Keth Sobans Personal Log

[Sjet]

Keth's initial reaction: "Whats Cyanide?"
Keths reaction after Wikipedia...well he's still refusing to come out from behind the sofa so somewhere between the depths of terror and the curiosity of the lost fortune in pennies back there.

[Sjet]

Cultural Log 578…or 579. Come to mention it this might be log 577. Huum….Computer delete all and start again.

((Segment ‘Cultural Log….start again’ Deleted))

Cultural Log! Hello my fellow Huanni of all fur tones and Clans, it is I Keth Soban, brave explorer and cultural expert to the Federation here! As with all of my previous logs to date I will be answering one questions from home directly, whilst all others will be sent back with a written response or a picture of what I believe you want your answer to be.

Grekker Huffal, OH! I know that name! We all do as Huffal Farm Foods are a prouder sponsor of this cultural expedition! Remember listeners that if you want food that so farm fresh it’s still walking around, let Huffal Farms round it up for you! Hehe these advertisement tie in’s are easy…oh wait the lights still on! Delete last sentence!

((Segment ‘Delete Last Sentence’ deleted))

So Grekker Huffal, of whom I have no familial or client based obligation to at all, writes an interesting question on the topic of human digital recordings. This is an excellent question, seeing as Humanity has created over seven billion hours of recorded digital video footage in the past three hundred years. Why do humans seek to record so much of their world in this medium? Well for that we have two answers.

The first is entertainment. After all, as we all know, re-watching a football match for the billionth time is a fascinating and enlightening experience for one and all. How else are we to understand then holy message passed on by the strikers as they test the faith of the goalie with their divine passing’s? The second is to chronicle their own history, because humans have very poor memories being unable to use the sense of smell to heighten memory retention. One of their recordings that struck a chord with this explorer was of their Challenger space shuttle, which has many similarities with our very own Sacred Ascender of which I was a crew member.

They use these recordings to remember the events across the span of time, to keep them fresh and real in the minds of their young kits (Kiddens? Catdren? I’ll edit this later). I was also taken aback by a historical recording from their distant pre warp times: a historical epic in step with our own epics of heroes struck down by the unjust and lifted up by the will of the people to stand in their defence.

I would strongly advise all my fans to watch the attached historical epic called ‘Robocop’ for its deep and meaningful commentary on the frailty of life and what they call the ‘human condition’. Though come to think of it the name Robocop is sort of….drab. Well you know what, I’M good at naming stuff. Really good, just ask the map makers of Huanni’s second moon: I names every other crater after one of the bones in my tail.

Anyway this all the time I have left for. We’re currently under attack by Romulans, and there are a lot of leaky humans who need my courageous aid-

OH-OH! ROBOT-A-COP!...Oh yes that’s much better.

[Sjet]

“Dammit!”

Keth leaned over the console and looked, upside down obviously, at the scorched fingertips of the engineering officer who was blowing them over his hissing lips. Keth couldn’t tell if the look of utter disdain was for the sparking wires, or the so far small pile of blown out buffer units, but the furred Huanni had a feeling that this was on his side. After all he’d spent so many hours in Engineering following after Nav as more lessons in human culture were doled out on an ‘as needed basis’, that Keth had grown accustomed to hearing the word ‘dammit’ following him about. It must have been some sort of salutation or religious observance provided to a god of engineering.

Oh! Maybe the elephant one with all the arms, those would be handy for a engineer.

“Is it done?” Keth asked hopefully, holding his hands tightly behind his back to stop them fighting madly, eyes as big as dinner plates glowing almost in the light of the communications room “Did my mail from home download?”

The engineer glowered as the still glowing buffer unit, the last to have been slid into place before rebooting the main antenna, and then looked at Keth.

“Nav!” he shouted with a slight rise in his voice, looking out of the door and into the main engine hall beyond “Can someone find me the damn Animal Control tech!”

It hadn’t been long enough for her to finish repairs on her end of the destabilising couplers to set the inertial dampeners on to a rotation sequence that may or may not hit the Chief’s office at regular or irregular intervals. But apparently, her uniquely conceived prank would have to wait. With a fresh brushing of grease across her left brow and a lopsided grin on her face, she pushed herself free from the relay section. “Somebody call?” she yelled back, folding her tool kit back up and tossing it over her shoulder. This was one repair she didn’t want to get logged, unofficially or otherwise.

Animal Control had to mean only one thing. Ensign Soban was on the prowl, so to speak. “Everybody relax, I’m here.” Entering the Comm room, she narrowed her eyes in some confusion. “Um… what’s going on here?”

“I-” Keth began, before with a huff of air the the officer got up off the deck and shoved the roll of his own tools into her arms. He then turned, opening his mouth to throw something back at the massive Huanni who seemed ready to cower away from that glare, and then with a growl departed. This left Nav in the company of Keth, in a empty communications station, with the smoking remains of many a buffer unit to keep her company.

To which Keth’s only addition to the conversation thus far was a weak little wave and a “Well, fancy seeing you again. So soon. Why breakfast was only 30 minutes ago.”

Nav stood in the decimated remains, holding far too many tools, and grinned at Keth. “Well, welcome to the Communications Room.” She bit her lip and tried to lay the tools, along with her own, in a somewhat aligned sense of order. “It has looked better. I couldn’t tell that you’ve been here. I mean, you’re not holding anything that could possibly destroy the place.” She looked at him with mock detailed scrutiny and raised an eyebrow. “You haven’t been through the transporter since breakfast, right?” she asked with a sarcastic tone that had a more playful twist leaning towards humour than disappointment.

“Nope!” Keth said proudly, before adding with a little raised finger “Oh I did pop into sickbay to see how Ensign McGuffin was doing. He says he can feel his toes again, and does not blame me at all for the pitcher of water I threw on him when he came at me with the pointy stick. He seem’s very nice when he’s not slightly on fire.”

Said stick had been the grounding rod connected to the ships space frame. The water, left out by a well intentioned steward to aid in the technical work in debugging the Huanni transportation technique, had allowed the static burst to be grounded….right through Ensign McGuffin’s central nervous system. To the young red shirts credit he only whimpered when he was zapped before falling to the floor.

Engineering was certainly more of a carnival with Ensign Keth Soban aboard. But to be honest, she wouldn’t want it any other way. Turning to him once she’d finished with the tools and assessing at least some of the damage, she looked up and asked, “So, what happened?” Her voice wasn’t reproving but understanding. There was precious little of that going on in the Engineering Department, and it wasn’t something she was going to perpetuate it. “Talk while I’m working,” she said and took a look at the disarray of the array, which seemed about right when getting Frankie and Keth in any juxtaposition.

“Well I just came down here to check for any mail from home.” Keth said simply, leaning on the console with a audible groan of metal under strain “Usually its just gossip from home, some news from the capital and general purpose housekeeping. Sometimes I even get letters from the Federation Ambassador to Huan, just making sure everythings okay: she jokes about me signing away Huanni sovereignty to the Romulan Star Empire, and I kid back that I have. I get A LOT of mail from the Diplomatic office for some reason. Anywho I came down this morning to download my mail, hit all the right buttons ((unlike that sticky escape pod lever incident)) and….poof!”

He gave the console a hard slap with a open hand, enough that a screw came loose and rattled down into a floor grate.

“Poof,” Nav mimicked, watching the screw roll away, and grateful that she had at least 20 more like it in her tool kit. Sighing and setting herself to the task, she could see the wires twisted more from frustration than with effort, and began the methodical unravelling, and sourcing the origin of the spectacular overwhelming incoming data stream that had overrun every buffer in their system. There had to be larger buffers, longer tubules, reinforced wires, upgraded relays, and some redundancy she could use in order to match the transporter’s system. After all, it buffered kajillaquintillians of data in the form of human or not so human anatomy for disassembling and reassembling. How could someone’s mail rival anything like it?

Maybe she could use that system until she could… yes… No one transporting off the Legacy for a while… it could be done. Bypass the primary memory core which housed everyone’s original buffered details, run the regular Starfleet communications through the main channel, and reroute the incoming mail to the secondary buffer panels before transferring the data stream to the comm system and finally have a poof of their own, without the screws being loose.

The question really was, what might cause such an increase in transmissions from home to here? There didn’t seem to be anything out of sorts with Keth, but something must be amiss. Rubbing her fingers across her forehead in some consternation, generously spreading the grease across in a thin unibrow, she looked up. “Everything ok, Keth?”

“Huh?” Keth said a little distractedly, snapping back to reality with a little clack of his teeth. He then went through the recording his ears made of the conversation, a nice little feature his mind had gained when he realised just how often humans just focused on their work. It was like they could only do one thing at once, or were so focused on a single thing that they were nearly savant. A Huanni could multi task with the best of them,, and Keth had proved that at the Academy by rubbing his belly, patting his head, and singing a selection of Gilbert and Sullivan songs.

Backwards!

“Oh, yeah. I’m okay.” Keth said with a smile, before letting a little sigh creep into his words “Its just, it being my birthday and all, I was looking forward to getting some messages from home. You know, mother, father, close family.”

“Your birthday?” Nav said, her head rising and narrowly missing the console, but her hair snagged neatly into the newly replaced loose screw and tore out in a chunk. “Well, damn it all, Keth, why didn’t you say so before?” Scratching absently at her head, she made the last connection, and hoped that the buffers that the Comm’s Engineer had left behind were going to at least shunt some of what was about to prove to be sensory overload.

“Humans love birthdays, or celebrations, or parties… or really any excuse to get together and drink,” Nav said, as she gingerly reactivated the channel. It lit up like its own Marquis on old world Broadway. “And close family.” Whistling softly, she scratched her cheek, fingers covered in a red grease to add a macabre dimension to her unibrow. “You… wow, you must have a lot of family.”

“I come from a relatively small family, and my father has always been teased over only having seventeen sons and daughters. So we’re kinda closed knit, with me being the firts Huaan to leave the system! That was…something different. Kinda scary.” Keth lept over the communications console, and then leaned over it as the message counter began to go up “...Huh...only five figures. Oh well the suns still rising on Huan so the others will come in sooner or later.”

Nav blinked in some surprise, and shook her head slowly. “Five figures… seventeen…” Family wasn’t her strong suit, so instead of broaching the subject, she turned it around a little. After all, today should be all about Keth. After all, it wasn’t every day that was his birthday. And to be honest, she wasn’t sure how they could tell all the way out there…

“So, happy birthday, Keth! What does a Huanni do on his or her special day? And uh… you’re going to have five of these on our trip? Or…” This was going to prove to be quite the daunting task. “I hope you don’t mind, but I think we should do a human type celebration to mark such an occasion, especially for the first Huanni from your family to leave the system.”

“Oh? And what would a human birthday celebration entail?” Keth said, trying to quietly not get excited. He accomplished this feat by keeping his head totally still, whilst the rest of his body did a little wiggle dance up and down. All in all very convincing for a Huan. Would their be a hunt? Well of course there would be a hunt. That was a really daft thing to say considering just how big main engineering was. Keth had been on board for a month now and still got lost down there even when following a guide map.

‘Convenient walking distance from the cafeteria’ my rumpled neck scruff.

‘Well, there are presents, and balloons, and ribbons, and special food and of course, well, there’s cake, with making wishes and candles,” Nav said, now leaning comfortably against the console, still watching the lights twinkle like their own little universe inside of the Comm Room. “Sometimes there’s dancing, and games. We should do something big for you, especially your being away from home on such an important day.”

There was the slightest shadow that passed over Nav’s face before she brightened again. “They must miss you a lot. I mean, the messages are still coming.” She waited a beat. “Maybe you might need some help reading them all.” Nav wasn’t going to be getting any mail from home. Her whole family was right there on the ship.

“Can we….er….skip the candles? Fire seems to….er….like me a little to much..” Keth said, holding the tip of his tail and remembering and all to memorable Chinese new year when a roman candle had proved to be just to alluring to leave alone “And I like dancing, thats an important part of Huanni society after all. Huum...OH! I can show you!”

He opened up the message file and began to literally paw through them. Names and message headers were flicked by until he found the one he wanted. He clicked it, and the message unfolded onto a larger screen that showed it was a video file instead of a plain text message. Which also explained why a peta byte memory buffer had blown its stop when 64526 large high quality video files had suddenly appeared.

On the screen was the head and torso of a Huanni, though all the proportions seemed more slender and streamlined when placed against the metric Keth created when measuring Huanni against Huanni. Where Keth’s fur was a mottled tan, this Huanni;s had a sable like finish of sun kissed snow, with a violent streak that ran in parallel lines that across the lips and eyes towards the back of the head. The video began to play, and whilst there was a little sound to it in the form of muted growls and purs in constructed sections of speech, and a odd bass rumble the speakers had trouble creating, the video was more for show than tell.

The Huanni never stopped moving.

From the tips of her ears to the narrow and delicately groomed mane the Huan remained in motion. A head tilted forward here, cock to the right there, tips of ears flicking up and down in rapid semaphore like patterns with the raising of mane underlining a phrase or stating a serious fact. The eyes as well remained in motion, widening and turning too slits with rapid flashs. Even the whiskers played a role, shimmering in a high frequence dance all their own. Hands appeared in the screen, delicate fingers flicking the air with claw tips sometimes on display and sometimes note. Then at the end the Huanni female glanced past the camera, then then grinned wide and leaned close to nuzzle the camera-

“Thats enough of that!” Keth said in a squeak before fumbling with the controls, that didnt so much as stop the video as suddenly play it on separate monitors and in a variety of clashing contrasts, before it too was sent to digital purgatory in the buffer. Once he was sure the image was gone, for good, he turned back to Nav and smiled sheepishly “Shes the...er….president of my fan club back on Huan. Just, er….her way of passing on the message that all of the Families of Huanni are waching me, expecting all greatness and so on and that, er...welll she’s a people person.”

He wiggled his hand in a mimic to one of the hand gestures she had made.

“You know...a Stalker?” he said, again mimicing the hand gesture for Nav “You know, someone who hunts down the right people for the right things. She was a big shot in a Huanni Resourcing division before she was recruited for me- TO WORK FOR ME. To work for me not for me which is an important difference to make and golly gee don't you think the environment controls are off in here? Its hot in here. Can't open a window in here, it being a vacuum and all.”

Nav was fascinated by the beautiful execution of a rather intricate dance, and as she watched, it became less a dance and more of an exhibition. She judiciously avoided looking at Keth during the rather exquisite and interesting display of Huanni body language, which, if it had any remote resemblance to human body language, there was a lot more than dancing going on in that one. She was going to mention that she had a sari and knew some traditional dances from her native land of India, but instead, she smiled, looked at the ceiling above Keth’s head and flicked a switch on the console, a sharp and cool blast of air blew down right on him.

“Well, glad to know you’re missed, and have a whole fan club. Hopefully they’re all as… flexible and committed to developing their talents in such a dedicated way.” Nav bit her lip and tried to keep her chuckling from shaking her shoulders too much. “So, no candles, and a whole different type of dancing. With people and everything.” Nav thought for a moment. Perhaps it wasn’t a whole different type of dancing at all… just not for public consumption on that one.

“This download is going to take quite a bit of time, Keth. I’m not sure you want to see all of them in here… or perhaps I should leave you alone to uh… experience the rest of them at your leisure.” She shrugged a little and grinned widely. “She’s quite lovely, Keth. She might have sent a few more… messages…”

“You think so?” Keth said innocently, or at least as innocently as he could.

“Yes, on both counts,” Nav said, her brown eyes twinkling. “She must miss you very much. They all must,” she said and watched the messages still ticking up. “I hope you don’t get too lonely on board, Keth. It’s great to be the first one who has made it out of your system, but it can be hard too.”

“Its okay. Besides its not like Huan is going anywhere, and I’m doing very important things here that will benefit all of Huanni society when I go home. Doctor Voddy is very educational, and always delegating important tasks to me to improve my knowledge base. Did you know the Legacy has four thousand and ninety seven sample containers on board? I didn’t know that! But now I do because Doctor Voddy asked me to run inventory on them after I had a misunderstanding with a fire extinguisher.” Keth said in that breezy, always one notch away from manic nature of his that glazed over quite a lot of worry. or at least it would be worry and anxiety when you thought of it in human psychological terms.

Nav grinned widely, glad he was settling in more and knowing that once the project that Jill had approved was complete, would have more responsibility aboard. Some might argue against it, but diversity made life worth living. Besides, he’d studied to do more than damage biomonitors and fire extinguishers; certainly not inventory a bunch of sample containers, no matter how he might feel about it.

“Soooo….do you have any mail waiting? I imagine human families are quite a lot similar to the Huanni societal model of two mates, offspring and familial obligations?” Keth asked, still trying to wrap his head around the small size of human families. But then again there was that disquieting small number of nipples pers mating pair that kept the figure low…

Maybe that had something to do with the Eugenics War he had read abou? A genetically enforced population control mechanism? He mentally added another question to the Tome of Questions that he be asking Doctor Voddy about in the coming five years of their mission: lots of why’s, but not many hows.

She shook her head once and took a small breath. "No," she said quietly, "no mail." Busying herself with the buffer modules, she forced a smile and said as cheerfully as she could, "But yours more than makes up for it!" She cleared her throat to dispel the lump inside of it. Family wasn’t something she felt ready to discuss.

Keth was celebrating the day of his birth with every member of his family and entourage. Heavy emphasis on celebrating, if that small insight into dancing and the art of foreplay on Huan was any indication. Today was all about him and not about her. It wasn't his fault that his overwhelming outpouring of love, attention and messages simply highlighted her own lack.

If she kept focused on the work then she could ignore the ache. Besides, she was an Ambassador of sorts for the Huanni contingent of one. She wiped her eyes and gathered the blown buffers, trying to clear up the mess left behind. If she could simply focus on that task… she would be fine.

“Oh. Well then.” Keth said, waking to the now well abused communications console and began to work the board there. His fingers worked fast, and were soon finished as he stood back and smiled “There you go, and now you do.”

Nav blinked and swallowed. "What... what did you do?" Turning to him she had tears standing in her eyes and said nothing for a moment, then hugged him as tightly as her smaller arms and relatively weaker muscles could manage.

“I sent you all my spam.” Keth said, a little teary himself as his own big arms wrapped around Nav too the point of being able to tickle his own sides “That way you always have mail, whether you want it or not. And I am sure when I tell all my fans about you, being my Human/Federation expert, they’ll want to ask you all the questions they send me. The Huanni school system sends me two terabytes of questions every month about the Federation, but fortunately I’ve found sending a link back to Wikipedia works very well.”

Nav bit her cheek and squeezed a bit harder, which probably made less impact than a tight clamp on say a Wookie's wrist. "Thanks, I think," she said, her smile sunny. "I've just become your spam filter." She stepped back and looked up at him. "Truly. Thank you." She might change her tune another time, but she felt like she had been gifted with something she no longer had. Not just mail but the meaning behind it... that she mattered.

“Happy birthday, Keth,” she gave him a smile. “Now, I’m not sure I can get you a present that will rival what you gave me, but, I can sure try.”

“I like cake!” Keth said, and with Nav under one arm turned and headed out of the communications room “To the cafeteria!”

[Sjet]

Personal Log 4
CC: Federation Diplomatic Service, Memory Alpha, Huan Directorate Of Information Formatting And Corrolation, Tumbler.

If AquaMan, a hero from humanity's pre-warp days, has the power to control all fish...why can he control the minds of whales? Whales are mammals. It makes no sense. Though maybe it has something to do with their ban on genetic engineering, the fish/mammal thing. I will have to ask more questions.

[Sjet]

Personal Log 5
CC: Federation Diplomatic Service, Memory Alpha, Huan Directorate Of Information Formatting And Corrolation, Tumbler and Twitter.

I have come to a worrying conclusion: I am not alone on this star ship. In previous logs back home I have written of the...er...'odd' aroma that follows humans around. And Andorians. And Bajorans. Though Vulcans do tend to just smell of dust and sand, and run rather fast in my opinion. But recently I have begun to smell another speices on this ship.

A Huanni.

Everytime I go near sickbay I seemed to have missed them! Are they running away from me? Is it bad timing?...Or am I being replaced already! Look, er...I know the whole 'demotion to ship board security thing' looks bad, on paper (in a utterly theoretical sense of the term!!) but I would like to call it a 'learning experiance'. Its a human phrase I'm throwing out there as proof that I am still learning tons about the Federation. And the english language. (They have only one word for malting! And its MALTING! Such a strange and backwards tongue).

So...please don't replace me with another Huanni. I know we sent Sabatha off to join the USS Furgeson and Lokiti found a berth with the Federation Merchant Marine, but really I'm good here. The crew really like me, and some of them even go jogging with me in the morning (though they never let me catch up anbd run RESLLY fast for humans). There is no need to replace me with another healer on this ship. Besides who would you send in my place, Kalic?...Don't send Kalic, we all knows he's a few barbs short of a bushle of barbble fruit if you can't my meaning.

(He's CRAZY, just in case the human phrase is lost in translation.)

I'm good here.
Please send the doctor away before I meet them, I'd really hate to say good bye to a news friend.

@StrangeHuanniScents @UnEmployment.Gov.Federation @HuanniFanBase @HelloKitty

[Sjet]

Now...this is not for the Legacy, as such. It was actually made for a game called the Nautilus, a game set in the Wrath of Khan era of films. A fun little game that lasted all of six months before it died, a time span that saw the game go almost no where but character developmnt. What this show cases is the character that Keth would have been, had someone not invited me to play as Keth Soban: Benjamin Ingram. Some of you have had the pleasure of writing with this character, a man who was classified as a genius at a young age...and was told of that fact. If there is a centre to the universe, then Benjie thought that he was it. He got his first outing on the SLA's New Trek sim the Oddy, as Navigator: oh and did he ever tell people where to go.

So here is a taste of what Keth could have been...

+++

"You Made Me Break a Nail!"

STARRING
Lieutenant Junior Grade EVANGELINE ERINTH
Chief Helmsman (A Note, the character is a Miran so they all look child like regardless of their actual age)

Lieutenant Junior Grade BENJAMIN INGRAM
Chief Science Officer (And Supreme Being In The Making.)

Date: MD1
Location: Deck 3
------------------------

A short, slender finger tapped the wall panel, its purple-colored nail making a clinking sound as it connected with the metal covering. Drawing her mouth into a line, the girl moved on, tapping her finger at each panel as she went, comparing its numeric designation to the one displayed in bright letters on her PADD, 3A-13-5.

Deck three was the epicenter for all things related to navigation, apart from the actual sensors that rimmed the bridge deck. Even those sensors, however, were controlled by equipment housed within the walls of deck three's corridors, making them much easier to access than crawling around next to the outer hull on deck one.

That still didn't make this job any simpler. Engineers were good at putting things together, but Eva had been shocked to discover the helm console reporting the ship's location incorrectly. So incorrect, in fact, that the Nautilus was supposed to be falling towards the surface of the planet below them from its position just inside the Martian atmosphere. That level of inaccuracy would make any maneuvers, much less precise ones needed for docking or combat, wildly unpredictable.

The Miran girl didn't envy the days before navigational sensors, when pilots had to steer based on physics models and star locations than any real sense of location.

The panel before her read 3A-8-3. She moved on.

Next was 3A-10-2.

Then came 3A-12-3.

Eva turned her head, her double-pigtails slipping off her shoulders as she did. She glanced at the other side of the corridor, and, squinting, the Miran girl could barely make out the numbers of the panel directly opposite. 3A-13-3. Grinning happily as she crossed the hall, Eva set down the PADD she was holding, and crouched down, bringing the diminutive pilot to eye level with the panel that read 3A-13-5.

Grasping the sides of the panel, the girl felt for the locking mechanism keeping it attached to the wall. Once it was turned off, Eva pulled gently, separating the panel from its position, revealing a gaping maw in the smooth corridor walls, filled with an intricate maze of wires and equipment. She had barely begun to reach inside when a voice startled her, causing the girl to shake and knock her hand around inside the mass of equipment.

“And that should teach you right for messing about in there!”

The man who stood over Eva was on the ‘very’ side of being tall. Benjamin Ingram glowered down at her, and tapped a booted foot against the discarded wall panel she had just removed. As he looked down at her, his face seemed to soften a little bit as he regarded the quite petite and also quite obviously young child knelt before him.

“Look,” he said, giving his hand a bit of a roll as though wanting this conversation to have happened already “It’s really sweet and cute and all, the whole junior sized Starfleet Uniform, but just because your mommy and daddy bought it specially for you doesn’t mean you get to go tearing into things. I mean don't get me wrong, the detailing on it is accurate as all get out, but-”

He held a hand up against his chest.

“-You must be this tall and four times as old as you are now to ride on this bus.” he stated, before giving a little imperial clap of his hands “Now get up from there and lets go find your parents before someone gets a snapshot of Starfleet conscripting toddlers.”

The Miran girl tossed a glance up at the speaker, turning away just as fast. He was tall and wirey, the portrait of a twig wearing clothes. Jagged words bounced out of his mouth as he spoke, their meanings lying carelessly where they fell. He, like others before him, had assumed the haughty voice of authority, like the schoolyard bully or the aspiring manager who just isn't mature enough to handle the job. His nose firmly stuck in her business, the man, whose rank marked him as a fellow junior lieutenant, chided Eva for donning such obviously faked attire and attempting to mess around with Starfleet business. How arrogant.

His speech was also incredibly boring.

Eva's ear was well practiced in listening to this kind of tirade. The words may have been different, but the sentiment was the same as dozens before him who had tried to pull the same stunt. Eva half wondered if there was a message board for Starfleet officers who spotted kids in uniforms on a regular basis. No one approach seemed to work well across the board. Anger put some in their place, while others could be defused by a glance at her Federation ident card. Yet something told the girl that this one was going to be a difficult case.

She closed her eyes, and when the girl opened them, they were damp. The tears overflowed, rolling down her cheeks as the Miran let a soft whimper escape. Her eyes were full now, there was no stopping the cascade of salty droplets that flowed down her face. Eva cradled her hand as she sobbed, a wracking cry that was sure to draw the attention of passersby in the corridors. After a moment's pause, the girl turned her reddened face towards the junior lieutenant, showing off the results of his handiwork.

He looked, and he sniffed.

That single sound carried with it a weight of meaning and subtext. It was a sound that had been heard in Revolutionary France, at the final board meeting after the hostile takeover, and very possibly sometime during the First romulan War. It was a sound that said what politics and diplomacy could not: you truly are a worthless soul to stand before me.

“What is this?” he asked with utter indifference, making a rolling gesture of his hand towards her cradled paw “A play for sympathy? Well don’t for a second think you can go and run to mom and dad and tell them I did that to you, little guttersnipe playing around with very dangerous things. You deserve whatever you got.”

He knelt down, looking into the access panel she’d removed and his eyes widened, before he looked back at her. Then the hand with the broken nail was grabbed, and the man with the haughty nasal voice and a nose you could measure angles by began to pull her jerkily towards the nearest wall mounted comm station.

“Children do not get to play with the the navigation sensors!” he snapped, a frisson of fear running through him as he thought of what the tikes tampering might have caused “If you want to play at Starfleet Officer, you can do so from behind the wall of a brig cell!”

So Plan A was a miserable failure. Eva stared through blurry eyes at the indignant science officer as she felt herself being hoisted to her feet. The girl went limp, allowing herself to be pulled along, her captor marching toward a comm station as if it were the Principle's Office. Her injured hand, its finger still throbbing from having the nail ripped from the cuticle, was completely encircled by the junior lieutenant's large hand. Even with all her strength, she had no hope of wriggling from the tall man's grip.

The Miran weighed the options as she was dragged along. Playing along had seemed like a good idea at first, so many had made assumptions about her in the past that, for once, Eva wanted to have a little fun with thme. Clearly this one was a no nonsense Starfleeter, probably one of those boring by-the-book people.

Passing an embedded console in the wall, Eva squirmed, trying to reach out. If she could touch the computer, maybe it would recognize her and log her in. That would be proof enough. Her fingers just lightly brushed the console's glassy surface as they passed, fast enough for the computer to disregard her attempt as a mistake.

Time for Plan C?

Her thoughts were interrupted as she heard a voice passing by, dropping a crisp, "Lieutenants," as the speaker came their way. Eva looked up at the crewman to whom she had presented her credentials upon boarding the ship. He saluted as he passed the pair, eyeing the taller lieutenant's firm grip on her hand with a curious, but quiet, eye.

Ingram came to a sudden stop, and turned on the polite lieutenant. He cleared his throat, attracting the attention of the man, and beckoned him back towards them.

“Would you mind doing that again for me?” he asked, to which only furrowed brows were raised “The saluting thing. You know, that thing your bodies been trained to do because someone who is your supposed better has tramped past and their ego needs a good petting. Could you do that again for me, exactly as you did it before? Trust me when I say you’re aiding in a matter of scientific enquiry.”

The fellow Nautilus officer frowned, before slowly performing the action again to both ingram and Eva. Ingram beamed, first to the lieutenant he had just stopped, and than at the child he had just caught. His face then snapped back to the unlucky man who had walked past and done the right thing, and his voice rang out like the trumpet of an angered God.

"What?!” he snarled, tapping two fingers against the side of the mans head as he spoke bitterly “Are you a simpleton? Some sort of Federation charity case brought on board because they ran out of glue paste for you to guzzle back home on Hillbilly Prime?”

He rounded, directing a single pointing finger at Eva as he pronounced each word separately.

“She! Is! A! Child!” he roared, before adding civilly “We do not salute the loin spawn of Admirals unless they are present. Now be off with you Rover, before I deliver unto you your spine to chew upon!"

[Sjet]

On the surface of things, Benjamin Ingram really did look like a mad scientist.

His hair had grown long when one he would have kept it neatly combed and tended to a reasonable length. And the long silvery streak that ran from his temple down to the ragged tip of the tail of it gave him an odd look: a man struck either by a lightning bolt or highlighted as a warning feature. He hobbled around the large and often empty lab space with able bodied leg and another that was stiff and useless, a cane of rich dark wood capped with silver one handle and tip clicking in time with his steps.

He looked tired, his eyes red rimmed and shifty, as seen from behind the small spectacles that were perched on his nose. He was dressed in the uniform of a Starfleet Science officer, the blue tunic hidden as it was beneath the antique lab coat he had been bought as a gift so long ago: he wore it as a totem, something within which all memory could reside and be safe.

Unlike the now shattered, and almost certainly destroyed schrodinger compensator that smoked and sputtered on the floor of his lab. He stood awkwardly over the scientific instrument, his face wincing as he lifted his cane up and tapped the cracked egg shell white plastic casing of the machine: more sparks, a few pitiful sparks of chemical laced smoke, and then no more. He sighed, placing his weight back onto the cane, the long fingers of his hands coiling about the canes handle until the skin shone white.

In that light, the man with a genius level IQ did not look like a mad scientist: he looked on the verge of becoming a psychotic scientist.

“I do not ask for much in my work.” he says, his voice rich with aristocratic bearing and a moneyed lineage that had been pleasantly liquid during the First Great Depression of the 1900’s. He tapped the ruined remains of his device and shook his head.

“I ask to be left alone to my work, work those feeble brained fools in the Fleet would rather have buried in paper work than progress. I ask for time to complete this work, for time is all I will ever need to see this business through.” he growled out his last word, before slowly regaining his composure and continuing “And thus far this ship and its crew have done me a great service in leaving me be. Even the ships janitorial custodians no better than to attempt their chores whilst I am in residence here, and I hold them in high esteem for that.”

He tapped the ruined machine again, still looking down.

“And yet here I stand, before the grave of a lifetimes work. Hand crafted mechanisms, devices whose form and function were more the work of fever dreams than scientific progress, whose basic underpinning principles were bear only an occasional relationship to their effects on the world…” his eyes flared wide, and he brought the cane down hard, smashing the remains of the ruined machine again and again and again “WRECKED! RUINED! DESTROYED!”

He was breathing hard now, panting with deep bellows like breaths as he turned his eyes skyward towards the pipe filled ceiling.

“I have heard of you my friend: Doctor Vodden might be as personable as a Vulcan, but her orderlies speak freely enough. And what they speak in the commissary echoes out into the halls, and from there to the air vents, and from there to me here in my sanctum. I had thought her wise beyond her years when she had seen fit to rid herself of you, but now I see that she is a slacker. A jobs worth. For she has foisted the fool of worlds upon a ship of fools, and has cost me immeasurably!” with another wince of pain as he stood on his crippled left leg, raising the cane to point it at the ceiling like a sword “Now come down from your roost, you foul raven! I might not be able to purchase a full accounting for my loss from you, but by hell fire I’ll take a square meter of your skin and make a fine throw rug from it!”

Keth, who when the transporter beam had left him standing atop the table in this lab instead of re-appearing in transporter room 2, shook his head. He had quite quickly learned that hiding from this man was a good idea, for though he might be slow on his feet that cane hurt!

“But I didn’t do anything!!” Keth wailed, hands and legs coiled about the pipes as he hugged them tighter: squeezing himself closer to the ceiling as the canes metal tip swished angrily through the air.

“Didn’t....DID NOT DO ANYTHING! YOU CRETIN! YOU FOOL! YOU DESTROYED EVERYTHING!!” the human with the wild hair, mad eyes, and now manic swinging cane roared. Keth now did not regret the once thought hasty call to Nav that he might need a rescue. He very much needed rescuing.

Dr Ingram was going to eat him alive!!

[Sjet]

A starship is a big place, even a mongrel of a starship like the USS Legacy. All those parts and modules more or less flying in a loose and orderly formation gave her designers a lot of wiggle room. Extra Helium 3 storage tanks for the impulse drives, a pair of deuterium intermix regulators insteads of the usual one: but those were just the big house sized things. There were a host of other oddities and additives that the designers of the Constitution class had never thought of, but crafted ship wrights had squeezed into the recycled hulk of the Legacy. One of them was the heavily refurbished science module from a Cyclop class starship.

The fact the Cyclops had been a failed prototype that had been towed from its dry dock slip to the breakers yard without ever firing up its warp core, goes without comment.

The large science labs were set up in a pie slice arrangement in the Saucer section. And for the most part they were bright and airy spaces filled with industrious people going about the task of removing the magic from the universe: one peer reviewed paper at a time. All except Lab 4, which the two lab techs that Nav had interrogated for directions told her ‘Are off limits, if you value your health’. Breaking the seal on the door was easy enough, merely a case of turning the power back onto the mechanism after it had been disabled...from the other side.

The Lab 4 looked...well used. In fact it looked like one of the sections caught up in the battle damage from the run in with the Romulans: lab tables littered with debris, light panels either sparking and dead or removed from their wall sconces. There was also a funk to the air, not an unpleasant scent: more of a remembered one. A heady aroma of burnt stale coffee and lung clogging smoke. From somewhere deeper in the lab came the sound of breaking glass, and the high pitched and terrified shriek of Keth.

Mission accomplished: now to move this SAR operation into the rescue phase.

Lieutenant Navkiran Khangura carried the tracking device, partially musing that the tracker they’d inserted subcutaneously into Keth was working perfectly, and much like she would use to locate a wayward pet. The further she walked, the more concerned she became and with the wafting taste in the air of crusted coffee, her pace picked up considerably. Until she heard Keth.

Then she broke into a run, and tugged a phaser free. No telling what might be lurking below… they’d managed to take care of most of the vermin, but there might be something else. “Keth!?” Nav called out, using her ears and the tracker in conjunction. “Where the hell…” Nav muttered until she turned a corner and a burst through a door that had been barely used. “Keth!” she said, trying to take in the scene.

Man, threat. Cane. Wait, crew member. Who… She followed his eyes upward. “Keth?” she asked and looked back at the rather crazed man, taking a step as if to interpose herself between him and the threat. “I’m Lieutenant Navkiran Khangura, Assistant Chief of Engineering. And you are…?”

“TRYING TO KILL ME!!” Keth wailed from his perch in the jungle like ticket of pipes and conduits that made up the ceiling. He’d wedged himself good and proper up there, with all four of his limbs pressed out into openings or grabbing hold of dubious looking supports. But at least like that he was effectively out of reach of the man who was now just steadying himself on his feet, leaning heavily on the cane with both hands as his skin paled from exertion. He looked up past a shaggy, unkempt lock of fallen hair, and glowered at Nav.

“A clown…” he said through clenched teeth “And now a lion tamer. If I...If I didn’t know better, I’d think it was a festival.”

Nav quirked an eyebrow at him. “You’re a clown.” It wasn’t a question, and she ignored the reference. “I’d say you were more of a hermit.” She didn’t smile. Her friend was afraid, and this cane-wielding lunatic seemed to have lost some of his physical steam. If not his mental… “Stand down. And let Keth down. If you raise your cane or make any threatening movements, I will stun you.” Without a moment’s pause too. “Do you understand this, Mr. Hermit?”

She looked around, trying to figure out what had been happening down in this part of the ship, obviously out of the way. Her mind went over the existing blueprints she’d seen as she waited for his response.

“Its Doctor.” the man said, stressing the two syllables out into dok-tor. He frowned, mouth working back over the phrasing of the word, as though trying to figure out where exactly he had heard it said like that: a pretentious jibe, a sarcastic comment...a playful reminder of his less than godly standing. This went on for a good long while, long enough that Nav’s eyes were drawn to the walls and other large flat surfaces of the Lab.

Every surface was covered in the mad scientific scrawls of someone in the grips of a maddening compulsion. Whenever the lights flickered on long enough to cast their meagre glow a stanza on temporal hyper dimensions could be seen interposed with a basic framework of warp field theory: where the two met the conflicting mathematical models seemed to collide and do battle...and some how found a truce and a answer there.

“I am a scientist.” he said, clearing his throat and turning one shoulder away, shaking his head as though to clear it “I’ve worked hard for my title, it is all I have now. That and these walls, my musings and…”

He trailed off as his cane struck a broken shard of his ruined device, turning it over as though hoping some part of the ruined and partially melted item were salvageable. He sighed heavily, back turned now as he stood over the grave of his endeavor.

“Just go.” came a quiet voice, lacking in the fire or mania she had seen “Just leave me here amid my ashes to work and think.”

Keth, who had somehow extricated himself and now stood at the door nodded at Nav hurriedly, pointing at the door he hunched by as though worried this escape was a limited time offer.

Nav nodded. “Of course, Doctor,” she repeated with the same intonation and was drawn to some of the equations scrawled there. Hm… a few of theories were sound, but her practical mind had started ruminating. “If you’re open to an additional hand every now and then, perhaps to assist in building or rebuilding…” her hand went to a broken piece of equipment and a part of her nature felt a heave that was near nausea. “But you’re busy. I’ll leave you be.”

She took the hint from Keth and stepped quickly to the door. But something made her turn around, and cock her head sideways at one of the massive equations. “Hmmm…” she said to herself, and impulsively stepped forward, took one of the writing implements and added two symbols. “There,” she said as she relaxed.

“Let’s go Keth,” she said, giving him the once over and checking to make sure he was at least not physically harmed. Holstering her weapon she placed a hand on his arm. “You’re sure you’re alright?” she asked as they left.

“Yeah.” Keth sniffed, clearly lying through his pointy teeth but he had his pride to choke down “But, er, next time can we send McGuffin through the transporter to test it out? I don’t want to land in that humans lab again. He’s not like you or Doctor Voddy...he’s scary!”

The fact that Keth said that with genuine fear in his voice, this coming from a being who had wanted to beam over to a alien starship and dismantle the crew who would harm his own, said something about Keth. It probably said a lot more about his threat analysis skills, but we’ll leave it at that.

[Sjet]

Log System: USS Libertine, on line.
Log System: Captain Anthony Pruitt, on line.
Log System: Recording...

Captains Log
Stardate...its a Thursday right? There was meat loaf in the mess hall so that makes it Thursday. Or at least I think that was meat loaf. I hope it was anyway.

I am writing this log in my bathrobe, with a glass of Jim Beam in one hand and an ice pack in the other. Obviously this hangover has allowed me to grow a third hand to type out this log entry, that or I've put one of the other two items down. Definitely not the Jimmy on the rocks. You know this is a genuine bottle of the stuff? Not that mass produced synthetic stuff they load into the mess hall for the junior rates to swill about like kids at a cocktail party. This bottle cost me a lot, and that's even before inflation (which is outrageous, let me tell you that.). I tell you this, dear future discoverer of the Capitan Anthony Pruitt Memorial Hangover Crater, so that you can understand why I had need to drink the entire bottle over the course of a single evening.

That reason is because myself, and the crew of the USS Libertine, are returning from our diplomatic mission to the Klingon home world of Qo'nos seven weeks early. We were only in orbit 72 hours.

Things were going well when we arrived: we'd only been threatened twice with weapons fire from the D7 cruisers sent out to escort us into our parking orbit. I am told that's almost polite by Klingon standards. For a day we exchanged what passed for diplomatic pleasantries with the Klingon High Command: they threatened to send a war fleet to Earth to boil away the oceans, and we tried to sell them a time share in Tampa. Yeah, I know: that time shares a money pit but where are you going to get good credit to buy a war fleet when you're five payments late on that time share? There is logic here, as Lieutenant Tovak is want to say in his Vulcany ways when I wander past sickbay.

...You'll have to forgive me. The idea of going to sickbay in my current state might be a wise idea, but to hear that Vulcan rattle off his folksy wisdom might lead me to murder a member of an endangered species.

On the second day we prepared to accept our first official Klingon delegation. My chief of security Mr Soto warned me to expect a full scale invasion, or perhaps for a dozen Birds of Prey to de-cloak of the starboard bow and blow us to hell. Mr Soto is a paranoid who see's targeting solutions in dark corners: but just because your paranoid doesn't mean there's an invisible space monsters not about to eat your face. (On that note Ensign Ricky, from Security, sadly passed away in a tragic peanut allergy incident involving a small slow moving sloth. Nothing to do with this log entry, but dammit Ricky owed me $10 and I can't find it in his personal effects.) We followed full diplomatic protocol when it came to the Klingon party beaming aboard, and allowed them to insult us in every demeaning way possible. I think after a while the Klingon diplomat just began to feel a tiny bit sorry for us, probably around the same time we got to the conference room and showed off the impressive drinks cabinet Starfleet Command had installed for this little venture.

Mr Bark'Cho, the diplomats pet Targ, really enjoys schnapps by the way. Like, a lot. Like, we had to send in damage control parties to clear up the mess made by a armour plated pig on a peach schnapps bender. The Libertine might never make Warp 6 again after that incident.

On the subject of large destructive beasts of burden: Ensign Sabatha Talwar. I know form my many, many discussion's with the Federation diplomatic office that the Huanni are to be treated with the utmost respect and gracious forbearance. in fact it was that directive that lead to poor Ensign 'Welsh On All Bets' Ricky getting slowly and painfully swollen to death by a slow moving sloth with rage on for peanuts. Ensign Sabatha is a fine addition to the ships science crew, but she is excitable. She is also bossy. She is also prideful. She is also aggressive. She is also furious. She is also terrified. She is also over joyed. She is also ALL OF THESE FRELLING THINGS AT THE SAME FRELLING TIME!!! From the heights of passions to the fiery depths of despair there is no middle ground for this seven foot tall prima-donna feline to occupy: its either dialled all the way to 11 whichever way you go! So when the diplomats pet piggy got riled up and charged off through a door and into the bowels of the Libertine, had I known before hand that cursed bacon joint would whined up in that science lab....I'd have grabbed an escape pod. No joke: I have woken up with serious morning wood after dreaming about escaping this nightmare. That says a lot about my lack of a love life really.

But to continue the tale-Seriously. Like, no female contact in forever. I'm just saying.

The Klingon party followed the Targ, whilst I followed and tried to convince Mr Soto that the Klingon's were not staging a hostile take over of the ship. When they found the pig in the science lab they also found Ensign Sabatha standing on top of a table squealing her head off in panic. She was also holding up my first officer Commander Winton, in an attempt to save his life from the targ. Lieutenant Tovak is optimistic Commander Winton will recover from all of the injuries he sustained from Sabatha's rescue attempt in due time with minimal scarring. I still think the situation could have been salvaged to a greater or lesser degree, had one of the Klingon not made a poorly timed joke concerning the bravery of the oft mentioned Ensign Sabatha.

At this point I must make reference to the medical files Lt Tovak has compiled for me: Dislocated left hip. Major thoracic trauma to rib cage. Fractured ulna. Concussion. Mild haematoma. Broken jaw. Scarring to liver (both back and front). Detached left iris. Loss of ability to taste lemons. These are the major headline injuries that has landed Commander Winton in sickbay. From this I am able to determine, with aid from the security cameras, that Ensign Sabatha took offence with the Klingon insult and proceeded to beat the ever loving hell out of them...by using Commander Winton as a baseball bat. Of the five man Klingon diplomatic party only the chief delegate was able to leave the science lab under his own power, and had suffered multiple cracked ribs and a severely broken arm.

Paradoxically I have a signed treaty with very reasonable terms for future military and trade alliance structures, and diplomatic ties with the Klingon Empire are now stronger than they have been. I think in their eyes they see the Federation as a interstellar power willing to do what ever it takes to win: which seems to include taking on the Huanni as a member world. We're either crazy strong and warriors to be respected, or we're bug nuts crazy and there is a degree of respect in that. On that note I have asked Lt Tovak not to instruct Sabatha in the art of Vulcan mediation, or at least to hold off tapping the crazy train until Commander Winton is back on his feet. So in short: mission accomplished by means of homicidal maniac.

I again ask, and beg because I'm a Starfleet captain and I am not below begging, that you grant me permission to have Sabatha transferred to another ship. Like the USS Legacy, Capitan Hair Flips ship! She already has a Huanni on her crew and hasn't set her self on fire: she's found a way to keep the big cat of her's from starting/ending a interstellar incident. So I again beg you to send the furred harpy off my ship and onto someone else's.

Now I'm gonna hit send on this log entry before I sober up and realise there's no more Jimmy on the rocks left for me to drink.

Log File Ends.

[Sjet]