Back to normal
Posted on Sun Jul 26th, 2020 @ 2:22pm by Warrant Officer Bashful O'Neil
Edited on on Mon Jul 27th, 2020 @ 12:24pm
895 words; about a 4 minute read
Mission:
The Ties That Bind - Empok Nor Episode 2
Location: Amok Nor, crew quarters
Timeline: MD001 1800 hrs
Bash eyed the hatch to his quarters and then peered at the screen of his tricorder, which he’d patched into the room’s systems. During the battle of Empok Nor, they’d been holed by phaser fire and everything that hadn’t been secured had been wrecked.
He and Madi had three crates in storage that needed to be put back and had the next two watch cycles off. He looked at the tricorder screen and then cycled the hatch and walked in.
The room looked mostly like it had before, but smelled new and his nose crinkled at the smell of the carpet glue in particular. Then he sighed and went to work.
Over the next four hours, he used up the industrial replicator credits he’d been allocated for furnishing and had everything but Madi’s room finished. Bash had decided she would prefer to decorate it herself so he’d sent a message off to her and gotten a Scovia hummingbird in reply.
That he’d had to run through the database to understand that it was a an agreeable symbol that was being used in certain tween-age circles. Bash had been planning to upgrade his universal translator to include tween but the computer had dryly informed him that theoretical communication would, on average, take too much processing power to be reliably used.
He was surveying his work and sipping at a Fabiola. Bash had went undercover at enough drinking establishments over the years that he’d learned mixology fairly well. The Manhattan styled drink was a good aperitif for the chicken and mushrooms he planned to cook after he let himself be lazy for a half hour.
Then the comm buzzed and he sighed. Touching a control on the desk where he had his feet propped up on, he said. “O’Neil.”
“Bashful,” his ex-cohabiter said by way of greetings. “Did you get your place put back together for Madi?”
“Good to hear from you too, Karen,” he said dryly, setting back into his chair.
“What?” Kara said and he shrugged into the view screen.
“What,” he asked and she just started at him.
Peering at him, she said, “You really are an ass, Bash.”
“So you’ve told me. Repeatedly,” he said. What do you need, Karen.
“Kara, you twit,” she said. “And answer my question. Is your place ready for Madi?”
“No,” he said reasonably. “It’s close though. Soon as she picked a bed, she’ll have a place to sleep.”
The towheaded woman gave him an exasperated look and said, “You’re sure it’s safe? I don’t feel great about sending her back.”
“I’ve been through all the threat assessments, even wrote a few of them myself,” Bash said, sipping at his drink. “Further, the place has been fully swept for bugs, incendiaries and drunk Klingons. Finally, I have ensured that her room is ray shielded and has a full monitoring suite.”
“Bash,” Kara said shocked, “She deserves her privacy.”
“She’s thirteen and I am not taking any chances,” Bash went on, ignoring her sparking outrage. “It’s passive and will only be reviewed as necessary. Besides, she’s a clever kid. I built in a couple of back doors she can hack into and over-ride everything but the proximity tracker and intruder systems.”
“She’s not interested in any of that, Kara told him matter of factly.
“Then she’ll have to deal with privacy issues,” he said shifting for a more comfortable position and not quite finding it.
He hated breaking in new…well anything.
“So, what’s up Kara,” he asked, us using her correct name this time. “You didn’t contact me over all of this. You know it’s safe and when Madi’s going to get here. And that I would make sure her room would be ready. What’s going on?”
“I thought, maybe,” Kara began, trying to work herself up to ask what she was going to ask, “I could come out to Empok and spend some time with you both.”
Bash sighed, “No, Kara. We’ve went through that. I don’t have the time and, frankly, the strength to help you get a medical leave, plus transport and then finally to monitor you while you’re here. You’re best off there.”
“But, Bash,” she pleaded, “I miss you. And Madi…it was hard seeing her leave.”
“You don’t miss me, Karen,” Bash said, putting a cold tone into his usually calm, if confused sounding voice. “And you’re in no condition to be her mom here. You know all of that.”
She started crying then and he let her go. After a few minutes, she stopped abruptly and spit curses at him in Mandarin and cut the link.
Sighing, Bash checked the signals analysis of the comm, to make sure Kara hadn’t evaded her doctors again, then said. “Computer, break it down.”
He finished off half of the remaining Fabiola and when the computer had indicated that the comm suite was closed and secure, then he leaned his head back and shut his eyes.
Well, things were getting back to normal alright.
Post brought to you by;
Warrant Officer Bashful O'Neil
Security Investigations Officer, Empok Nor
RSS Feed