All Curled Up

Posted on Mon Oct 30th, 2023 @ 3:51am by Lieutenant Ami Rori & Lieutenant JG Jane Sinclair

2,648 words; about a 13 minute read

Mission: Operation Tokyo Return
Location: Shuttle Ankou, Myogi Hangar Deck

It had been a good day, a day where she had accomplished much. Her new ship had arrived, she'd gotten her workplace set up (it had taken maybe half an hour, or was it an hour?), she'd even had the rest of her personal items dropped in her new quarters, but she'd wanted to just get started at work. A quick check of the ticket queue had shown that most of the tasks were minor maintenance items, ones that the spacedock crew would typically handle while the ship was docked. But she could go to the hanger bay and get ahead of maintenance on one or two of the shuttles by about thirty-six days. Always best to be efficient about things.

But just like any hanger deck, it was freezing and she pulled the hoodie around herself once again, flipping the hood up and over her head to protect her ears as she sat down in the copilots chair of the shuttle with the name and image of an anglerfish on the outside and keyed the diagnostic to run. She kicked off her shoes and tucked them in under her as she watched the results begin to slide across the screen, pulling her hands into the sleeves to keep them warm as well. Before she knew it, in fact she didn't know it, her eyes had drifted shut and she was asleep.

An hour had passed before the Chief Flight Control Officer was free to make her shuttlebay rounds. An alert on her helm console had signaled that the chief engineer was running diagnostics. That was fine but she liked being there for those. It was simple: she trusted her crewmates to do the job right but in her heart she couldn’t actually take their word for it. A diver was responsible for their own air, and a pilot their own ship.

The shuttlebay was quiet. Was there someone working here? The diagnostic on Ankou was finished, but the next one hadn’t been started.

The Ankou’s hatch was still open. Was Mia getting handsy with her shuttles again? Or was the new chief engineer still working? In either case, there was no noise.

Except…yes there was. It was soft. Gentle.

Jane crept in and found her. The new chief engineer, bundled in a Starfleet issue hoodie, snoring the softest, cutest little snore she’d heard in years.

Part of her was tempted to play a prank. Simulate an emergency launch. Deactivate gravity. But instead she just sat in the pilot seat and gently nudged the sleepy girl with her arm. “Wakey wakey.”

From beneath the hood, a voice muttered quietly in Japanese, "Ato sū-budakedo, okiru junbi ga dekite inai." (Just a few more minute, not ready to get up.) There was a bit of motion, the hood flipping open slightly by accident to show a youthful face that was clearly still asleep.

Jane stifled a laugh, and then activated the shuttle’s internal Red Alert alarm.

That startled the girl awake and she sat straight up, which with her position, meant she fell off the copilots seat and to the floor between them. “Holy SHIT!” She said loudly, “Ow! I’m awake, I’m awake, computer, kill the alarm!”

“Serves you right,” Jane said with a laugh. “Hi. I’m Jane Sinclair, pilot. You must be Lieutenant Rori.” She held her hand out to help the engineer up.

“Ami, please, don’t let this thing think it really runs my life like she says she does.” The engineer glanced down, “But whaddaya mean it serves me right? I JUST closed my eyes while the diagnostic ran. It should be done..” Her hazel eyes drifted to the screen and her face fell, “An hour ago… Oh.”

“‘Oh’ is right,” Jane said, still giggling. “Eh, it happens. Tell me at least you started the others too?”

“I.. Umm…” Ami flushed red, “I just wanted to get one done for now, make sure that all of the diagnostic programming was up to snuff on the first before going to any of the other shuttles.. And while yes, I could have set up several diagnostics to simultaneously run or even in sequence, I didn’t want to risk overloading the system in case there was a problem with the diagnostic programs until I’d gotten through the first one.” It was all rapid fire words, with emphasis at various points as if she was just explaining why she didn’t do wrong. “I should have just kept myself busy, rather than sit in this nice comfy chair.”

“It is a comfy chair,” Jane admitted. “And that makes sense. Gotta keep the diagnostic tools in good shape or they won’t diagnose, am I right?” She stretched her back. “Truthfully I kitted out the Ankou with better seats. She’s my favourite, you see, and so if I’m flying her for three days straight I need to be cozy.”

“Almost too cozy.” Ami reached out to tap the console to bring up the report, then brushed the hood back from her head to see better. The faded dots of a Trill became very apparent as she skimmed the report, then keyed in for another series of diagnostics, “That’ll take about half an hour more to run!” She looked brightly up, way up, at Jane and smiled, “Lieutenant Ami Sai-“ she stopped, “Rori, Chief Engineer, at your service!”

“Newly joined?” Jane asked, hearing the slip-up. She’d worked with joined Trills before. Indeed, she saved her former Captain’s husband’s symbiont during Gatecrasher, an act which simultaneously earned a medal for the mission’s success and blocked long term promotion prospects for disobeying orders to do it. Captain Sun’s husband had been joined for over ten years though, so slip-ups were unheard of. Still, he had stories of embarrassment.

"Well, you see... Now that's an interesting story." Ami had settled back down onto the seat and after wriggling her toes had once more tucked them up and under her. She glanced at the timer on the diagnostic countdown and nodded once. "I've been Joined with Rori for the last two years, which is well outside the normal um... 'Forgetfulness' period, the melding should be one hundred percent and memory retrieval second-nature, but um... I'm only HALF Trill."

The smaller woman sighed heavily, "I was on the Akebono, a beautiful little Intrepid, when we were ambushed by a pair of Tzen'kethi destroyers. They managed to take down one section of our shields and sent a couple boarding parties across before I could extend the coverage over the hole, took me about two minutes, meanwhile the Tzen'kethi boarders went absolutely bezerk. You know how they are, when it's death or capture on the line, they'll choose death so long as they achieve their mission. But, one of their groups hit the bridge running, getting through the security team and the quick-response team coming up their rear end. Don't know how the Captain survived, but the Exec bought it along with half a security team and Floria got hit bad, like really, really bad. Commander Rori, that was."

She pursed her lips for a moment, "But as you may or may not know, that's not the bad part: Every Joined Trill tends to have a 'backup body' around for just such an emergency. Lieutenant Joer Rasca was one of my engineers when that second boarding party visited main engineering while I was out fixing that shield problem and they went nutso. The main station and some consoles were burned up and I spent a couple hours helping to clean up Joer from the wall and the ceiling and the floor." She made an exploding gesture with her hands. "But that's not the REALLY bad part."

“Worse than that?” Jane asked, rhetorically.

"Well, the normal procedure is to transfer a symbiont into a qualified Host, but if not, they can be put into a partial stasis for a short journey to get to one. Rori, however, got hit by the same thing that did kill Floria and you can't just put an injured symbiont into stasis, they literally NEED the connection to draw energy from the Host body." Ami sighed once more, "I was semi-sorta dragged in and asked to at least attempt a Joining, which of course, no duh, had to at least try, right? Especially since engines were out after we fought off those Tzen'kethi Bakas. Miracle of miracles, it worked, but no one could have foreseen what happened. After she settled in with me for two weeks, completing the hardest part of the Joining, she decided that she wanted to kill me!" Ami let out a most unbecoming giggle, "Well, okay, it's my body that was rejecting Rori, so now I have to take some medicine every week or else I'll kick her out and then die, because the meld completed to that extent at least."

“I’ve never heard of this,” Jane said, amazed by the story. “Almost like an allergy.” She sat up straight and smiled. “Do me a favour? Authorize Dr. Delling to let me replicate some of this anti-rejection medication and I’ll stock the shuttlecraft first aid kits. It’s possible you’ll be on an away mission in one of these when things go wrong. Having a few days’ worth of pre-replicated supply in the kits seems obvious.” It helped that medication like this took virtually no physical space. They weren’t talking multiple large glass bottles; a week of any medication could fit very small into a portable kit.

"That's a great idea!" Ami launched forward when she'd only meant to lean out and her arms wrapped around Jane with more force than she'd intended. She rebounded back after they'd hit the bulkhead and she once again found herself on the floor. "But yes, just like an allergy! And for some reason, which the Trill Symbiosis Commission said is due to this 'incompatibility', it also means that the memory retrieval and personal communicability with Rori and her past lives isn't what it's supposed to be like, I can't hear her unless she's 'yelling' or I'm asleep or I really really focus on her. Of course, she's quick to note when I'm doing something wrong. AND she's an energy-hungry little worm... It was understandable when she was healing, basically all I did for the first three weeks was sleep and eat and eat and eat. I gained TEN KILOS during the healing process! Have you ever just outright CRAVED a donut after you've eaten two complete meals, plus a triple-helping of chocolate cake? With literally no room left in your stomach?"

“I can’t say that I have,” Jane admitted, amused by the engineer’s awkward launch that took her out of her seat. “Well, listen, a couple of little secrets for you. You already know that Ankou has the comfiest seats. The lockdown measures on the Godzilla or Gojira, I’m never sure, is harsher than the others so don’t let yourself doze there. I have an office just beside the control room.” She pointed to the transparent aluminum along the far wall, through which were visible both the control room and a small office. “It isn’t much but the windows can be polarized and there’s a blanket in the bottom-right drawer since it gets chilly in there. And I feel like the chief engineer should have access, in case you need my files to maintain a shuttle and I’m not around.” She gave her new friend Ami a wink. “On my first assignment, I kept a mattress tucked away in the maintenance area of the hangar bay, since I spent most of my down time there. But it was a big flight deck for fighter ops, so there was space. Not much of that here unfortunately.”

"I'll try not to take you up on that little nap area, because I'm not *supposed* to snooze while on duty, but sometimes it just happens." Ami flushed red at the admission, "Sometimes I just need to recharge for a few minutes to get back going at full strength. And it's not like I don't get things done. Did graduate near the top of my class in Tokyo."

“I never thought you were a slacker,” Jane said. “Well, maybe a bit,” she admitted, “but not now. Anyway, we do so much in our off-duty time too. And a few minutes of recharging may as well be done somewhere comfortable.”

"But speaking of work, what sort of things do you need me to take care of? I mean, obviously if you've got any problems, that's what I'm here for." Ami regained the seat yet once more, but this time kept her feet firmly on the ground, "I've got a few things on my list already, but I can move things around rather easily."

“I try and keep on top of shuttle maintenance myself,” Jane replied, “but if there’s a big project needing your help I won’t hesitate to ask. We got new equipment not long ago, after loyalists to a previous commander absconded with most of our shuttle kit. It was a whole thing, I’ll tell you about it later. The gravity plating has been giving me trouble though, and the tractor beam keeps tripping breakers. Never enough to cause actual problems but compromising backups in a way I’m not comfortable with.”

"In Ankou here? Or one of the other shuttles?" Ami went all contemplative, "The grav-plates may be secured too close to the polarizing array for the tractor beam. In theory, that could cause a power bleed with the standard standby load of the array, which would cause a flicker effect with the gravity production due to 'too much energy', but when you then activate the tractor beam or even just have the shuttle powered on too long, would overload the beam and pop the breaker."

“I’m more worried about the grav plating on the flight deck,” Jane clarified. “We keep it on a dial, so to speak, to help with launch and retrieval, but controls haven’t been responsive, and when it does finally work it does flicker for just a moment. Backups kick in right away but I don’t want the problem affecting the backups too. Or the shuttles. I truthfully haven’t noticed if the shuttles have had gravity issues but this could be a wider spread issue, and the diagnostics wouldn’t reveal it if it wasn’t happening at the time.”

"Ohhhhhh... The main hangar deck, not shuttle.." Her eyes glazed over a bit as she contemplated what the problem could possibly be. Her head slid slight off-kilter as she apparently spoke to herself, "No, the power generator wouldn't be the problem... You have to try to keep in mind that nowadays we've got far more reliable surge protection." A couple more seconds, "You're right, I'll have to check out the connections." Her head came back upright as her eyes focused again and she clearly addressed Jane, "I'll have to check out the conduits and interface matrices, but that's just for a start. I'll track down the problem, promise!"

“Perfect,” Jane said. “Now, the diagnostic for this shuttle said the phaser coils are due for replacement. We’ll do them together?”

Ami cracked her knuckled and wriggled her fingers in anticipation, “Together! And maybe a cup of tea after? You seem really, really nice and I hardly know anyone on board so far..” a sudden yawn escaped her and her eyes opened wide as she realized, “Oops.”

Mission Post By:

Lieutenant (jg) Jane Sinclair
Chief Flight Control Officer

Lieutenant Ami Rori
Chief Engineer

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