So I Hear You Are A Pilot?

Posted on Mon Apr 4th, 2022 @ 5:35pm by Chief Helmsman Kalahaeia t'Leiya & Captain Rueben Gregnol

Mission: Mission 14: Holoworld
2429 words - 4.9 OF Standard Post Measure

Gregnol could not remember the last time that he had been in the guest area of the ship but he had a mission on his mind right now that he had the right woman they had rescued from the other ship. Kaleetha had almost laughed in his face when he had mentioned her flying the ship, especially as her last experience flying a ship anywhere near as big as the Connie had been nearly into the sun. She was not the person he wanted and he apologised very quickly for waking her and making a fool of himself. They had far too similar names he thought to himself as he pressed the door chime.

Hotels and similar, usually, had a peephole in the door, giving you an advance glance at a visitor. Permanent quarters, back during her time in the fleet, had been easy enough to set up with a scan to achieve something relatively similar. This wasn't either of those, though, and while Kali was pretty sure by now that no one on board the ship was a pirate, a Tal'Shiar agent, or anything else that wanted her dead, old habits (and even older training; every admonishment from her parents as a small child to never, ever open the door to their house if she was uncertain who was on the outside of it) died hard and her fingers twitched, involuntarily positioning themselves in a good spot to be able to draw her knife if need be, and stepping out of an easy line of fire from the doorway before opening it. Once she finally got an eyeball on her visitor as the doors swooshed open, though, she dropped the hand as quickly as she could manage, with a slightly sheepish expression and a subtle olive-tinged blush.

"Captain. Please, come in." Kali waved her hand slightly at the guest quarters behind her, which looked slightly less barren than normal for even occupied ones at the moment. She'd had a good bit more luggage than most passengers on the Holoworld, as she had effectively been living out of suitcases full time for years now, and while some of it had bought the farm in the crash, most of it had survived. The result was that the current room was a scattered array of suitcases and duffel bags, objects of Earth and Romulan cultural significance, and various still and motion capture photos of her family and from her days in Starfleet, giving one the feeling that even when she'd still been an officer in active service, Kali had never bothered ever making a room 'inspection-ready' again once she'd passed out of the ranks most likely to be inspected.

The man nodded and quickly glanced around as the room. It was old fashioned as was most things on the ship thanks to the collector and his retro fitting of the ship back to its original looks in most areas other they the fact it took far less people to run than normal.. “I am glad you were able to get your luggage before we blew the ship up.” The man commented taking everything in that was scattered around. She packed like his wife - not light at all by the looks of this happening.

"Definitely cheaper than replacing it all." Kali joked, moving a couple of shirts draped over the back of one of the pair of chairs in the room and tossing them onto the bed, motioning to the newly cleared chair before shoving a duffel bag out of the other one and sitting in it herself. "Thanks for the ride. I suppose you can just drop me wherever your next decent port is." She shrugged, the unique combination of shoulders and eyebrows at once she was prone to. "Eventually I'll figure out where to head next."

He could not deny that the room looked like Jeassaho had been there trying to get ready for something more than a crew party. It looked like a bomb had gone off but he could not judge anyone for their quarters. "We are going to be heading back towards Freecloud for our next layover and job but I have a better one for you. I have heard you are a pilot and in need of something maybe more permanent to your life." The man said sitting down in the cleared chair. It was a solid piece of furniture so easily took his weight.

"I was, yeah, until I made the mistake of saying 'yes' to a transfer to shut up the idiots who'd been hounding me since before I was old enough to vote." Kali sighed. "Still am one, legally speaking; I kept my certifications active." The 'legally' part implied skills wise too; you didn't keep flight certifications in most of the galaxy's major powers without at least a certain number of yearly flight hours and various other things. "Are you...in the market?"

Kali had considered commercial flight work a decade ago or so right after she'd been discharged, but between her unsettled anger, and the various parties in intelligence trying to keep their claws in her even after cutting her loose, it hadn't worked out for her at the time, being on Earth, or any of the Federation core worlds. A brief attempt at making a go of living among her own species in some of the breakaway states to come out of the fall of the Empire hadn't worked, either. In the end, gambling and beating up ill-intending hustlers and cheats had given her a way at the time to work her anger out on something that deserved it, and that was, in places with less rules, actually also legal to strike against (unlike the trio of Admirals she'd decked, who she maintained deserved it and more, but did have to admit had not been 'legal' to retaliate against) . Besides, after a lifetime of being too Romulan to fit in on Earth or Federation space, then discovering she was also too Federation to fit in in Romulan space, either...Well: If you didn't stay anywhere too long, you didn't have to feel like a freak for not belonging there, or not belonging anywhere. She had to admit the constant churn of one hotel room to the next was getting old lately, though; and half the places out there deserving of her wrath had probably banned her by now already, to boot.

"We are as of our next port of call. Pilot quit her boyfriend and the ship." Gregnol admitted still surprised that Eden had upped and left the way that she had. "We always say yes to the things idiots. It makes them feel better and when it goes wrong it makes us feel better." The man said trying to tone down his thick accent slightly with a new person. It always took time to for people to adjust to him. "Legal is good." Gregnol did not have the heart to tell her then and there that his last pilot's legal flight status was 150 years out of date as she had been declared dead in 2246.

"I have active certifications and papers from the Federation and the Romulan Republic." Kali said the latter name in Romulan rather than standard, and reached a hand into her pants pocket, pulling out a pair of ID chips, swiping a finger across them to activate the data projection and offering Gregnol a glance: Her photo appeared on each, next to various information and seals, each set in the official language of the issuing authority. Conspicuously absent from the list were any credentials from the Free State; which would have been impossible (not to mention extremely ill advised) to try and get from a place run in large part by people from an organization who’d prefer you were dead. "Though if you mostly base out of Freecloud, I've found they don't really care, as long as you pay your fees and don't damage anything."

"That they do." He said glancing over the chips quickly. He knew all of it would depend on his next answer. "So... speaking of Freecloud. How do you feel about the Fenris Rangers?" He asked waving the holograms away with a nod sitting back in the chair.

"They seem like decent sorts, for the most part. Thought about joining them a few times over the years actually; but I dunno, the timing never seemed right." Or more to the point, she had been too tied up in the web of obligations she'd gotten herself into when she'd taken SFI's offer to upgrade her discharge to 'honorable' in exchange for some occasional contract work. After this latest fiasco though, she was telling them to go screw themselves next time they asked, potential consequences be damned. She flipped the chips in a fancy move from one hand to the other with a flourish, then stuffed them back in her pocket: Fast, accurate, and ambidextrous; and the sort of ‘showing off’ pilots of many species tended to be prone to. "Why?"

Gregnol could not help but express just a minute of a grin as she mentioned timing. Michael said she was trustworthy so he had to believe that the woman, either way, would be able to keep the secret. "Would the timing be right now?" He wondered leaning forward, putting his elbows on his knees and leaning his head against his hands.

"...It could be." Kali said carefully, studying the man, and to the best of her ability, the situation; that Burnie had vouched for him (or the human version of doing so, at least; which had distinctly lower collateral and seriousness to it) said good things; and that he and Liha--whatever her deal was--had coexisted on the same ship for whatever time probably said he wouldn't hold certain things against Kali herself, either.

"Good because the time is right for the rest of the crew." Gregnol said with a smile. "How can I turn the could be into something more definite?" He questioned.

Kali considered further--she could hedge her bets until they got to Freecloud, see if she could conduct some checks into things before answering; or alternatively, could assume that once they got there, someone else would be doing so into her, and could take this time to warn them what they might find and see if they were willing to put up with her anyways. Except this wasn't a commercial spaceliner company, and she rather doubted anyone planning to associate themselves with the Rangers actually cared about the sort of items that were in her background: They tended to put 'punching people who earned it' under 'pro' column not the 'con' column; which she found rather appealing.

"...She's a bit more of a classic than most of what I've flown, so I'll want a chance to read your flight manuals and get a feel for the controls on the way to Freecloud. And honestly that one would probably be true even if she were a Defiant class or something; every ship has its own 'feel' even ones that are technically twins. The rest...Well. Consider this a yes, then." Kali grinned, then the expression faded a bit to something with a touch of awkwardness to it. "That said, I have a bit of a request if I could...One of your people took some weapons off me on the wreck when we first met, including some Orion throwing knives that were a gift from a friend of mine. I'm not entirely sure what she did with them after that, but if it's possible I'd like to get them back."

Reuben could not help but smile at the requested feel of his ship, it had been expected and if she had said yes he had already arranged it for the next day. It would be easy to cancel if she had said no but he wanted to keep the pilot a warning before turning up with sometime.

“Your weapons will have been stored in the armoury. We can retrieve them when you are crew and get them placed in personal armoury quarters. I do not allow crew to walk around with weapons unless armoury department and even then only responding to an emergency.” He said without hesitation.

"Fair enough." Kali considered cluing him into to the fact that she could guarantee at least one member of his crew was already walking around every day with a dagger at a minimum; but came to the conclusion that in this case, the best path to...cultural harmony...might be for that fact, much like the blades themselves, to remain concealed. For some reason a lot of humans she'd met over the years seemed to consider it a bridge too far in cultural tolerance; even though she'd seen some of those same people blithely and easily accept that you could not demand a Bajoran remove their earring, or various other humans remove their head coverings, or such. She rather doubted Liha was limiting herself that strictly even; but though ten years in dicier space had made Kali value carrying a bit more backup; she'd spent most of her fleet career before that, and her school years on Earth, carrying nothing more most days but the blade concealed in her tunic, and going back to that would be...annoying...but no hardship. "As long as we can check things back out when we get into ports before we leave the ship, I assume? Freecloud isn't an 'unarmed' kind of place." Well; it wasn't an unarmed kind of place if you'd spent the last ten years ticking off at lot of the local petty scammers and goons in the area, at least. Which, yeah; that one was on her, mostly. She supposed she'd have to work on that tendency now; and make sure she started only picking the fights the Rangers wanted to pick.

“Never had a problem on Freecloud and I suspect the watchdog will track you there if you carry but that is your choice.” Gregnol felt more safe on Freecloud than he did on a lot of worlds especially after his kidnapping and trouble when they got the escape corridors fixed. “Well as that is all settled. Zero nine hundred. Bridge. You want to try my old girl out you’ll get your opportunity.”