Ens Lahl, Ens Caras, Ens Qurgh'Loq , Nurse Miash, Ens Nis, Ens Kovacs JOPA: Bridgerton Part 4
Lhandon Nilsen
((Holodeck 2, USS Octavia E Butler))
(Table A)
As Eli approached the table, he saw an elegant handwritten tent card with his full name, Elijah Ivan Kovacs, resting on the table. He sat down on the plushy chair, and watched as his companions, Miash and Nis, did the same.
Kovacs: (looking to Miash) It has been too long — we need to catch up again soon! ::smiling playfully:: So much to dish, so little time. And, ::turning to Nis:: it’s a pleasure to meet you. I’m Eli, one of the engineers here in the belly of the OEB.
Nis: Hello, Eli. We’re Jania and Nis. Have you been on the OEB a long time? :: After she said it, she realized no one had been on the OEB for a long time. :: Oh, I mean … what ship were you on before this?
Kovacs: The ‘Oumuamua — most of the OEB’s crew was on it until the explosion at DS9. She’s got a new crew complement now and under the command of our former XO Etan Iljor. I only came into the field about a year and a half ago, so you’re not much greener than me. ::smiling::
As the holo-cowboy butler pulled up the silver platter covers, there was a variety of different treats and assortments, everything from small cucumber sandwiches to tetali and flying fish ceviche and tube grubs. Not feeling too adventurous, he opted for several cucumber sandwiches which were instantly replenished once he grabbed them.
Miash: Never really been a fan of these ::holding a tube grub in front of her face:: but when in Rome dears.
Miash smiled with her eyes making contact with each of them before dropping a few tube grubs down her throat. Eli did the same, however swallowing wasn’t as effortless as the nurse.
Nis: Are those good? They look like something Nis would eat when it’s in the Caves of Mak’ala.
Nis roiled in Jania’s stomach at this apparent insult of its dietary preferences.
Butler: Howdy ma’am ::tipping his hat:: What can I get you?
Nis: Um . . . apple juice? Is that what humans drank in this time period?
oO You can have anything you want, Jania -- there’s tetali ceviche in front of you -- and you’re going for apple juice? Oo
Butler: It is a bland but acceptable option. And, for you sir?
Kovacs: Perhaps, a… mimosa?
The butler’s eyebrow shot up, but he complied. Grabbing the floral teacup, he tipped the pot and a liquid poured out with a hue similar to a sunset he’d caught on New Bajor.
Kovacs: (looking at the other two) What? It’s 5 o’clock somewhere right?
Jania’s eyes widened. oO We shouldn’t have picked apple juice. Oo
Nis: Mr. Butler, sir? We’d like to change our order. How about . . .:: She thought about the wines her symbiont’s previous host Mibahm had liked. Mibahm had been a connoisseur, but Jania was not :: A glass of Holtin House Tetali?
The butler went through an abrupt personality shift, more befitting the era, as he tightened his lips and sighed.
Butler: It must be something the replicator can reliably produce.
Nis: Oh. Okay, then any pale will do.
The butler nodded, his friendly demeanour returning, and poured a light golden liquid into her cup. Jania took a tiny sip. To her, it tasted fine, but when it reached her stomach, the symbiont rolled around and she realized not just any pale would do after all. Oh well.
Nis: Table A’s kind of a boring name, huh? Should we come up with a nickname? The A-Team? Eh, we guess that’s a bit too on the nose. Engine Doctors? We don’t know, maybe someone else should do this.
Miash: The wise ones? Maybe a play on wise acres or maybe a play on being the smartest in the room?
Kovacs: Maybe we figure out the prank first, and then the name will come to us. I wanna be infamous after this!
Jania leaned forward and glanced around the room as though others might hear her and judge them, even though she assumed they were tall talking about their pranks.
Nis: Do we really have to prank someone? What if they get mad?
Miash: I’ve had some fun ones over the years, this one time we had this young doctor who was easily overwhelmed and we… ::beat:: actually
Kovacs: I mean, the chief there ::pointing to Herrick:: pulled a prank on the XO and he seemed to survive. But I think we have an opportunity to level it up.
He took a sip of his mimosa while the others looked upon him, intrigued. He wasn’t sure if it was him, or the alcohol on a mostly empty stomach talking.
Kovacs: Captain Rouiancet.
Nis: The Captain!? Uh . . . does she have a sense of humor?
Jania tried to recall if she’d seen Captain Rouiancet smile, but she’d only seen her briefly when she’d first come aboard, and then a few times walking down the hallway.
Miash: Honestly, I’ve not spent much time with her since coming on board. I reported to Dr. Toz when I arrived.
Kovacs: They have a saying where I come from, go big or go home… we’ll be legends if we pull it off.
Miash: Oh dear, oh my.
Eli stroked his chin absentmindedly while they considered what the prank could entail.
Kovacs: What about… whenever she sits in her chair on the bridge… there’s a meow like a pet, but the sound comes from random different consoles so she can never really figure out where it’s emanating from?
Nis: Oh! We have an idea! What if it was a line from a Vic Fontaine song? Have you ever heard of him? One of my symbiont’s former hosts was a fan :: Jania gritted her teeth, speaking as herself as an individual, something she did very rarely :: Personally, I am not.
Miash: I have some of his songs on recording, he’s popular in the Ferengi community for some reason.
Nis: Then if she comes into medical, we’ll tell her she’s experiencing residual hallucinations from the Dow! oO No, Jania, that’s too far. Oo :: Rubbing her chin in thought :: Oh. Or maybe not that.
Miash: Oh my, would that be ethical dears?
Kovacs: Ethical… smethical… I mean, I haven’t taken the hippocratic oath. ::winking:: Though I could see how that might be perceived as a bit too much. We don’t wanna send her on a mental health leave.
He was glad that he got paired up with the two of them; while he toyed with the idea of a career in medical, he’d thought that most medical officers came across stuffy; but between Toz, Miash and their recent addition of Nis, he was being proven wrong.
Nis: Yeah, no, we agree. Definitely a bad idea. But how do we program the prank? We don’t know the first thing about computers.
Miash: Oh don’t look at me, I took the computer 101 course and scored very low (beat) in fact the instructor advised I just stick to medicine.
Kovacs: Soooo…. ::flexing his fingers:: You want me to do all the dirty work..
He sat back a bit like a mafioso, he was taking all the risk of potentially needing to walk the plank should the captain find out it was him who programmed it, but he wanted to check this box. If he went down, he’d also do it alone, he wasn’t no snitch.
Kovacs: Let’s get the details sorted and see. I wouldn’t mind having each of you owe me a favour.
After they chatted about the prank and Jania finished her glass, she felt a little warmed up. She already knew Miash well from their near-death experience together; even still, Jania was socially awkward. She had memories of hosts who had been great speakers; Nis’s first host had been a firebrand of a politician, who could win over anyone with a snappy one-liner. But Jania had nothing of that in her, so she searched her memories for socialization advice the way an awkward person might search a PADD for “dinner party etiquette.”
Nis: Any plans for shore leave?
Miash: I’m hoping to catch up on some reading and new yoga poses I’ve been learning. You? ::to Kovacs::
Nis: We wanted to see this Dyson thinger, but Dr. Toz asked most of the medical staff to help out with the Dow crew. Hopefully we’ll get a chance to sneak off. Still, it’s kind of fascinating working on people who have been out of phase so long. Some of them still aren’t quite ‘here.’ We tried to give one a dose from a hypospray and it passed right through them. The whole dose sprayed on the floor!
Miash: I wanted to see the ring too dear, but no dice, maybe next time.
Eli also hadn’t been able to get off the ship to see the ring; Herrick had been gone for the entire time they’d been there so some team members, like himself, had to pick up the slack.
Kovacs: Unless we kidnap a shuttle.
Nis: :: lets out a low, long, uncomfortable groan ::
Miash: Oh, I’m not sure about that.
Kovacs: Well, I heard they set up some ongoing trade arrangement, so maybe we’ll be back there soon enough.
Miash: Would we get in trouble?
Nis: We really don’t mind. It’s not like we’ve never been to a Dyson thingy before. Well, this body hasn’t, but Nis was to Corazonia back in the 2100s some time. Nis has already seen a lot of the known universe, so it’s more important that we’re helping people than seeing weird stuff :: Jania sighed, because while this answer was true enough for her symbiont, someone else’s memories were one thing and her own experiences were another :: Will you go to DS14?
Kovacs: (more serious) I think for the rest of our leave, I’ll be taking care of him. ::motioning his eyebrows over to Lhandon:: On the outside he’s good, but he’s been through a lot. I just want to be around for him. I’m not sure he’s even aware of how deeply affected he’s been.
For some reason, Jania had developed an eensy-weensie teenie-tiny little crush on Lhandon after his gruffness in the medical lab, so she suddenly felt flustered.
Nis: Oh, you and he are . . . Yeah, of course, he’s been having a rough time, right? This whole entity on OVIV has been messing with a lot of people. Like, we were with . . . uh . . . you know, never mind . . . Weird stuff, though. Changlings. Crazy.
She didn’t want to break doctor-patient confidentiality, so she trailed off awkwardly, then drank more of her wine.
Eli watched his ensign counterpart try to recover from the fact that the two of them were in a relationship — he wasn’t sure exactly what threw her for a loop but maybe she was just realizing that even though Starfleet frowned upon crewmen relationships, they still happened.
Kovacs: Changlings you say…
Miash: I’ve never met a Changling, well I guess I wouldn’t know if I did, would i?
The group continued to swap gossip that they heard aboard, that is until something happened on the dance floor.
(Table B)
Caras’ dress was so large that he needed to take out extra chairs from the table that he and Lahl were sitting at. He had adjusted so he could finally sit comfortably with a drink and observe what other people were doing at this get together.
Caras: :: sighing:: I feel like getting pranked put me in a unique position to fit in better.
Lahl: Oh yeah? You look good in that dress Morro. You wear it, you don’t let it wear you.
Caras: Where I come from men and women essentially wear the same style of clothing. Your clothing is more of an expression of a combination of things like your vocation mixed with your personalities, and your aspirations.
Lahl: Oh yeah? That sounds interesting. I don’t know much about Orion culture. In fact, the only reason that I knew what to wear when I went to change after realizing Lieutenant Herrick’s prank on me was because my ex-girlfriend Jennifer, back at the academy, was obsessed with holonovels set in this period. I eventually came to love them too. And like I said, they make even as small chested as me look like I have cleavage. ::She motioned to her chest:: Anywho, we need to figure out how we’re going to prank someone.
Caras: It’s gotta be the boss right? I feel like pranking an engineer, and especially one that knows he could end up getting pranked is a challenge. It has to be subtle and cunning.
Caras looked at Lahl.
Caras: Two things I greatly lack, which is why I’m glad you’re here.
Lahl: I see.
Caras was self aware enough to know he wasn’t wise. Was that in itself, wisdom?
Caras: My sister was the one that always pulled pranks on the ships we were on. Well they weren’t pranks really they were more traps. Honey pot traps, scams, fixed gambling games, other forms of coercion. Those are like pranks though right? If you remove the malice and purpose from them?
Caras knew what a prank was. He had just struggled to think of a time he actually had pulled one off. One that was a real prank, not a scheme that Z’Mat cooked up so that they could gain leverage.
Lahl: Kind of? Those sound more like crimes. ::raising an eyebrow at Caras::
Caras repeated the lines Z’Mat had trained him for on instinct.
Caras: Technically for a crime to happen there has to be laws where you commit them. I know I can think of something non-lethal. Maybe something very cerebral having to do with work. A lot of engineers are pretty obsessive right? What if we have something only slightly off-kilter that isn’t a primary function but not instantly noticeable.
Lahl: We could start a thing where the EPS conduits wherever he is at are a couple of kilohertz off in frequency. And every time he fixes it, another one just a few meters down starts up.
Caras: Send him on an EPS goose chase? I bet we could figure out how to cascade it like that… but then what if he was somewhere important… ::putting his hand to his chin::
Kimonzi thought of other pranks they could do without putting the safety of the ship at danger.
Caras did think it was good, but it he was in the wrong place at the wrong time. He heard about some pranks in the academy ending up in a court martial, He did not want to end up with those cadets. Besides, the dean of sciences was back to himself again in like… a month or two.
Lahl: We could also make his sonic shower play Klingon Opera as he cleans. That would be amusing.
Caras: Like in his personal shower? That could be pretty good. Would we change it to the cold and hot settings, so he could listen to it with the volume down, but it would have to be cold, but the moment he asks for more heat, the volume goes up?
Lahl: Yes! That sounds great.
Caras: I have been fixing a lot of replicators recently, since we had all of those phasic dilations during the last mission. Each one of the replicators needs to be fine tuned. I’m pretty good at skewing those results, I bet I could make everything he orders at his replicator start to get a little bit smaller in size each day. So that his morning drink shrinks a little bit more.
Lahl: Do we want there to be multiple pranks, or just one big prank?
Caras: You’re right. It depends on if we want to hit for distance or not. Just one big prank and it’s over, or something that happens over time that as long as we keep a straight face it doesn’t give it away.
Lahl: I think one big prank.
Caras: There is the problem that these are all engineering issues, and he’s the Chief of engineering. He has expertise. He could fix it himself so yeah maybe the one-and-done is better… Or we rope in someone from another division. ::looking at the other tables:: but they’ve all got their own pranks.
Lahl: We don’t need to worry about him fixing it too early if we do the big one.
Caras: Agreed, plus You're the one with the subtleness and cunning, but with you I’ll gladly take the risk.
Lahl: Let’s do it.
Ensign Elijah Kovacs
Engineering Officer
USS Octavia E. Butler
&
Senior Chief Petty Officer Miash
Head Nurse
USS Octavia E Buttler NCC-82850
Writer ID.: O239910TA4LT
&
Ensign Kimonzi Lahl
Engineering Officer
U.S.S. Octavia E. Butler
O240107KL4
&
Ensign Morro Caras
Engineering Officer
USS Octavia E. Butler
O240106MC1
&
Ensign Qurgh'Loq Yinn
Science Officer/Diplomatic Corps
USS Octavia E Butler
O240011Y12