Lt. JG Zhanyt Lafizatar - The Stories We Tell

[Koihime Nakamura]

((Deck 10, USS Veritas.))

Zhanyt preferred to work out and then practice her CQC at least once a day, even though it meant juggling her schedule a lot to ensure she had the time in between getting her qualifications, getting her duties done, and having time enough to keep up on the new journals. She didn't quite have the same time to work on her phaser shooting, but it meant she had time to keep fit. For this, though, she wore just the shirt and pants of her uniform, and her hair was back in it's ponytail.

Of course, it also let her work through her annoyance with things, even if she wasn't sure it should annoy her.

.oO Case in point, the Engineering Incident. Oo. Like most of the other junior officers, Zhanyt had heard about it from the grapevine. And, aside from the disrespect shown by the enlisted, Zhanyt was also irritable at it, and was just thankful the Chief Petty Officer had stepped in before she had been obliged to and dressed them down.

Zhanyt only noticed it when she saw the holo-dummy reacting a bit more violently than normal, because she had lost control of the precise movements she was practicing - Mathenite CQC had a significant fraction of similar moves to the Earth martial art judo, although the comparison wasn't exact - and she forced herself to calm down.  There were certainly times that she needed to call on all of her strength - more than a human baseline, and comparable to a Vulcan or Klingon baseline - but even then, you did so in a disciplined manner. Allowing anger to flow through would have gotten her a reprimand by the instructor that normally watched these rooms by now, and Zhanyt was once more reminded of the difference in Starfleet and the Mathenite Navy.

.oO I like it, but sometimes it's just so jarring. Oo.

Parker: ?

Lafizatar: Evening, Commander. ::Zhanyt stepped back, and the holo-dummy returned to normal. A lot of people preferred standard objects, and she did too, but a holo dummy could respond to test your knowledge and skills, and she felt like testing herself today. :: I suppose you noticed the sloppiness of my moves.. ::Zhanyt sighed, her eyes hooded a bit.::

Parker: ?

Lafizatar: Well. I overheard two enlisted sailors .. casting disparagement over what happened in engineering when Lieutenant Vanlith thought her dog was destroyed. I .. am upset over this.::Zhanyt seemed a bit more than 'upset'

:: It's one thing to be able to say what you'd do, it's another when you've faced the Void. ::Zhanyt was blankly staring at the wall:: Granted, in Starfleet, you aren't expected to do boarding actions, nor are you routinely deployed on anti-pirate and anti-insurgent actions.

Parker: ?

Lafizatar: Well.. One stands out in mind. ::Zhanyt looks back at the dummy, gauging her time left, then with a sigh:: Computer, End Holotraining Dummy. ::she turns back to Parker:: I should probably tell you a story then, one of Companion-at-Arms Zhanyt Lafizatar, on her one-year training cruise. Someone who did not yet know about combat.. or that she could never have served in the Mathenite Confederate Navy. 

Lafizatar: ::Zhanyt sat down on the bench, her tone changing slightly, to one accustomed to telling stories.:: It was half way through the solar year, and we were patrolling some colony systems close to the Cardassian border.  Our class was actually rather small and I knew the other Companions - both were Call, and from the metropolitan areas of the nation there. We had just exited warp and were beginning a patrol pattern when the ship was suddenly attacked by a squadron of insurgent ships. This was unusual but not unexpected, as the Confederation is.. harsh.. on any dissent. The issue was that they had hostages. So, we dispatched four stealth boarding teams, and me and the other cadets were on one of them. The captain of the ship I was on believed strongly that cadets should force everything that any naval personnel would be expected to do.

Parker: ?

Lafizatar: Well.. they were ready for us. As you may have noticed, I am .. rather tall. Even for a Mathenite, I am rather tall, and I stand out. It's why the Sergeant-Master had me and the other Companions bring up the star guard - I simply stand out. My hair is naturally rainbow colored - it's rare, but not unheard of among Mathenites - and I'm over 2 standard Federation meters. I can't do stealth. The thing is, the insurgents expected the starguard to comprise of the weakest members, as it's a weakness in traditional Mathenite boarding doctrine. We got ambushed, and one of the other companions was shot down in her tracks, and with disruptors, you aren't getting back up. I began opening fire, but one of the companions just.. froze. He was clearly trying to make himself pull the trigger of his disruptor, but his hands were shaking so hard.. ::Zhanyt seems lost in the memory, her hands clenching and unclenching, her voice shaky :: I screamed at him to at least duck into a door area, but he was shot down in seconds. I was left to hold off the six ambushers..and I think I would have joined my ancestors in the Living Stars had the Sergeant-Master not sensed there was something wrong and provided covering fire for me to retreat to the rest of them.  And after that.. well.... it's something that you can't overcome without facing it. I counted myself lucky that my reaction to combat is to fight back. Something that came in useful when the USS Fidelity lost it's entire senior officers except for one officer.

Parker: ?

TBC/TAG

Lt. Zhanyt Lafiztatar

Science Officer

USS Veritas

C239112CA0