Grandma Murder-Punch to the Rescue

Posted on Tue Aug 13th, 2019 @ 1:35pm by Lieutenant Mona Gonadie & Ensign Fiona O'Dell & Ensign Briaar Gavarus & Jaeih Dox-t'Aan
Edited on on Sat Aug 17th, 2019 @ 4:33pm

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

The hour was late, and on the flight deck of the R&D department, the unlikely duo of Ensign Fiona O’Dell and Ensign Briaar Gavarus had exchanged some long-overdue words and worked through the lingering stress of the recent incident involving an inexplicable malfunction which caused the massive mech called the Thunderchicken to run mildly amok, running off of the tiny test pilot’s brainwaves and almost crushing her best friend to death in a well-intended hug. But there on the deck, in the updated production model of the mech, dubbed the Banshee, the two worked things out and now needed to attend to a different problem.

The Banshee’s exhausted and very likely unconscious inventor, and their supervisor, Ensign Mona Gonadie. All but knocked out by that same neural interface that tended to mentally and physically drain its users past the point of good sense.

Nodding with a smile, Gavarus gave no further attention to the emotional situation and moved on to the business at hand. The pair would only ever deal with their emotions up to a very specific, invisible line, and then always changed the subject and it would be no different today. Entering the break room where Ensign Gonadie was, as Gavarus predicted, passed out in her half-eaten breakfast. Her cheek resting in a mound of eggs and a gentle, trilling snore rippling out.

Chuckling, the pair stepped over. Gavarus whispered at O'Dell, "Uh... you're better at the 'gentle' shit. But we should probably wake her up and get her to her quarters, right? I mean, nobody else needs to see this."

Listening, O'Dell was oddly fascinated, and she whispered to Gavarus. "Listen... when she snores, s'like a cat purring, but different."

Putting the table between her and the exhausted inventor, O'Dell called out. "Chief Gonadie? Kin ye hear me? We need ye to wake oop, so's we kin walk ye to yuir quarters, aye? Wakey wakey maybe?" At that, O'Dell paused, then turned to look at Gavarus. "We could beam her back to her quarters wi' the pad on the flight deck, aye? I mean, if she won't wake up and we dinna want her to end up in sickbay? Or should we take her to sickbay, because that's what she'd do if t'was me snorin' in me eggs... what do ye think?"

Pulling out the medical tricorder again, Gavarus gave the exhausted bird a quick scan. "It just looks like it drained the shit out of her. It's was always this hard waking you up after you'd been in the old 'Chicken a while too back when you first started using the neural link. Plus, I don't know if it's safe to beam her. I mean, I know literal CRAP about Half Romulan bird babies." Gavarus replied, stroking her snout ponderingly.

Then, without much warning, she moved to slap a hand down on the table and when she had it upraised, O'Dell intervened by grabbing at the arm with both hands. "Whist! She's preggers, are ye daft? No sharp noised nor joomp scares. They call it a 'delicate condition' fuir a reason, aye? Look, I dinna even remember walkin back to me quarters last time, and I coundnae be roused. Herself here is likely the same."

"So how do we get her back to her quarters wi' her dignity intact. Ach, and the Lieutenant's on an away mission too, so she canna come get her... also means we'll have to tuck her in. Ah... this all sounds a bit madcap but also an invasion of privacy," the warning bell in her head of the flight chief explaining the invasion of privacy for being in the shared quarters of Lieutenant Dox and her wife hauling their unconscious chief made O'Dell blanch again. "Think we should make sure she doesnae drown in her omelet and see if Carrot's aboot? Medical is better equipped for this than ye and me I'm thinking Gavarus, me old sot."

As delicately as possible, Gavarus lifted the feathered head of the R&D chief out of her eggs and leaned her back in her chair. Mona's delicate, trilling snore continued unabated as it was clear she was out hard. "Carrot's off duty dealing with his own preggers wife and Doc Powers is... hell... he's less subtle than I am."

Stepping back to stand next to O'Dell, the nervous engineer tilted her head while they both looked at their unconscious chief. "We can't just have you carry her in the Banshee, tiptoeing down the corridors. And I don't want to go into casa de Murder-Punch uninvited any more than you do."

"Okay, maybe we could move the lunch table here, have a bed replicated in and lock down the break room and let her sleep it off here? Carrot's not around, so it's not likely that anyone else is going to want to use this room." Gavarus suggested, grasping at straws.

"Nah, that'll still be a medical issue, and you know how private the chief is," Gavaris snorted in sharply then sighed, crossing her arms over her prodigious belly as she nixed her own plan. "She likes for her work to speak for her and all that. Her vitals are stable, she's just beat. I think we could get her on a grav sled, then over onto the platform and beam her to over her own bed, then remote the platform to tip, we beam the platform out, no intrusion!"

"Kin we do that wi'oot authorization? I know we're officers and all, but don't site to site beaming during day to day operations take some kinda clearance, aye? Plus m'worried aboot droppin her on her less padded part. Maybe put her on the grav sled on her tummy? Then when we drop her into her lovenest she'll land on her bum, because that bird's got a lot of plumage, if ye know what I-"

Suddenly, Gavarus and O'Dell froze where they stood as an icy "AHEM..." sounded out from the doorway behind them. Turning with a start, there stood the Hera's resident independent Romulan Intelligence Operative, Jaeih Dox. The mother of the dreaded Lieutenant "Murder-Punch" and Chief Gonadie's newly minted Mother in Law.

Not that either of them knew any of that. This was the first time they'd laid eyes on the severe-looking Romulan woman in the grey uniform with no rank.

"What in the hell are you two doing? What happened to my Daughter?" The stern-faced woman demanded, staring at them with daggers in her eyes.

As one, O'Dell and Gavarus' eyes half-lidded, then they turned to look at one another dubiously. Turning back to the civilian, they both took a step forward.

"Mum, ye canna be here, this is a restricted area. Who's yuir section chief?" the little redhead explained in a squeaky yet confident tone.

Raising a single eyebrow and meeting O'Dell's gaze with her arms folded behind her back, Jaieh replied flatly but firmly. "My name... is Jaeih Dox. I am an independent consultant for the Hera's Intelligence department. While I work under the aegis of Intel Chief Clemens, I answer directly to Commander Paris in all tasks. Except when I am consulting with Ensign Gonadie on her various projects involving cloaking technology."

Moving her gaze up to the taller Tellarite, Jaeih continued, "So, when I am in THIS room, which I am authorized for clearance to be in or the door would not have admitted me, my direct supervisor is the woman whom you seem to be scheming around. She is the wife of my daughter and that makes her, too, my daughter."

"So, that being said, WHY does she have egg in her feathers? Why is she unconscious? And why are you two trying to figure out how to move her from this location without being seen?" Jaeih asked point-blank as her eyes narrowed to slits.

Both junior officers, now in full understanding of just who this was, both gulped simultaneously as they both thought, Grandma Murder-Punch?!?

"Ah, well, y'see, the chief..." O'Dell volunteered, speaking very quickly and animatedly to illustrate the story as she relayed it. "W, she and me, been on bedrest fuir a few days because we had an accident wi' the neural interface. So since the Lieutenant is way, seems the chief just tried to work herself to death and built an entirely new prototype from the ground oop. I dinna think she's been sleepin, cuz she smells a bit molty, and she fell asleep in the blasted thing, the very thing she was tryin' ta protect against, and it, ah, it drains yuir brain a bit, somethin' ta do with mappin the subconscious- there's a few reports."

"But we pooled her oota the prototype and scanned her and figured out she's in the family way, and I know from experience she's nae g'win ta wake oop, so we wanted to figure out how to get her back to her quarters so she dinna have to be, y'know, exposed. People're use ta seein Gavarus drag me home unconscious, but the chief's got her dignity, y'ken? Plus if we got medical involved it would ruin the surprise that she's... ahhhhhh, bollocks." O'Dell realized that in her retelling, she had done precisely that to the elder Romulan woman. Who, given her expression, still looked pretty Vulcan to the midget Mariposian.

While internally, Jaeih was ecstatic to hear what the diminutive test pilot had accidentally revealed about Mona's newly discovered pregnancy, her ice-cold expression and body language had not wavered in the slightest. A lifetime in the Romulan Tal'Shiar helped craft a masterful poker face and she simply stared at O'Dell.

After a moment of impossibly awkward silence, Jaeih simply began speaking as she stepped directly between the two Ensigns over to Mona as she delicately picked bits of egg out of her brilliant plumage. "I have clearance to enter their quarters, so getting her in her own bed will be simple enough. Moving her, however, without attracting undue attention will take more doing. Were Commander Paris back, I have no doubt she would approve a clandestine site-to-site beam, however, she is not and I do not have said clearance. I have the most direct path to her quarters in mind and the crew is largely engaged in other business. The corridors are largely bare at this late hour."

With Mona's plumage now free of debris, Jaeih continued. "You, Tellarite. You and I will carry Ensign Gonadie while..."

But as she spoke, Gavarus cleared her throat to interrupt. "Uh... I... Um... medical orders, I just recovered from surgery and can't carry anything for at least..."

This time it was Jaeih's turn to interrupt as she simply cut off the Porcine Ensign to continue. "Very well. Then this chair has wheels. I can push her as needed if you two would be so kind as to provide us... cover. Walk ahead and come up with some reason for anyone you see to walk the other way. Do you think you can come up with something to help expedite this?"

"Beggin yuir pardon mum," O'Dell stepped up, clasping her hands behind her back to look up at the stern Romulan taskmistress in the eye. "But while ye may have authorization, ye dinna have rank. Yuir a civilian, so ye canna order us aboot. Ye may answer to the Commander, but ye dinna speak for her. So as the rankin' officer I think wheelin' the chief to her quarters in an office chair is definitely not keepin' her dignity intact, nor tis it vurrah safe. We're willin' ta work with ye on a solution, but I dinna think that's the one, unless ye's got a cloak we kin put in her lap and joost clear a path before it so's nobody sees through it, and we could get her back to quarters thataway?"

"I stand corrected, Ensign." Jaeih nodded, a slight smirk cracking her facade as the diminutive officer exercised her authority. "I do not have such a device, no. And I am open to suggestions, although we may need to consider that simply contacting medical and asking for... discreet assistance may be the most prudent option. How would you recommend proceeding?"

"Waaaahhhhhl, since ye asked..."