Testing the Troubled Waters

Posted on Tue Oct 24th, 2017 @ 6:19pm by Jeassaho Kea (*)

Mission: Mission 4 - Combustion
Location: Engineering Control Room
Timeline: MD -07 09:00
2427 words - 4.9 OF Standard Post Measure

Jeassaho span around on her chair as she looked around the control room of Engineering. In one spin of the chair, she could see all the consoles and readings easily, it was one way to check the whole control room in one go. It was an old fashioned way of Engineering, one senior Engineer and one junior on duty in the ECR at all times. She didn't even hear or sense anyone come in as the door swooshed open.

Further obscuring the entrance of said senior engineer was the way she had crept in through the upper level of the engineering control room. Rather than marching in through the main entranceway --which was well within Jeassaho's line of sight-- the senior engineer literally tripped and stumbled into engineering from an adjacent compartment. After circling half the perimeter from the overhead catwalk, the senior engineer grabbed hold of the ladder and threw herself from the ledge. She did this because stretching her legs down to each and every one of the ladder rungs seemed like it would be far too much work, darling. Rather, the senior engineer slowed her decent by clutching the ladder rails as she dropped, and then she clattered to the deck in her heavy boots.

Standing before Jeassaho in a magenta jumpsuit that was cinched at the waist, the Cardassian senior engineer jerked a thumb over her shoulder at the cavernous power conduit that was formed like a triangular prism, its every surface glowing yellow-hot. Thankfully, the grilled barrier between the engineers and the conduit kept the environmental conditions in the control room perfectly (by Federation standards) comfortable. "That sound?" Draia Theroh said. Not only did her tone suggest some irritation, but she winced too. She asked, "Does it always make that sound?"

"That sound completely normal," Jeassaho assured as she realised the new Chief was there. She smiled a little as she leant out and pressed a button on the console nearest as it beeped. She had become lazy since her leave of absence from Starfleet. It was hard to admit that she was actually starting to enjoy the basic joy of being an Engineer again.

Nodding absently to acknowledge Jeassaho's assurance, Draia's turned her eyes on the ceiling, because her focus remained on what she was hearing. She made an effort to memorize the sound the power conduit was making in this time, in this place. "Learning a new starship is like dating a new man," Draia said. She snapped her head in Jeassaho's direction, and it sent Draia's high ponytail flailing. Then, she explained, "Only one way to discover the differences between an orgasm and a heart attack."

"I can't disagree with you there but i am not dating men at the moment." Jeassaho said with a shrug at the women.

Shrugging back at her with one shoulder, Draia said, "We can agree that we disagree. Women are too much work."

"How are you getting on?" Jeassaho said sitting up properly looking at the jumpsuit the woman wore. "I like the colour." She commented on wondering from Rueben saw in picking the Cardassian as Chief. It was nice to have another Engineer onboard that was not only female but former Starfleet.

Draia's eyes went a-wandering again, as she struggled to put her feelings into words. She opened her mouth wide as she sucked in a breath and then all that came out was a prolonged, "Uhhhh..." Draia shrugged helplessly and she sighed out, "Lost. Mostly I'm getting lost. I think I'm walking into the head and then I'm taking my jumpsuit off in the wardroom." Shaking her head at the shame of it all, she frowned like a woman duped, when she said, "Gregnol told me this used to be a Starfleet starship, but it may as well be a sailboat for all it resembles the starship I served aboard."

"Ah she was one of theirs but she's been heavily modified by The Collector when he was ah... collecting," Jeassaho said before she laughed imagining the woman taking her clothes off in the Wardroom. She shook her head at her. "You will get there. You're the longest surviving Chief yet." The pretty woman admitted as she stood up and looked at the computer log and then the paper copy that sat on the desk in the middle of the room checking they matched.

Plucking an oval-shaped PADD from her back pocket, Draia turned her own attention to the squat, dome-topped cylinder that was housed in the heart of the engineering deck. Closing in on it with slow steps, Draia raised the PADD to mid-chest level and she eyed the status reports from the computer's engineering automations. With a polished disinterest, Draia asked, "What did you do to the last one?"

"We ran out of fuel," Jeassaho said without missing a beat as she leant back again to her previous position to look at the console array again. "He took one for the team." She teased just a little before she sobered thinking of Brandon, he had been nice and actually fixed enough to get things moving along nicely, he had left after Empok Nor and the Engineer that they lost there but Andros had barely lasted a week before jumping ship.

Rubbing a palm over the domed surface of the dilithium crystal chamber, Draia split her attention between Jeassaho's story and the story her PADD was telling her about the state of the dilithium crystals. At the suggestion the last chief engineer had self-immolated himself to give the ship's thrusters a boost, Draia and Jeassaho both allowed a pause to conceive and grow pregnant between them. Draia hoped the pause was pregnant with puppies, but there was a good chance it was pregnant with spite or lies. Pivoting left, Draia asked, "How long have you know Captain Gregnol?"

"Rueben?" Jeassaho wondered for a moment a small smile on her lips at how everyone called him 'Captain Gregnol' it suited him and what he should have been if he hadn't been the good man and gone looking for Barton in all the wrong places. "Long enough to know he really isn't a morning person with out some java." Was all she said.

And that certainly hooked Draia's attention. Her head snapped in Jeassaho's direction as if she really were a fish on a line. She dropped her pad on the waist-high chamber she had been examining. Smirking lasciviously, Draia asked, "And how might a junior engineer learn that about her Captain? ...Might that be why you're not dating men now?"

Jeassaho looked at her open mouthed for second before holding up a finger and shaking in. "Draia... I might be a junior Engineer here by choice but I haven't always been so. I outrank pretty much 99% of the former Starfleet Crew." She said leaning back in her chair looking at the woman with a grin as she put her feet on the console. It was something she would never have on Mercury as she was too formal but Rosie just required that kind of friendship with. This was going to be good, Jeassaho mused to herself as she realised this was possibly the only person on the ship who didn't know about her and the Russian Captain.

Once again, Draia snapped her head in Jeassaho's direction, which whipped her ponytail over one shoulder. An irreverent scoff escaped from between Draia's lips, as she asked, "Does that mean I'm supposed to call you ma'am? Commandant?" --Petulantly, Draia rolled her eyes-- "Madame President?"

"Nah... I am going incognito here Draia." Jeassaho scoffed back with a grin on her face. "You can call me Jeassaho I promise." She said sounding gracious as she said it. A wicked grin played on her face.

The severity of Draia's questioning expression softened noticeably. She put her eyes on the down, trying to focus on the dilithium diagnostics on her PADD, but her eyes wouldn't focus. Rather, Draia was mentally drawing lines between each of the data points Jeassaho had shared. Squinting at the effort, she asked, "You reported to Captain Gregnol when you were both in Starfleet?"

"He was my XO." She hinted with a wink as she watched the woman trying to connect the things she had told her about her and Rueben.

As Cardassians went, Draia was woefully lacking in the quality of guile. She had no capability to hide the way she was baiting a trap, when she asked, "...So ...It was on the bridge of a starship ...when he missed his coffee ...that he gave you the hardest time?" Draia asked, because most people were more likely to correct an assumption rather than answer a question.

"Not on the Bridge," Jeassaho could play her game. She liked twenty questions even if it was one-sided it was fun to watch people get annoyed when they couldn't get the answers. "He wasn't Executive Officer when I met him." She admitted.

Having lost the thread of this conversation, Draia shook her head in irritation and perched herself on the edge of the dilithium crystal chamber. "Where did you meet him then?" she asked directly.

“Well, I met him in the lounge... He was stood at the bar looking all lost wearing a security uniform... turns out he had been brought to the Victory temporarily as the Security Chief until he became the XO. Seriously he stood there as this cocky ensign, wearing this bright blue dress and purple sky high heels walked up to him and asks him to join her for dinner as she didn’t know anyone and it was his duty as a head of a department to look after her." She giggled at how cocky and new she had been five years ago. "He did but he spent the whole night staring at me, not able to say a word other than Da in response to anything I say.” She smiled thinking of the man and how nervous he had been with this young woman taking charge.

Watching the conflicting emotions play across Jeassaho's face as micro-expressions, Draia leaned forward and asked, "Where did you find the courage to speak to your superior officer so brazenly?" At first glance, such behaviour appeared inconsistent with the rest of Jeassaho's personality, by Draia's assessment.

"That was before I realised he was the new XO, just temporarily there as Security Chief.” She admitted. That had been a deep shock that this man five years older, one that had caught her eye the first night she had been on the Victory wasn't who she had thought he had been. She had thought him on the ship as the Chief of Security not there to eventually become the XO.

"Did he continue to say Da to everything you said," Draia asked, doubtfully, "after you began copulating?"

"I think I scared him at first. I was a little too much for him. He didn't quite know what to do with me." Jeassaho admitted with a laugh. "What about you? You must have someone out in the universe?" If they were having that kind of chat Jeassaho was asking her own questions.

Draia jumped up from her perch on the dilithium chamber. There was a defeated frown crossing her face, but it wasn't without humour, when Draia shook her head at Jeassaho. "No one will have me," Draia replied.

Jeassaho shook her head that wasn't the case at all she knew that as the truth. Despite her anger as Rueben she knew eventually she would calm down and they would eventually talk like the adult they were. "Or you won't have them," Jeassaho argued back with a bright smile. No one was a lost cause at all.

Something about what Jeassaho said caused a shift in the way Draia carried herself. She physically recoiled from Jeassaho; even Draia herself wasn't fully consciously aware of what snapped inside her head. However, there was no hiding what snapped out of Draia's mouth. "You can stay out of my intentions, and you can stay out of my head, Betazoid," Draia demanded. This may have been the engineering control room of a Constitution-Class starship, but this wasn't a Starfleet vessel anymore. "Don't ever-- even if you do know better than me-- don't ever tell me what I'm thinking," she spat out.

"I am not in your head. Starfleet rules still apply here for me at the very least. I am just on a leave of absence from my commision." Jeassaho said softly not even losing her small smile as she looked at the Cardassian. She sat back up and smiled more. "I can see what Selina meant about you now." She admitted as an alarm went off that required her to get up.

Following Jeassaho to the source of the alarm, Draia called after her, "What did you say about Selina?"

"I know her," Jeassaho admitted with a smile. "Did you not know that? I thought you knew that I knew her as she knows Rueben?"

Shaking her head while she kept her eyes on Jeassaho, Draia responded with, "I don't much care who you know." Saying that she moved in close to Jeassaho, as if it were vitally important for Draia to lay eyes on the source of the alarm her own self. "What is asked is: what did you say about Selina?'

Jeassaho didn't even glance at her as she was joined by the younger woman. "I said I can see what Selina meant about you now," Jeassaho repeated as she bent over the console looking through the cameras that were around where the alarm was sounding from.

"Mmm," Draia vocalized noncommittally. He touched the controls, adjusting the views from a couple of the cameras. Without looking up from her work, Draia asked, "And what exactly did Selina say about me?"

"Just that you need someone to watch out for you," Jeassaho said softly as she saw that everything was okay and deactivated the alarm. It was boring being a watchkeeper despite it being the second most important job after her opposite number on the Bridge.

Turning her gaze on Jeassaho, Draia watched Jeassaho watching the monitor. "We shall see how well you manage keeping watch," Draia said, and she turned her head to watch the monitor too.

OFF::

Lieutenant Commander (LOA) Jeassaho Kea
Engineer
SS Mary Rose

Draia Theroh
Engineering Chief
SS Mary Rose