Finding Stability

Posted on Fri Mar 19th, 2021 @ 10:19pm by Executive Officer Jake Ford & Liha t'Ehhelih

Mission: Mission 12 - Railway
Location: Refugee Ship - Fore
Timeline: MD 04 14:00
1679 words - 3.4 OF Standard Post Measure

Jake and Liha moved towards the fore section of the refugee ship in silence initially. Not that there wasn't anything to be said at first - there was plenty - but Jake's mind was preoccupied by the fact that they hadn't seen anyone yet. No communications at all with the crew of the ship they were on. It could be that they were waiting to ambush them - a thought he wondered if it was influenced by the physiology of her Romulan body that he was now becoming accustomed-to. Were it someone else he might have broached it as a topic of conversation.

"This looks like the bridge," he said, pointing to a sealed hatchway. "Locked down, perhaps. Though I can't tell whether it was done manually or by some safety system kicking-in." He motioned to the cracked screen adjacent. "I don't read Romulan. Any ideas?"

Liha contained a sigh. If she was going to be forced to trade bodies with someone, why couldn't it be someone who knew at least a little basic Romulan? " 'Status: Emergency Protocols in Use'," she read with exaggerated slowness, pointing to each syllable of each word. "Which means, they are conserving resources. And also ready to carve boarders into easily disposed of pieces," she added since Jake was nowhere near being able to think like a Romulan yet.

He bit his tongue - rather her tongue - at the needlessly patronising comment. "Then we should be careful not to get carved up, then." He peeled-open a panel next to the door seals and gave the manual release a sharp tug, feeling and hearing the mechanical creak as the locks unsealed. She'd probably be thinking that he wouldn't have been able to do even that in his own body. As if it was weak and feeble like a child. He wasn't sure why she wound him up so much but with everything they were going through it was harder to ignore. "Maybe you should offer to sleep with them, too?" he remarked, giving the heavy plated door a shove.

Liha pulled her body out of the way - just in time to avoid a shot that came through the door. "Dæhlenma! Fenris Theirru!" she yelled. It would have worked better coming from her throat, but Jake just didn't think about just forcing his way in without knowing how to even say 'friend'.

"Fenris Theirru?" came a cautious but hopeful question from inside.

"Au'e," Liha replied firmly.

When sounds of relief came from within, Liha pushed the door a crack further open. "I didn't offer to sleep with anyone. I just wasn't rude about rejecting one," whispering harshly to Jake.

"I don't doubt it; I was made well aware of your 'preferences' in that respect," he grunted back, providing the added strength to ease the door open more fully. Inside crouched half a dozen Romulans of varying age and gender, with improvised weapons at-hand as well as the single disruptor pistol that had fired the previous shot. "We're here to help," he explained, realising how odd it would look for the human to be speaking in Romulan and the Romulan to be speaking in human language. There would be time for figuring that out later. "They don't look injured. Maybe malnourished? We should get them beamed over to the Rosie for checkup."

Liha's eyebrows - on Jake's face - shot up. "Made aware how?" But the need for an answer - right now anyway - was cut off by the sight of the refugees. They were trying not to show it, but she could see how anxious they were, and how ill and exhausted. "Mnean bhiyy'dhohh hrian rrhietevha mnei," she told them reassuringly so they wouldn't be taken by surprise by the transport, then opened her comm. "L- ...Ford to Mary Rose, we have roughly two dozen refugees for transport."

There was an acknowledgement from the ship before the refugees began dissolving in light a small group at a time. As the last of them faded away, Jake eased forward into the bridge space, which for a ship this old was more a glorified cockpit; six seats with barely any space between them. It was incredible the refugees had squeezed in together. He felt awful for them, having to endure through such a nightmare.

"We should secure things here," he suggested. It went without saying that he wasn't going to be as much help with that due to the language problem. As she followed him in there was an awkward moment where their bodies pressed together very briefly - a strange experience to be squashed by one's own body, for sure. But Liha passed him and made for the front seats. "I'll be glad when we're back to normal..." he grumbled.

"Yes," Liha agreed tersely as she tried to wedge Jake's large awkward-feeling body into the pilot's seat. She looked over the console with a deepening frown. "Half the controls are fried. I'd climb underneath and see what I could fix, but I'm not sure I could get your body back out of there."

"Is it something you can talk me through? Despite your feelings on the matter I'm not completely useless," he replied, using the superior agility of Liha's body to slide into the adjacent seat. He wasn't totally sure he would be able to work it out himself but if she could walk him through the basics he appeared to be the better option for performing the task in that moment.

"Okay," Liha agreed despite not having much confidence in that assessment. "Do you see the duolitic interchange sequencer?"

"Round thing connected to the triangle thing?" he asked. After a moment he poked his head back out. "I'm joking. I see the sequencer. It's connected up to the isoburst matrix. Though it's wired up like a Christmas tree in here...a lot of overlapping botch jobs if you ask me. Going to be a nightmare to untangle."

Great... I have to do it by proxy She was somewhat relieved that he at least knew what he was looking at, but had little confidence in his ability to untangle, especially whatever mess of cludged together Romulan, Federation, and probably Ferengi and Orion tech was in there. "Okay," she said taking a slow breath to calm herself since this body didn't respond to stress as well as hers did. "Do you see anything that is obviously shorted or fried?"

"Only most of it." He poked with his finger and felt something spark. Wincing, he recoiled. "This might be a lost cause. There's barely enough power to make toast in this console."

Great. She was sure she could find a way to route power to it, but she was stuck in this big awkward human body. Elements! What else could go wrong?

As if in answer, she starting noticing a strange light at the corner of her eye. Her head whipped around, looking for sign of sparks or flame, but instead the light went bluish and seemed to be enveloping her. She pushed out of the pilot seat, trying to see what was causing it, but in the next instant she felt consciousness fleeing and fell heavily to the deck.

"Hey-ow!" She fell on him. Or did he fall on her? He felt dizzy for a second. Then he realised that things sounded different...smelled different. "I'm-" He could tell as he opened his mouth that things had changed. "I'm me again!" He pushed himself up off her and started feeling himself all over. Everything was where it should be, thank goodness. "We've swapped back!"

"Oof! What the -?!" Liha snapped alert with a start and was about to throw the offending weight off of her when she realized - off of HER. HER body. She felt along herself making sure. "Yes!! Thank the Elements!" She looked up at Jake, in his own body, and realized they both had ridiculous smiles. That wouldn't do. She flattened her lips and looked at fried controls - a good look with her own eyes. "Finally. Now I can fix this thing. Run a line from the comms panel and i'll splice it into the power relays."

It took several seconds for him to work out she was asking him to do something - rather, she was telling him to do something, which certainly felt a bit different. Given they were back to normal he let that part of it slide and prised open the comms panel to fish out the relevant innards. "How long to get things stablised?" he asked.

Liha looked over the mess of various components - it was bad, but she'd seen, and out of similar necessity, put together worse. "Depends on what I see once I get power spliced in," she said, taking the cable. "Best case: 10 minutes. Worst case, I have to rebuild a part or two from stuff scavenged from other systems, so maybe an hour."

"All right. I'd better call in to the Captain that things are back to normal, though hopefully he knows himself by now..." he noted. "Thank goodness that's all over. Not sure I could've kept going as you for much longer."

"Yes, thank goodness," Liha replied, and turned her face back to the damaged console. "...because you weren't keeping it up very well to begin with..."

Jake made a little face at her snarky remark. "No idea if that's a compliment or not," he grunted, hitting his comm. "Ford to Mary Rose. Not sure if it's happened to everyone else, but Liha and I are suddenly back to normal. We'll finish up work here and head back over once the freighter is secured." He peered down at Liha, feeling a weird out-of-body vibe at no longer being in her body. It was unsettling to think that his own body actually felt 'wrong' to him considering how desperate he had been to return to it. "I guess it goes without saying that I'm grateful everything is still in one piece."

 

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