--------------------------------
Shuttlecraft Boarding Hub
Star Station Inflexible, Docking Ring B
0515 Hours, December 30th, 2290
It began, as usual, with light -- with strobes, glowbars, and crackling bulbs that plunged Inflexible’s corridors into throbbing crimson darkness. Half a second later, klaxons roared to life all throughout the station, interrupted only by the shrieking of alarms and the modulated voice of the station computer: “Priority alert, all hands scramble -- priority alert, all hands -- ” Room doors swished open as officers and crew flooded out of their quarters in various states of dress. Clambering into jackets, smoothing out skirts, pinning on badges, even slipping on pants, they made their way helter-skelter to their docking ring trying desperately to shake off the last torpid remnants of sleep.
They arrived at the boarding hub in streams of twenty and thirty to find a fleet of shuttles awaiting them, ion engines humming as they hovered above the duranium deck. Four security officers walked up and down the lines, shouting orders and directions as fleet personnel flooded into the bay: “Engineering crew to port-side transports, bridge crew to starboard -- ” Pinwheeling arms swung from left to right, metronomes in a sea of activity.
Ryan Laskir ducked behind an unusually large Tellarite to slip out of their line of sight and then sped up to keep pace with his Vulcan companion. “What the hell is going on?” he hissed, his normally pale face flushed with fury. One hand gripped the railing as an orbital shuttle took off, the blowback from its engines sending a minor shockwave across the deck. “I just went to bed two and a half hours ago -- ”
“Must you whine every morning?” S’Tasik was barely audible over the cacophony surrounding him, though his annoyance showed plainly on his face. “Cold-start drill, courtesy of Captain Pergemon -- he even activated the station alarm to make it as real as possible.” Abruptly, he stopped short and fell into line with a group of officers arrayed all in red. Two shuttles slipped through the forcefield separating the hub from space, spinning a hundred and eighty degrees before stopping a foot from the ground.
“I know what it is,” Laskir snapped. “But what I don’t know is why you didn’t keep an eye out for me and let me know what’s going down. You’re my friend, you know how nervous I get, and you don’t even bother to tell we’re going to be drilled so I can prep?”
“Your father wasn’t that generous. If memory serves me right, he made sure to work us good and tired the night before and sounded general quarters thirty minutes after we completed over our shift. Tamerlane never came so close to destruction as she did that morning.” The line jumped forward; S’Tasik followed, edging closer to the boarding ladders and freedom.
“So now you’re accusing me of something that happened three years ago, is that it?”
“No, Ryan.” S’Tasik rolled his eyes in exasperation, praying that the legendary Laskir fury wouldn’t boil over before the shuttles came. The forcefield sparked and crackled as his plea was answered -- three more had returned to the hub and were now angling towards the right. He’d be on the next one for sure; in the meantime, he had more important things to deal with. “I’m saying you should wake yourself up so you don’t try to eject the warp core out aft. I don’t imagine that would look good on anybody’s service record, even one as … glowing … as yours.”
“Look, man, you know all about this and you know that the debriefers even said that it wasn’t my fault. That was Specialist Janssen who didn’t lock in the couplings like she was supposed to, I was following procedure to the letter -- ” Laskir had grown increasingly breathless and increasingly red. By now, they were starting to attract attention despite the fact that the substance of their conversation was drowned out by the roar of engines powering up for flight.
“Methinks the lady doth protest too much.” S’Tasik watched in satisfaction as he saw his sarcasm hit home -- and, having assured himself that he’d won this particular battle, he finally raised his palms in a gesture of conciliation. “Come on, Ryan, you know I’m implying nothing of the sort. Now please stop feeling sorry for yourself and get to your duty station so we can have someone competent in Engineering.”
But the spiky-haired human would not be placated. “Don’t try to sweet-talk me, pretending like you know what I’m feeling. You, of all people!”
“Careful now. There is a line, Ryan, and you don’t want to cross it.”
“And how the flying fuck could you know what I want? You can pretend all you want but you’re still a fucking Vulcan inside -- ”
“Have done, Lieutenant!” Fury of his own lent a sharp edge to S’Tasik’s gravelly voice even as the Vulcan jabbed a hand in the air, intent upon attracting the attention of a security officer on duty. “You may know me better than anybody else, Mr. Laskir, but I will not permit insubordination on board this ship, whether from strangers or from you. You will act professionally if I have to sew your mouth closed. Don’t force me to make than an order.”
“And now you’re pulling rank on me.” Ryan’s fists clenched and his knuckles whitened. “Why, you half-breed son of a -- ”
“You!” A scaly hand dug into Laskir’s shoulder and interrupted him just in time; salvation, in the form of a growling brown-skinned Saurian, had arrived. “Are you being stupid on purpose or were you born that way? Engineering personnel to port, not starboard -- that’s on your left, in case your brain broke and you forgot to fix it. Move, sir, or I’ll move you.”
Laskir was impetuous, not irrational. With one last baleful look at his companion, he allowed himself to be led away, disappearing into a crowd of enlisted crewmen trimmed in engineering gold. A few curious heads turned surreptitiously to watch him go, though they quickly snapped back into position after the Vulcan met them with a scowl totally foreign to his appearance.
Inwardly, S’Tasik cursed himself for allowing the confrontation to escalate as quickly as it did. Having served with Ryan in one capacity or another since his Academy days, he was acutely aware of the man’s extraordinary talent as well as his chronic insecurity. By now, everybody on the station probably knew that Ryan was the son of Captain Michael Laskir, avowed bachelor and commander of one of the most decorated destroyers in the fleet; small wonder, then, that his friend’s fuse was shorter than usual. For one brief moment, S’Tasik felt a pang of guilt at tweaking Laskir’s buttons -- until he remembered the parting shot.
The Vulcan -- half-Vulcan -- had spent nearly two years trying to untangle the Gordian knot that was his family tree, a maddening endeavor that had provided him with little in the way of knowledge and much in the way of hatred for red tape. Despite his best efforts, S’Tasik could find out nothing about his father save the fact that he was Vulcan, and he could almost have said the same about his mother if not for Federation policy: everybody who wanted to transfer a child into Federation care had to register in a logbook and give a few shreds of personal information in anticipation of this very eventuality.
Thanks to that particular piece of legislation, he’d learned that his biological mother was a human temp at a secluded Federation embassy who was thirty-seven at the time of his birth. Unable or unwilling to shoulder the responsibilities of mothering a half-Vulcan son, she had bid him what he hoped was a fond farewell and delivered him into the nurturing arms of the Federation Social Services Corps. Her name had been blacked out in order to maintain the veil of privacy that shrouded all such transactions, and at any rate it would have proven only marginally useful. Any record of her presence at an official Federation institution would have been long since purged from archival documentation, and after several wasted months he finally decided to stop looking.
We know each other too well, he mused. Both of us can get under each other’s skins without even trying anymore.
“Lieutenant!” The Saurian had returned, and this time the full focus of his ire fell on his erstwhile ally. “Do you plan on getting on yourself or should I call for a litter?” One gnarled finger pointed up at the orbital shuttle bobbing impatiently in the air, the rest of its complement already on board and waiting for their last passenger.
“Do you treat all of your officers like this, Chief?”
The toothy alien smiled a truly horrifying smile and the smell of rotted meat caused S’Tasik’s stomach to turn. “Only the ones who cooperate,” he snarled in a voice reminiscent of crunching bone. “I’ve been known to do far worse.”
With a rueful chuckle, the Vulcan nodded and scrambled up the ladder, buckling himself into his seat in preparation for the drive. Vivaldi lurched forward as her pilot engaged her burners, leaving both boarding hub and Laskir behind as she sped towards her destination. “What I wouldn’t give to be back in bed,” moaned a bald ensign cradling his head in his arms.
“I couldn’t agree more,” S’Tasik agreed darkly. This is going to be a long day.
--------------------------------------
USS Valiant, NCC-1875
Star Station Inflexible, Docking Ring B
0523 Hours, December 30th, 2290
During the course of her training, Ensign Yukiko Hanagawa had faced her fair share of difficult situations. She had airdropped into the middle of a forest with nothing except a phaser and a tricorder and found her way to safety without any outside aid. She had taken command of a understaffed system of bunkers and repelled a simulated Klingon assault. She had led a team of rookies on a live-fire exercise to recover a hostage held captive in a network of underground caves. She had even managed to defeat a Vulcan in an unofficial arm-wrestling contest, which, given her almost fragile build and the fact that she stood five-foot-six, was quite an accomplishment indeed. However, despite her impressive list of accomplishments, the Valiant's new chief of security found herself stymied by her newest assignment: making sure that each and every member of the heavy frigate's crew got where they needed to go.
It wasn't supposed to be like this. Hanagawa and the rest of her security detachment had come on board on the first wave of shuttles, escorting a group of engineers who were charged with ensuring that all life-support systems were in working order. Decked out in EV gear as a precaution against a hull breach or something equally unfortunate, the techheads had fanned out across the Valiant's eleven decks to check atmospheric pressure and the oxygen content of the air. With the exception of abnormally high levels of radon in the armory -- a fairly routine problem that the filtration array had taken care of posthaste -- they had found nothing worth reporting. And so it was that Hanagawa ended up securing from patrol formation a full forty minutes before she had expected. Instead of shepherding compliant engineers for the duration of the drill, she found herself stationed in Shuttlebay Two to complete her secondary objective, one even less glamorous than the first.
"Ensign!" Hanagawa spun to face a harried Andorian storming out of the turbolifts behind her, his antennae quivering in anger. "You are in command of the security division, no?"
"That would be me, petty officer." The ensign forced herself to smile, though annoyance lent a hard cast to her clear brown eyes. It was in times like these that she cursed the gods for stunting her growth at the tender age of fifteen, for the Andorian towered over her like a very large and very blue tree. "Whatever you want, you'll have to wait: the Brahms just docked and I need to direct her crew." In an attempt to keep control of the situation, she returned her attention to the crewmen lined up behind the perimeter established by her men. One by one, they began to identify themselves for the retina scan that would allow them aboard the ship.
"I will not wait," the Andorian snapped, having long since abandoned any pretense of decorum. "I needed to get the auxiliary fusion reactors online fifteen minutes ago. Your man told our team that they were on deck five aft, but when we got there we found not reactors but the main energizers -- "
Hanagawa gritted her teeth, trying her damnedest to look concerned. "I apologize for my man's mistake," she said, nodding as Fagles, Lindsay Z. passed through the cordon and dashed off to main engineering. Inwardly, the ensign wondered what that "Z" might stand for. "As you can imagine, he's as new to the Avenger-class as you are, and -- "
"I did not come here to hear your insignificant excuses, Ensign. I came here to file a formal protest against Mister Jaral for incompetence, and I demand that he be removed from duty so more essential personnel do not receive the wrong instructions."
Venazzar, Ichar T. stepped over the threshold, following his gold-collared companion to the lift. Hanagawa waved him through without so much as a glance at the verification confirmation displayed on her screen; instead, she rounded on the Andorian glaring at her from on high, resolved to make one last effort to placate the angry beast. "Duly noted, petty officer. I'll tell Mister Jaral that you're unhappy with his performance and discipline him if I see fit." Yeah, by thanking him for tweaking you out. Her smile grew even sweeter: "Is that all?"
The Andorian shook his head violently, antennae flapping backwards and forwards with the force of his rage. "That's insufficient for a mistake of this magnitude -- "
Hanagawa flinched, her delicate features flushed with red. "You seriously expect me to punish Faolain because you don't know how to read the deck maps posted next to every turbolift? Have you gotten the reactors online?"
"No, but -- "
"Deck six. Aft. Get there before somebody comes hunting for your head."
"I will have you know, Ensign, that I am not an enemy you want to make."
"Oh, for god's sake -- " Her slender hand punched the communicator hanging at her side. "Hanagawa to engineering. Someone just told me that the fusions haven't come up yet and we're running fifteen minutes behind schedule. Can you confirm?"
A clearly irritated voice buzzed back over the intercom. "This is Lieutenant O'Riordan. Petty Officer Tholon was supposed to take care of that. Knowing him, he's probably mouthing off to somebody and -- "
Hanagawa toggled off vox and drew herself up to her full height -- which by the most generous estimation brought her up to the Andorian's neck. Tholon stiffened, straightened, and fled, storming back towards the lift and nearly bowling over Gonzalez, Vienna P. in his haste.
For her part, the ensign smiled once more, and this time the sentiment was genuine. Looking for all the world like an innocent schoolgirl who had found her way on board a starship by accident, she leaned forward to rest her elbows on the reinforced tritanium barrier her people had set up at the far end of the bay. Her shoulder-length hair fell forward to cover one eye, lending her an insouciant look that had brought the coldest of men to heel. "Next?" she asked, her voice veritably dripping with honey.
"Matrazzi, Christopher F., crewman second class." The man blinked nervously and forced the scanner to void its first test and start another. "I think I can make my way to my post myself, sir."
"Good, because I didn't enlist to be a tour guide," she said, even as her face fell at the sight of two more shuttles soaring through the docking bays with ladders extended. "Though if Starfleet has anything to say about it, I'll be handing out maps and candy to little kids at HQ. Carry on."
Shuttlecraft Boarding Hub
Star Station Inflexible, Docking Ring B
0515 Hours, December 30th, 2290
It began, as usual, with light -- with strobes, glowbars, and crackling bulbs that plunged Inflexible’s corridors into throbbing crimson darkness. Half a second later, klaxons roared to life all throughout the station, interrupted only by the shrieking of alarms and the modulated voice of the station computer: “Priority alert, all hands scramble -- priority alert, all hands -- ” Room doors swished open as officers and crew flooded out of their quarters in various states of dress. Clambering into jackets, smoothing out skirts, pinning on badges, even slipping on pants, they made their way helter-skelter to their docking ring trying desperately to shake off the last torpid remnants of sleep.
They arrived at the boarding hub in streams of twenty and thirty to find a fleet of shuttles awaiting them, ion engines humming as they hovered above the duranium deck. Four security officers walked up and down the lines, shouting orders and directions as fleet personnel flooded into the bay: “Engineering crew to port-side transports, bridge crew to starboard -- ” Pinwheeling arms swung from left to right, metronomes in a sea of activity.
Ryan Laskir ducked behind an unusually large Tellarite to slip out of their line of sight and then sped up to keep pace with his Vulcan companion. “What the hell is going on?” he hissed, his normally pale face flushed with fury. One hand gripped the railing as an orbital shuttle took off, the blowback from its engines sending a minor shockwave across the deck. “I just went to bed two and a half hours ago -- ”
“Must you whine every morning?” S’Tasik was barely audible over the cacophony surrounding him, though his annoyance showed plainly on his face. “Cold-start drill, courtesy of Captain Pergemon -- he even activated the station alarm to make it as real as possible.” Abruptly, he stopped short and fell into line with a group of officers arrayed all in red. Two shuttles slipped through the forcefield separating the hub from space, spinning a hundred and eighty degrees before stopping a foot from the ground.
“I know what it is,” Laskir snapped. “But what I don’t know is why you didn’t keep an eye out for me and let me know what’s going down. You’re my friend, you know how nervous I get, and you don’t even bother to tell we’re going to be drilled so I can prep?”
“Your father wasn’t that generous. If memory serves me right, he made sure to work us good and tired the night before and sounded general quarters thirty minutes after we completed over our shift. Tamerlane never came so close to destruction as she did that morning.” The line jumped forward; S’Tasik followed, edging closer to the boarding ladders and freedom.
“So now you’re accusing me of something that happened three years ago, is that it?”
“No, Ryan.” S’Tasik rolled his eyes in exasperation, praying that the legendary Laskir fury wouldn’t boil over before the shuttles came. The forcefield sparked and crackled as his plea was answered -- three more had returned to the hub and were now angling towards the right. He’d be on the next one for sure; in the meantime, he had more important things to deal with. “I’m saying you should wake yourself up so you don’t try to eject the warp core out aft. I don’t imagine that would look good on anybody’s service record, even one as … glowing … as yours.”
“Look, man, you know all about this and you know that the debriefers even said that it wasn’t my fault. That was Specialist Janssen who didn’t lock in the couplings like she was supposed to, I was following procedure to the letter -- ” Laskir had grown increasingly breathless and increasingly red. By now, they were starting to attract attention despite the fact that the substance of their conversation was drowned out by the roar of engines powering up for flight.
“Methinks the lady doth protest too much.” S’Tasik watched in satisfaction as he saw his sarcasm hit home -- and, having assured himself that he’d won this particular battle, he finally raised his palms in a gesture of conciliation. “Come on, Ryan, you know I’m implying nothing of the sort. Now please stop feeling sorry for yourself and get to your duty station so we can have someone competent in Engineering.”
But the spiky-haired human would not be placated. “Don’t try to sweet-talk me, pretending like you know what I’m feeling. You, of all people!”
“Careful now. There is a line, Ryan, and you don’t want to cross it.”
“And how the flying fuck could you know what I want? You can pretend all you want but you’re still a fucking Vulcan inside -- ”
“Have done, Lieutenant!” Fury of his own lent a sharp edge to S’Tasik’s gravelly voice even as the Vulcan jabbed a hand in the air, intent upon attracting the attention of a security officer on duty. “You may know me better than anybody else, Mr. Laskir, but I will not permit insubordination on board this ship, whether from strangers or from you. You will act professionally if I have to sew your mouth closed. Don’t force me to make than an order.”
“And now you’re pulling rank on me.” Ryan’s fists clenched and his knuckles whitened. “Why, you half-breed son of a -- ”
“You!” A scaly hand dug into Laskir’s shoulder and interrupted him just in time; salvation, in the form of a growling brown-skinned Saurian, had arrived. “Are you being stupid on purpose or were you born that way? Engineering personnel to port, not starboard -- that’s on your left, in case your brain broke and you forgot to fix it. Move, sir, or I’ll move you.”
Laskir was impetuous, not irrational. With one last baleful look at his companion, he allowed himself to be led away, disappearing into a crowd of enlisted crewmen trimmed in engineering gold. A few curious heads turned surreptitiously to watch him go, though they quickly snapped back into position after the Vulcan met them with a scowl totally foreign to his appearance.
Inwardly, S’Tasik cursed himself for allowing the confrontation to escalate as quickly as it did. Having served with Ryan in one capacity or another since his Academy days, he was acutely aware of the man’s extraordinary talent as well as his chronic insecurity. By now, everybody on the station probably knew that Ryan was the son of Captain Michael Laskir, avowed bachelor and commander of one of the most decorated destroyers in the fleet; small wonder, then, that his friend’s fuse was shorter than usual. For one brief moment, S’Tasik felt a pang of guilt at tweaking Laskir’s buttons -- until he remembered the parting shot.
The Vulcan -- half-Vulcan -- had spent nearly two years trying to untangle the Gordian knot that was his family tree, a maddening endeavor that had provided him with little in the way of knowledge and much in the way of hatred for red tape. Despite his best efforts, S’Tasik could find out nothing about his father save the fact that he was Vulcan, and he could almost have said the same about his mother if not for Federation policy: everybody who wanted to transfer a child into Federation care had to register in a logbook and give a few shreds of personal information in anticipation of this very eventuality.
Thanks to that particular piece of legislation, he’d learned that his biological mother was a human temp at a secluded Federation embassy who was thirty-seven at the time of his birth. Unable or unwilling to shoulder the responsibilities of mothering a half-Vulcan son, she had bid him what he hoped was a fond farewell and delivered him into the nurturing arms of the Federation Social Services Corps. Her name had been blacked out in order to maintain the veil of privacy that shrouded all such transactions, and at any rate it would have proven only marginally useful. Any record of her presence at an official Federation institution would have been long since purged from archival documentation, and after several wasted months he finally decided to stop looking.
We know each other too well, he mused. Both of us can get under each other’s skins without even trying anymore.
“Lieutenant!” The Saurian had returned, and this time the full focus of his ire fell on his erstwhile ally. “Do you plan on getting on yourself or should I call for a litter?” One gnarled finger pointed up at the orbital shuttle bobbing impatiently in the air, the rest of its complement already on board and waiting for their last passenger.
“Do you treat all of your officers like this, Chief?”
The toothy alien smiled a truly horrifying smile and the smell of rotted meat caused S’Tasik’s stomach to turn. “Only the ones who cooperate,” he snarled in a voice reminiscent of crunching bone. “I’ve been known to do far worse.”
With a rueful chuckle, the Vulcan nodded and scrambled up the ladder, buckling himself into his seat in preparation for the drive. Vivaldi lurched forward as her pilot engaged her burners, leaving both boarding hub and Laskir behind as she sped towards her destination. “What I wouldn’t give to be back in bed,” moaned a bald ensign cradling his head in his arms.
“I couldn’t agree more,” S’Tasik agreed darkly. This is going to be a long day.
--------------------------------------
USS Valiant, NCC-1875
Star Station Inflexible, Docking Ring B
0523 Hours, December 30th, 2290
During the course of her training, Ensign Yukiko Hanagawa had faced her fair share of difficult situations. She had airdropped into the middle of a forest with nothing except a phaser and a tricorder and found her way to safety without any outside aid. She had taken command of a understaffed system of bunkers and repelled a simulated Klingon assault. She had led a team of rookies on a live-fire exercise to recover a hostage held captive in a network of underground caves. She had even managed to defeat a Vulcan in an unofficial arm-wrestling contest, which, given her almost fragile build and the fact that she stood five-foot-six, was quite an accomplishment indeed. However, despite her impressive list of accomplishments, the Valiant's new chief of security found herself stymied by her newest assignment: making sure that each and every member of the heavy frigate's crew got where they needed to go.
It wasn't supposed to be like this. Hanagawa and the rest of her security detachment had come on board on the first wave of shuttles, escorting a group of engineers who were charged with ensuring that all life-support systems were in working order. Decked out in EV gear as a precaution against a hull breach or something equally unfortunate, the techheads had fanned out across the Valiant's eleven decks to check atmospheric pressure and the oxygen content of the air. With the exception of abnormally high levels of radon in the armory -- a fairly routine problem that the filtration array had taken care of posthaste -- they had found nothing worth reporting. And so it was that Hanagawa ended up securing from patrol formation a full forty minutes before she had expected. Instead of shepherding compliant engineers for the duration of the drill, she found herself stationed in Shuttlebay Two to complete her secondary objective, one even less glamorous than the first.
"Ensign!" Hanagawa spun to face a harried Andorian storming out of the turbolifts behind her, his antennae quivering in anger. "You are in command of the security division, no?"
"That would be me, petty officer." The ensign forced herself to smile, though annoyance lent a hard cast to her clear brown eyes. It was in times like these that she cursed the gods for stunting her growth at the tender age of fifteen, for the Andorian towered over her like a very large and very blue tree. "Whatever you want, you'll have to wait: the Brahms just docked and I need to direct her crew." In an attempt to keep control of the situation, she returned her attention to the crewmen lined up behind the perimeter established by her men. One by one, they began to identify themselves for the retina scan that would allow them aboard the ship.
"I will not wait," the Andorian snapped, having long since abandoned any pretense of decorum. "I needed to get the auxiliary fusion reactors online fifteen minutes ago. Your man told our team that they were on deck five aft, but when we got there we found not reactors but the main energizers -- "
Hanagawa gritted her teeth, trying her damnedest to look concerned. "I apologize for my man's mistake," she said, nodding as Fagles, Lindsay Z. passed through the cordon and dashed off to main engineering. Inwardly, the ensign wondered what that "Z" might stand for. "As you can imagine, he's as new to the Avenger-class as you are, and -- "
"I did not come here to hear your insignificant excuses, Ensign. I came here to file a formal protest against Mister Jaral for incompetence, and I demand that he be removed from duty so more essential personnel do not receive the wrong instructions."
Venazzar, Ichar T. stepped over the threshold, following his gold-collared companion to the lift. Hanagawa waved him through without so much as a glance at the verification confirmation displayed on her screen; instead, she rounded on the Andorian glaring at her from on high, resolved to make one last effort to placate the angry beast. "Duly noted, petty officer. I'll tell Mister Jaral that you're unhappy with his performance and discipline him if I see fit." Yeah, by thanking him for tweaking you out. Her smile grew even sweeter: "Is that all?"
The Andorian shook his head violently, antennae flapping backwards and forwards with the force of his rage. "That's insufficient for a mistake of this magnitude -- "
Hanagawa flinched, her delicate features flushed with red. "You seriously expect me to punish Faolain because you don't know how to read the deck maps posted next to every turbolift? Have you gotten the reactors online?"
"No, but -- "
"Deck six. Aft. Get there before somebody comes hunting for your head."
"I will have you know, Ensign, that I am not an enemy you want to make."
"Oh, for god's sake -- " Her slender hand punched the communicator hanging at her side. "Hanagawa to engineering. Someone just told me that the fusions haven't come up yet and we're running fifteen minutes behind schedule. Can you confirm?"
A clearly irritated voice buzzed back over the intercom. "This is Lieutenant O'Riordan. Petty Officer Tholon was supposed to take care of that. Knowing him, he's probably mouthing off to somebody and -- "
Hanagawa toggled off vox and drew herself up to her full height -- which by the most generous estimation brought her up to the Andorian's neck. Tholon stiffened, straightened, and fled, storming back towards the lift and nearly bowling over Gonzalez, Vienna P. in his haste.
For her part, the ensign smiled once more, and this time the sentiment was genuine. Looking for all the world like an innocent schoolgirl who had found her way on board a starship by accident, she leaned forward to rest her elbows on the reinforced tritanium barrier her people had set up at the far end of the bay. Her shoulder-length hair fell forward to cover one eye, lending her an insouciant look that had brought the coldest of men to heel. "Next?" she asked, her voice veritably dripping with honey.
"Matrazzi, Christopher F., crewman second class." The man blinked nervously and forced the scanner to void its first test and start another. "I think I can make my way to my post myself, sir."
"Good, because I didn't enlist to be a tour guide," she said, even as her face fell at the sight of two more shuttles soaring through the docking bays with ladders extended. "Though if Starfleet has anything to say about it, I'll be handing out maps and candy to little kids at HQ. Carry on."
