After Party

Posted on Tue Jul 19th, 2022 @ 3:03pm by Leiddem Kea (*) & Chief Helmsman Kalahaeia t'Leiya

Mission: Mission 15: Adrift
Location: Cargo bay
Timeline: MD05 00:05
2147 words - 4.3 OF Standard Post Measure

The party was over and the Leiddem smiled as he saw that it was only him and Kali left after everyone was done drinking and partying. It had been so good even if was getting colder and rockier by the moment. He was going to tided up a bit but it seemed pointless at the moment when he hadn’t spoken to Kali properly in while. “How are you doing Kali?” He called as he turned down the music. He could not help but blush slightly as he had crushed hard on her fellow survivor Kaleetha Sloan back on the holoworld and then done nothing around it.

"Cold." She reached up a hand to her ears as the music turned down; stripping a glove off briefly and removing the little audio filters from inside her ears; an essential tool if you had vulcanoid hearing and had spent a lot of the last decade hanging out in clubs, bars, and casinos where insanely loud music was sometimes played. "Don't suppose you want to finish off the last of this?" Kali looked dubiously at the smallest bit of blue liquid still in the bottom of the Romulan ale bottle she'd brought and been doling out to people during the party, then back at Leiddem; it seemed pointless to preserve the whole bottle for such a small remaining amount.

“An offer I cannot refuse.” The man said looking at the floor and choosing a spot that looked clean in the formal centre and sat down. He was all legs as he sat down stretching out his legs in front of him. “Yeah it is betting a bit frosty even for me so I tread to think what it is like for Liha, yourself and Cassie. Only you have mentioned being cold so far though.” He had spoken to the other two at one point or another over the night. The Betazoid perfect the more tropical temperature of Betazed but he had spent the last decade or so off works and traveling on ships that kept their environmental controls less than idea. It did make him wonder how Delaney would handle his witters being hotter than most.

"I'm probably more apt to be willing to complain than they are." Kali shrugged. "Humans don't tend to shy away from it so I may have picked it up from them as a bad habit, as my mother would put it." She upended the remaining contents of the bottle into a shot glass and passed it to Leiddem. "It actually gets a lot colder than this in the winters where I was born and raised on Earth, but I had access to full winter gear, then. Though I'll admit this jacket--" Kali indicated the fitted leather jacket she had been wearing all day with a grin. "--is basically a means of cheating; it's thinner than a winter coat, but it's heated and has reflective insulation sewn into it." In contrast to Leiddem's spot on the floor, she chose to perch on a nearby supply crate, a move that combined with the jacket and her smaller-than-average size, perhaps gave the impression of a juvenile delinquent skipping class to hang out behind the school.

“Most likely. I do not believe I have ever heard either of them complain and they’ve both had a lot to complain about recently.” Leiddem mused as he looked the jacket over and nodded thinking he would have liked something like that. Whatever worked to keep people alive was all that mattered right then and there.

Kali briefly wondered what, exactly, Liha had to merit complaints lately; other than the sort of things any Romulan might the last ten years or so. Well, that and the temperature or the engineering workload the last few days. "You, now, you've got a niiice planet." Kali grinned. "One of my friends back in my fleet days when I was a pilot was a Betazoid; went home with her a few times. Gorgeous; with a nice, comfy temperature." Kali didn't mention the flipside of it; the Dominion's occupation of the place, during the war; it had been a sore subject for Nia, and she wasn't sure how it would or wouldn't shake out with Leiddem, or if he was even old enough to have any memory of it.

“It has good points and bad points like any homeworld but I would give a lot right now for its lowest temperature and maybe natural sunlight.” He added the last point with a bit of a grin. It was a beautiful planet that was slowly returning to its former glory from before the occupation.

"We could put Risa on the itinerary; but that'd take us pretty far afield..." Kali jumped off the crates and paced back and forth nearby, gathering items and empty drink cups that the more inebriated of the partiers had left behind, cleaning them up and stacking them off to one side.

“Not our usual itinerary at all. Think I’ll wait for Betazed to come up to be fair. Better nights.” The man said watching her for a moment before he started reaching for stuff in his locality. Now he was sat down he did not want to move for a moment. “So what about you? Where would you go if you could right now?”

"...Back in time, maybe." She said half-jokingly but possibly half-seriously too as flipped the last of the left-behind party items into the pile of junk and sighed. "Tell my younger self not to get mixed up with SFI, to just let them keep bugging me, and stay a Starfleet pilot." She had no idea whether, had she taken that path, she would have still ended up leaving in '85 or not; but even if she had, at least at that point it might've been a garden-variety resignation in protest, not a narrow-avoidance-of-prison-time that still in the end accomplished nothing.

Leiddem burst out laughing at the mention of Starfleet Intelligence. “You and Gregnol both would say that.” It was common knowledge on board so Leiddem was not breaking any trust or anything with his brother in law. “Starfleet Intelligence does not exactly have a good reputation onboard.” He added finally getting up to pick up the large bin bag to take what she had been collecting.

"Great; then I keep telling them to frak off next time they hit me up for a contract job, and maybe even get the worst offenders blocked in the comms system." Kali snarked. "Long story short, they'd been trying to recruit me since I first got to the Academy at 16. Wasn't even a 'real' officer yet, hell wasn't even old enough to vote yet and they still couldn't help themselves. Kept telling them no, through the Academy, through flight school, through the war and the years right after it. They, however, kept asking. Finally in '78 I told them yes. Maybe I just got tired of it and they wore me down, but..." She paused for a moment, old hopes perhaps hurting even more than old pains, in this case. "...Maybe I thought there was a better chance for better relations, between the Federation and the Empire, in the wake of the whole attempted coup thing Shinzon tried and the clean up afterwards, when you added it to the work done together during the war. Maybe I thought I could be a part of helping people on Earth understand enough about their opposite numbers to build that bridge better. At least that's what they sold me, and like a bridge in London not actually for sale, I bought it from them. Hell, maybe it was even true for awhile. Until it wasn't, and they were somehow surprised that I might have issues with the Council and the Fleet Command backing out of all the vows they'd made on the rescue effort." She shook her head angrily.

"Can't say I regret that I popped a handful of them in the face with my fist; and can't say that I'm surprised they cut me loose for that move, either." It was the odd combination of 'I did it and I'd do it again but I also don't hold it against anyone that there were consequences for it' that one was apt to hear from Romulans sometimes; like a personal echo of the Right of Statement in a criminal case. "What I do hold against SFI specifically is dangling a retroactive honorable discharge over my head like bait and handing it over in return for spending way too many years of my life on the hook for their stupid contract jobs here and there. If they'd wanted me for that much work they should've kept me in the first place; if they wanted me gone they should've just been done with it; and the way they played it overall was just one asshole move after another." She stuffed part of the pile into the bag Leiddem was holding with perhaps more force and zeal than was actually necessary, then raised one eyebrow. "Dare I ask what they did to Gregnol?"

"I can hint at it but that is not my story to tell. You should ask him and take Betazed Nectar to soften the blow of the story." The man said. he paused taking in her story, it was quite something and reminded him she was not quite as young as she looked. It was always a stark reminder that he had gotten used to being among humans who aged quicker than him and her. "I've never regretted anyone I have ever socked in the face. And that is quite a story. Why tell me about it?" He wondered drinking the rest of the liquid and handed back the bottle to her.

"Mostly because I think it's useful for people to know SFI is full of complete dicks." Kali took the empty bottle and stuffed it in the bag along with all the rest of the junk, to be run back through the replicator hopefully after the storm had passed and things were back online again. "And since my association with them during my fleet days was in an overt post, it's not like most of that isn't already out there for anyone who went looking to find it." She shrugged. "Most of the contract work later isn't, but I already mentioned that part to Burnie so I figure eventually it'll get around to others anyways."

“I guess.” The man shrugged himself.

She slid her fingers down a hidden panel on the side of her jacket and turned up the heat again, this time just cranking it to maximum since the air temp kept dropping now. "Plus, you may've noticed I tend to fail the breed standard in 'keeping everything a secret by reflex just because'. If I think something is likely to get out anyways and may be more disruptive coming out that way than if I'd just been open about it, or if I think something will be more useful in divulging it than in not, I'll share it. Vice versa if I think the opposite, then I'll keep it quiet. Besides--" Kali grinned suddenly, "--you seemed like, yeah, the type of guy who wouldn't regret my having socked a bunch of admirals in the face." Her voice trailed off for a moment or two. "What's your story, then?"

“Oh me regret you punching an admiral? Nah I would never regret you doing that in the slightest. I would probably covered you.” He laughed and grinned back as he struct a few poses to show off before he tugged his hoodie up to keep warmer. “My story is simple. Brother in law runs this ship and I am here to make sure he comes back to my sister at the end of the day.” He really did not have an interesting story in his opinion but that was him.

"Ah." Kali nodded; accepting the act of sticking close to or providing service to your kin as an answer and reason whole in and of itself, and glancing around them at the now-empty and reasonably clean area. "Think that's about it for what we can do until the power is back. Just stash that--" she waved absently at the bag of junk, "--somewhere and we can recycling it later whenever we get sprung from here and the replicators come back online. Might as well go find somewhere to hole up for the night and try to get some sleep before we hit the storm."

He nodded. He could not see anything else left to do himself. “Go on. I'm going to check the perimeter then get some sleep myself.” Leiddem assured taking the bag from her and let her wander off.