by Rada Dengar and Zanh Liis
80706.13
Following Toast
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I myself must mix with action,
lest I wither by despair."
From Locksley Hall by Tennyson
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-=USS Alchemy=-
80706.13
Following Toast
------------------------------
I myself must mix with action,
lest I wither by despair."
From Locksley Hall by Tennyson
------------------------------
-=USS Alchemy=-
Parking her bag in the first available empty storage locker aboard the Alchemy, Zanh Liis parted company with TC Blane as he headed for the bridge.
The moment he'd gone and she was once again alone, she began to feel a fury of nervous energy building within her.
She was too wired to sleep, too tired to talk. All she longed for was a hot cup of coffee and a way to occupy herself for the four day journey to Betazed which would keep her quiet, active, and out from underfoot.
She knew just the thing, and just the man she needed to tell that she intended to do it.
She opened the storage locker again and pulled out a small black box. Tucking it into the pocket of the civilian leather jacket she still wore, Zanh Liis made her way to the replimat.
"Hot coffee double cream, and two dozen pieces of romal candy." She ordered, "To go."
She gulped more than drank her beverage as the replicator set about creating the second item she had requested.
A small, plastic container materialized before her with the round, dark colored candies in it. She tossed her now empty coffee cup, nodded her approval, and then headed toward Main Engineering.
She was happy to see that Lair Kellyn was off running an errand for Chief Dengar- or "Danger" as Liis preferred to call him, and that for the moment he appeared to be alone.
"Mr. Dengar." She clearly voiced her approach, knowing that if he saw her as she was dressed before he heard her, in his distracted state he might think she was an unknown intruder.
Then he might tap his badge and declare an intruder alert, and then Security ends up getting called, the procedure for filling out paperwork explaining it had been a false alarm snowballs into an all night affair, and no one gets any sleep or eats breakfast on time tomorrow morning.
Since breakfast was commonly known to be the most important meal of the day- even though Zanh never personally put that theory to the test by eating it herself- she didn't want her crew going around all cranky and low blood-sugared because she had caused them to miss theirs.
"Captain? I thought you were," Rada turned and saw from her manner of dress that she was still very much off duty indeed.
Before he could say anything more, she reached out toward him with the container of Bajoran toffees. He took it from her, and while his hands were busy Liis reached up and snatched the dark pip from his collar. Before he could recover from the shock, a shiny new gold one was in its place.
Rada blinked in quick succession, trying to figure out what had just taken place. Whilst the obvious response may seem to have been to simply ask about it, Rada feared that this may have placed all of their lives at risk.
It would have been nice to think that they were simply under constant Romulan surveillance and that the Captain had cleverly hidden a small isolinear rod in the pip she had just placed on him as a way to notify him without the Romulans realising but he feared that this wasn’t too likely.
He thought it much more likely that an alien race which required the material from the darker pips worn by Starfleet officers to survive had replaced the Captain with one of their own number in order to infiltrate their ranks so that they could steal all of the life giving pips and replacing them with the gold ones they considered to be completely worthless.
Rada wasn’t sure about their system of authority but concluded that they must have though that the out of uniform Captain did in fact hold no rank and therefore no importance on this ship making her the perfect target to replace with a doppelganger.
Now Rada feared that if he were to say something about it they would realise that their plan had been foiled and may choose to return the real Captain to them for a good three seconds before they destroy this ship and everyone on it so that they can move on to another Starfleet vessel before any of the Alchemy’s crew has a chance to send a warning.
He needed to get out of here and to tell someone but knew that anyone on this ship could potentially be one of them. Maybe if he could confront this here and now he could start negotiations. Maybe even show the aliens how they could make their own pips so they didn’t wipe out the entire Federation trying to get them.
The only problem with that lovely little thought was that a species advanced enough to create a phoney Captain and who had taken the time in surveillance to duplicate her voice and movements so accurately would be almost certainly familiar with replicator technology, suggesting that the pips must be of no use to them when they’re initially replicated. If this were the case then they must require they be in a particular state resultant from them being worn by Starfleet Officers for some period of time.
The fact that he was the only Angosian on board suggests that their efforts have little to do with the species themselves as it would have been much easier to kidnap Rada alone than to have a Bajoran kicking and screaming all the way to the copy room.
He could only conclude therefore that some element of the life of a Starfleet officer would alter the quantum structure of these particular pips, something beyond current replicator technology, to the required state for them to fuel the aliens’ honey farms, or whatever it was they wanted to do with them.
Worse still, the fact that they would resort to invasion would indicate that they didn’t know which element of a Starfleet officer’s life would alter the pips structure or they could simply make it themselves, meaning that in the long term they most probably intended to start kidnapping more and more Starfleet officers and subjecting to laboratory versions of Starfleet life including realigning warp coils, being shot at by more weapons than Rada thought existed and of course spending hour after hour making small talk at official functions.
It was a fate worse than death.
"Congratulations, Lieutenant Senior Grade, you've more than earned the promotion," explained Liis. "...and the candy."
Rada was completely stunned, this explanation made a lot less sense than the whole pip eating alien idea. On his watch, what he could only describe as a group of inter-dimensional psychiatrists, had been able to almost completely disable the Serendipity, not to mention his failure to notice when they had stuck them in a giant bubble and the Captain wants to give him a promotion? He was frozen now just silently observing the Captain as he tried to process exactly what was happening.
Liis began searching through cabinets and drawers for a specific item, and not finding it, she moved toward the Engineering replicator.
"Give me a small cleaning brush." Liis requested.
^Specify size and consistency of bristles,^
"Something the size of, say, a standard toothbrush. Firm bristles, for scrubbing. Oh, and pad the handle."
A moment later, Liis picked up the brush and nodded, even as Rada tried to determine what she could possibly be planning to do next.
"Well, I've got to go. If anyone is looking for me, you don't know where I am. If you are looking for me, then you can find me in deuterium storage, scrubbing the sensors on the intake manifolds."
He was glad the Captain had turned away from him now as if she’d seen his eyes she’d have realised he was near fainting. In a world where he gets promoted and Captains scrub sensors with undersized brushes, nothing makes sense.
"Captain, we have people to...do that..." Rada paused, and Liis nodded slowly.
"I know. But right now, I need something to do, and it needs to be done. So." She raised two fingers and saluted him cavalierly.
A forced smile made its way across her lips- though Rada could not help but notice this was not the Zanh Liis he was accustomed to.
Not today.
"Carry on, Danger."
He held his hand up in the air, not quite waving but not quite saluting either, thinking surely he was living in a universe gone mad.
Perhaps the alien replacement idea was not so far fetched after all.
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LT. SG Rada Dengar
Chief Engineering Officer
USS Alchemy NX 53099
and
-=/\=- Zanh Liis
Starfleet Janitorial Staff
USS Alchemy NX 53099
LT. SG Rada Dengar
Chief Engineering Officer
USS Alchemy NX 53099
and
-=/\=- Zanh Liis
Starfleet Janitorial Staff
USS Alchemy NX 53099