Conflicted Priorities

Posted on Thu Apr 18th, 2019 @ 6:25pm by Lieutenant Commander Mnhei'sahe Dox & Commander Rita Paris

Mission: Detours
Location: The Khallianen, Shuttlebay 2
Timeline: 2396

Sticking half out of an open access panel in the deck of the small J-type freighter known as the Khallianen, it's owner and, by default, Captain, Lieutenant Mnhei'sahe Dox, was busy trying to reassemble a fused power junction.

Since receiving the compact pirate ship from Captain Magnus of the Artan Pirate Family as a part of her inclusion to their ranks as a Baroness, Dox had found herself spending a lot of her free time on the little ship tinkering with it. He bond-mate, Ensign Mona Gonadie, was busy with her new R&D department and Dox wasn't exactly the socializing type, so hanging out in Ten-Forward wasn't for her.

Instead, she found herself in Shuttlebay two, futzing around with the systems of her new ship that had become something of a hideaway for her.

Pulling herself out, she muttered a curse in her native Rihan, “Imirrhlhhse!” The stout, red-headed Romulan woman had a tendency to mutter to herself in her first tongue when she was alone and especially when she was irritated, and tonight she was very much both.

It had been a few weeks now since the mind meld with both much of the Hera's command crew allowed the troubled pilot to psychically communicate with the Titan Gaia, but in that time it felt as if her life had changed completely. While it's true that her burgeoning psychic abilities were now all but gone as a result of Gaia having been in her mind, it was more in how the crew had changed towards her.

Before the mind meld, Asa Dael and Mnhei'sahe we're extremely close friends. But it seemed that since joining minds, the two had barely spoke and Dox couldn't help but fear that her El-Aurian friend saw too much in the anxiety-riddled mind of the conflicted pilot and pulled away.

Even her empathic bond with Mona had become weak. And while the two were recovering it, that loss only served to amplify Dox's feelings of isolation and loneliness.

So she retreated to where those thoughts, ironically, were amplified. The pirate ship that was the physical representation of the internal conflict between her life in Starfleet and the life of a smuggler she once ran from but that kept calling her back. And, while the ownership of the Khallianen was now shared with Mona as her bond-mate, the Miradonian pilot and inventor had yet to set foot on the ship.

Now that Dox was thinking about it, the only other person that had been on this ship as a visitor was the Baroness Schwein von Alcott with a bottle of Kali-Fa to celebrate Dox’s appointment with the Artan Family. Asa had been here momentarily when Dox used the ship to rescue her friend from mercenaries months ago, but that was it.

Mona hadn’t been there. Asa never came to see it under normal circumstances. And Rita Paris had most certainly not come. Rita was virtually the living embodiment of Starfleet and she made no attempts at hiding her disdain for anything to do with the Artan Family business of her disappointment that Dox had chosen to become involved in the Captain's family drama. It was a disappointment that cut deep for the pilot that looked up to Paris as both a friend and a role model.

As such, Dox had removed from her quarters any of the artifacts connected to her station as an Artan Baroness. Her I.D., the Repulsor she had purchased with the Captain at a pirate auction so many months ago, when her ears were still rounded, her blood brown and her name 'Melanie', her uniform as a Baroness, even the twin Caitian blades that Schwein had gifted her. They were all kept in her small cabin on the Khallianen where there was no chance of Rita seeing during a casual visit to her quarters.

Still, it was a fact that stuck in Dox’s mind. When she was made a Baroness by the Captain, she was extremely proud. But it was a pride she now felt ashamed of as a Starfleet officer. She wanted to figure out a way to be both without betraying one for the other, but ultimately she was afraid that where she sat now was her fate. The android Kodria… her niece from the future… had all but confirmed this by letting it slip that in her time, Dox was a pirate Captain. The young Romulan didn’t pry for more information, but it has stuck in the back of her mind ever since and weighed on her heavily.

Getting up off the deck, Dox closed the panel on the repaired conduit and wiped the grease from her hands with a rag on the chair behind her. She was wearing black cargo pants and a green tank top with black work boots and her curly red hair that was growing back out in a ponytail as she walked to the back of the small craft to the cargo hold. Passing the small replicator, she ordered up a black Romulan Coffee and sat down in front of the few small crates that had come with the ship.

Behind them in the hold, strapped down, was her gunmetal gray hoverbike that she had recovered from storage on Earth during the Hera’s shore leave that she enjoyed tinkering with as well. A rare positive memento of her few years on Earth.

But it was the crates her attention was focused on tonight. Gifts from the other Baronesses, welcoming her to the Artan family. Crates she had yet to open in the months she’d owned the small ship. But here she sat, afraid that this life was her fate. Terrified that her commitment to Starfleet was doomed to failure. Feeling lonely and disconnected to the life she once she belonged in but was now questioning, she opened the first crate to examine its contents.

A crate of Praetor’s Select Kali-Fa. A 16 year old vintage, making it the last year that she was actively smuggling the former contraband. A thoughtful gesture that she sighed at. Since bonding with Mona, the young Romulan had been actively trying to quit drinking. It was a habit that fueled her self-doubt and self-destructive behavior patterns and it was one she was struggling with rather hard of late. This crate would likely be gifted to Schwein or the Captain VERY quickly.

Pushing the Kali-Fa to the side, she pulled over the next crate and took the lid off. Inside was a series of smaller boxes. Some simple wood, others more elaborate, not unlike jewelry boxes. Dox picked up a small, ornate red box wrapped in velvet and trimmed with gold filigree. Inside was a beautiful necklace. Swirls of platinum framing a brilliant green stone. Dox recognized the piece as a Romulan ceremonial pendant, used in years past in bonding ceremonies. Holding it up to the light, she couldn’t help but wonder if it had been stolen before she saw a name on the inside of the lid. The small gold plaque read: “Verelan t’Rul’. It was the name of her paternal Grandmother. The former director of the Tal’Shiar and current Romulan Senator that Dox has only recently learned about.

The grandmother, who according to Dox’s mother, would stop at nothing to possess Mnhei’sahe if she learned of her existence.

Holding the heirloom in her hands, she sighed for a long moment as she thought of her Mother. He mother, Jaeih Dox, who now resided aboard the very same Starship that Dox thought of as her home. She had spoken to her just a few hours earlier in the ship's brig and by now, the elder Romulan was likely trying to make some kind of deal with the Captain in exchange for her help with the Captain's tribunal.

Putting the neckless away, Mnhei’sahe opened the next box. In it, a framed picture. It was a picture of her Mother and her when she couldn't have been any older than twelve. A short, pudgy red-head with her hair awkwardly straightened in a standard Romulan bowl-cut with a scowl on her face. Her ears still rounded off from surgery she received as a child that had only recently been discovered and repaired. Standing beside her and her mother, clearly, on the smuggling ship she grew up on, the Forager, was another woman. The former Romulan refugee that was now a Baroness, Sienae Nei’rrh of the Romulan Refugee Corps.

The Captain's family drama had forced Mnhei’sahe to reconnect with the childhood she had run away to Starfleet to try and forget. She knew that the Captain meant well, but was terrified that she would soon have no choice but to embrace that life if the Captain’s upcoming tribunal against her own mother went bad. It had already put Mnhei’sahe in the position of having to choose between the Artan Pirate family and Starfleet. And now it had put her own mother on the same starship, forcing a relationship she wasn’t sure she wanted anymore.

Ignoring the rest of the crates, she tossed the contents back in and slid them back into the cargo hold. All the while, her eyes were on that crate with the Kali-Fal in it. The pale blue liquor practically called to her, but she ignored it as she took an almost angry sip of her coffee.

In the short time that Jaeih Dox had been on board, the two women had only spoken briefly but it was something the younger Dox knew she was going to have to deal with. She had told Rita that she had no intention of hiding in her own home from her mother, but there she was. Sitting on the deck of the Khallianen. Very much hiding.

Hiding from her mother.

Hiding from Rita and Asa. People she thought of like family that were feeling more and more like strangers with each passing day.

Hiding from Mona, terrified that their bond might never be fully restored.

But mostly hiding from herself. Hiding from her fears and self-doubt that were making her feel alone again. Unwanted again. Lost again.