I Can Be One Too

Posted on 10 Aug 2015 @ 12:20pm by Commander Andreus Kohl & Lieutenant Oren Idris Ph.D. & Ensign Jaana Voutilainen

2,792 words; about a 14 minute read

Mission: Episode 09 - Empires
Location: USS Galileo - Deck 7, Astrometrics Lab
Timeline: MD 02 - 0059 hours

[ON]

Kohl's legs felt heavy and uncoordinated as he crossed the threshold into the Astrometrics lab. It was getting late in the day, but Andreus Kohl wasn't quite ready to call it quits. Going back to his quarters --collapsing into bed in his uniform-- was somewhere on his To-Do list, but it was still pretty far down. Kohl had reviewed the casualty lists extensively and he had checked in with the entire science department electronically, one way or another. But that wasn't enough. He needed to see them. He needed to see them all with his own eyes. Although, the way his limbs felt, he was wishing for a bit of zero-gravity again, or even his damned motor-assist bands.

Looking up, Kohl was disheartened by the vision that crossed his own eyes. The compartment had taken terrible damage, with ceiling plates and structural girders cluttering the deck. Half of the consoles were burned out, and while there were flickers of operational LCARS interfaces staggered around the room, the massive viewscreen was pitch dark. At those consoles that were (mostly) operational, science officers were posted in the search for a suitable asteroid for Galileo to set down and make repairs.

Having been released from Sickbay less than an hour ago, Oren had walked around the few areas of the ship that were less damaged. Eventually, as if on autopilot, he'd made his way to the labs. Feeling numb from the medication he'd received, Oren used what little power there was to replicate a large broom, deciding a bit of repetitive movement while cleaning would soothe him.

Amidst the broken debris and shattered bulkheads, near the far corner, Oren swept back and forth, moving the debris to one corner so that at least people wouldn't trip. At the sound of someone entering, he looked up, coming face to face with Kohl. Seeing him made Oren feel a bit lighter. He was moving a bit choppily, but from what Oren could see, he seemed fine.

Giving the Argelian a relieved smile, he looked back down to where he was sweeping.

Kohl was actually, literally surprised to see Oren smile at him. He wondered if that had been the very first time for such an occurrence. Kohl didn't comment on it, though, as he moved to approach Oren. "How are you feeling?" Kohl asked in a manner that assumed Oren's answer would be sore.

Oren shook his head, taking a deep breath. "I don't know," he admitted, sighing. "Physically, I feel sick, and sore and like my skin is a size too small for me, but otherwise..." He shook his head, unsure how to express himself efficiently. "I feel...numb, somehow."

As he discovered chunks of data crystal membrane littering the floor between himself and Oren, Kohl stopped to pick them up as he moved closer. Perhaps it was too personal a question, but Kohl asked, "When did you start feeling that way?"

"When I woke up," Oren replied, making another long sweep against the floor, filling the silence of the pause he made. "After we passed through I mean," he clarified. "In the lab. It's like, that part of my brain registered all that was happening and just said 'Nope' and shut down." He let out a huff out a laugh before shaking his head and looking up at Kohl.

"How do you feel? Were you injured?"

Kohl couldn't help himself. He snickered out a short laugh at Oren's answer too. "I'm fatigued," Kohl said with the kind of emphasis to suggest that was an understatement. "Overwhelmed. I'm patiently waiting for my own brain to finally say nope too. But I'm uninjured. I was strapped into my chair at the science post. I didn't realize we had lost gravity until after I unbuckled myself and ended up free-floating."

Oren nodded, stopping his sweeping to look at Kohl, his body leaning against the broom. "That's good," he said, glad someone wasn't hurt. He decided not to mention the breach he and Cyrin suffered through, not seeing the point now that it was over.

Unsure of what else to say, Oren pursed his lips and looked around the damaged room. The moment felt awkward but not too uncomfortable. Finally, he looked down at the bristles of the broom and went back to sweeping, the movement giving his nervous energy somewhere to go. "I'm glad you weren't hurt," he admitted sincerely, sweeping the debris to one side. What else could he say, after all? They weren't sure where they were or what would happen next. The moment seemed to be all they had.

As surprising to himself as to anyone else, Kohl stepped towards Oren and wrapped his arms around his shoulders. Kohl embraced him in a hug, and he said, "I'm glad you're still here."

Blinking several times, Oren wondered if perhaps the medication was playing tricks on his mind. If the doctor had maybe given him such a strong dose that he was beginning to hallucinate.

As Kohl wrapped his arms around Oren's neck, the El Aurian felt his senses almost overwhelmed, first by the warmth of Kohl's body, then by the distinct smell of burning and sweat which had seeped into his uniform from the events surrounding the breach. Oddly, the smell, or perhaps the closeness, felt comforting and Oren returned the unexpected show of affection by wrapping his thinner arms around Kohl's waist, saying nothing.

Because often, silence was best.

Without letting go, Kohl asked, "What are we going to do?" He asked the question quietly, so quietly, it was hardly a decibel or two above imperceptible.

Strangely comfortable where he was, because Federation grade drugs were amazing (or so he told himself), Oren shook his head while his face was half buried in Kohl's shoulder. After a moment, he lifted it to rest his cheek there. "Clean up the room? Drink until almost dying for no reason begins to make sense?"

"Drinking until almost dying sounds awfully good. Awfully better than making any decisions," said Kohl, the oft-conflicted hedonist. He shook his head softly, careful not to headbutt Oren. Kohl rubbed a palm between Oren's shoulder blades. "But you're a Lieutenant now. What would the junior officers think?"

"If he can be a Lieutenant, then I can be one too," Oren said after a moment of thought, then raised his head to look up at Kohl with a put upon, serious expression. His arms were still around the taller man's waist. "It's for their morale, Kohl."

Having enough of going unnoticed Jaana spoke up from the console in the corner where she was working from. "I can't speak of all the junior officers on this ship, but I am seriously wondering why you two aren't having this conversation in the lounge."

Andreus Kohl physically recoiled from Oren at the sound of Jaana's voice. Her intonation caused a physical reaction in him. Although he stepped back far enough to take a good look at Jaana, Kohl left one hand draped over Oren's shoulder. "Kindness is one of the duties of a Starfleet officer," Kohl said. He sounded hurt, and more than a little confused, but her comment. "That's why."

Feeling her bravery vanish at the reply she was seriously wondering why she had said that out loud, instead of just keeping her thought with her. "My apologies sir, that didn't come out as I meant. I think my politeness has run out a bit by the activities of the last day."

Oren pursed his lips, his arm still around Kohl's waist. "Maybe you need a drink too, Jaana," he told her, his voice sad and sympathetic towards her. It had been a long day and, in the aftermath of falling through the breach, it seemed like it would be an even longer night.

"I don't imagine many of us have much patience left, Voutilainen," Kohl remarked with an intonation to suggest she shouldn't think anything of it again. Turning to Oren, Kohl offered a wry down to business kind of look, and he tugged on Oren's shoulder as he began to move towards Jaana's workstation. As Kohl let his arms drop to his sides, Kohl asked Jaana, "What's sapping your politeness now most of all?"

"What about not being able to pinpoint our location." she said sarcastic. "Nimbus might not be well known territory but it was mapped. Where we are now isn't being recognised by our sensors. Something I've never encountered before. I even checked if the sensor suites are damaged by the encounter, but they weren't. At least not bad enough for them not to recognised our location." She lifted her hands in the air in a sign of desperation. "I'm seriously considering taking out the old star maps to find where we are. Assuming we have those on board that is. The computers so far seems useless. Maybe some old fashion stargazing can help us out."

"That sounds like the right approach, Voutilainen," Kohl said. As he moved closer to stand behind Jaana's chair, there was a sense of approval in his tone; his defensiveness of earlier was dropping. "We can't know where we're going until we're certain of where we are. Just remember to think like an officer. You're the expert in this field. You can delegate work like scanning through star charts or taking holo-captures out the view ports." --Kohl pointed to himself and to Oren-- "Even one of us can help you out, you know. You don't have to trudge through any of it alone."

"Wherever we are, we shouldn't be here," Oren suddenly said, his voice more even and lacking the amused, ironic tone it had sported before. Now, when Kohl moved away, Oren had settled his body back against one of the broken analyser units and he was slowly rocking with his arms crossed and his eyes lowered to a leftover piece of debris on the floor. Without anything more lighthearted to speak about and no contact to really focus on, Oren once again found himself filled with nervous energy. As the words left his mouth, he finally looked up at the other two people in the room. He shook his head.

"Ignore me, I've just been feeling off since I woke up in Sickbay."

Shaking his head at Oren, Kohl affirmed, "I don't think your feeling is something that should be ignored." He spoke slowly, and with an edge of dread that spoke to the moments of panic that had been haunting Kohl's wanderings all evening. Kohl then covered it up with a flippant flare, when he said, "Your feeling may be an irrational outlier of a data point, but it's still a valid data point that should be considered in Ensign Voutilainen's analysis."

Oren said nothing in reply, and instead just raised his eyes to Kohl to look at him, then moved his gaze over to Jaana. In that moment, he was struck with how much younger they were, how vulnerable their entire situation was and how, beneath that uniform, they were little more than children compared to Oren himself. Despite the situation they found themselves in or the training they had, they were still largely unequipped to quickly process and deal with suddenly being throwing through a hole in space.

Although he was thrown by their predicament as well, Oren was a lot more capable of shrinking his field of vision to the current moment, perhaps not in his personal life, but at least in a situation like this, when the ship was literally falling apart. He focused on the big picture between them, how long it would take for Kohl or Jaana to snap under the new weight. He looked back to Kohl, the one with the most responsibility. As the new Chief Science Officer, Oren knew it would all fall on him to find a way out of this, and should they hit any walls, the blame would fall on him as well.

"We'll be alright," he then said, breaking the tense silence. "We need some time to regroup, gather our thoughts. It's mostly dead space around us, so we all need to take a moment to breathe," Oren advised. At least no one was shooting at them...yet. There was no immediate danger.

"That sounds like a plan. I'll find the other astrometrics and stellar crew to work together on our location." Jaana said. She should have thought of working with the rest before, specially knowing Kohl would mention that. She couldn't she was a loner and preferred to work alone. Not just preferred but working alone had always been her way of doing things.

"That's literally the opposite of taking a moment to breathe, Ensign," Oren told her with what he hoped was an encouraging smile. Closing his eyes, he tipped his head back and took a deep breath for himself, hoping to clear his head and hopefully relax him enough to make the feeling of dread pass.

"Taking a breath doesn't take that long," she answered while with her eyes on her Padd. "And we need to do something. Standing around won't get us any new info." she said with a smile, like she was stating the obvious.

Approaching Jaana more closely, Kohl dropped himself into a chair beside the one she was working from. Kohl chose to speak with her on a subject-matter of comfort for her, rather than pushing her deeper into uncomfortable territories. He looked to the LCARS panel she was working at and then he regarded her directly. "Do you have any leads, Ensign?" he asked hopefully. "The asteroid belt is a mystery, but does anything look familiar out there to either of you?"

Jaana pondered the question. If she could only find some reference points with absolute certainty, she would be able to pinpoint their exact location. But there were so many stars in the galaxy that without knowing where they were to begin with, it would be difficult to match up their location with any certaintly. Unless...

"A pulsar," she gasped.

Kohl sat up straight and pivoted his head from side to side, as if he might discover a rotating neutron star in the compartment with them. "A pulsar?" Kohl asked in an excitable fashion. "Where?"

"Pulsars rotate at very precise speeds, emitting EM radiation along their magnetic axis, which to an observer appears as a series of EM pulses at precise regular intervals." Jaana was getting a little excited as she explained it, even though it was astronomy 101. "If we can detect a pulsar and measure its period, we might be able to match it up stellar records in our database. Find three, and we can triangulate our precise location." Jaana was beaming with pride at her suggestion for an instant, then returned to her glum self. "I mean, if we can detect them."

Standing from his chair, Kohl leaned into the LCARS console to peer at the displays. "The sensor data we gather is garbled --incomplete-- ever since the incident with the secondary deflector," Kohl said, agreeing with Jaana's trepidation. He stepped back from her workstation; it was time he stopped looking over her shoulder, he supposed. "But your strategy is solid. Clever thinking. Put the astrometrics team to work on that."

"I'll do that," replied Jaana, gaining a bit of confidence from Kohl's comments. Though in truth, she would rather do the astrometric work herself, rather than taking on the role of delegating and supervising. Even if it were to take her all night. "Hopefully we can find something..."

Standing silently on the side, Oren tried to focus on the conversation but struggled. The medication Allyndra had given him had begun to work, numbing his brain and preventing it from analysing any information more complex than 'Go here. Do this.' As someone who struggled with some aspects of science even when he performed at peak efficiency, the current conversation was making his head hurt, simple as it was.

"Great," he said suddenly, pushing himself off the analyser and brushing off some imaginary dust from his uniform. "Well, with that settled, I'm going to the lounge to find something that complements my medication," he announced to the room before making his way to the door.

As he slowly stepped back from Jaana's workstation, Kohl remarked, "Maybe the lounge isn't such a bad idea..."


[OFF]

Lieutenant Commander Andreus Kohl
Chief Science Officer
USS Galileo

Ensign Jaana Voutilainen
Stellar Cartographer
USS Galileo

Lieutenant JG Oren Idris
Chief Research Officer
USS Galileo

with special thanks to an assist from:
Lieutenant JG Tuula Voutilainen M.D.
Medical Officer
USS Galileo

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