Subject: Grail: "Unexplored Spaces"; "Run, Hide, and Scream"
<OOC: Welcome to the wonderful sport of wall staring.>
Kait woke up the next day, not as sad as she had once been, but rather,
feeling somewhat thoughtful. In reflection of the day before, her day ha
d
gone pretty well for the disposition she had been in. Indeed, it would'v
e
been better if she could have gone back to sleep in hopes of waking up
differently, but since that had not been an option, she decided that it
should not have been a consideration either. Other from that, nothing ha
d
gone wrong at all, and that was something which was especially important
in
light of her being particularly sensitive at that time. Undoubtedly, if
anything _had_ gone wrong, she would have broken down crying, for no
apparent reason.
Her talk with Kestra could've gone better, but Kait didn't feel that the
girl held any resentment towards her. In fact, when Kait checked her
messages that morning, she found a brief message from her cousin asking K
ait
to go to Kestra's quarters to feed "Familiar", Kestra's cat. Kait did as
asked that morning, but gladly left the cat behind to go to work.
However, later that evening a "General Quarters" was ordered and Brennan
was
faced with a decision. With Kestra going to be in Sickbay for the entire
stay of the quarantine period and seeing as how her cat would have no via
ble
means of sustenance for an indefinite period of time, she had to decide
whether to wait out that period of confinement where the cat was or to br
ing
the cat to her quarters.
When Kait walked into her cousin's quarters, she felt almost as if she we
re
invading the girl's privacy by intruding on her personal space. From thi
s
impression, the decision was made fairly easily. However, executing this
decision proved to be much more difficult. Familiar struggled against be
ing
held and launched off her chest, and ran the rest of the way down the
corridor. Surely, he must've left a nasty scratch on her skin.
Familiar stopped only when he reached the end of the corridor at a turbol
ift
entrance. Brennan quickly ran over to the cat so that some unknowing per
son
would not have the chance to walk out of that turbolift and allow the cat
a
means of escape. When the cat realised he was trapped, he tried running
past Kait, but thanks to her good reflexes, she was able to catch him, th
en
she barely made the traversion to her quarters, though it was a short
distance from where she was.
Once she and the cat were successfully inside quarters, Kait thanked the
gods that she would not have to walk in and out of that door very often,
in
fact, she wouldn't have to for quite some time.
For those ten long days, her only tangible companion was Familiar. She f
elt
that the cat behaved better as they spent more time together, and Kait's
opinion of this species of animal changed slightly... but not completely.
She still would have preferred to have a dog and a big house... Her thoug
hts
would have continued on creating this utopia in her mind, but the apparen
t
hopelessness of her situation gave the activity a rather disheartening
effect. So she chose to focus her energies on tending to this cat, namel
y
by feeding her temporary and only companion.
For the first few days, Kait had tried to offer help to Lt. Cmdr. Hargen,
but without being able to do any physical work, her attempt to help was m
ore
so salutatory, and Hargen assured Brennan that she could make it just fin
e
on her own. Hargen told Brennan to try to enjoy her time off. On a more
personal level, Kait reminded Janice that she was free to contact Kait
whenever, if she needed anything.
Eventually Kait had resorted to using the video communications to develop
some sort of personal interaction in order to break the monotony of it al
l.
She found that she got to learn more about her engineering staff than she
could have in the normal work place. The reason is that the only people
she
contacted were the ones on her engineering staff, and, though at first, h
er
officers were a bit leery about approaching a superior officer in any oth
er
manner than the formal, especially one such as Kaitlyn Brennan, who was
probably the only person above the rank of Ensign in the Engineering
department who would, without a second thought, mete out punishment to
anyone who proved to deserve it. =20
Nevertheless, she was able to break this barrier by talking about herself
a
bit, then tried to ascertain certain things about the other person so tha
t
they could agree or correct her, because the easiest thing to talk about
is
yourself, since what area could you possibly know better than yourself?
At
least that was the case with most people.
Ensign Delagi proved to be the most animated character to talk with, Ensi
gn
Adran was the most delicate, Wilson seemed to be the most talkative on li
ght
subjects, Koscearny the most self-critical and fearful, K'tel the most
stand-offish, and Ladun seemed to be the most familiar or kindred spirit
to
her. These were the most general assumptions she could make about these
people, but as with any generalisation, it could not be considered
invariably accurate and there was still much to be said about that person.
A whole book could be written just explaining every nuance of a person, s
o
no matter how much you could say you couldn't give a _complete_ descrip
tion
of a person.
Even in the face of confinement, Kait still was able to find a way to esc
ape
it, but only thanks to the ship's internal communication systems. Althou
gh
considering how much she hated having to go to work, being off for ten da
ys
did not go unappreciated. In fact, when the General Quarters was stood
down, Kait had trouble deciding which she hated more: work or boredom.
Standing up, she took a pensive survey of the room and then briefly pette
d
Familiar who had taken, though uninvited, the liberty of sleeping on her
cot.
Kait, remembering how unkempt she had allowed herself to become the past
couple days, she decided that she wasn't going anywhere until she made
herself a little more presentable. Taking a sonic shower, fooling with h
er
hair for a long time, and dressing in a new change of clothes were the ma
in
things that she needed to do.
Once she had done all this, and finally decided that she was half-way dec
ent
now, she walked over to the entrance/exit to her quarters. Familiar sat
waiting in front of the door, looking up at it as if at any moment the do
or
would open. There must have been some humor in the cat's perception of h
er
impending exit, because Kait gave a startled laugh when seeing how
expectantly the cat sat.
"Oh no, I don't think so, my friend!" Kait exclaimed with a smile.
As she picked up the cat, the door opened automatically. Kait carefully
threw the cat onto her cot before quickly running out of her quarters. T
he
door closed, and no fleeing animal could be seen. Kestra would be so-o
upset with Kaitlyn if the girl ever found out how Kait had thrown Familia
r
half-way across the room! but it was the only way to escape a room that
might as well have been an eight cubic meter box for all the freedom it h
ad
permitted.
There were several people socializing in the corridors, although it must'
ve
been much worse after the General Quarters was initially called off. Unl
ike
the others, she didn't have a need to run out to talk to anyone. Unlike
the
others, she had recovered from the infection. What was the reason for it
?
Thinking on it, it did rather remind Kait of other plague situations she
had
read about where there almost never failed to be a survivor, for some
unknown reason. That was, at least when the plague was of natural causes
,
and not the result of some chemical warfare. In this case, however, the
plague was chemically designed, but she could only conclude that the
attempted substance must have been in the preliminary stages, and not a
result of the necessary years of conditioning to make any such destructiv
e
force absolutely perfect...
Her thoughts continued to ramble on until she passed by one of the female
junior officers who spoke in a rather crude tone, "If only the Romulans h
ad
the sense of honor that the Klingons have, none of this would have
happened=85" She had to agree with this, however. The Klingons never wo
uld
stoop so low as creating chemical weapons to instigate an artificial plag
ue
upon their enemies; such a thing would be considered a million times more
cowardly than even resorting to poisoning. At least, that was how it see
med
to her.
Leaving the junior officers behind to carry on their reviving 'first
contacts' for a while, Kaitlyn Brennan stepped inside the turbolift and
ordered the usual, so to speak. She really did need Bridge duty once in
a
while to give her some place new to go. Her intentions when joining
Starfleet had been to see new places, but instead the exact opposite was
true. She was kept off _all_ away missions thanks to her former superior.
However, upon her entrance into Main Engineering, she found that there wa
s a
very different, or new, feel to the place. Then again, walking around fe
lt
rather new considering she hadn't been outside of her quarters for quite
some time. She hadn't been an engineer for quite some time, and now,
standing at the entrance of the oversized engineering room, she looked wi
th
wonder, and came to the realization that she had truly missed it all, too.
Ensign Bryant and Ensign Adran were the only souls in Engineering for the
moment, but that wouldn't last forever. Lt. Brennan was actually quite
surprised to find that Janice Hargen was not present. Despite this, she
approached the two junior officers and asked them if anything was going o
n.
They had responded in the negative, but Brennan could quite clearly see w
hat
their eyes were on. It was some sort of probe.
Brennan decided that maybe she should've kept more in contact with her
superior, so that she would know the purpose of this device. The cloakin
g
device was stored away somewhere. Janice had told her this much: that
researching the cloaking device was taken off the list for things to do.
There was always the possibility of later, however far into that future t
hat
might be.
"Have you seen Commander Hargen?" Brennan asked the two junior officers.
Adran shrugged and Ladun simply said, "No."
From the looks of it, it looked like the two were conspiring to commit so
me
crime. She looked suspiciously casted her eyes unto the console that the
y
had been standing in front of. The screen was still waiting for the log-
in
sequence, hadn't even been touched that day.
As the silence soon became unbearable, Brennan asked, "Is everything okay
here?"
Adran seemed to blush slightly, and Ladun again repeated, "No."
Then it was silence again. Kaitlyn Brennan thought for sure she would go
crazy if this didn't end here. It was already apparent that the two were
hiding something, and she wanted to make sure it was nothing that they
shouldn't be doing.
"Okay, spill it," Brennan demanded.
"Excuse me?" Ladun asked.
"You know, spill it. Tell me what it is that's got you two so squeamish.
"
"Why, nothing sir," Ensign Adran replied innocently. Ensign Ladun echoed
her 'nothing.'
Lt. Brennan could always wait for the chief engineer to return and deal w
ith
them, but she was so light-handed that she would likely let it go.
If she didn't know any better, she'd say that they were getting intimate.
..
but then again, she regarded Ensign Ladun rather softly, and if she didn'
t
keep her emotions in check, jealousy might raise its ugly head. After a
few
more attempts at prodding it out of them though, Kait soon found out that
their only crime was the same curiosity that had so consumed Kaitlyn hers
elf.
"We were just taking a sort-of look inside the probe, that's all," Ensign
Adran replied, starting to sound offended by the implications Brennan had
made towards what her suspicions had become.
"Never mind it all," Kaitlyn Brennan had said straightforwardly. "Did yo
u
find anything of interest?"
"No," Ensign Ladun said.
Then Lt. Brennan had the distinct feeling of d=E9j=E0 vu and couldn't hel
p but
utter quite audibly, "No... not this again!"
With that, she walked away from the two, completely exasperated. She rea
lly
didn't get the pick of the litter when it came to engineers. She had hop
ed
that with the motley assortment of people that a far superior staff could
be
created than the ones that were made from the foundations of books and st
udy
hours. Creativity and motivation in the form of aggression would be thei
r
greatest assets. Nevertheless, it wouldn't hurt to have some better comp
any
than a couple of giggling teenagers, who acted as if their peeking inside
a
carefully-constructed probe was something akin to peeking inside a cookie
jar.
Kaitlyn was much more content to stare at the wall than to carry on any m
ore
conversations like the former. And so she did that for a while, wonderin
g
how she might get ahold of Janice, because she needed somebody with a bit
of
sanity to talk to.
<OOC: Confused about the title? Here's a short explanation, if you'll r
ead
on. Familiar runs for cover, Kaitlyn runs after Familiar, Kaitlyn hides
in
her quarters, the two junior officers hide their "curiosity", and after a
ll
this stupidity, everyone, including Kaitlyn, is ready to scream! :) >
Kaitlyn Brennan, Asst. Chief Engineer, USS Grail
Lynne Baillie, "Chief Engineer", USS Trailblazer
ICQ #6664187, IRC Nick (Undernet)--Kestra
Get on IRC--Visit http://www.mirc.co.uk today!