No Fate But What We Make... Maybe

Posted on Sat May 25th, 2019 @ 7:49pm by Commander Rita Paris & Lieutenant Commander Mnhei'sahe Dox

Mission: Fractured Fairy Tales
Location: USS Hera, Deck 23, Secret Shuttlebay
Timeline: 2396

The remains of the j-type light freighter, the Khallianen, lay in scattered pieces in the corner of the deck of the loud and busy Shuttlebay two. The nacelles were dismantled and stacked against the side bulkhead. The flight computer components were collected in a series of cargo containers to the side of the still-twisted hatchway on the ships port side.

As Lieutenant Mnhei'sahe Dox looked over the picked apart pieces of what was one her personal ship, a gift from of the Artan fleet after her induction as a Baroness in their ranks, her heart sank a little.

The Khallianen was dismantled by the science and Intel teams of the U.S.S. Hera after an assassination attempt resulted in the red-headed Romulan woman almost being murdered in this very room, and left another officer dead for getting in the way. The assassin was a small droid, hidden amongst the crates of gifts left for her on the Khallianen from the other Baronesses of the Artan Family.

The investigation into her attempted assassination was still ongoing, although without any assistance from her for obvious, if frustrating, reasons. But science and Intel had cleared the ship as safe and the Hera's unlikely Flight Chief was allowed to see it again.

Climbing up into the small ship, she sighed. The hatch had been twisted out of shape when the assassin droid had rammed it with one of the Hera's own Work Bees. To Dox's left was what was left of the cockpit. Most of the consoles had been removed and all of the internal components of the ships drive system, steering column and flight computer we're in pieces in the cargo containers outside. And the windscreen was still gone from when she had to blast it out to escape.

To her right were the four crates of gifts that had clearly been rifled through with every form of scanner the ship could provide. The items cataloged, sealed in envelopes and replacdd. Then, Dox's eyes began to swell as she saw the pieces of her own hoverbike in the cargo area at the rear of the ship.

The matte silver antique had been one of the only possessions of hers that she had brought with her on board the Hera from her storage unit back on Earth. She had built that bike by hand when she was still a teenager and it had survived the attack intact, but didn't survive the security investigation that took the ship and everything in it apart. She understood the necessity, of course, but it did little to deaden the sting in that moment.

Sitting down on the ground between the pieces of her former hoverbike and the crates, Dox stifled a desire to cry. She had so few personal possessions she had cared about, and those were now largely destroyed all because she had said 'yes’ when Captain Telvan had welcomed her back into the life she had once worked so hard to abandon.

She started to look through the crates and see what was left, wiping her eyes dry. “Kreldanni child…” she whispered to herself, cursing in her native Rihan as she was known to do. “You're supposed to be an officer. Start acting like it.”

At her feet was one of the four crates- the crate containing six bottles of premium Kali-Fal. Known across the galaxy as Romulan Ale, it was the brand she and her mother used to deal in as smugglers when she was younger. A reminder, both of that life, and of the person she had been desperately trying to put behind her.

She pulled out one of the bottles, scanned and investigated through to ensure it was safe. But in her hands it was anything but safe. In her hands it was the path back to the perpetually angry, self-loathing, self-destructive young woman Mnhei'sahe Dox has spent months trying to bury in the past. She replaced the bottle, kicking the crate just a little further away as she kept looking through the crates.

The items had all been scanned individually and cataloged by the Intel department. In one padded envelope marked ‘Evidence: 12-4’, was a framed photograph. The glass had been removed, likely broken in the attack, but the photograph was intact. It was a photo of herself, he mother and the Romulan refugee turned Baroness, Sienae Nei'rrh. Just a day ago, Dox had met with Nei'rrh to try and sway her to vote with the Captain in the upcoming Tribunal and was less than successful.

Staring back at Dox was the forced, painful smile of her twelve-year-old self. Pudgy as ever, with pale pink skin and rounded off ears, but sporting the familiar, pointed banged bowl cut common among Romulans. A very different sight from the olive-skinned, pointed eared woman she was now. She still had the pointed bangs, though.

“Lovely…” she muttered as she tossed the picture aside towards the hatch. “The entire kreldanni Intel team knows what you looked like as a little girl. Because that's going to help them take you seriously.”

“If a picture of you as a teenager is going to make them lose respect for you, they didn’t have much to begin with,” the clear voice of Rita Paris rang out from the hatchway, where she’d been leaning for a moment or two. Eyeing the devastation wrought by her order to ‘take this ship apart piece by piece to ensure that there are no further threats to the crew of the Hera’, she offered a pained smile. “You wanna talk about it?”

"Commander?!" Dox looked up, startled that she hadn't noticed Rita Paris's approach, she was so lost in her own head. The anxious youn Romulan pilot straightened up almost out of instinct for a second before relaxing again and thinking about her friend's offer.

Picking another envelope out of the crate in front of her with a memory sealed inside, Dox sighed slightly. "I... I don't really know what to talk about. I still don't know how I'm supposed to feel about this."

Saying the word 'supposed', it was evident from Dox's tone that she was substituting it for the word 'allowed'. The very existence of the small Pirate ship aboard the Hera, even endorsed and encouraged by the Captain, had been a point of tension between the two women.

“Well, you should feel how you feel, Miss Dox,” Paris explained as she stepped slightly inside the craft and leaned against the warped hatchway. “We're both off duty. Not Commander and Lieutenant, just you and me, here, Mnhei’sahe. So speak your piece… if you need to yell at me, I promise to take it gracefully.”

"I need to yell at myself. I want to yell at myself. Let out all the anger and guilt that I know isn't ever going to leave because of this ship." Dox flumped back, knocking against the bulkhead will the back of her head as she spoke. "I used to come here all the time, Rita. Whenever I couldn't get my head to shut up or when I had a tough decision to make in the office. I'd come here and work on the ship."

Kicking the removable deckplate to her right, Dox kept talking. "I'd bury myself down there and re-route the power couplings. I'd mess around with the hydraulics on the hatch or re-wire the flight computer. I'd tinker. And I guess I'm mad that I don't have that anymore, as selfish as that sounds."

"It was a better distraction than..." As she spoke, she glanced for the briefest of seconds at the crate of Kali-Fal, "...other things."

“Well… perhaps I am being insensitive here, and I apologize if I am, but you definitely have lots of reassembly to do, so… can you not tinker on it still? What am I missing here, Miss Dox?” Sliding her back down the bulkhead, Paris settled herself on the deck to bring her to eye level with the morose Rihannsu. How she managed to pull off such stunts in a miniskirt was a source of unending mystery to Dox, but then, Rita did have years of practice in that minidress uniform of hers.

The anxious your pilot rolled her shoulders a little. "I can fix some basic systems. I can rewire some consoles. But this is... reassembling a starship from the parts. Mona or Thex could do it but it's more than..." As she spoke, she could practically prognosticate Rita's answer telling her to not dare belittle her own abilities before she had even tried.

"I... Guess I could try. It would be a hell of a project, at least." Dox tried to allow a slight smile to crack her dour facade. As she spoke, she began thumbing through the envelopes and security wrapped packages in the crates.

“Wanna tell me what’s really bothering you, then?” Rita asked softly. While the woman was a master of relaying nearly every potential emotion in conversation, in this case Paris was approaching the subject gently, and trying to give Dox time to get it off her chest, while gently kneading and prodding at her to open up over what was genuinely bothering her. “Was it that I ordered her taken apart and not reassembled? I can fix that…”

"What? No." Dox replied rather quickly. She was unsure even if what she was feeling exactly at the moment, but it wasn't anger towards Rita. "It's not the ship. And... It doesn't have anything to do you. Honestly. I'm not upset at you, Rita. If you would have let me, I would have come down here myself to help after... after what happened. I guess it... these."

Gesturing to the remaining three crates of personal effects, Dox leaned forward, running her hand over her ear to tug lightly as she spoke. "When I got the ship... I never looked in these. I just put them away to ignore them. The first time I opened them up was... well... just before the assassin droid was activated. I didn't want to see. Honestly. That pendant and the picture over there is exactly as far as I got before I put them back away."

"Hnaev... Sam knows what's in here better than I do " Dox scoffed.

Holding up her ever-present PaDD, Paris wagged it. "I've got the inventories if you're interested, all dutifully cataloged. That's not what's bothering you, though. I mean the general malaise I get..." The eyes of Rita Paris sprung open, and an expression of marvel flooded her features. "You think I'm mad at you over all of this, don't you?"

Pointing the PaDD at the lieutenant, the commander pursued her hunch. "You think I'm eyeing all of this with a sneer of disdain because it's all tied up in 'that pirate business'. Even when I don't say a word- that's it. You've heard my opinions on it before, know it to be applicable to the situation, so assume, given that I'm pretty constant, that I haven't changed my mind about it. Which means that you as an officer know it, and it colors everything you do, particularly when it comes to piracy. Or at least, that's my assumption."

Leaning forward, Dox tore open another one of the packages. It contained another photo of herself and her mother from years ago. As she put it on the ground between the two, she replied. But her voice was quiet and weak as she spoke. "That scared me for a while. It's why I never asked you to come see the ship. At first... I was excited about the controls and I wanted to show you, but... Yeah. That did worry me. But that's not what's bothering me right now."

"For a while... I didn't want to open any of this. I didn't want to because while the crates were closed, it was all abstract. The people who gave me them were just pirates. But once I opened them, it would be real. Real people. People that I knew growing up. These would be what they are... memories." Dox's head hung a little lower as she spoke, looking down at the photo of her and her mother.

"You remember the first thing Kodria said in that message for me?" Dox looked up at Rita, her eyes searching and plaintive.

The brow of the first officer furrowed then she recalled. "Ohhhh... your mother. Okay, so... you think she's in danger? You think one of our missions is going to get her killed out here, and that's why she warned you?"

"It wasn't a warning, like 'don't drink the Brandy'. It was... different. She's wasn't trying to give me some clue to try and stop it. She was just urging me to appreciate the time we had left." Nervously, Dox put her fist to her chin as she all but whispered her next words.

"They both said the same thing."

"They who? You lost me there, I'm afraid," Paris admitted. "Kodria aaaand...?"

Sitting back, Dox cleared her throat and took a long breath. "It was... Months ago. Back in February now. When I found out about my father. She... Death... she told me the same thing, Rita. She... she said... I remember every word... she said 'The next time you meet your mother, promise me one thing. You won't talk to her in anger. You have precious little time left with her and words spoken in anger only reduce that time further. Instead, please try to use compassion and open-mindedness.' Those were her words."

"Ahhhhhh, see, this is the downside of hanging out with powerful forces of the universe who can't be argued with," Paris clawed the air before her in mock rage at the universe. "So, your time with your mother seems very possibly limited. None of us have any guarantees, you know? Death herself might tell you you'll live to be nine hundred years old, yet you still might get hit by a shuttlecraft tomorrow."

"I refuse to believe that any of this is written in stone, and neither did Kodria, clearly. Which makes me wonder if I'm the one she learned it from. Which I can't worry about, because I can't worry about predestination, I need to live in the here and now." Rolling her eyes, the out of date officer redirected again. "But you ARE worried. So, talk to me. Tell me what you're afraid to say?"

"I know that it could all change or not mean what I think. I could be the one to die or a thousand other things might happen. It might be tomorrow or in ten years. Who knows what 'not much time' means to functionally immortal people talking to someone with a potential two hundred plus years left?" Dox rambled a bit. It was obvious she had been running all the scenarios in her head for a while now.

"I'm just worried that I'm going to screw it up. Ultimately... The only thing I can do, really, is just follow their advice as best as possible. I just..." Dox paused for a second. "I just got her back and for the first time in forever... I feel like I have a mother. And now I'm just afraid to lose that again."

Levering herself up onto her knees, Rita scooted over across the ship to sit next to her friend. "That's love, Dox. Love means having something to lose, and that can be scary. Especially when cosmic beings and time travelers kind of point right to it. But love is what we do it for. Love moves mountains and can pull you through space and time. Fear gets things done, but love... love can do anything. So because of that, sure, it's fair to be a little scared, for all the people you love in your life. Because they won't be there forever, and that's a fact. Some of us are mere mortals, y'know."

"The key is trust, Dox. I," Paris scooted back to be able to look at the little lieutenant to emphasize her point. "Sent you off with those gun-happy psychotics and their crazed leader into that hole of the damned and weird science. I was terrified for you. I love you, and I was genuinely afraid that I'd sent you off where a stray beam was going to end you, and that would be it. I commanded you to your doom."

"I couldn't worry about that, though. I had my mission, you had yours. I had to trust that you would do everything right to make it back alive, and I did the same. That might be part of the puzzle you're missing? You have to trust in your mother to be on guard and protective of her own life, to come back safely." Raising and eyebrow as she settled back in next to the redhead, the blonde looked up at the overhead.

"Besides, I paired her up with Az'prel, who an entire universe couldn't kill. A woman who escaped an apocalypse is someone I trust to survive, at the very least." Leaning over, Rita parked the side of her head on top of Mnhei'sahe's and sighed. "Mrs. Dox will make it home safely, I have full confidence. She's got you and Mona to come back to... you've given her a whole lot more to live for. And I suspect she is enjoying her current mission more than her suite at the Starfleet Hilton. She's getting to live a life of her own again, and that's because you made it possible."

"Oh, I'm sure she's having the time of her life right now. And that there are very likely explosions involved. I know she's coming back. And she'll find the evidence the Captain needs. And I'll hug her and do my best to follow Kodria and Rei's advice because regardless of what I know or don't know, it's good advice." Dox replied, with a light if awkward chuckle as she name dropped the grim reaper.

"It's almost funny. Starfleet tries to train us to face the unknown and deal with the impossible. But there's really no preparation for the Hera." The young officer looked up with the first actual smile she had cracked all evening. "Thank you, though. Thank you for reminding me that it's worth it. I was sitting here, only seeing what was lost. Not what could be."

"I lost an entire universe, my past, as well as any and all relevancy," Paris pointed out. "But look what I gained in return? Having him here just makes it perfect, but even without Sonak, I would have a good life here. I am needed. I am valued. I am surrounded by shipmates who respect me and love me for who and what I am... duotronics and all. Sometimes from loss comes incalculable gain. But focusing on the loss doesn't get you there. Focusing on the love that binds us together, on the other hand, can see you through quite a bit, in my experience."

"Trust your mother, if not in all things, at least to be strong enough to make it back home to you. To return to her family, that she hasn't known for half your life, now. Trust that the woman who raised you to be so brutal in personal combat will fight ten times that hard to make it back to you and Mona and this odd and unique starship that is our home... all of us." Wrapping an arm around the young Romulan woman, the human astronaut of another age hugged her. "Yes?"

Leaning into the hug, Dox nodded simply in response, smiling. "Yes."

The sat for a long moment in silence, the bustle of the busy deck outside echoing through the empty ship they were in before Dox sat back up and looked around at the ship, in pieces. "You're right..."

"This isn't a loss, either it's an opportunity. To make this ship what I want it to be, right?" Dox turned to Rita with a slight smirk on her face. "What do you think?"

“I think you’ve come a long way from Lieutenant Junior Grade Melanie Dox, and seeing all of this as an opportunity,” the buxom bombardier waved in an expansive and elegant gesture to all of the scattered parts and components of the small starship, “speaks volumes to that change. I’m very proud of you, Miss Dox. Despite my disapproval of some of what we’re involved in, don’t ever imagine for a moment that I blame you or that I am upset with you. I’m just… defensive of you, is all. Call it the big sister reflex I never got to use,” Paris shrugged with a wry grin.

“I can be upset with the situation and not upset with you. It works that way sometimes. But you should be able to come to me about anything- you are under me in the chain of command, and it is my duty to be there for you,” the compassionate commander explained. “As your friend, I have it on good authority that my stern disapproval can be intimidating, but remember- I care. I want to help. Your well-being- physical, professional and emotional- are all in part my responsibility. So don’t think that because the old lady doesn’t like pirates that she’d going to be hostile to you about a situation that drives her crazy. Okay?”

Nodding, Dox smiled gratefully. "Okay. I promise. And... when this is all over, however the proverbial chips may fall, this will still be mine, Baroness or not. When I get her running again. I'd... really like to take her out for a run with you, if you want."

Offering a warm smile, Paris patted her beleaguered friend on the shoulder. “I’d love that. Of course, given that it’s me, you’re liable to end up crash-landed on some primitive planet where they worship you as a goddess, which sounds swell right up until you find out they are going to sacrifice you to appease their angry volcano god… but I’m willing to take the chance if you are!”

"Yeah. Sounds like shore leave to me." Dox replied, with a smile. As she did, she pulled out another package from the crate in front of her. Tearing the envelope open, she pulled out a small box. Inside was a handful of latinum coins. For a moment, she stared at them with a cricked eyebrow.

"Hnaev... Okay. I can't believe it. Rita, these are counterfeit. Years ago, a ship of Ferengi tried to cheat my mother out of six cases of Kali-Fal. We followed them back and beamed these directly into their nav console and fried their entire ship. An Artan patrol picked them up and delivered them to the Starfleet liaison. I can't believe someone kept these."

Taking a moment to laugh, the two women continued opening up the packages, each containing a piece of the red-headed Romulans past. Some prompted more laughs, others the occasional tear. Into the night, together the two friends sorted through the past of one Mnhei'sahe Dox.

In the days to come, they would have to face the trials Enalia Telvan's tribunal. But in that moment, they were just two friends talking, and the problems yet to come would wait. And even then, they knew that those challenges would be dealt with the same way: together