Reunited, Part 2 of 4
Posted on Fri Feb 25th, 2022 @ 12:45am by Lieutenant Baktosh Redclaw & Captain Christine Applegate & Lieutenant Commander Ian Ryan & Lieutenant Commander Zayn Satu M.D.
Mission:
Mission 6: Shore Leave
Location: USS Medea, Various
Timeline: 2389 234 at 0930
The chief of security had never been so far away from his children for so long, and he wanted to spend as much time with them during this brief holiday as he could. But they wanted to see the ship and Starbase and explore on their own, and frankly he also needed some time alone with his wife.
Thankfully, his friends aboard the Medea were incredibly accommodating, and Satu had agreed to watch the three younger Kzinti while Baktosh and Maylis took a break. So that morning, after breakfast aboard Starbase 38, Baktosh left his children with Dr. Zayn Satu and fled the scene.
“In your opinion, Doctor, what’s the biggest medical risk versus rewards you might find during Delta Quadrant exploration?”
“Hey what does this shiny thing do?”
“So, uh, do you like…music?”
Questions came in nonstop, from the intellectual who wanted interviews with every prominent woman aboard the ship, from the incredibly curious cat who had to touch everything in the entire sickbay, and from a teen boy so awkward and lovesick that a nurse overhearing them didn’t know whether to feel worse for the kid or his apparent crush.
Satu looked almost bewildered at the Kzinti children, but she was quite amused at each of them. "A new disease without a cure. Huge risk to work with in order to find a cure, but even bigger reward if you do find the cure." She said to the first child.
"That shiny thing is used in surgeries to stop bleeding by using a laser to essentially burn the tissue in a process called cauterization." She moved said shiny thing out of the child's reach despite it not being connected to a power source at that moment.
"And I absolutely love music! I was a dancer before I joined Starfleet, and before my leg was... well, destroyed. But now that it's fixed, I'm dancing in my spare time again to get back to what I used to be able to do. What's your favourite genre of music? Do you like to dance?" She said to the last, very awkward, child.
The boy's fur hid any blush reaction he might've had, but the idea of the cute Bajoran dancing made the awkward teen even more so.
Unfortunately for him, his baby sister interrupted. "Kolahr loves to dance!" she squealed. "He can't do it at all, but we all see him dancing to that old Earth club music that his girlfriend likes."
"Shut up, Terra!" he growled quietly. "She's not my-- she's my study partner, okay?"
Terra giggled and sat down on a biobed.
The middle child, Vayra, hung her head and shook it. "This is every day at our house, Doctor." She looked up at smiled. "We have something in common with you, actually. I understand you were raised on Earth too, away from the carnage of your people's homeworld. How do you think that affected you?"
Before the doctor could answer, one more question came from the tiny one. "Are you friends with our daddy?"
Chuckling at the kids' banter, Satu leaned against the main desk and crossed her arms over her chest. "To answer the easier question first," she said, looking over to the tiniest mini-Redclaw. "Yes, I'm friends with your Daddy. We do weekly movie nights and watch movies you all suggest to us."
She then turned to the middle mini-Redclaw. "That is a question," she said at first and then sighed. "I did grow up on Earth. I was smuggled out of my homeworld with my brother after our parents were killed," she gave a slight smile. "My aunt had been on Earth for a little while at that point, having managed to find a way off world before I was born. I was very young when my parents died, so I don't remember them or my homeworld very well. But learning about what my people went through once I was old enough to understand was hard," she paused again. Rubbing the back of her neck she let out a sigh. "It took a lot of therapy for me to get over the guilt I felt at escaping all of it. But, that is not a story for today. Maybe one day we can sit down and chat about this, but I'd rather not get into the nitty gritty of it all now."
"That's fair," Vayra said. "My report doesn't need those details anyway. Plenty on record."
"You watch what we suggest?!" Terra squealed. "We try to suggest things daddy will like but sometimes there's something I like that I'm not sure he will. Like that one about the princesses. Did you watch that!?!"
"Which princesses? The magical ice one and the non magical one? Or the two space princesses?"
Terra's eyes widened. "You've watched BOTH?"
A security officer came into sickbay. "Pardon me, Doctor, but Lieutenant Redclaw asked me to collect his children. The Captain, First Officer, and one of the engineering staff agreed to show them around a bit."
Terra and Vayra walked to the security officer, but Kolahr trailed a bit more slowly, as he kept checking Satu out whenever he could.
"Thank you for letting me sit and talk with you, Captain."
The Kzinti girl, aged 14, sat on the sofa of Captain Applegate's Ready Room, PADD in hand and attention focussed on her father's commanding officer. "I wanted to begin by asking what got you interested in Starfleet. What drove you to enroll?"
Christine smiled at Vayra, not minding doing the question and answer thing. Besides, it gave her more time to relax since a few things from Command had been piling up.
"It isn't a problem at all, Vayra. As for how I got interested in Starfleet? You're making me think way back here, aren't you?" She took a sip of the coffee she had, attempting to remember. "My family wanted me to be a doctor on Betazed, even though I'm only have Betazoid. They wanted to train me within the family."
She smirked, "I'm no doctor, even though I served on a ship with my cousin forever, who is a doctor. Basic medical, sure, but the stars are my thing."
Vayra tapped away on her PADD as she listened intently. She smiled at the last sentence. "It may interest you to know how common that is, Captain. Most of the Captains I've interviewed said they were motivated by exploring 'the stars'. Most used very similar phrasing, too. It must mean they're worth it."
"They sure seem to be, Vayra. Though, Starfleet does more than just exploring. It can be dangerous out there too if you come across the wrong people."
"Which is why you need competent people to control your defense systems, right?" Vayra allowed herself a smile and the small indulgence. She was proud of her father, after all. "For transparency's sake, I will be declaring in my article that my father serves under you. He's said some very kind things about you, Captain. Did you really call him 'kiddy' though?"
Christine bit her lips and had hoped that particular story hadn't made it outside of the ship and the official report. "Under extreme circumstances, yes." She knew more questions on that were coming, but waited.
"Oh, we thought it was funny, Captain," Vayra assured her, now grinning. "Terra thought it was the funniest thing she'd heard all year. And we were glad he was able to seem less scary for you. But, no, Captain, I expect you'll never live that down. What do you remember from your time as a toddler?"
"Unfortunately, every single bit of it. So, anything I did or said, I knew what it was. It was almost as if I was there, but couldn't get out. The toddler version was the part in control."
"That sounds terrifying," Vayra said. "Do you have any advice for young girls who are thinking of joining Starfleet?"
Christine grinned. "Go for it. Don't let anything hold you back. If your heart is truly in it, then you'll go far."
Kolahr was walking side by side with the ship's first officer. His father, Lieutenant Baktosh Redclaw, had made a point of arranging for the two to meet. The boy, age 16, was soon going to submit his application to Starfleet Academy, and Baktosh thought it would be helpful to have him speak with Lieutenant Commander Ryan for a bit.
Truthfully, Kolahr would much preferred to have spent more time with the cute doctor. But it was possible that the Lieutenant Commander might have some useful insight to impart. Also, his father told him the human knew how to have fun, something that Kolahr sometimes forgot.
"So, Commander, what field were you in before switching to command?" he asked as they walked.
Ian had known Kolahr was the son of the ship's chief tactical officer, but to say that he really knew the teenager was a bit of a stretch. Then came the question, and at least it was a relatively easy one to answer. "I was an engineer before I switched to command. In fact when I'm not on the bridge I do spend quite a bit of time in the engine room."
Kolahr nodded. "Thanks again to letting me spend some time with you. My dad says you're a pretty good commander. That you're a bit difficult sometimes because of pranks but otherwise a good leader." He grinned, which unfortunately looked more ferocious than intended. "Is there a good prank I can get him with? Something he'll be really annoyed at but won't be able to help laughing?"
Ian chuckled a little bit at the question, "Well... I do have a few ideas up my sleeve but I'm not quite sure on the mechanics of them. I could show you how to reprogram the sonic shower in your family quarters so that when your father takes his next sonic shower it plays boisterous music instead of what it's supposed to do."
That made Kolahr smirk. "That's good. We heard about how he got hurt pretty badly when his sonic shower broke though. But we can change it. Prank still works if it's his replicator. Especially the one in his office."
"I can show you how to program the replicator to produce Klingon bloodwine and how to program it to activate the comms system in his office. There are a few Klingon operas I know of..." Ian suggested with a smirk.
"Tell me more, Commander," the teen cat said, as he and Ian walked on....
With Chief Engineer Milner working hard elsewhere on the ship, the youngest Kzinti was put in the care of Chief Petty Officer Broeker, a patient damage control specialist who, a father himself, was pleased to show the girl around.
While the Medea was docked at Starbase 38, many of its systems were powered down. Nevertheless, the warp core remained online, idling, so that if the ship had to escape quickly it was able. Most of the engineering staff, meanwhile, were on the Starbase enjoying their leave, which meant that young Terra Redclaw could look around without actually getting in anyone's way.
"So is that the warp core?" she asked the chief engineer, whom Baktosh had roped in to showing his daughter around for a few minutes. "What's it doing now? Can we turn it down? Or up? Ooh! Can we eject it?!"
Old Man Broeker could only laugh and do his best to answer questions, until he turned his back for thirty seconds to answer a Crewman’s question. When he turned back, he saw that the warp core had been dialed up, and was continuing to generate more and more power on a ship that, being docked, didn’t need it and had nowhere for it to go. “Easy, now,” he said as he stood next to the girl and helped her get it back under control. “I think it might be time to find your siblings. And parents.”
Her eyes never left the core, one of the most powerful pieces of technology ever made. Eyes wide, the experience simply reaffirmed Terra’s drive to one day become the best engineer in all of everywhere.
