes.

"The other night meant a lot to me Lirha," Gyce admitted with a nervous, but happy shake in her voice. "I don't really sleep with people I just met either. I'd like to think that means something."

Maybe it did, maybe it didn't. Lirha hoped that whatever the long-term outcome would be, they could still remain friends and engage in the occasional hookup. "I think it means something. The hard part is finding out exactly what."

"I'd like to figure that out with you, once your marriage situation has been settled," Gyce hopefully spoke with a half-smile. She was not entirely sure how Lirha would take that statement. "And also when you're ready... Cause if it is more than a friendship, I don't want to be the rebound."

The Orion looked at Gyce with curious green eyes, not quite sure what she meant. "A...'rebound'?" The only Human terminology she knew which matched the vernacular was in reference to a game called basketball -- a game she had never paid much attention to during her limited time on Earth.

"It's what humans refer to a relationship that's a filler between something else," Gyce explained. "I don't really understand it much either, but it happens."

"Oh..." Lirha mused out loud while slowly understanding the inherent meaning behind the phrase. "Well, I did just ended a relationship with someone I loved," she admitted, then paused for a second. "I suppose -- to answer your other statement -- my marriage is now settled. It has been annulled."

That sentence alone completely diffused her whole dilemma. She no longer felt like she had put on a scarlet letter, and her whole body showed that relaxed relief.

"Well then, Lirha, I'd like to get to know you more, with the intent of possibly dating you some day, when you're ready. That is, if you're open to that," Gyce asked with a whole new load of confidence than what she walked in with.

Smiling subtly, Lirha tilted her head to the side while she pondered the idea. It was quite soon to be dating a new partner after her recent separation, but that was not necessarily a bad thing. And she would be lying to herself if she said she hadn't ever done it before in the past. "Perhaps," she teased. "And...what exactly would you like to know about me?"

"What do you like to do for fun," Gyce started out with an eager grin.

What most Orions liked to do, most likely, mused Saalm as she scooted herself closer to the Bajoran. "I enjoy the finer things in life, such as recreation. Dance, film, music, sex...any that stimulates the senses." She couldn't help but giggle a bit.

"What sort of music do you like?" Gyce asked eagerly, for the universe had an array of sounds.

"Oh...anything with drum percussion and strings. Mostly anything I can dance to," she answered with a provocative grin. "I even enjoy the variety of Terran music that has heavy bass."

"Bajorans don't have a lot of the heavy percussion sounds... Mostly that is for the Gratitude Festival and the like," Gyce explained to her friend. "I do like the Terran music style of rock, though... Sometimes I play rock when I pray."

Lirha thought back to what she knew about rock music from her limited time on Earth. It was hard to distinguish the different Earthly art forms from one another because so many of them sounded similar to her -- especially the older art forms -- and she looked curiously at Gyce. "Rock?"

"It has a lot of percussion and electronic sounds," Gyce attempted to explain. "Terrans have a lot of different types of music though, so I'm not really sure how to articulate it."

"Perhaps you could play some?" It was the best way the Orion could think of to familiarize herself with the style of art, and perhaps she would even enjoy it? She really didn't know.

"Computer? Play Nirvana. Come As You Are track," Gyce ordered, and waited a moment before the computer began to play it. "An alternative rock, actually. But a band I like, nonetheless."

Lirha listened to the melody and the lyrics for a while after the song began to play. It sounded much different to her preferred style of Orion percussion and strings, but it was calmingly mellow and tranquil. "I like it," she said after about a minute of listening. "You said this is...'alternative rock'? What makes it 'alternative'?"

"I have no idea about that particular classification. All I know is that for Terran music, it's pretty good," Gyce admitted with a small laugh, but then turned to Lirha with a look of concern. "There anything I can do for you? You look tired."

Rubbing the side of her head where she had hit it in Engineering the previous day, Lirha lightly shrugged and gave a weak smile. "It is probably just some fatigue. Perhaps the dimensional rift we entered affected my body's sleep cycle." Or maybe not. She had no idea. "What would you propose?"

"Have you eaten yet?" Gyce asked for she had some Bajoran recipes she thought Lirha might enjoy.

The rear admiral shook her head. She hadn't had much of an appetite the entire day, and had been much more concerned with the current state of affairs than grabbing a bite to eat. But one probably exacerbated the other, she supposed, and food wasn't a particularly bad idea at the moment. "I suppose I should have a meal."

"I'll make it then," Gyce assured, then rubbed Lirha's taut shoulders for only a moment. "We'll get out of this mess, Lirha. You guys faced the Borg, after all."

Yes...the Borg. And that didn't go particularly too well. Lirha still had the occasional recurring nightmare as a result of Holliday's botched assimilation attempt on her, and it was a week in her life that she would happily do over if she had the chance. But she also knew Gyce was trying to cheer her up, and she was right; if Galileo and her crew had managed to survive that encounter, then they were a very resilient group. She smiled up at the Bajoran and nodded in agreement.

"You smacked your head pretty good when we lost gravity," Gyce pointed out with concern as she stood up and went to the kitchenette and began to pilfer through Lirha's cooling unit for ingredients. "Did you get that bump checked out yet?"

"No, not yet," admitted Saalm while absentmindedly reaching up to rub the sore spot. "Perhaps later today I will stop by sickbay. I also need a dose of my pheromone suppressants." It wouldn't hurt to have one of the doctors check for any swelling or lingering effects of a concussion, she reasoned with herself. Just as long as it didn't turn out to be a serious condition that prevented her from being on duty. "I imagine sickbay has been busy recently. There were quite a few casualties when we entered the anomaly...I am glad we did not lose any of the crew."

"From what I read in the incident reports, yeah. They were pretty busy," Gyce agreed as she started working on bread batter. Her brown eyes suddenly looked to Lirha with slight embarrassment. "I had wondered about our night together... Only because I know so little about how female Orion hormones work with the same gender. More or less was curious to know how much of what happened was just us, and how much were your hormones."

"Oh?" Lirha had never really been asked a question like that...well, not from another woman. The men were usually always the curious ones. "Pheromones in Orion women are usually directed towards the male gender...Starfleet studies have demonstrated that they have little to no effect on other women. Aside from the occasional headache here and there," she tried to explain rather casually and without worry.

Gyce checked the heating unit to see if the pot had melted the butter before she placed the batter into it. Something in Lirha's answer caused a huge grin in Gyce.

"I'm glad to know what happened was pure and completely real between us," Gyce admitted with a slight blush. "It's not often at all that I let people see that side of me. Partly because it's my job to look intimidating to rule breakers and ruffians."

The other part she did not want to admit aloud. But she knew it was because she just thought she had not earned the right to be blissful and blessed with any sort of family.

"Well...even an uptight security officer needs some relaxation from time to time, no?" teased Saalm with her own grin. She unconsciously batted her dark lashes at Gyce and looked at her curvy frame from across the room while she cooked. "Besides," she added, "in bed, I am the head mistress."

Gyce never blushed as much as she did with Lirha in that moment. The Orion really knew how to flirt. It was not that Gyce did not know how, but when she was not sleeping with people as part of her job? She had problems finding the true, natural woman.

So much of her job consisted of telling carefully woven lies into hard truths, that sometimes she did not know herself. The self that existed outside of work and masterful manipulations to slyly force truths of others. That was why she blushed like a schoolgirl with a massive crush on Lirha.

"Kosst!" Gyce looked down at the pan only to realized she gotten one side of her fritter bread a bit crispier than she'd of liked because of her short daze into Lirha's curves. "I'm not normally so careless."

"...What did you do?" Lirha asked without too much concern. Hopefully it was a simple kitchen malfunction and nothing serious. The ship's automatic fire suppressant system would be able to detect any cooking fires and extinguish them if necessary, but so far she hadn't seen any indication of such. "Did you ruin my meal?" she teased again.

"One side of the fritter is a tad crispier than I intended," Gyce admitted almost shyly.

The Orion liked her food crispy. In fact, despite her normally-fit meal regimen, she enjoyed battered and deep fried dishes as much as she could get away with. There was just something about the texture of crunchy food which delighted her...

"I cannot wait." Her stomach was now grumbling while she waited with anticipation.

Within about fifteen minutes, Gyce had fixed fritter bread with Bajoran-whipped potatoes and a slab of broiled targ sirloin for her lover. The irony of the meal brought back her initial interaction with Lirha's pet.

"So why a pet targ?" Gyce asked as she brought Lirha her tray of food.

Lirha looked at the steak and after one whiff, immediately knew what it was. Not that she disliked targ; it was actually quite tasty...but she hoped Snuffles wouldn't mind her eating it in front of her.

As she started in on the potatoes and munched on a piece of bread, she had to think back to her wedding to try and answer the question. "It was my mother's idea, if I remember correctly. A wedding present, of sorts, from the Vajripam targ farm." She looked over at the cute little animal that was now asleep in the far corner. "They are quite adorable when they are young."

"We did not have many animals on our farm," Gyce spoke with envy. "Tree farm... so not a big need for cattle or cattle dogs."

"It is a bit different on Rigel VII...the farms mostly cater to trade and production. Exports of different animals and meat is a big boost to the economy and often times traders come from very far to acquire Vajripam's products," Lirha explained, then looked up from her meal at Gyce. "What type of trees did you grow?"

"Jumja," Gyce spoke bittersweetly, for she missed that place as much as her old home saddened her. "My family - what's left of it really, has a vineyard. We used to, and still do, make and sell wines."

Lirha smiled at that. "I like wine. But I have never tasted...jumja wine?" She wasn't very familiar with that type of refined berry. "Is it nice?"

"Had I thought about it, I'd of brought a bottle from my case," Gyce admitted with a small blush. "It is a sweet wine with a peach-pink hue to it. And we keep a case of our best brews in a cellar under the winery. My aunt actually sends me some of our better grade of wines on occasion. You'd probably love visiting a place like that."

"...Yes, probably..." she mumbled with her mouth full of forkful of potatoes and steak. "Is there a strong market for this jumja wine? Is your family's business profitable?" she wondered out loud once she finished swallowing.

"Before the Occupation, we did average," Gyce admitted and paused a moment before she added, "And because the Cardassians never found some of our cellars, we are now a fairly popular brand on-world. Mostly because when the wine is first made, it is not very sweet. So the older the wine and the yield of the fruit, makes it more valuable. So we've some forty year-old stock my aunt saves for the more expensive buyers."

"Can she send us a crate?" asked the Orion. A rare wine stock aboard Galileo would do wonders for crew morale, in her opinion. Or maybe just her own, she wasn't quite sure. "Once we find a way out of this universe, that is," she smirked in-between bites.

"I have a crate in my quarters, actually." Gyce turned blush for a moment. "Had I known you were a wine collector, I could of given you a bottle of twenty-three year-old spring wine. But I could have my aunt send the ship as a whole a crate, sure."

Lirha continued to poke at her plate. She found herself hungrier than usual and was loving the Bajoran's food. Before she knew it, she had finished the steak after several healthy bites and was now lapping up the remaining potatoes and bread on the edge of her fork.

"Mmm.." she mumbled to herself, then set the plate down on the table and leaned back in her couch to let her body relax for a bit. "I will never say no to wine," she grinned, then patted the seat next to her to encourage Gyce to come closer.

Gyce hung her cane on the back of her chair before she sat down. Quite nervously too. This would be the first time in almost a decade that she found someone that put butterflies in her stomach.

"I cook. It's the one hobby, outside of my cold cases, that I do in my free time," Gyce admitted in a bit of a nervous ramble. "I've even learned to adapt some Italian Terran meals with a bit of the Bajoran spicy flare. But I can dull back on them if you don't like spicey food all that much."

Scooting close to her friend and leaning her head on her shoulder, Lirha wrapped an arm around Gyce's waist and pulled her close for a warm hug. She sighed contently now that she'd been fed, and gave her a kiss on the smooth skin of her neck then began to let her lips travel upwards in search of her mouth.

For only a moment, Gyce's eyes went wide. Taken off-guard as it were. As nervous as she was, the fact Lirha was trying to make a desert out of Gyce's neck oddly calmed her. At least, put Gyce at ease.

"I'm glad you..." Gyce paused when Lirha kissed her lips and upon breaking for air, finished with "...liked it."

"My room? Or the couch?" the rear admiral asked in a sultry and soft voice. A flutter of her dark eyelashes conveyed her desires at the moment, and she leaned herself against Gyce waiting for her reply.

To Be Continued...

[OFF]

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RADM Lirha Saalm
Mission Advisor
USS Galileo

Lieutenant JG Benice Gyce
Chief of Security/Tactical
USS Galileo

 

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