The Organic Components

Posted on 16 Aug 2015 @ 12:56am by Commander Andreus Kohl & Cadwyn Lane
Edited on on 09 Sep 2015 @ 12:40pm

1,837 words; about a 9 minute read

Mission: Episode 09 - Empires
Location: USS Galileo - Deck 7, Arboretum
Timeline: MD 02 - 0026 hours

[ON]

As his eyes adjusted to the half-light of the emergency lighting grid, Andreus Kohl tread carefully into the relatively wide-open compartment of the arboretum. When he first walked in from the corridor, he looked up instinctively. The ceiling was adorned with simple gridlines and scaffolding-like hardware necessary for high-intensity holographic projection. To Kohl, the room had lost much of it's seemingly-natural character without its holographic sky. He frowned, and he returned his attention to where he was walking before he moved forward.

"Hello?" Kohl called out, when he couldn't see anybody around.

Cadwyn emerged from behind the lilac tree where he'd been dead-heading a rose bush. Shears in one hand, he looked to Kohl with a smile and held them up. "I'm not sure what to do with myself," he confessed, dropping the shears to by his waist. "I'm trying to save the most of this rose bush but it may be done for I've seen worse survive after the summer fires on the estate but this isn't outside and nature has a way of knowing that somehow." He walked over to the path and sighed. "How are you? You seemed to have survived the rift too."

"I did," said Kohl. He nodded at Cadwyn's assertion, as he slowly padded towards the other man. "I did survive. But I got too close to a damaged impulse reactor. Now I've got drugs in my circulatory system to combat any radiation poisoning." --Kohl held up a hand, as if he could watch the biochemical process happening beneath his skin, but then he gasped in alarm-- "I hope I'm not sterile."

Cadwyn blinked at Kohl, unsure how to take the comment. "As in fertility?" he asked, continuing to stare at the man. "I mean, I can advise you on the plant situation here, Commander, but I have my limits when it comes to the chemical sterilisation of the humanoid population."

And now it was Kohl's turn to smile nervously. He looked anywhere but at Cadwyn's eyes, when he said, "Yes. Yes. Yes, you're right, I should be saving that question for Doctor Allyndra." --Kohl took in a deep breath, and he blinked, and he turned his eyes on Cadwyn again-- "I think you were mistaken before. You said you don't know where to begin, but it looks like you managed to get started saving our flora anyhow..."

Cadwyn relaxed fully and with a sigh turned back to look at one of the rose bushes, rubbing the back of his head in slight distress. "If it's one thing I know, it's you've got get on it early," he said, looking back to the commander. And roses are such shy plants." He paused and then decided to qualify it. "People think they are robust and plentiful, since you can deadhead them back each year to an inch of their life. But when they're in bloom and about to flourish, the slightest change in temperature can strike them back. We may have to start over with these bushes." He stopped for a moment and then realised the importance of the pond. "Oh, I've also moved most of the wildlife from the pond to my quarters. I'm still in the VIP and its water-bathtub wasn't destroyed. It'll be the best place for them until we can clean this water up."

With a sudden and equal urgency, Kohl asked, "Have all the ducks survived?"

"Luckily," Cadwyn replied with a wince of a smile. "They're in shock and not a happy bunch but in a couple of days they'll settle, I'm sure."

Kohl nodded at that, and he found himself smiling. That enthusiastic smile of his was probably his first genuine smile in hours. "Oh, that's good. That's a good news story for once," Kohl remarked. Looking around to either side of Cadwyn, Kohl asked, "Is there anything I can do to help? Anything pressing?"

Cadwyn's face relaxed into a hopeless, almost exasperated expression. He honestly didn't know where to start. "In all honesty," he said, looking about him again, "I concentrated on the wildlife and delicate growths first. Rescued what I could and now it's just damage limitation. Apart from a bit of charring here and there, I think most of it will survive. But nature is such a tricky mistress," he then added. "You never can truly know what she's thinking... or what she's got up her sleeve. But life has a way of clinging on until the bitter end. And I think that if we get things back as they were, it should all right itself."

For all his efforts to appear steady --happy, even-- Kohl couldn't help it. An exasperated, drastic expression of his own crept into Kohl's expression. It started in the corners of his eyes, and then the corners of his lips, and then it was everywhere, absolutely everywhere. His breathing turned shallow, and Kohl moved to brace a palm against the trunk of the lilac tree. "And here Ensign Khnailmnae had only just nursed the arboretum back to health after the flooding over Lyshan Three..." Kohl said.

"Flooding is a different matter," Cadwyn replied cautiously, his brow now furrowing as he spoke, a keen eye searching Kohl's face for signs of his distress. "Plants who aren't suited for wetter..." He trailed off and approached the commander. "Are you all right? Shall I call for someone?"

"No, no, I think I am all right," Kohl said, but his voice cracked in the process. He shifted his weight back onto his own two legs, and he breathed in an out heavily in a huff. "It's nothing physical, it's... I've never seen Galileo like this. I've been with her since her very first mission, did you know? She's never been broke down like this, certainly not since the refit."

Cadwyn broke into an even and comforting smile. "She's only bulkheads and EPS conduits, Commander," he replied quietly. "The heart of any ship, as Norvi likes to tell me, is the organic components. And not the bio-neural gel packs or the arboretum deck." He paused and rainbowed his hand about them both. "It's the people; her crew. And from what I can gather, we all survived. It's only now a case of piecing the metallic shell back together. And I guarantee that she won't look any different than before we went through the singularity." He took a seat on a nearby rock and looked out into the middle distance before returning his attention back to Andreus."

I'm no engineer, but I know people. And I know what it's like to be left homeless and to struggle to find your place in this vast universe. But from what Stace tells me, you're all a family here. A unit. And that's what's important. That we're all still here and alive."

There was something soothing about Cadwyn's intonation to Kohl's ears. As he listened, Kohl's breathing returned to normal and his posture relaxed. Although Kohl nodded at the points Cadwyn was making, the deep furrow in his brow suggested he didn't entirely agree with all of them. "And where do you fit, Cadwyn?" Kohl found himself asking, because of the way he spoke of Galileo's unit as something separate. "What's your role in our surrogate family?"

"I'm not entirely sure as yet," he replied honestly. "I came at Stace's behest and if I last a month then so be it. Or a year. Even if she leaves, I may even stay. But I don't honestly know. But until I do then I'll take each day at a time. I'm not locked into a commission like most."

Kohl squinted at Cadwyn, and he tilted his head to the left. "I can't entirely imagine what that kind of life would be like. My parents both served the Federation. My mother serves her faith. I've never had a free agent role model," Kohl said, a bit haltingly, a bit rambling. Inviting Cadwyn to join Galileo was one of the only shreds of personnel administration that Stace had taken on --when she'd served as Chief Science Officer-- without Kohl's participation. "What were you doing before? Before Stace beckoned you here?" Kohl asked.

"Now that," he replied with a smirk as he rubbed the back of his neck, "is a little more complicated. I'm the Perim's gardener at the most basic level," he started with. "That's Commander Stace's family name," he then qualified, "before she was Joined. They have a country estate out on Trill and I'm groundsman. 'Was' groundsman. But I was young when I took up the position and far away from home. Norvi wasn't that much older than myself and we grew up together. They welcomed me into their family and housed me in their hunters' lodge. I am sort of an addition to the Perims. But I tended the entire estate. Woodland, meadows, lakes. The lot. A green-fingered man's dream. It's more of a calling for me. Not a job. And that lodge is still mine should I ever wish to return to it."

Cadwyn wanted to ask of Andreus the same question but then thought it inappropriate.

Alas, for Andreus, there was little life before Starfleet. There was Starfleet, and before that, there had been the preparing for Starfleet, and the preparing for the preparing. That was what motivated Kohl to say, "I'd say we're fortunate to have a man with a calling aboard."

"It is a pleasure and a curse," Cadwyn replied with a smile. "I could be whisked off away from here should the need ask of me. And this little patch of burnt grass," he then motioned to the ground beneath him, "can't keep my passion here for long. But we'll see what happens when we get out of this mess."

"I suppose that's true of all of us aboard Starfleet facilities; commission or not," admitted Kohl. He considered himself fortunate for his prolonged tour aboard Galileo. That couldn't keep the wistful edge out of his voice, because he remembered how suddenly it could end. He palmed the tricorder from his belt and activated its sensors to take his own look at the wellbeing of this little patch of burnt grass. While he distracted his eyes with the display of his tricorder, Kohl remarked, "So many of our crew have been whisked away from the ship in the past couple of months. Some mornings, I hardly recognize half of our family unit. Perhaps... I've become the strange uncle now."

"Uncles are the friendly fathers that allow their nieces and nephews to get away with murder," Cadwyn said with a smile. "But never strange ones. The strange ones are the ones you have to watch out for. Anyway..." he then trailed off, "let's try and get this bit of land back to some kind of normality."

"Let's try for good health," Kohl remarked; "Who wants normal?"


[OFF]

Lieutenant Commander Andreus Kohl
Chief Science Officer
USS Galileo

Cadwyn Lane
Gardener
USS Galileo

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