Missing Pieces

Posted on Mon Apr 25th, 2022 @ 9:49am by Curtis Vaan & Chief Helmsman Kalahaeia t'Leiya

Mission: Mission 15: Adrift
Location: Computer Cores
Timeline: MD01 - 2110
2478 words - 5 OF Standard Post Measure

Since 'officially' joining the Mary Rose's crew; Kali had mostly been spending her free time studying the more esoteric and detailed sections of the flight manuals for the class, the sort of little tidbits that weren't technically required but would probably be useful someday; but also, after moving all her luggage from the guest quarters to the crew quarters, had been trying to gather the last tidbits that she hadn't had in the guest quarters; checking to see that the extra weapons Liha had taken from her were actually in the armory, and getting back the device from her aunt that she'd handed over at the meeting after the computer core incident to be passed along for the ship's computer guru, Curtis, to examine. Unfortunately the universe seemed to be laughing at her; because she had yet to have her schedule and attempts to seek him out line up; so had resorted to just heading to this ship's core room--hopefully with 100% less computer viruses involved in it--in the hopes of finding him.

"Do ya really wanna, do ya really wanna taste it...What's going up must come down! Do ya really wanna, do ya really wanna taste it...Baby you're losing groooooound!"

Standing - or rather dancing - at the main computer interface console, Curtis did a little spin on the spot. Halfway through the twirl he spotted the approaching Romulan and jumped a mile, quickly scrambling to turn off the blasting music.

"Ah!" he squealed, clamping a hand on his chest. "I know you can't exactly help it, but pleeeease don't sneak up on me like that!"

Kali considered that an elephant could probably sneak up on anyone blasting music that loudly, followed by reminding herself that it wouldn't be nearly as loud to many species hearing.

"I...wasn't trying to?" Kali shrugged. "Sorry. Just, I think you you may still have something of mine. Are you Curtis?"

"Ye..." he opened his mouth to reply, but then he hesitated and glanced around suspiciously. Could never tell with Romulans. Especially when they were being polite. "Who's asking?"

"I'm asking." Kali said with emphasis before she could stop herself; automatic instinct to avoid divulging her own name to someone refusing to confirm his. Then she sighed and forced her expression into something more human-style pleasant and less 'do not start with me, you will not win'; reasonably sure where this was coming from in this case: the exact same place it usually did. "I'm Kali. The new helmsman. I was one of the survivors from the Holoworld crash, and I gave something to Jake and the captain to give to you when you first found the virus down there right after Burnie blew the core."

'Something' was a rather roundabout was of referring to it; considering Kali's understanding of the little silvery square her aunt had given her years ago 'just in case' in the short time in between Caithlin's arrival in Federation space and Kali's ventures into increasingly dicey and lawless space was that it was both not exactly legal in Federation space, and like a lot of high level Romulan tech, wouldn't have been for sale at any price back before the fall of the Empire, even to most Romulans let alone anyone else. She had to admit it had really come in handy the one time those smugglers and pirates had tried to grab her a few years back, though. And in getting into the Holoworld core room to blow it. That she hadn't heard anything back on it since providing it made her think it likely the thing had done it's job in either not getting infected by whatever the ship had, or in clearing it out if it had; but she might be rethinking that now given how high strung Curtis seemed; maybe it had been compromised, and they'd just torched it without telling her.

"Something. Little vague." His eyes narrowed suspiciously for a moment, then widened as he realised. "Ah! The skeleton key!" he fumbled around his pockets, looking for all intents and purposes completely absent-minded until he snapped his fingers and grabbed the small technical kit he usually carried around. "In here somewhere...there." He lifted the square triumphantly. "Nice piece of tech. Old school Romulan, right? Sort of thing that if I figure out what it is you have to kill me?" He paused. "You're not going to kill me, right?"

"Wasn't planning on it." Kali rolled her eyes, then grinned and reached a hand out for the device. "And if you figure out more about it, by all means tell me, because I got it...secondhand...from my aunt, who brought it with her from the Empire after it collapsed back in the early 90s. She was hoping it would be a good piece of backup in the sort of places I was hanging out in occasionally." She shrugged. "Which I have to admit was true, very useful escape hatch when these stupid goons tried to grab me a few years back. But considering whatever was going on with that virus in the Holoworld systems, figured better safe than sorry to get it checked out to make sure it was clean, since I used it to hack the core room access when we blew the core down there."

"Oh, it's clean. Everything we brought back has been checked and double-checked. Even got Jinx's pet thingy to sniff it for bugs." Curtis unconsciously retreated from being too close to her. "Well, wherever it came from, it's well made. Secure, too; not the sort of thing it's easy to pull any data from. So, I guess, sorry I can't tell you much more about it."

Kali laughed at this last. "That would, indeed, be my aunt's idea of 'well made', then: Secure, effective, enigmatic as hell. Not really surprised. Also not really that surprised it's clean; wouldn't have been that useful, historically, if it left permanent traces in the other guy's systems, or worse, let the other guy's system plant a back trace in it." She tucked it back in a pocket, then noticed the way the young man was backing off her and suppressed the urge to roll her eyes again; she appreciated being seen as a credible threat as much as the next woman, but this was a tad ridiculous. "Relax. I don't bite."

"I'm sure that's what you'd say if you were going to..." he mumbled. "Force of habit, after what we went through." His experiences on the Holoworld would likely stick with him for a long time. He was already fairly squeamish, and encountering someone who had survived through all of that was intimidating, even if Kali wasn't intentional about it.

Kali briefly wondered what, exactly, the young man felt he had gone through that she had not experienced as well; considering both of them had been on the wreck and all that implied, but of the pair of them, she was the one who had actually also had to survive the crash itself and the initial aftermath. This was probably a human thing, then; one of the reactions that came from biology and psychology of the species vs from Earth culture; and therefore was still a mystery to Kali despite almost 45 years among humans, because she had never been inside the head, emotions, and thought processes of one.

"Pretty creepy, yeah; the way the programs went completely ape, that effectively the main computer there committed murder; and knowing someone intended it. But remember we are alive." Kali gave Curits a reassuring smile. "And the computer in question is, I can confirm very, very 'dead' after Burnie torched it. Honor the dead; investigate the leads; and take some pride in your survival and in the steps you've taken to help ensure it in the future." She waved a hand slightly at various nearby items as a whole and the fact that he said he had confirmed everything they'd brought or kept aboard was 'clean' from the virus.

"Wow. You take that whole 'honor the dead' thing pretty seriously then." He raised an eyebrow. Curtis had not been around anything close to that before, and it was horrifying to his young mind. In some ways it just went to confirm his earlier instincts to keep his distance, especially if she took it so calmly and lightly. Maybe for a Romulan watching people get killed was like Christmas dinner with the family. "Cool. Pretty dark. And you have military-grade sub-quantum locked encrypted tech passed around like family heirlooms. Fun times."

Kali sighed and made a half-facepalm of sorts, swiping a hand wearily across her face in a brief motion that also brushed some stray strands of hair away, frustration that Curtis seemed so disturbed by...her existence?...warring in her head as a reaction with frustration at herself that she had once again seemingly failed to properly thread the needle and had gotten things slightly 'off' enough somehow; which tended to happen a decent amount of the time with both humans and with other Romulans, each put off by touches of the other in her, and she wracked her brain for how to bridge the gap this time; but couldn't quite keep the glare out of her eyes for a moment in reaction to the statement. "Look; I'm not really sure what on Earth I can say at this point to convince you I'm not the boogeyman; but you seem to have pegged me as enjoying this all or something and I assure you I am not. But I fought in and survived the war against the Dominion--" Kali sighed again, and a reminder whispered in the back of her head that to human eyes, she looked far too young to have done that, close to a peer of the man in front of her rather than her human agemates in their 40s. "--and things I saw then were a lot worse than a starliner wreck, so I'm not going to react like I haven't. That doesn't mean I think surviving the wreck was 'fun' though; or that it isn't awful that so many people died there."

Humans, her father had remarked once, seemed strangely incapable of finding pride or satisfaction in their own survival while also processing and mourning a wider tragedy or loss. Kali wasn't quite sure he was right about that - too many drunken nights with her fellow pilots after battles in the war that were both wakes for the fallen and celebrations of survival and victory made her think it wasn't quite so different - but it might be proving true here at least. She thought about pointing out that by keeping the virus off the Rosie and analyzing it in hopes that someone could find the perpetrators, Curtis was doing in fact the only thing that could be done for the victims any longer, attempting to avenge them and to ensure the same enemy did not strike others; but wasn't sure it would translate well across the gap and so stayed silent on that point.

"Oh I didn't peg you as heartless or anything," he replied, flipping over a tool in his hand. "Just my experience of Romulans is that you folks tend to enjoy different pursuits to most." He tapped the tool against his forehead, indicating what she might have missed - the tiny scar from his Risian jewel. "Folks like me tend to judge people by the things they enjoy the most."

Kali's eye zeroed in on the spot Curtis indicated, followed immediately with a slight, thoughtful rise of one eyebrow: There was undoubtedly a story there; an in the removal, a divergence from the species 'breed standard' potentially; which she couldn't help but feel curious about since, well, she diverged a fair bit in various ways from her own. "...I mostly enjoy anything fast, i suppose: Small flight craft, hoverbikes--and just because, you know, Earth--waterskiing. Other than that? I like gambling, parrises squares, and pizza." And smacking the frak out of half the petty thugs within 20 lightyears, she appended silently in her mind, but well, that probably wouldn't help his discomfort level if she divulged it as a 'hobby', however true the statement might've been the last few years. "Thank you for checking this for me." She pulled her aunt's little device out of her pocket for a moment and flipped it rapidly and effortlessly in one hand, caught it again, and stuffed it back in her pocket once more, giving Curtis a polite nod as she turned to leave him to his work.

"Yeah." He frowned. She was a little more open with that reply than he'd expected. Maybe she wasn't as scary as Liha; At least a little less. He opened his mouth to try to amend his stand-offishness when the power suddenly blacked out in the room. One of the computer core servers sparked as the deck pitched.

"What the hell was-" he started, as the deck pitched a second time and virtually all the power in the room died, aside from the small light sources from his PADD and tools. "Woah. I think the automation systems just went down," he said, suddenly feeling like he shouldn't let Kali leave him on his own. Not again, anyway.

A long string of profanity, Earth and Romulan alike, was the response as Kali picked herself up; it was far from her first experience with 'hitting bulkhead or deck from sudden acceleration', but the fact that it wasn't even her only recent experience with such was beginning to give her the feeling that the universe had it out for her. The room remained pitch black except for the subtle glow of the PADD, and she felt a hand around and oriented on the door she'd been about to exit out of, then to the side to pull the panel off and throw the emergency release (which seemed to be another pattern in her life, lately). The door creaked open halfway, bathing the area in a bit of spillover from the couple of emergency lights in the corridor. "I don't think we're drawing main power, yeah. Grab what you need and let's go."

Yelping a protest and acknowledgement in a single syllable, Curtis scooped up what he could and scrambled out after her, wishing and praying that this wasn't going to be a repeat of the Holoship disaster.