Stormes on the Horizon...

Posted on Wed May 24th, 2017 @ 4:08pm by Commander Mal Xustos & Lieutenant Misty Stormes

Mission: Death is in the Details
Location: Mal's Office
Timeline: Current

Mal sat at his desk reviewing various details for the upcoming mission. He was frustrated that he would need to remain on the ship, but he knew it was for the best. His part of the mission would essentially involve preventing the Hera from being detected by the locals while laying in wait near enough to the Orion facility that he could come to the aid of the Away Teams if need be. To be honest, he was just killing time. He'd been over and over everything time and time again. At this point, there was nothing to do but wait. An alarm on his scheduler broke his train of thought. He looked at his day planner and found a welcome distraction from his worries over the Hera's impending trip through time. The Hera had just taken on a new Chief Science Officer, a lieutenant named Misty Stormes, and he was scheduled to meet with her. Mal cleared up the clutter on his desk and zipped up his jacket. He made sure that his utilikilt wasn't riding high, because, well...that would be awkward. Satisfied, he sat back and waited for Lieutenant Stormes to arrive.

HALLWAY

Misty strode through the ship, her ultimate destination being the XO's office. When she had first received orders for her new assignment, the first thing she had done was learn the layout of the ship; after all, it wouldn't do to get lost.

In addition to learning the physical layout of the ship, she also learned the social layout, most particularly that of the command group. Word on the XO's physical attractiveness and sexual skill bordered on legendary; more than one colleague had half-jokingly said she should prepare to start birthing children like a starship firing photon torpedoes.

She reached the XO's office and activated the door chime, curious as to how the next few minutes would play themselves out.

XO'S OFFICE

Mal touched a control on his desk and was rewarded with the image of Lieutenant Misty Stormes standing outside of his office. He made one last check to make sure that nothing classified above the lieutenant's level had been left out. Satisfied that nothing had been, he invited the attractive young lieutenant in.

"Enter!" he said, rising from his chair.

Misty casually entered the office and saluted.

"Sir, Lieutenant Stormes reporting for duty," she said.

Mal returned the salute casually.

"Commander Mal Xustos," he said. "A true pleasure to meet you, Lieutenant Stormes. Please have a seat. May I get you something to drink? To eat? I have actual tea and coffee if you'd like either. I find that the real stuff is much better than the replicated stuff when I can can get it."

She dropped her salute and took the offered chair.

"Yes please," she said. "Tell me about the Hera."

"First things first," Mal said. "Coffee or Tea? If coffee, then dark, medium, or light roast? If tea then black or green...or, believe it or not, we grow a tea leaf on my planet that produces a purple tea. It contains caffeine, but it's very gentle. Strong, but gentle...which rather describes my people, both the satyrs and the nymphs. Anyway, would you like to try it?"

Misty considered the offer of beverage while also wondering if he was already trying to initiate a sexual relationship with her. She doubted it--it would have been difficult for him to reach his rank if he fraternized with his subordinates.

But she did find herself wondering nonetheless.

"I've never had purple tea before, so I'd like to try that," she said.

"Excellent," Mal replied. "I'll be right back."

Mal went to a side table where he kept his tea and coffee and implements and vessels. He took a pouch of tea and placed it in a ceramic tea pot. He placed the pot under the water dispenser and tapped a few controls. Boiling hot water poured down into the pot. Once filled, Mal pulled the pot away from the dispenser and placed it on a tray. He gently held the tea pouch by the string attached to it and dunked the pouch in and out of the pot several times to get the process of brewing started, then let the pouch sit in the water. He placed the lid on the pot, then placed honey and other sweeteners on the tray along with two cups and spoons. Finished, he looked over his handy work a moment, then brought it to his desk, where he placed it down gently before taking his seat.

"We'll just let that sit a moment or two," he said. "So, you were asking about the Hera I believe? Well, we are not your average ship, though I suppose everyone says that about their ship. In fact, I've been a Starfleet officer for around twenty years and I have never reported in and had a captain or executive officer tell me 'Oh, you know, we're just your average, ordinary ship'. So I suppose we are ordinary in our uniqueness! In all seriousness, we are assigned to the beck and call of Starfleet Intelligence. We are assigned very secretive and very dangerous missions and we usually operate without outside support. That, I believe, is one of the reasons a ship this size has been given this duty. We are capable of carrying enough personnel, equipment, and support vessels, and are equipped with the necessary technology, to act independently for long periods of time. Even the pod we are currently equipped with is designed to be used for intelligence gathering purposes. You, as I understand it, are no stranger to special assignments. You were previously assigned to the Borg Task Force prior to coming to us?"

“Yes sir,” she said.

Focus…

“I believe they’re the single greatest threat facing us,” she said. “With other races, there’s the possibility of negotiation, but the Borg absolutely aren’t. They’re completely devoted to the idea of assimilating everyone, and the only way they can be stopped is by killing them.

"Anyway, you mentioned we mostly carry out missions as directed by Starfleet Intelligence," she said, deftly changing the subject. "Are we currently engaged in one now?"

Mal noticed the seemingly deft change of subject. The Borg were a sore point then. Only natural. Lieutenant Stormes was, after all, El-Aurian. If anyone had a right to hate the Borg, it was the El-Aurians...and the countless other races, planets, and civilizations the Borg had destroyed in the process of assimilation. Mal decided to let it go for now.

"Yes," Mal said. "We are. You'll have to forgive me because I was assigned as first officer only a short time ago, so even I am not entirely clear on the details and asking too many questions is not always wise. One might not like the answers. Essentially, the Hera and her crew have been involved in an on-going mission to seek out and shut down a series of secret laboratories where genetic manipulation has taken place. Our most recent raid nearly resulted in the loss of the entire team. As it was we lost several masters-at-arms and one of our intelligence NCOs suffered a severe injury, one he has now recovered from thanks to the miracles of 24th Century medicine. After infiltrating the seemingly abandoned facility, one that was protected by orbital defense platforms of Cardassian design, the team encountered several very dangerous genetically altered beings, including two quite massive creatures that were at one point Cardassian males. They were resistant to phaser fire and Chief West's projectile weapon did much less damage than might be expected. There were also a pair of rodents larger than me. To make matters odder, the base's AI seemed to know one of our intelligence staff, a contractor by the name of Nexi. This is apparently not the first time Nexi and the crew have encountered this issue while on this mission but they have been able to discover no new information. We extracted our personnel and destroyed the base before anything there could get out and hurt anyone else. Our current mission is even more dangerous, but for different reasons. Temporal Investigations and Starfleet Intelligence have located one of these bases near the BEPI system...in the year 2160. We've been asked to sling-shot back to 2160 and investigate. Why do we have to go back, you ask? Because it was destroyed that same year. There's a paradoxical problem, though. You see, it may have been us that destroyed it. If that makes your head hurt, you're not the only one. So we are going back and several teams in appropriate disguises are going to infiltrate an orion run facility in the BEPI system and, hopefully, find the base hidden beneath it. I am unable to go, as my species had not had contact with the Orions or any of the major Federation races at that point. In fact, the Federation didn't actually exist in 2160. The Earth-Romulan War had just ended. In 2161 the founding members of the Federation would sign the Federation into existence, but in 2160...no Federation, no unifying body, no real interplanetary law and order."

"Time travel..." she said thoughtfully and took a sip of the tea.

"Quite good," she said. "But getting back to the mission. Temporal mechanics has never been a strong suit of mine, but from what I recall of the policy on travelling to the past means we need to avoid any temporal contamination at all costs.

"This may be a bit premature sir, but am I being assigned to one of the away teams?" she asked.

"Would you like to be?" Mal asked. "Because of the nature of the assignment, someone with a scientific background would be very useful. It would be rather pointless for the team to infiltrate the base and then have no idea what they are looking at. I would very much like to assign you to one of the teams."

"I suppose this is what the humans call 'being thrown into the deep end', sir," she said. "Count me in."

She took another sip of the tea.

"This really is quite good, sir," she said. "Is this available elsewhere around the galaxy, or are you the sole source?"

"I'm glad you like it," Mal said. "As for whether you can find it elsewhere...purple tea, probably, but this particular purple tea...I'm not sure. I don't know if anyone has ever tried to grow it somewhere else. We haven't traded in the seeds, but I suppose someone could try and clone the dried leaves. I'm not much of a scientific mind, but I don't think that would work very well."

Mal sipped his tea, then went on.

"You might find it interesting to know that we have another El-Aurian aboard," he said. "Chief Warrant Officer Daytona Ral. He's half-Rigelian and as far as I know he's never been to your home planet. His mother was El-Aurian. She fell in love with and married Daytona's father and lived on Rigel V until her spouses died off, then moved on. He's a bit over four hundred years old."

"Interesting," she said, taking another sip of tea. "Tell me about the captain. What's he like?"

"She's an interesting woman," Mal replied. "Dedicated, fiercely loyal, and a bit unorthodox. She spent some of her career as a pilot flying support for intelligence operations. Her familiarity with Starfleet Intelligence is, I assume, one of the reasons she was assigned to command the Hera in the first place. Personable as well. She has a decidedly quirky sense of humor and an unusual spouse. She's married to a sentient hologram. Oddities aside, if I was in trouble, I'd feel better knowing that Captain Enalia Telvan was on my side."

Misty's cool demeanor cracked, her eyebrows flying up in surprise and her eyes widening.

"Married...to a sentient hologram?" she said, her mind racing. "And here I thought my first starship assignment was going to be boring. Anything else about this ship and her crew that I should be aware of?"

"Well," Mal said with a grin. "Some of the crew take a little...getting used to, especially while they're getting used to you. Some of them are perfectly normal, as far as normal goes, while others, well...let's just say it takes a certain type of off the wall person to do the type of off the wall work that we do. If you need to talk about anything or run into any problems, my door is always open...just be sure to knock first."

Mal smiled at this last remark to show he was trying to be clever.

"Oh," Mal said. "Nexi, the contractor from Intelligence. Her half-sister is aboard. Aewia has suffered severe brain damage as a result of torture. She is rather simple, though I believe more clever than people give her credit for."

Mal turned a photograph on his desk around so that it faced Misty. It showed Mal and Aewia at an ice cream shop making funny faces at the camera. Nexi sat with them, a grumpy look on her face, clearly wondering why she had let her sister talk her into bringing some idiotic goat person with them to get ice cream.

"Aewia's the one with ice cream on her nose," Mal said. "The one with the horns is me, of course, and the grumpalumpus sitting with us is Aewia's sister Nexi. Nexi is very protective of Aewia, so just keep that in mind if you encounter one or the both of them. Nexi is a very dangerous woman to have as an enemy."

"Good to know, the last way I want to wake up is with a slit throat," she said. "I'm all out of questions for now, do you have anything else for me?"

"Nothing but this," Mal said. "Welcome aboard, Lieutenant Misty Stormes. I look forward to working with you."

"Likewise, sir," she said, and smiled.