Catching Up

Posted on Sun Apr 3rd, 2022 @ 2:52pm by Chief Helmsman Kalahaeia t'Leiya & Chief Engineer Michael Burnstein & Nollel Livaam (*)

Mission: Mission 14: Holoworld
2799 words - 5.6 OF Standard Post Measure

Nollel was glad the other ship was blown up and that they were under escort from a Starfleet ship whilst everything was worked out and explained properly between the two Captain. She did not think that it would be hard with the records they had and what had been observed from the two Starfleet Officers that had been rescued. "I am not sure K9 is allowed in here so I took him back to your quarters. Are pets allowed in the mess hall?" Nollel said by way of greeting as she sat down with Burnie and Kalahaeia. "Oh... sorry... hello." She said noticing finally that there was someone else at the table as well.

"It's not like K-9 sheds, or steals food," Burnie said, shaking his head. "But probably best to get it cleared first."

"Hello." Kali nodded to Nollel, and flicked her eyes to Burnie for an introduction, setting down the big slice of New York style pizza she was eating.

Oh, right. Social graces. "Kali, this is Nollel, who runs admin and accounting," Burnie reached over a took her hand, more than enough of a signal to a Romulan of a personal relationship, and smiled. "I don't know what we'd do without her. Nollel, this is Kali. We served together back on Starbase 83."

Kali's left eyebrow crept up slightly as Burnie overlaid his hand on Nollel's--of all her old fleet buddies or colleagues to be involved in a relationship, he was nowhere near the top of the list. Then again she'd also not expected to find him anywhere like this, either; so maybe her predictive abilities just sucked lately. A twinge of envy stuck her; that was now one more of her old friends who had managed to find themselves someone and she...hadn't. The eyebrow went a bit higher still when she heard 'accountant', until she reminded herself that the term meant something very different most places than it had in the places she'd tended to be passing through most of the last ten years; where calling someone the head of accounting was akin to admitting they fixed the books for you. Still, she both doubted Nollel was cooking the local books, and honestly no longer cared much even if someone was, as long as the cause was just.

"Nice to meet you." Kali smiled, eyebrows dropping back into their usual position, with a precise little half-nod of greeting.

Nollel grinned at the woman and nodded as her expression changed to one not quite so intrigued. “Nice to meet you too. Glad to see that someone survived that thing over there.” She added thinking on it all was enough to give her nightmares for the rest of her life. “I do not know accounting and administration was not handy in our current situation could have easily thrown a paint pallet at it and got the same results.” Nollel shook her head. “So what do you do then? I am guessing Starfleet but you could be a civilian just like us.” Nollel wondered she got food envy seeing the huge slice of pizza.

"Well. Uhh." Kali flushed slightly. "I used to be Starfleet, yeah. I kinda got kicked out about ten years ago for socking a bunch of Admirals though. When I was in the fleet I was a pilot for about ten years, and an intelligence officer for another ten or so after that. Since then, I mostly just...Uhh. Well to be honest I've mostly been gambling, and trying to turn the tables on various thugs who were cheating people out of their money. By relieving them of their money." It would remain one of the universe's mysteries that someone with as many expressive tells in her daily life as Kali had could somehow manage to cover them so utterly and effectively at the gaming tables.

"The miracle is that you waited until you had a really good excuse to punch them," Burnie teased, and noticing how Nollel was eying the pizza, pushed his plate toward her to share. "I'm surprised you went with gambling ...unless it just made for a good excuse to turn the tables on the thugs and punch them out too before you grabbed their latinum?" Most people wouldn't tease Kali like that, but it was all said as the friendly ribbing between former comrades in arms, and in full expectation that she'd 'hit back' verbally rather than physically.

"Depends on the situation, and the local legalities if any." She grinned and shrugged again. "If it's not likely to land one on an actual law enforcement wanted list to beat the hell out of them, or if there aren't any local legalities, yeah." In contrast to the embarrassment with which she recounted the circumstances of her departure from the fleet, Kali seemed to have no regrets at all over these incidents. "But actually beating them at their own game is usually even worse for them than just beating them up." Here perhaps, a definite hint of Romulan psychological profile showed itself; not just 'fearing disgrace over death' but also a rather bloodthirsty-yet-calculated tendency to consider then that disgrace was excellent as a weapon against opponents or a or punishment for criminals. "They hate knowing that they fixed stuff that much and still lost; and usually at that point too, they start something and give you all the excuses in the universe for kicking them in the balls after they made the first strike." There was a pause in which she took another bite of her pizza slice. "Haven't had great luck at it lately, though. Bit of a dry spell; so I said yes to the job that came with a free cruise. Unfortunately it turned out to be on the Space Titanic." Her eyes executed a textbook-perfect eyeroll.

The blonde nodded as she listened to the woman's rationale for her leaving Starfleet and how she ended up out in the universe."I know my fathers and my brothers would hate to be beaten at their own games by a woman so good for you." The woman said with a wicked grin as she remembered her own downfall and rebirth. Nollel offered a smile to Michael as he recognised the signs that she was hungry but did not want to be rude about leaving. She squeezed his hand and took a slice from his plate. "Titanic?" The woman asked not recognising the reference.

"Earth reference to a famous cruise ship disaster," Burnie supplied. "Titanic was an ocean-going luxury liner that hit an iceberg and sank on its maiden voyage. That was almost 400 years ago, but what made it the kind disaster that became a byword even today is that it was advertised as unsinkable, so cheap SOBs who built it didn't provide nearly enough lifeboats for everyone aboard, plus they used cheaper steel on the hull than the designers called for, which is why it embrittled and fractured when it ran against an iceberg. And there were just multiple things that went wrong - ship ignored ice warnings and didn't slow, mismanaged getting people onto the lifeboats they did have so some weren't even at half capacity when they launched - basically everything went wrong and around 1,500 people died on what should have been a pleasure cruise."

Nollel nodded quickly. It made perfect sense in her opinion. Most planets she knew of had nautical disaters before they had reached the stars but that one seemed like it was ingrained in Starfleet more than most. "Makes sense."

Kali nodded at the Titanic explanation, then grimaced. "Since this folly voyage took out not only the crew and passengers, but delegations from both the Free State and the Republic...I might actually be sparing a ounce or two of pity for whichever Federation diplomatic staffer has to explain to both their respective governments that the Federation-flagged luxury liner they were holding talks on crashed into a moon, the software went rogue, and everyone is dead. Doesn't really give us a glowing reputation as reliable hosts, unfortunately." Kali chewed another bite of pizza and considered some of what Nollel had said earlier. "Though, if your father and brothers are so, no offense..." Here, some definite judgement of the absent men crept into Kali's voice, "....backwards...that they are bothered by the gender of an opponent who bests them….then I would pay good money to see them meet my aunt." She grinned.

Nollel wanted to grin but the remembrance of her family and the hardships they had put her through made the pizza turn bitter in her mouth making it difficult to swallow. She thought she had moved on past it but the reminder despite how wicked the first thought was of comeuppance it would never happen and she would never see her mother again was a bitter pill to swallow. "Stratos dwellers are not always known for being forward-thinking." Nollel finally revealed where she was from. "If your aunt is ever going near Ardana she should check out the Stratos City Art projects. She will be sure to find them."

Kali wasn't entirely sure, but something about subtle changes for a moment in Nollel's body language made her think this might be someone else with a...complicated...relationship with some things. For most of her own life, her family had been nothing more than herself and her parents; till well into adulthood; bereft of the large extended family she should have had by the decisions her parents had made. And now...Well. Now, there were a few members more, with the arrival of her aunt and cousins and the births of her sisters, but it was still a small circle indeed by Romulan standards. And the rest...Well. The rest were dead, now, for the most part; there would be no chance to meet them, at least on this side of the grave.

"She mostly stays on Earth, honestly. Or did; they moved recently to a colony world; she took a job as Chief Legal Counsel for the Bray Science Foundation." Kali swallowed the last piece of her own pizza with perhaps less difficulty than Nollel's recent bite, but a moment of hesitation or ambiguity of her own; she wasn't quite sure how she felt about the move honestly; the idea that the little Boston rowhouse she'd grown up in now belonged to someone else, for all that she hadn't lived in it for years now. Finally, she took a sip of the coffee she was washing down the pizza with and forcibly re-directed her focus, glancing at Nollel and then Burnie with slight smile and an ever-so-slight eyebrow raise. "So, how long have you two been together, then?"

"It's been...about six months." Burnie glanced at Nollel as though checking that was right. It didn't seem he'd only met her such a short time ago. "She helped us out of a real tight spot, at real risk to herself," he recounted with a mix of fondness and pride. "Kind of hard not to fall for someone that brave. Though I was probably hooked when they told me she knew how to make bombs," he added with a wink.

"Naturally." Kali's wry tone wasn't quite a verbal facepalm, but it was close. "Then again, when I was in the Republic for awhile, I got hit on at least three times at the firing range by men admiring my aim.” She shrugged again, perhaps anticipating a follow on question. “Decided to try my hand at ‘living with my own kind’ after one too many people told me to in the wrong tones. Can’t say I was that great at it unfortunately, but the local methods of…expressing interest…definitely beat the ones a lot of the guys in the places I've been more recently have tried." Those attempts tended to end with the offending party leaving with a couple of broken bones in whichever hand or other appendage they'd been trying to paw at her with. Or once or twice, with a liquor bottle brought down upside the man’s head. “He’s a great shot too, actually.” Kali smiled at Nollel while jerking a thumb towards Burnie. “We used to have some of the best scores on the whole base outside of security.” In point of fact she’d beaten out the scores of some of the Starbase 83 security personnel too; but it probably hadn’t been a fair competition, since her father had begun the basics of teaching her to shoot before she’d been in kindergarten.

The blonde could see the shake of the woman's head and smiled at how goofy it must seem to the woman. "Anyone would have done the same. I owed Gregnol a lot for saving me from my arranged marriage." Nollel said quickly. "Cannot say I have good target scores but yes I do know how to make something go bomb," Noelle agreed. "I did not know you could shoot though. I thought you left all of that to Liha." She teased.

"I leave the hand-to-hand to Liha. That's completely not my thing. But you know I go to shooting range for fun," Burnie replied, and smiled at her. "Though maybe not quite as much now that I have someone fun to be around." Looking back at Kali he'd lifted his brows. "So Romulan space didn't work out? I know Liha tried going back once after the Republic formed, but I guess there saying about how 'you can't go home again' applied."

"I mean. The largest of the different pieces of Romulan space is off the table; I'd be likely to get myself thrown in prison or shot on sight in the Free State." It suddenly dawned on Kali that Nollel probably didn't have the level of background information on herself or her family that Burnie did to be able to parse that statement or interpret what she meant with it, so she glanced over at the other woman for a moment and appended: "Long story short, the opinion of the Tal'Shiar is that I'm not a positive influence", before looking back at Burnie again. "Over in the Republic, where they are the ones who aren't welcome, though? It wasn't like it ended up in a 'leave under cover of darkness and never come back' type situation; I suppose I could go back someday if I wanted to, just like I could go back to Earth someday. It was more of a trying to fit a square peg into a round hole, 'everyone here also thinks you're bizarre' situation." She filed the bit about Liha away for some checking later, though; that was interesting.

"Being a positive influence seems overrated," Noelle commented. It never seemed to work out for most people and left them bitter and resentful. Easy to dance to your beat so to speak was the advice that she kept to. It had healed her frailties mentally and physically from their early adulthood and childhood, enough that she was a functioning adult who was able to do what she needed to and more to have a good life.

"Definitely," Burnie agreed, casting a smile toward Nollel before looking back his old comrade. "And I'd say being dubbed 'not a positive influence' by the Tal'Shiar is a positive endorsement. As to being a square peg in a round hole, that's kind of the first gen immigrant kid story going back centuries - we have whole university studies centers devoted to it back home - but it's not exclusive to that. I mean, I'm 100% human, born and raised on earth, but everyone still thinks I'm bizarre." He flashed a grin showing how much he had come to just own that now. "Most of the folks on this ship fit that to one degree or another in fact, which is maybe why I feel pretty comfortable here."

Kali nodded thoughtfully, considering the people she'd met so far fitting that generally; and some of the rest of what he said. "...Yeah; weird to consider really, on the one count. There's been enough spillover into Federation space the last ten years, and even some on Earth, that fifty years from now; I'll probably just be one of many pizza-eating Romulans." She shook her head as if marveling at it all for better and for worse, and laughed softly. "Just don't tell my mother that; she still slaps my wrist whenever she sees me eating with my hands."