Banshee's Loose

Posted on Tue Aug 13th, 2019 @ 9:15am by Lieutenant Mona Gonadie & Ensign Fiona O'Dell & Ensign Briaar Gavarus
Edited on on Tue Aug 13th, 2019 @ 1:56pm

Mission: Mudd on the Souls of Mankind
Location: R&D Department Construction Lab
Timeline: 2396

The R&D crew had been a bit separated over the past two weeks, what with Briar recovering, Fiona acting as her nurse and also recovering from overusing the old neural link, and Carrott busy with family and sickbay maternity training. On top of that, her bond-mate was on an extended away mission through time, which left Mona more time than she cared for on her hands, which she used to rebuild the Thunderchicken from the ground up.

Thankfully, she'd been redesigning a lot of it in her spare time, including having created new polymers for the skin and exoskeleton. The spaceframe would remain the same poly-duranium, but since the incident with the variable mode mecha getting up and going for a pint in 10 forward, she'd been busy building a completely new mecha that was at least thirty percent smaller, half the weight, had the same payload of sensors and weapons, included a phaser reflective skin, bio-neural computer system, and a completely redesigned neural link with a virtual intelligence that shared the load and made sure nothing like what happened before could possibly happen again.

She had just finished and run through a gamut of testing, using herself as the guinea pig the night before and fallen asleep in the cockpit, the systems still running all night when O'Dell and Gavarus were supposed to report in for duty.

As the morning alarms went off and the VI warned her of two figures approaching the lab door, Mona finally woke up, feeling completely drained and exhausted and realized she'd fallen asleep in the new prototype. "Ah, fecht... Vitals are... Well, they're crap... I'll get chewed out for that." Sending the log data to the lab stations, she went through the shutdown and climbed out of the silver-skinned mecha just as the pair entered.

"... of all the diets I've been stuck on, I'll take beer as a liquid meal every frickin' time." Ensign Briaar Gavarus chuckled to her partner-in-crime, Ensign Fiona O'Dell, the diminutive test pilot as she finished a sentence began outside of the bay doors.

"Aye! Bein' the tester was nae s'bad, neither. I'm not sure if I healed me brain or damaged it in equal amount whilst we was invalids," O'Dell chirped in agreement as she hustled alongside her long-legged partner.

As the pair entered, they stopped in their tracks at the sight of the R&D chief climbing out of an entirely new mech. "Uh... How long was I on bed rest?"

"Long enou..." Mona began before losing her footing and falling to the floor with a thud on her backside. Rather than trying to get up, she just flopped the rest of the way out and lay there, too exhausted to move any further. "Fecht..."

"Chief!" O'Dell was quick to react, and while she was far too late to catch Ensign Gonadie, she was beside her. "Ach, ye did it too, ye fell asleep in there, dincha?" Tapping her comm badge, O'Dell called out in her pipsqueak voice. "Kin we get a medical team on the flight deck, we have an emergency."

"We're nae supposed ta move ye, so joost be still, Chief. T'will be alreet..." At that, Fiona O'Dell realized that when she had fallen asleep in the fighter, it had emulated her behavior, or maintained a sufficient link to her subconscious to be a facet of her. If Mona had been asleep in the new model...

"Uh, is that new bird going to start inventing more birds now...?"

"No..." Mona began, stifling a lethargic yawn. "I redesigned the interface and the computer. The Banshee has a bio-neural computer core and a virtual intelligence to support the pilot and prevent mishaps. Still draining, though if I can last a day on the new system and sleep on it, you should have no troubles now. And it fits in a turbolift better."

"I was g'win ta suggest that to ye! The AI to balance the load and clear the buffers afterward so residual neural traces would nae be left behind. Aye, good plan mum!" At that, O'Dell frowned. "Ah, should I cancel the medical emergency? Ye seem kinda joost woozy? Maybe we should scan her, aye Gavarus?"

Flustered and still a bit stressed from the sight of their Chief falling to the deck, the towering Tellarite engineer nodded her head as she started to move. "Uh... Yeah. Yeah, good Idea. Hold on. Keep 'em on standby. Let me grab the emergency med kit. There's a tri... Hold on."

Still stiff but no longer hurting from her week-plus of medical bed rest following major surgery to repair shattered ribs and crushed organs from being hugged by an O'Dell-possessed Thunderchicken, Briaar Gavarus broke into a light trot across the deck to the medkit in the wall to port. As she did so, O'Dell downgraded the medical emergency to a standby.

"Just... Uh... Yeah. Do that, Chief. Don't try and move and just lay there a minute. Let me..." The Tellarite engineer knew her way around a tricorder well. Even a medical one. But she looked flustered.

"It... It doesn't look... Everything looks okay. Nothing broken or... Your readings are strained, like when O'Dell was in the 'Chicken a while, but nothing that looks... off? The hell is wrong with this thing?" Gavarus looked positively confused as she knelt over the exhausted Miradonian officer.

Showing the bio-readouts to O'Dell as she muttered through them, Gavarus kept talking. "You look fine, Ma'am. Just tired. But this dumb thing might need to be recalibrated. I'm getting... some kind of... I dunno. Echo. I've got your vitals just fine but the Tri-Corder is picking up three additional patterns synched with yours."

"Chief! This is... aww, I see it noow. Congratulations, mum!" O'Dell poked Gavarus on the shoulder and showed her the tricroder's interpretation of the life sign readings. "The Banshee might not be inventing new birds, but seems ye are, in more ways than one, aye?"

The brightly plumed aviatrix rested the back of one hand on her forehead and sighed happily, a soft grin on her lips. "That explains the nausea and cravings then. More so than overworking myself, anyway. We'd been trying since the bonding ceremony but for it to have taken that first night so well..."

The light in O’Dell’s eyes practically gleamed. “That’s soo fantastic, mum! I’m so happy for ye!” she squealed, wrapping the plush plumed mother-to-be in a hug. It was horribly unprofessional, but so was picking your chief up off the flight deck.

Grunting mightily, Mona tried to sit up and just flopped back on the deck, unsuccessful in her attempt. "Yeah, I'm out of energy... You two look over the Banshee and see what you think and just drag me off to the break room so I can get some food and sleep or something."

"What? We're not gonna drag... hold on, Chief," Gavarus grumbled as she looked around the lab for a moment before heading off to Mona's office and returning with her rolling desk chair, customized and designed for a Miradonian's unique posterior. "Here. This has wheels on it so we can scooch you into the break room. Uh... Fee... Ensign O'Dell. I kinda can't pick shiii... stuff up yet. But we gotta get her off the floor. Here. See if you can help me get the chief up."

Looking up at the extra-large engineer, O’Dell with her thin and spindly arms knew better than to even try, because she was nowhere near strong enough to lift the R&D chief up on her own. She’d be lucky to do it with Gavarus’ help, for that matter. Eyes flickering to the mech on the deck, there was the not inconsiderable concern that she might hurt the chief were she to man the Banshee and use it to lift her. But O’Dell had to overcome that fear- awake and alert and in command of her faculties, she would not hurt the Miradonian in her delicate condition. But short of calling for help, it was the only way at hand.

“I’ll get ye oop, mum, nivvir ye fear,” O’Dell promised as she scampered up the mech to drop herself in the pilot’s seat, starting up the systems and bringing the new improved model online, Experimentally flexing the arms and fingers of the walker-mode mechanoid, O’Dell took a sidestep to turn toward them, then lowered the hands of the prototype to the deck and scooted them to within an inch of Mona Gonadie before pausing it and hopping out of the open canopy.

Watching from the side, Gavarus felt like she suddenly needed to pee she was so nervous. Having been the recipient of a hug from the Banshee's predecessor that almost killed her a couple of weeks ago, she was fidgeting in place. "Uh... the control console. I should be monitoring the control console here." As she spoke, she ran over to the side where the aforementioned control console was. From there she could shut the entire Banshee down in and instant and monitor both Fiona and Mona's vitals.

“Alreet, help me get ye on the hands, Chief, and I’ll pick ye oop and set ye down, gentle as a feather, hm?” O’Dell held out her hand to Mona, so she could help her scoot onto the improvised lift.

"Oh fecht... There's no way for this to end badly..." Mona muttered as she took the midget Leprechaun's hand and used the last of her strength to scoot into the hand of the new mech.

“Both of yuir faith in me is deeply touchin’,” O’Dell snarled a bit as she grunted to use what strength and leverage she had to help the exhausted chief into position

From the cockpit, a soft male voice droned a warning. "Warning. Contact with biological life form detected. As combat mode is offline, safeties are engaged. Please proceed with caution."

"Hey Leprechaun, guess who gets to name him." Mona grinned as the warning message finished.

Muttering Gaelic curses under her breath, O’Dell scrambled back into the cockpit and re-engaged the system. Gingerly picking up the pregnant chief, O’Dell moved with surety and confidence, one hand placing the Miradonian in the chair, tilting the hand to enable her to slide off the mech’s hands, the other hand holding the chair steady. Once Gonadie was successfully transferred to the chair, the plucky pilot patted the brilliant inventor on the head ever so gently.

“Once,” the mech held up a finger. “The damn thing runs off once and nearly kills someone when I wasnae even in the pilot's seat and now neither of ye have inny faith in me? That’s real nice, thanks ta both a’ye. Pog mo thoin…” With that, O’Dell powered down the mech and climbed out of it again. The fact that both the chief and her engineer were that nervous around her in the spacecraft spoke volumes of how much their confidence in O'Dell had been shaken, which in turn took a wrecking ball to what confidence she was trying to rebuild with the seemingly simple action.

"Ya'know..." Gavarus grumbled as she came up behind Mona's chair, "Considering that I was the 'someone' in question, I think I'm entitled to be a little frickin' twitchy around the new model. Which, ya'know, NEW model! You never actually drove THIS one before! Which you kicked ass at, by the way!"

The touchy Tellarite was arguing, and conversely, complimenting O'Dell over their exhausted department chief's head as if she wasn't still there. "Plus, ya' know, you were picking up the now-pregnant wife of Lieutenant Murder-Punch, who would actually kill us if..."

Freezing, mid-sentence, Gavarus crunched herself up in embarrassment as the blood rushed from her face. "Shit. I said that out loud, didn't I?"

Mona couldn't help but chuckle softly as she sat there mostly limp in her chair. "No, I trust you, Fiona. After what happened, I didn't trust myself, which is why I rebuilt the system from the ground up. There are still neural buffers, but there's the bio-neural gel systems and the VI to share the load and safeties just in case. I tried to make it smart enough to follow simple voice commands, but I'll leave training it up to you."

"As for my wife, Lieutenant Murder-Punch..." Mona rolled her head so she could look at Briaar, a weary and punch drunk grin on her face. "Miradonians crave meat while we're pregnant. I'll try to be considerate, but you do look pretty tasty right now..."

Looking from the creepy grin of the chief up to O'Dell, Gavarus chuckled nervously as she grabbed the back of Mona's chair. "Break room. Replicator. Yeah, it's lunchtime." And began pulling Mona gingerly behind her.

Hands on her hips, O’Dell approached the new, smaller, sleeker silver mechanoid fighter, still entirely irritated. “Alreet Ogma. Since apparently ye and me are to have our competency doubted and our skills distrusted, it looks like we’re in this together. Feh,” O’Dell began speaking animatedly with her hands.

“They worked so hard to convince me that it was nae me fault, that it couldnae be helped, that it was a ghost in the system or whativvir. So she rebuilds it from the ground up, adds in a VI to help bear the load, yet they still dinna trust us. That’s crap, and I dinna care fuir that. Nae one bit. Like I’d ever hurt Chief Gonadie! I joost wanted to help, and for her not to have to get picked up off the floor by somebody else. Teaches me, dunnit? Next time her modesty can go flip an’ she gets a full medical emergency and she kin be embarrassed,” O’Dell grumbled.

“Ye know what? Fook iad go léir,” O’Dell declared, scrambling back into the cockpit. “Warm it oop, Ogma. We’re takin’ her oot for field trials right bloody now. They want ta think we canna do it, I’ll show ‘em who canna fookin do it…” Flipping switches and tapping at the interface panels, O’Dell ran the preflight checks and closed the canopy even as she filed a flight plan with traffic control, as she prepared to fly angry.

-----------------

In the break room, completely unaware of what was happening just outside, Gavarus was grunting as even pulling Chief Gonadie in her rolling chair was something of a strain on the still-recovering Tellarite. But after a minute, she pushed the chair and it's occupant gently up to the lunch table as she walked over to the replicator. Turning to the exhausted R&D chief, Gavarus cleared her throat and tried to pretend she was professional. "Uh... so Chief. What... what would you like to eat? Actually? Do you know what you're allowed to eat since you're... ya' know. Um... Coffee? Can you have coffee?"

Mona leaned forward, doing her best to summon enough strength to at least eat something. "Yeah, I'm supposed to eat about the same with more proteins. A mint mocha latte and breakfast set C with a double omelet and triple bacon, please. And if you could check on Fiona? I'm worried about her."

With a nervous chuckle, Gavarus realized that Mona wasn't completely kidding earlier as she called up the Chief's bacon-heavy order on the replicator. Placing the heaping meal and coffee on the table, the Porcine Engineer stepped back and nodded. "H... Here you go chief. I'll be back in a minute."

As she left the break room, she continued. "I'll check on F... Ensign O'Dell. She's a little upset but I'm sure she's..."

Back in the main test bay and we'll put of earshot of Mona, Gavarus froze. "...Okay?!"

The Silver Banshee was stepping up to the now open spacedoors and shaking itself off as it seemed to be preparing to fly out of the ship. Gavarus, in spite of her lingering stiffness, immediately broke out into a run. Not to the control console, but to the mighty mech itself and her best friend piloting it. "FIONA!!! What the effin' @#$& are you doing!?"

“Doin’ what I’ve done me whole life," the tinny voice of the pixie pilot broadcast from the control panel behind them. "Provin’ that I can, or I’ll find a way. Ye said it was nae me fault, but ye think I’m g’win ta hurt somebody, so I’ll show ye I’m as good as I ever was. Maybe better, who knows.” With that, the impulse engines lit up and the mech hovered off the deck. The hand of the mech came out to gently but firmly nudge Gavarus off to the side, out of the way. “But I kin do it, and I’ll prove it to ye!”

"Prove... Shit yes, you can do it!" Gavarus was fuming as she ran back in front of the hovering banshee and stomped her hoof on the deck. "What happened was NOT your fault, but whatever happens if you take this out there sure as @#$& will be, Fiona!!!"

Shouting out at the cockpit, Gavarus was terrified but too angry to care about it. "I'm your @#$&ING ENGINEER, and I don't even know if that thing is spaceworthy yet! DO YOU?!"

The face of the pilot contorted in frustration as she realized that she didn’t know, but then she realized she had a perfect way to find out. “Ogma, are we spaceworthy?”

The VI, quickly figuring out that Ogma was its new designation, ran through a self-check of all flight systems, displaying them on the cockpit displays. "Affirmative. All of my systems check out and are installed. However, without a spacesuit, I am unable to guarantee that the pilot unit is spaceworthy. I am also unable to relay flight and targeting information to the pilot unit."

Face squinching up in a determined frown, the pint-sized pilot made the call. “I could pilot the first prototype wi’oot me armor. I’m sure t’will be fine- ye can still gimme HUD on the canopy, aye?”

"No, that's a big ass NO!" Gavarus shouted. "Fee! Land and look at me! Please! You're angry and I get it! But at no point did either of us doubt your frickin' ability! Gonadie's in there likely snoring face down in her eggs because that thing was too much for her. But it's not too much for you and NOBODY on this ship doubts that! Especially not @#$%ING ME!"

There was clearly an internal debate raging, as the short stunt pilot who had been forced to prove herself in anything she did, battling against the trust she had in her best friend, and her plea for sanity. As well, her point about how any catastrophe from this point would be her fault. While she didn't want to admit it, Gavarus was right. For all she knew Gonadie might have cross-wired something in her exhaustion, and Fiona was just being dense now. Reluctantly, she lowered the mech to the deck with a feather-light landing, and powered down the impulse engines. The mech's shoulders sagged a bit, then it visibly sighed.

"Thank you. Now..." Gavarus was looking up at the still significantly larger mech as she realized what she needed to do. "Okay, this is a pain in the ass not being able to see you when I yell at you."

As she spoke, she held her arms up at her sides and put on the most serious face she could manage. "Pick me up so I can see you!"

There was a brief expression of panic that crossed the face of the pipsqueak pilot, as she was stricken by the concept. But that gave way to a frown, then an expression of determination, followed by exhaling, and a centering moment of zen.

Without hesitation, the left hand took hold of Gavarus, the pinkie sliding underneath her rump to support her, even as the thumb formed an armrest, the prototype silver Banshee easily picked Gavarus up, and brought her alongside the cockpit, even as the canopy raised and O'Dell turned to look at her porcine partner in crime, who'd just stopped her from doing something colossally stupid for bad reasons.

Staring at her, there was a mix of emotions in the infuriated engineer's eyes. There was fear and anger and intense sadness. So much she practically shuddered in the Banshee's hands. "Don't you ever tell me I have no faith in you, Fiona O'Dell! EVER! I trust you with my LIFE! But you try so hard to prove yourself that sometimes I don't trust you with YOURS!"

With each punctuation of the sharp-tongue Tellarite's tirade, Fiona O'Dell flinched- slightly at first, then with more than her eyes, her hands coming up a bit defensively.

"Yes! I was scared. I was scared of an untested mech that already messed up the chief. That I hadn't so much as scanned. But I didn't doubt YOU for a millisecond. I didn't doubt you helping the chief up, I don't doubt you now and I didn't even doubt you in the 'Chicken in Ten-Forward."

"If it wasn't for you I would have NEVER stepped out of that cyclone to fix it In the middle of an asteroid field. If it wasn't for you I would have been busted to petty officer for my quarters or booted off the ship because of my fat ass. If it wasn't for you I'd be nobody! But I need you to know how amazing you are because everyone else knows it. You've got NOTHING to prove!"

Again, at each shouted word, O'Dell cringed a bit. A reaction of fear that tore at Gavarus every time she saw it, and now seemed like as good a time as any to address it.

"I trust you, Fiona. But I don't always trust the technology. I KNOW how delicate it is inside and out. I helped put it together. I keep it running. And it's hard to NOT think of the ten million things that could fail catastrophically for no reason every time you step into this and trust your life to our work. It's terrifying to me, Fee."

"But do you trust me? You say over and over that you would never hurt me. You get mad because I'm... I'm justifiably scared of this thing. But..." She paused, unsure of if she should keep going. "But right now... Right now you look like you're afraid that I'm going to hit you, Fee. You're flinching right now. If it makes you feel bad that I'm a little scared of the Thunderchicken, how the hell do you think it makes me feel when I see you look at me with fear in your eyes. I'd rather let you stomp on me with this thing that ever hurt you, Fee."

Those bright green eyes widened in shock, as she looked at where her hands were, what her posture was doing. In a flight couch in an experimental mech that greatly amplified her strength and reflexes, she had dropped the controls to cringe back, and in that moment Fiona O'Dell finally saw it. Internally, her mind raced, which meant that her mouth engaged.

"I mean, you are a lot bigger than me, and, aye, that other night in 10-Forward when ye did fall off yuir barstool, it does hurt havin' ye land on me. But... that's nae excuse. Ye'd never hurt me, Briar, and I believe that. Well... I didn't at first, because the first time ye got mad at me a bit, it scared me, aye. But I did figure out ye meant me no harm. We're pals, ye and me, and... I know ye'd ne'er raise a hand aginst me in anger. I do believe that."

"S'jooooost, uh, I have issues wi' people I care about lashin' oot when they be drunk or angry. Which isnae fair to you, because you're a right merry drunk, and a game partner in crime," O'Dell hastily added. "So... okay, aye. All fair dinkum to me, and I'll... I'll give ye the courtesy I expect from ye. Thanks fuir, well... makin' me see it. Ye're a mate."

It was clear to Gavarus as she listened that someone... maybe multiple someones... that Fiona had cared about had hurt her. Probably physically. And the idea infuriated her that anyone would want to hurt someone like Fiona, but she swallowed that moment of anger and nodded. That was a discussion for another time. "It's... It's okay, Fee. Really. We're mates. I'm not going anywhere and I'm never hurting you. I promise you that. Okay? We're in this together. We drink together. We get hurt together. And we'll figure this all out and we'll be okay together, right?"

Sniffling slightly, Gavarus continued. "Though we should probably check on the chief before we start official system tests, I'm thinking? Wanna let me down and we can go check? Grab a snack?"

Another enthusiastic shake of the mop of bright red curls that festooned the head of the emotional ensign, which was notably absent from the mech's movement, and the Banshee strode over to the doorway to the lounge, where it gently and carefully set the injured engineer down, none the worse for wear this time. Then O'Dell walked the fighter back to the pad, and parked it there in walker mode.

"Thanks, Ogma. I appreciate that ye told me the risks but were willin ta let me make me own choices. I'm lookin forward to workin with ye, aye? I'm Fiona O'Dell... I'll be yuir test pilot." It might have seemed silly to introduce herself to the craft. But the Thunderchicken had only a ship's computer, not a full fledged intelligence. This time O'Dell would have a copilot, so she figured best to get off on the right foot with him.

"Affirmative. Primary pilot unit O'Dell, Ensign. F. Identity confirmed. Permissions set." The internal intelligence now dubbed Ogma replied dispassionately. "Welcome. Your actions indicate a reckless and emotional nature to your piloting. Should this be our usual relationship- that of 'daredevil' and 'voice of reason', Ensign O'Dell?"

"Soomtimes, Ogma. But sometimes we'll take it slow and easy because testin' ain't all aboot the daredevil moments- tis aboot gathering and applying the data, aye? S'why I named ye as I did- after the inventor of Ogham, the runic language in which Irish Gaelic was first written. That's how me people evolved from a spoken word culture- through recorded language, thus compounded knowledge. Ye'll be that for all the Banshees yet to come, aye? I'll do the flying, and you'll make it all data. S'a wonderful thing. But fuir noow- g'night, Ogma."

"Good night, Ensign O'Dell."

Smiling, Gavarus was glad to see O'Dell in a better headspace. She knew that after the last few weeks, their relationship had somehow morphed into something more than best friends, but neither woman would openly acknowledge it. So the Tellarite did what they both usually did and changed the subject away from their feelings. "C'mon. Let's see how the chief is holding up. You know how draining this is, so maybe you can help her deal with it."

Powering down the system, O'Dell made sure to engage the new safety locks, and she also noticed that the shutdown procedure covered powering down the neural net as well as locking the parking brake, so the newer model wouldn't nip out to the pub after hours. Scrambling out of the cockpit, the lithe lightweight leprechaun closed the cockpit canopy behind her and scooted over to stand in front of her porcine partner in crime.

"Thank fuir talkin me down, Briaar. I know I shouldn't be so quick to think folks think less of me, and ye and the Chief keep tryin ta tell me, but... tis a hard habit to break, ye ken?" The little ginger looked up with a somewhat sheepish expression on her face. "I'm grateful to ye for stickin wi'me, even when I act like a tit."

"Now let's see if the Chief is sleepin' it off in her breakfast, aye?"