Options Not Forthcoming

Posted on Wed Nov 11th, 2020 @ 9:18pm by Ka'see 'Cassie' Anderson (*) & Chief Engineer Michael Burnstein

Mission: Mission 12 - Railway
Location: Various
Timeline: MD 02 11:30
2192 words - 4.4 OF Standard Post Measure

Cassie sat waiting patiently for herself to turn up. She was clean and wearing clean clothes and really felt the best she had since waking up that morning. It was amazing what showering and clean clothes could do for a person. She had chosen a clean boiler suit as it was loose and comfortable looking compared to everything else. She had even grabbed a few mouthfuls of crackers and water that had been hanging around his quarters. It had been odd being in his quarters without him but it had been necessary to keep up the pretense and no one had turned up so it was working so far even if no one was really happy over it all.

Being clean did feel a lot better, Burnie had to admit, though brushing hair out had been a process. But it had only taken him half as long to get the bra back on. Not that he was getting the hang of it, but once he wasn't so flustered with Cassie watching he'd figured out the 'cheat code': put it on with the clips in front and then shift it around until the cups were front, then arms through the straps and shrug it on. It was probably something any woman knew how to how do before she was old enough to drink, but he felt absurdly proud of himself for getting it to work. After that, he'd picked practical clothes he'd seen her wear in the lab. "Okay. I hope I'm ...that this, your body is sufficiently smell free."

Cassie looked at herself impressed. She wore something that she normally wore, her hair was up in a damp ponytail and she really did not a lot more awake. "I look less grubby," Cassie said hopping down from the cargo container she was sat on. "You feel better?" She wondered holding out a water bottle to him.

"Yes, I do," he said, taking the offered water, and looked at his own body. Cassie had done a good job of cleaning him up; his hair even seemed to be behaving for a change. He cracked a grin. "I look good too - better than most of the times I've seen myself in the mirror."

"I did not attempt to shave your face. You look better with a beard." She teased ever so slightly. It had been a quick shower but she had focused on his hair as it always seemed to have a life of its own. "A little conditioner on your hair seems to do wonders. Should use your girl friends stuff more often."

"Noted. Maybe I'll try it ...if she ever showers with me again," he added with a sigh. The longer he was in Cassie's body, the less likely repairing that relationship seemed. "Anyway, let's get to dealing with the contraband. I'm thinking the engineering lab - you know the one reinforced for explosions - would be a good place to hide it. It's secure, shielded, and I'm one of the few people with the lock code."

"You are going to fix it all," Cassie said simply. She was not going into detail but she knew it was a fact. She was going to make sure because after it was all over she knew that they were going to be able to tell and explain. Once it was safe to do so it would all work out. "That is a fantastic place to put it." She mused looking back at the cargo containers that it was still all secured in with lock codes and motion detectors.

"I'm glad one of us has confidence in me," Burnie quipped, entering the codes to deactivate the motion detectors so they could move the containers. "I'll get an anti-grav sled and we can start loading those up." He surveyed the stack, mentally calculating weights and cracked a smile. "If I had to swap bodies, I'm glad it was with someone at least as strong as I am."

"Someone has to boost your self-esteem and keep those endorphins going. They are important to Humans." Cassie mused as he came back with the anti-grav sled. "You know something Michael you will most likely find I am stronger than you." She admitted picking up the small of the cargo pods finding it nowhere near as easy as normal.

"Thanks. But you're the one in a human body that needs endorphins," Burnie laughed as he picked up a container. "If you gives you a boost - wow, yes, you are stronger than me." He lifted it up and down, testing her strength. "And you're only half-vulcanoid - remind me to be even more cautious about not hacking off Liha."

”I can live without endorphins.” Cassie assured not sure she was right but she did not want to admit just how unsure she felt about that requirement. “You really should be cautious of her. Romulans in my experience are even stronger.” There was so need to hide that from anyone. Vulcans no longer had to be so secretive in this time and she knew that Michael suspected.

"Great..." Burnie laughed. "It's a good thing then that she actually has a lot more self-control than most people assume. Though she'd probably prefer I not tell anyone that - half her real strength is in convincing people to be afraid of crossing her."

Cassie stayed quiet for a long time as they loaded the cargo pods and moved them down to the safety of the secured engineering lab.

“I appreciate her and her self control. It is impressive. Humans in this time do not seem to appreciate self control when vulcanoids could snap their necks easily.” Cassie said with a glimmer in her eyes that spoke she was only half teasing. “So I have not seen any of this since I broke bones.” She muses running a hand along a container lid remembering how high she got thanks to wrong medicine.

"She says she has a temper, even by Romulan standards, but honestly I think she stays in control pretty well," Burnie remarked. He'd seen Liha in action - in bar fights mostly, where she wasn't actually trying to kill anyone, but that was more than enough to have a sense of what she capable of. In the one where they first met, she had literally lifted a man a head taller than him off his feet with one hand. And thrown him across a table. "Thank God," he added sincerely and placed a crate on the sled. "I did a lot of the cataloguing and didn't see anything that could cause a weird effect like a body swap, but if you want to have a look yourself, I certainly won't object."

Cassie nodded and started to pull out the items one by one placing them gently on the bench. It was like a giant puzzle to the woman but she had no idea what the puzzle was around. “A lot of this is useless on organic material like us but some of it like the Borg parts are simply fascinating. We had not met the Borg in my time,” She admitted having seen images and records in the museum on planets they had stopped on. They were scary and she was relieved that she had never met one before.

"Be grateful. I was just a little kid when they first appeared, so I don't remember the first time they came at earth, but my sister does. She had nightmares for years, and then when they returned years later... I still remember the way the blood drained from her face when we heard the announcement that 'Resistance is futile'." Burnie shuddered. I've met some xBs - some in Starfleet, but most stay out deep space - and all of them lost a chunk of themselves in one way or another, no matter how much work went into recovering them."

"XB's..." Cassie rolled the word around her tongue. Even with the man's mouth it just did not feel right. Did not feel like a term she liked at all despite it being common in usage by a lot of people on the ship. "I can imagine it would be scary. We just feared the Klingons" Donatu V would always be the place she lost and found herself again after the battles that had occurred with the Klingons but she knew they were nothing compared to the Borg, they had no honour. She dropped the cortical nobe she had been looking back into the case with a shake of her head.

"The Klingons are no joke either," Burnie acknowledged, a hand subconsciouslydropping to touch the place a bat'leth had once cut into his thigh ...except what he touched was Cassie's thigh. He quickly lifted the hand and picked up one of the cranial implants. "They were allies when I enlisted, but my first posting on a ship we were fighting them back from preying on Romulan refugees and border settlements. Now, I'm not even sure where they fall - perennial frenemies, I guess."

Cassie nodded moving to brush a piece of hair behind her ear before frowning as her hair was no longer long. That was very true, the Klingon’s were no joke especially then as they were not growing their hair. They still haunted her sleep sometimes after an exhausting day. It was a big emotional release when she had caught up on history and seen they had not stopped growing their hair since the war with the federation. “It is the only phrase I can think of in Standard. What caused them to become like that?” She wondered not seeing how hobus going boom would cause the Klingon to change approach.

Burnie shrugged. "Warrior culture, I guess. A lot of earth's early history is like that - various groups fighting each other and then allying to fight other groups, and then splitting up and fighting each other again." He shook his head. Only the fact that nearly every war pushed technological advances kept the whole thing from being an appalling waste. "But I'm an engineer, not a xenologist. All I know is that most Klingons will jump at a chance to fight."

Cassie shook her head at him. “I think we are all happy you are an engineer, not a xenologist. Not many bombing opportunities in that line of business. You would have to have search out some new ways to get your kicks.” She teased feeling at ease with him finally since they had woken up. “There is just nothing here. Nothing in here would have caused us to swap over.” She sighed leaning against the wall running a hand through her short hair. “What else could we be missing here? We are two of the brightest minds on the ship.” She would have said smartest but she was sure that there were people on their level in there own way and shape.

"You're one of the brightest minds. I'm just a pyro," Burnie laughed, and flashed a grin. "I had hoped it might be a Borg thing though. They operate on a hive mind, and I remember one of my profs at the Academy saying that theoretically that meant their bodies were interchangeable. He was interested in the idea because in some sense it meant that any consciousness assimilated into that hive mind never actually died unless the whole Collective was destroyed, so it was vaguely possible that people whose bodies had died as Borg drones could be recovered in the sense of consciousness transferred to a positronic matrix - providing it could be teased out of the hive Collective ...which is kind of where the whole idea breaks down." He paused, realizing he was on a tangent. "Anyway, again, theoretically, the way they create that hive mind could potentially be adapted to just swap minds instead of blending them."

Cassie shook her head. He was smart in his own way but there was no time to argue. She would make sure it was shown to him another time. They had no time to pander to their own egos when so many refugees were “I have seen something about a borg queen who had a personality and I suspect that maybe it could have been passed down to a successor but it is useless just like all of that stuff.” It was a theory but there was nothing there that looked like it had been activated in years. “What are we going to do with this stuff eventually? What is the endgame with all of this and that world creator device?”

"If we break them down, there are components in a lot of it that we could use," he explained. "It never hurts to spare chips or even just raw material in reserve. But what we do with the rest of it... That's up to the Captain. For now, we just need to get it hidden away and secured."

He was right. But Cassie did not have to like it at all but she nodded. "Hopefully when he decides he is in a better mood than today." She mused.