Couch Crashing

Posted on Wed Jul 12th, 2017 @ 4:55am by Captain Enalia Telvan & Maica III 47 & Staff Warrant Officer Nexi
Edited on on Wed Jul 12th, 2017 @ 4:56am

Mission: When Iconians Deserve to Die
Location: Captain's Quarters
Timeline: A couple days before shore leave

It was quiet, for once, as the Hera sped through space, the stars streaming by at warp. Enalia moved through the darkness to get to her desk to get a head start on some paperwork so she wouldn’t have it hanging over her head while on shore leave. As she sat at her desk, her eyes fell on the framed photos of her great grandmother, Enalia Artan, and her stunning solar sail sloop. It was amazing to see this little slice of her family’s history, but was was even more amazing had been that Nexi took these photos. It wasn’t that Enalia thought Nexi incapable of the care and skill required to frame a composition like these photos, but it was unexpected, and it served to remind her that for as much as she knew about Nexi, there was always more to learn.

Maica moved through, leaving a cup of coffee and some scones on Enalia’s desk, then leaving a cup of coffee on the table beside the couch where Nexi slept. Technically, Nexi’s quarters were registered as the same as Aewia’s, and anyone who knew her knew that she spent more time on the Wandering Star than her registered quarters, but since the Star had been damaged, Nexi had been bunking on random couches, and it seemed that she had chosen Enalia’s couch to camp in last night. Catching Nexi while she slept was a rare treat, and in this moment she couldn’t see the weight of all the pain she carried around with her.

“Crewman Sanders finished repairs on the Star before she got back, but I’m sure she can tell the difference,” Maica whispered as she returned to Enalia’s side. “That ship is the whole world to her, isn’t it?”

“Almost the whole world, I think,” Enalia replied, as she sipped at her coffee. “Aewia is the rest of it. If not for her, I doubt she’d have held together as well as she had.”

“I can hear you, you know,” Nexi murmured from the couch, her eyes still peacefully closed. “And she smells different, too new…”

“If you want, I can order Crewman Sanders to eat a few buckets of fried chicken in there…” Enalia joked before nibbling on a scone.

“If he even thinks of bring food into my Star, I will space him,” Nexi stated firmly, then finally opened her eyes and looked over to Enalia. “Morning.”

“Morning,” Enalia said with a smile. “As for the new smell, I’m sure that’ll go away soon enough. You just need to break in the new parts, is all.”

Maica nodded reassuringly, “And what better way to do that than to go over all the repairs yourself?”

“I know what you’re trying to do,” Nexi said with her trademark scowl. She sat up and found the cup of coffee Maica had left for her, giving it a sip. “I’ll do it in my own time, leave me alone.”

“What I’m trying to do is look out for the mental health and well being of one of the members of my crew. That happens to be one of the responsibilities of being the Captain of a starship and though it sometimes doesn’t seem like it, I assure you, I do take it quite seriously.” Enalia scowled into her own coffee. “I will leave it alone for now though.”

“I know, I know.” Nexi sipped at her coffee knowing that that alone would help improve her demeanor. “So, how’d you like the pictures?” Nexi asked, hoping to make a peace offering. “Aewia and I got enough scans of that sloop we could recreate it.”

That did brighten Enalia’s demeanor considerably. “Amazing pictures. Thank you. I’ll have to compare the scans to the sloop itself when we get to my orbital fortress. It’s permanently moored in the family museum now. There was some restoration work after my great grandmother and her ship were recovered, but with those scans… They would go a long way towards full restoration.”

“Recovered?” Nexi asked. She had never really looked into Enalia’s history, mostly out of respect for their friendship, but curiosity was nibbling at her now. “What happened?”

“In 2168 while hunting a group of Syndicate pirates, she was ambushed. Her ship and three other privateer ships were gutted and left to drift in the wreckage of Selen VI.” Enalia stared into her coffee a moment longer before continuing. “Backup arrived a few minutes too late and while they were able to prevent them from raiding the ships, they were too late to save anyone. There were no survivors. The sloop was towed back to the orbital fortress she had just purchased and it’s been there ever since.”

“I’m- I’m sorry to hear that,” Nexi said. Her jacket was draped across the back of the couch, so she turned and found the Artan token and looked at it. “If I had know, I would have found a way to warn her,” she said, as if that was any kind of consolation. “But she got her fortress…” she added with a wry smile.

“And you’ll be able to see it in a few more days. I hate limping along at warp four, but in this case, it’s not just for us. They need time to prepare to receive us as well.” Enalia nibbled on another scone for a few before Maica glanced around.

“I’m sorry, may I offer you something to eat?” Maica offered. “Some biscuits and gravy, perhaps?”

“You are scary good at how you can read my mind,” Nexi said to Maica with a grin and a nod to accept the offer. Then she reclined back for a moment to enjoy her coffee and to twirl the token. “She was right neat lady, your great grandmother,” Nexi said to Enalia. “She reminded me of you. You… If ever there was a person meant to be a pirate, that’s you… The way you Captain this ship, just proves to me that the two of you were made from the same mold.”

As Maica busied herself in the kitchenette, Enalia grinned knowingly. “Perhaps. I was supposed to take over the family business when my parents retired. In a way I have, but in a much more limited capacity, I think. There’s also the matter of being Joined, that kind of gets in the way. No, I think my mother is the last true leader of the Artan Pirates.”

“Yeah, they don’t give those slugs to just anyone, and Starfleet looks so much better on the resume,” Nexi said. She downed the last of her coffee and motioned to Maica that she’d like another. “Speaking of which, I gotta ask; what’s it like to be joined? I know you’re the first host, but the slug has got to have some… maybe not memories, but at least some feelings, personality of its own. So what was it like? Did it change you any?”

“They say that being the first host is the most important and the most difficult. It can make or break both the symbiont and the host. The host has to be of particularly strong will and personality.” Enalia paused a moment and reflected on the experience a bit as Maica returned from the kitchenette with a plate of homemade biscuits smothered in sausage gravy and a fresh cup of coffee for Nexi.

“Realistically… Yes. Every joining, no matter what will change the host. I’m told that second hosts don’t get many memories of the symbiont, if any, but as a first host… You get them all. It took me months to relearn how to sit in a normal chair comfortably again. Even being as strong willed as I was, it still felt like I should have been swimming in a pool of hot water whenever I was on the bridge. My personality did change a bit, but at least I could sort it out, unlike other hosts that had to figure out lifetimes of other Trill experiences. I could say yes, that’s something the symbiont experienced and not me. I’m less cocky and I enjoy taking things slowly a lot more than I did before. My spacial awareness was amazing before but it went through the roof after.”

Nexi sat forward as Maica brought food over, and she couldn’t help herself when she reached out to give that fine backside a pinch, snickering as Maica swatted playfully at her hand. She dug into her breakfast with gusto, nodded as Enalia related her experience. “That’s crazy, I never woulda thought any of that about first joining, but I can see now why the choice is so crucial,” she said around a mouthful of mouth-watering biscuits and gravy, damn that woman was a fine cook! “Did you, I dunno, feel cheated that you didn’t get an experiences slug, or was it a greater honor? Like knowing you would be the first of many?”

“Think of it this way,” Enalia began. “Would you rather be the first person to explore a system or one of the twenty follow up teams that research and colonize it?”

Again, Nexi could only nod in response; she was the kind of person who would want to explore, to do all the firsts that exploration allowed, but she also knew that not everyone was like that, some people liked the safety and comfort of a follow-up research team. So just another reason that the right choice had to be made when introducing a new symbiont.

Enalia added a bit more for clarification. “That being said, It’s best not to let others know you’re a first host due to the stigma attached to it. A lot of people will get violently jealous or just outright angry. Most first hosts actually live in somewhat secular compounds or join Starfleet right away for the seclusion these days.”

“Huh…” Nexi replied, perplexed. “Why the hell would this be a cause for jealousy? Your people already know that joining is a rare gift, why would being the first make them angry?”

“Because the selection process is hard enough as it is and these days most first hosts are either rich fucks like me or politicians.” Enalia put it bluntly, then finished her coffee, just as Maica set another cup next to her.

“Seriously?” Nexi said with disbelief. “I thought the Symbiosis Commission was above all that. At least, that’s what I heard.” Nexi washed down her breakfast with some more coffee, then sighed in contentment; maybe she should think about getting one of these holograms to baby her. She knew Maica was more than just some cook and housekeeper, Enalia loved her, a feeling she could see was equally reciprocated in Maica’s eyes, but damn she was a good cook!

“It is,” Enalia replied, chuckling softly. “ No money changed hands or anything. They just wanted a nice safe environment. One with plush velvety carpets and grand halls. Somewhere secluded and out of the way where a young symbiont and host can just live peacefully together and figure things out while living a normal, albeit luxurious, life while surrounded by security provided by the family of the host. Nothing more, nothing less.”

“Well… I suppose that makes sense, sort of… The slugs actually ask for this? How do they communicate, though?” Nexi asked.

“Before the first host, they can now and then telepathically communicate with the people that care for the pools. Normally it’s just to ask for more food though.” Enalia chuckled as she bit into another scone. “The Symbiosis Commission has also determined that no symbiont has any idea of what it really wants before it’s joined anyway. Other than that it wants a host, that is. And that’s just from it learning from old retired symbionts.”

Okay, that did make sense. Nexi nodded, then finished off her breakfast and took her mug and plate back to the replicator for recycling. “You ever regret joining?” she asked as she moved back to the couch.

“Not in the slightest,” Enalia replied with a grin. “Also, please don’t feed my antiques to the replicator.”

“Oops… I owe you?” Nexi chuckled, then ran her fingers through her loose curls before tying them back and grabbing her jacket. “Thanks for letting me borrow your couch,” she said as she finished getting herself situated; not that she had asked, she rarely did.

Enalia nodded and chuckled a bit more as she took Maica’s hand. “They were replicas anyway. Like I’d keep original 17th century Earth dishes here on the ship. As for the couch, It’s free to use as long as you’d like as long as we have a bit of privacy now and then.”

“You got it,” Nexi said with a grin. After all, it wasn’t like she didn’t have other couches, or even Cato’s bed, to crash on. Giving a mock salute, Nexi rose and made her way out to see what kind of trouble she could get into...