Luggage check

Posted on Wed Oct 11th, 2023 @ 8:04pm by Chief Armoury Rormu Yazlin & Delaney O'Callaghan

Mission: Fractures
Timeline: December 2397
2388 words - 4.8 OF Standard Post Measure

The large bag over her shoulder and the smaller one in her hand had given her a lot of second looks. Or perhaps it was the fact that she had been escorted off the Starbase by two young security officers with said bags. Everone's in Yazlin's community knew what it meant if junior officers were escorting someone with black sturdy bags to the airlocks. The rumours outside of that were pretty wild, almost conspiratorial. The fact was that on the outskirts of Federation space Starfleet couldn't be held accountable for all the security needs. That's where people like her came in. Or used to at least. The hardware she was sporting wasn't tightly registered and controlled, so every time she would have to transfer over to a different vessel she'd have to cut through several layers of red tape with a UFP logo on it. Luckily one of the things in her bags was a machete, and with it she was much better at hacking away at the piles of PADDs.

Once on the ship you were supposed to check in with the quartermaster, or whomever did the due diligence aboard in regards to firearms and other weapons. Which is why right now she was coming to a halt in front of the office of one O'Callaghan, where she leaned to the side a bit so she could balance the bag on her shoulder while freeing up her hand to hit the chime. She quickly righted herself after doing so to prevent the weight from slipping the strap off anyway.

'Office' was an overly generous description of the space Delaney had carved out for herself. Not known to be particularly proficient at keeping her own company indefinitely, she tended to spend just as much time working from her station inside the security main office but there was a time for concentration and due diligence, and also it helped to have somewhere to store the boxes of supplies she'd successfully negotiated as part of a routine quarterly order. She hadn't known it at the time but taking up a short-term contract on the Mary Rose as a means of getting her first taste of space travel since graduation had been the first step towards carving out a very Laney-shaped niche that she had no intention of peeling herself out of any time soon. Someone had needed to put the security assets in some kind of order.

Currently, her attention was on the necessary detail of tracing the errant line of code that was causing several lines on the first aid supply manifest to show up the wrong shade of blue.

As much as she didn't tend to spend much time there, her office was unmistakably hers and volume of music was just another reason to enjoy a moment's solitude once in a while. Leiddem had introduced her to Betazed's alternative to symphonic trance and it presented as such a viable candidate for a holo-novel soundtrack that she was dedicating at least a portion of her attention to plot designs. A scramble of ginger curls piled atop her head, a pencil caught between her teeth, she glanced up as the doors opened and proved instantly incapable of smothering her surprise. Not recognising the woman was only half the mystery, the rest involved the nature of a stranger's visit to what, quite honestly, wasn't much more than a supply cupboard with a terminal in it.

"Hey. You good?" Delaney took out the pencil and offered an easy smile.

As the door slid away from in front of her Yazlin wondered if she had taken a wrong turn. The music instantly greeting her, the small dimensions of the room, and what appeared to be a harried scribe behind the terminal made her second guess for a moment. "Is this O'Callaghan's office?" She slowly and carefully slid the large bag off her should and with a heavy metallic clunk it hit the floor. She leaned back slightly to see if the room's number matched that which she had been given.

"I was told to check my weapons with one Delaney O'Callaghan." She put the emphasis of the name on the wrong syllable, and wasn't quite sure what to do with the GH combination either. Human's had been very forgiving in the past though about her knack for butchering alien names.

Far from offended, the Irish woman grinned at the attempt at her name, which was honestly not the worst pronunciation she'd heard. "I'm not sure I'd qualify it as an office," Delaney replied, the lilt of her natural brogue somewhat accentuated for effect, "but you've cornered me at least. New recruit?" There'd been a flurry of them recently and Gregnol wasn't known to rent out berths to passengers. The woman's eyes slid down towards the loaded bag and her expression shifted towards an animated mixture of bemusement and glee. "Or roving arms dealer, by the looks. I'm just going to go ahead and ban Kali from any transactions ahead of time. She and Liha filled up half my storage after our last pit-stop."

"This is all personally licensed hardware." Yazlin took a moment to put down the smaller bag as well. "It's a bit of a cliche I guess for security personnel. The Captain took me on as the new Chief Armoury." She stepped towards the woman and extended her hand. "Rormu."

"Oh wow, then you're kind of my new boss."

There was the tiniest hesitation before Delaney took the other woman's hand, not so much trepidation as just a very obvious moment to clear whatever her first reaction was. Had Leiddem been present, it likely would have earned her a warning glance, which wouldn't have done much beyond shed a sliver of light on the issue. Laney's opinion regarding Gregnol's unwillingness to promote his own brother-in-law to the position was hardly a secret at this point. It didn't affect her welcome too much, however, nor did it curb her guile in adding, "First point of contention; have you seen how inadequate my office space is?"

Grinning, Laney then moved out properly from behind her terminal and dropped to a crouch beside the bag. "So what are we dealing with?"

If there was any registration of the hesitation, Yazlin certainly didn't show it. "Couple of small arms and wilderness survival knives." The new armoury officer pointed at the small bag she had been carrying "Bajoran militia issue phaser, Romulan disruptor, flick knife, survival knife, machete. Some other odds and ends." She pushed the bag a bit closer to the woman with her foot, taking a step back as to not hover over her while she inspected it. Saving the contents of the other bag for a moment longer.

A year ago and this haul would have daunted Delaney beyond measure. Now, having navigated the storage requirements of two Romulans, her first impression was more a weary sense of continued ignorance. "And once again, two years of fencing training pales in comparison to people who actually know their shit. Okay, so general procedure around here is that everything goes on the asset registry, under allocated ownership, and anything with upkeep requirements also gets issued a service tag. Private collections like this more or less remain the owner's responsibility in that regard but the system will bug you incessantly until you deal with mandatory testing." She'd learned the hard way that most people preferred to handle their own maintenance. Pushing herself upright again, Delaney jerked her head in the direction of the inner door and added, "Come through to the armory, we'll find you some space."

Yazlin squatted down to pick up both bags again, not wanting the woman to strain herself, but also not wanting someone else touching too much of her stuff. "It'll be nice to see the armoury." It was going to be her main office after all. "How long have you been with the ship?" She asked as a matter of conversation, not wanting there to be an awkward silence between them.

"Bit over a year?" It was phrased like a question though clearly wasn't intended as one. Tapping in her access code to the main weapon's storage, Delaney was distracted by an attempt to calculate the passage of time. "Something like that anyway, it all tends to blur together after a while. Definitely less experienced than a lot of the crew. My boyfriend's one of your goons, Gregnol's brother-in-law actually." It was a sly sideways promotion of Leiddem's worth, though Laney had every intention of honouring promises not to give people hell simply because they'd been given a position she thought he deserved. "Much better source of historical anecdotes."

"I'll be sure to talk to them." Yazlin wondered if there was some underlying reason why she would bring that particular tidbit up. Her assignment there was a topic during her initial conversation with the Captain, and from that she gleaned at a bit of the current situation. Perhaps the people in the department and on the ship would come to see her hiring there as a positive thing. As a way to be able to lift themselves up. "I'm sure you have plenty of interesting experiences on the ship yourself, even if it was only a year. You found a partner, after all. That's not nothing."

It was an observation that met with no denial, just the pursed-lipped nod of a point conceded. "That and murderous holograms, nearly freezing to death and being chased by a dragon." Mischief flared, the choice of wording very clearly intended to paraphrase, though if pushed to explain Delaney would have been very quick to point out that it wasn't exactly an embellishment. Working her way through the rows of weapon lockers, the redhead brought up something on one of the processing terminals and then moved towards what was eventually revealed to be an empty storage space. "Do you have anything that needs to be stored under special conditions?"

"Not particularly. Just your regular weapons stuff. Ammo separate from the rifle." Yazlin lifted the bag that held her prized possession. It wasn't exactly normal to have a weapon still operating on ballistics, but when it came to long distance accuracy and efficiency there was very little that could out-range a chunk of metal being propelled by a focused and directed explosion. "I don't carry explosives or anything like that."

Though it wasn't the work of any considerable deduction to realise that Delaney wasn't the type to know much about the weapons she looked after on a daily basis, at least not when it came to the deployment of them in action, it was entirely in keeping with the woman's nature to disregard that as unimportant when it came to showing an interest. Enthusiasm and a general lust for learning were practically defining traits. "We have Burnie for that," she quipped, without going into further detail. After tapping her own access into the locker's keypad, she stepped aside to allow the Bajoran to input her bio-credentials. "Everything's registered to you?"

"Of course." Yazlin nodded at that, she'd not be able to travel so freely through Federation space, transporting the weapons like she did, had she not registered them properly with the authorities. "All the paperwork is in order." She pressed down her thumb on the scanner and then presented her eye to the scanner for an additional bio-metric lock. She started to take out the large marksman rifle from the bag and put it in place in the weapons locker.

"Yikes." Wide-eyed, Delaney looked more impressed than concerned. After a moment's consideration, however, her expression tempered to something closer to wry amusement. "You know, I wish I could say that kind of weapon's not likely to see much use around here but I honestly don't know if that's true. I can live in hope that it's slight overkill, I guess."

"I'll teach you how to use it one day. You'll soon realise there's many applications for being able to pick off your enemies from over one click away." Yazlin finished up strapping in the rifle and started to unpack her sidearms. Once everything was properly set aside she opened the floor safe on the bottom of the locker and set her own access code, the official date of the end of the Occupation, and put in the ammo cartridges for her sniper rifle. "Thank you for the warm welcome." She rose to her feet and after a moment remembered to put out her hand.

The casual promise was met with instant intrigue. "Consider that invitation accepted." Reaching out with her own hand, Delaney grinned and then lifted it from the shake to pat the locker. "Feel free to come visit them whenever you want, just...no lunch dates without Captain's approval."

Yazlin couldn't help but let a snicker escape her solemn demeanour. "I'll make sure to keep that in mind." There were a great many things she wanted to say on the topic, like how it wasn't such a codependent relationship. But it would just be screaming into the wind at this point. Besides, she didn't believe it herself either. "I appreciate you taking such good care of the logistics surrounding the safe storage of our weapons." She closed the locker and gave a gentle tap on the door. "Would you happen to know where I can find my personal quarters?"

That, for reasons known only to herself, evoked a soft chuckle from Delaney. "How about I show you?", she offered, leading the way back towards the exit. "I need to check the first aid supplies in the messhall anyway and it's on the way." Turning so that her next few steps were taken backwards whilst grinning, she added, "Via a slight deviation but it's practically the same direction."

"Lead the way." Yazlin stepped aside to allow for Delaney to point her in the right direction. The hallways of the old ship were steeped in history and they felt familiar even though she'd never been on a Starfleet vessel before. The videos and holos of Constitution classes had been very popular with her generation of Bajorans. The ultimate vision of freedom. Now she was on one.

No Federation, no Starfleet. For the first time in a long time, truly free.

 

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