Welcome Wagon

Posted on 30 Oct 2016 @ 12:04pm by Ensign Miraj Derani & Petty Officer 1st Class Aurora Aries

2,678 words; about a 13 minute read

Mission: Episode 12 - Recluse
Location: USS Galileo Deck 2
Timeline: MD-5 2100

::ON::

Miraj knew that another helm office had boarded from the Oceania and Wolff, but she'd been at conn so wasn't able to welcome her off the pad. So now, as the evening of the following day drew in, she was ringing the chime on the assigned quarters for Aurora Aries.

"Enter!" Came the somewhat frenzied reply.

With her shift due to start in a few minutes, it was debatable whether Aurora would be ready on time. Wearing a silky, black pajama onesie and sporting an impressive case of bed-head, it was evident that she'd just rolled out out of her bunk.

As she looked at her guest, Aurora's gaze was transfixed on Miraj's pink hair. She almost looked... jealous at first. And didn't seem to realize that it might be the woman's natural shade.

"Oh, hi there... ma'am." Aurora added in, a clear afterthought as she struggled to adjust to her new position.

Miraj hesitated. she hadn't imagined that the newcomer might be jetlagged, that the ship she came from might be on a totally different day cycle "er, sorry. I didn't mean to get you out of bed. I just wanted to say hello, have a chat, since we're working together now and all, but I can go, if you're still jetlagged."

Aurora stared for a second, her expression blank. At first she thought the pink-haired ensign might be her roommate or whatever, now she realized that this was her boss. The revelation was in some ways a relief, but it was also soul-crushing. A lot of people thought newly-minted ensigns were all pushovers, but in some ways they were just as dangerous as the surly, overbearing officers that everyone feared.

"No it's okay, I'm just not always a... morning person." Aurora said, recovering from her shock. "I love your hair." She added, then remember that her own was probably a disaster. Fetching her brush, she took a seat on her bunk and began brushing it out, wincing at an especially tough tangle.

Miraj touched one on her bunches self consciously. "Er thanks. It's natural. It just grows that way."

Aurora nodded, as if that made perfect sense. She knew next to nothing about Boslics... Miraj was the first one she'd ever seen up close. "I dyed my hair purple once, when I was fifteen. He dragged right back to the hairdresser, who had to bleach it blonde to get it all out." Aurora shuddered. Blonde was not a good look for her.

Finished with her hair, or rather, out of time, she looked around for her uniform, which was in a crumpled heap on the ground. It was her only uniform, as the ship she'd been posted on before had been called away while she was stuck dealing with the fallout of the nasty shore leave business. Most of her stuff was probably five or more sectors away, never to be seen again.

"I ah... I'm still trying to sort out an issue with my replicator." Aurora said sheepishly as she tugged on her no-doubt wrinkled duty jumpsuit over her pajamas. "The replicator says my resource allowance is all used up, but that can't be true." She lied. It probably was true.

"Oh. Well, there's several people in Ops who can help. Noah is very nice. And Petty officer snow seems to know what he's doing. And Mimi is very helpful."

"Thanks. I'll have to go find one of them and figure it out later, I've got a shift starting shortly." Aurora shrugged, zipping up her jumpsuit. The uniform did smooth out a bit, given that it was a rather close fit, but it still looked like it'd been slept in... or left in a heap on the deck.

"I'm Aurora, by the way. Aurora Aries." She left out her rank... it still rankled saying it, but the woman could probably see it on her tunic collar.

"Er, Miraj." Miraj said. "Nice to meet you. And don't worry, you're on gamma shift. You've got a couple of hours yet."

"Gamma shift.... right then." Aurora said, seeming to agree but sounding a bit skeptical. Last time she'd checked the schedule it had said beta, but of course she would be the last person to find out if a change had been made. She was not looking forward to gamma shift. Many new officers started off there, but it was also the place where careers went to die.

"I suppose I have time then. Maybe I'll go check out the mess hall or something... see what passes for food on a ship like this, if you'd care to join me. Has to be an improvement on my last assignment. The mess facilities on a Sabre-class are dreadful... and don't let anyone try to tell you otherwise." Aurora realized she was starting to ramble, and took the opportunity to shut up.

"Well, they're warriors, not chefs its understandable." Miraj allowed stepping back to allow Aurora space to get into the corridor. "The mess hall is on Deck 2. There's a new chef, so I have no idea what's being served, but I get the best smells whenever I open my door."

"As long as it's not squirming, I should be okay with it..." Aurora said, starting off down the wrong way before she caught herself and turned around. She was used to bad food. Starfleet was notorious for it, at least she ships she'd served on, and the Marine Corps was even worse. When she was a kid her dad had been a busy marine officer, and her mom was out the picture by the time she was ten... that meant home-cooked family dinners were very few and far between. She'd always had a pass for the on-base mess hall in case she wanted to be around other people. Aurora guessed some people liked to have their meals alone but she wasn't really one of them.

"An actual chef huh? Not a job I'd envy. Every day... every meal, a new opportunity to have the entire crew pissed off at you." Aurora said, entirely serious though she might have sounded like she was joking.

"No different from holding the helm." Miraj shrugged. "You're one teeny weeny kulbit away from trashing everyone's stuff if the gravity can't handle it."

Aurora winced. "That's a double whammy, right there. Trashing the captain's ancient record collection, and having to explain to the chief engie why the power draw of the structural integrity field generators shot up by nine hundred percent. I take it that one's from personal experience?" She arched an eyebrow.

"My Dad went spare. He banned me from the conn for a week." Miraj grinned to herself as they walked along to the mess hall. "A week! that was just cruel."

Aurora couldn't help but arch an eyebrow, wondering about the family arrangement. Miraj made it sound like her father was a captain or senior officer aboard a ship, but what kind of ship? Probably a civilian ship. The ensign looked to be too young to have gotten to chief with a high ranking officer for a parent. Aurora had never seen any officers fast-tracked by it, just saddled with pressure and high expectations.

"Your dad sounds like a nice guy. Most captains would toss in brig time for much less. I've heard this admiral of ours likes to send people off on camping trips in the airlock. Heh." Aurora didn't point out that it was actually she who had gotten time in the brig for much less.

"Yeah my dad's cool. And it was a civvy ship, close, a big family really. Starfleet was a bit of a culture shock. Though I've not seen the Admiral space anyone." Miraj frowned, thinking. "Mind you, we've just spent six weeks on a planet. I think she had a whole lot more unpleasant tasks there if she wanted to express her displeasure. Have you even seen a sewage 'cycler? Stinky!"

Aurora nodded at the bit of family history as if it all made sense. She wasn't the type of person who read into people, as she preferred more reliable sources than her own intuition. Aurora could however that Miraj had that familiarity... not with the uniform, but with the job. "So what do you think of the Galileo?" Throwing in a course-correction for the conversation.

"Well, he's fairly solid, and low speed manoevres are very crisp. cruises nicely at warp five, but i've not had a chance to push him harder. I'd love to do some fancy flying, see how the inertial dampers handle the stress."

Aurora took note of the precise, diplomatic response. All of what Miraj had said was true, but she only mentioned the good things. There were no doubt plenty of bad.

"I'm used to cruisers and combat frigates. It has been a... challenge, getting used to performance thresholds of this design in the simulators." She left out mention of her prior service in the Aerospace Corps. She generally preferred to act as if those days had never existed. To her, the ship was a slug. It had powerful sensors, sure, but it was likely to be outclassed by anything at least its size or larger, and probably a good deal of smaller ships as well.

"Would probably cook the maneuvering thrusters long before stressing out the hull." Aurora mused. "I'm hoping the thrust vectors on the impulse engines aren't as bad as they are in the simulator. No kulbits for Galileo. That Waverider though..." She smiled.

"Oh yeah," Miraj nodded, "They are fun. I've got my own, refurbished it, chucked out all the stuff you don't need, put in a warp core, upp the inertial dampers, increased the impulse engine so its maximum impulse is 0.8C, chucked out standard avionics and put in some scavenged of a valkyrie, and i converted helm so I can do both traditional helm swipe-screen and center-stick. She goes like hot shit." Miraj paused. "I miss her. Vinnie's a bit pedestrian by comparison."

Aurora looked surprised, at first. Not many young people--or anyone, for that matter--had access to what in the Federation was considered military-grade hardware: micro-warp reactors and impulse drives, combat avionics... few people could get those kinds of things unless a government had supplied them. But there was a key word in there that led Aurora to feel comfortable making an assumption.

"He ran salvage... your dad? Or was he a pirate?" Aurora said the last bit in jest. Of course he wasn't a pirate, but they did also have access to to salvaged military tech.

"No, that was mum." Miraj flashed a grin at Aurora as they came to the mess hall. "But yeah, Dad was in salvage. Mostly specialist recovery for Starfleet. Your typical fleet ship can't do anything that require more than a basic tow with a tractor beam."

Aurora returned a blank stare at first as she processed the response. It took only a few seconds to dismiss the comment as a joke though, and she was quick to offer a small, wry grin. She'd had some rather bad run-ins with pirates and wasn't overly fond of them, but she knew when to take a joke... or so she thought.

Reaching the mess hall just in time for dinner, Aurora took one step inside and felt the strong urge to pull an immediate about face. "It had to be wing-slugs." She said, feeling her mouth water and her stomach lurch at the same time.

"You know, a lot of guys say how they want to find an Orion gal. But what they don't realize is that if they shack up with one, they'll be slurping down those things at least once a week. I think my dad actually used to hide packets of field rations just for slug night." She paused for a moment, considering awkward family memories. "You know you've got problems in your life when you prefer standard issue preserved marine chow over your wife's cooking."

Miraj laughed. "Sounds pretty grim. So what made you choose to to fly ships like this, if you were fighter trained?" she had avoided reading the woman's file, she wanted to meet her first.

Though her smile wanted to vanish instantly, Aurora fought to let it fade instead. And they were having such a nice conversation. "It wasn't a choice, not how I saw it anyway." She shrugged. "Claustrophobia." It wasn't really a lie. She felt trapped in the cockpit of a starfighter now, and she didn't really feel like explaining why. It was humiliating to have to explain why you were no longer good enough to do something, and she didn't want to insult Miraj. It wasn't that it had been a tougher job... just different. Now, on the bridge of a starship Aurora could be replaced at any time. In a starfighter that wasn't always possible.

"That sucks." Miraj looked at the wingslugs, and saw exactly why Aurora might not like them. She'd scraped more appetizing things out of waste reclamation units. "Well, there's plenty of space on the bridge here."

Aurora wasn't quite sure how to respond to that. Even after years spent as a helm officer, the abrupt shift in occupations was still a sore subject. She tried to change the subject back to the slugs.

"It's an art, eating slugs." Aurora said as she took a seat with her plate. She picked one up and unceremoniously bit into it, slurping down the gooey innards before chewing on the crispy battered and fried soft shell. She attempted to lick all the goo off of her lips, but some of it slowly dribbled down to her chin and threatened to jump to her uniform. She wiped it away with her uniform sleeve.

"The trick is to not wash it down with your drink. Instead take a bite of a roll, or bread, or whatever. That will help clear out the goo so that you can actually taste whatever else is on your plate. So long as it's not hasperat. Wing slugs and hasperat will lead to immediate regret." The slug goo and spicy hasperat mixed to form an unfortunately gluey substance that stuck to the palate and burned like warp plasma.

Miraj looked at the plate of languorously writhing grubs. She was not trying that. Uh,uh. No way. She'd rather eat weevils in ships biscuit. "I will, er take your word for it." She eyed the slowly squirming, food. "So, can i tell you anything more about Galileo, or the job or anything?"

Aurora made a face as she washed down the wing slug with a bite of bread. In her experience they tasted oh so good but didn't always go down well. "Might have a few questions after a shift or two. Other than that... new bull, but the same old rodeo." She munched on another slug, managing to avoid getting goo on herself.

"Well." Miraj said, a little uncertain at Aurora's indifference. "I can arrange some split shifts whilst you get over the jet lag. If there's anything else I can do let me know."

Aurora nodding, setting aside her lunch for the moment. "Thank you, ma'am." She said, adding in the formality she'd neglected through most of the conversation. Aurora knew she wasn't an easy person to get along with, and that Starfleet had never been a great fit with her. She tried though. She really did. Hopefully she wouldn't screw up and get on Ensign Derani's bad side. There were still a number of unpleasant turns her career could take.

"Well, in that case, I'll leave you to your slugs. We'll have a meeting soon, introduce you to the rest of the team."

Aurora made a face, as if to suggest that the ensign was missing out, but the look didn't last long. "Sounds good, ma'am. And thanks for coming to see me."

TAG/END?

[OFF]

Ensign Miraj Derani
Chief Flight Control Officer
USS Galileo

Petty Officer First Class Aurora Aries
Flight Control Officer
USS Galileo
(NPC Played by Natalya Kirilova)

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