Bruncheon

Posted on Wed Sep 5th, 2018 @ 4:45pm by Commander Rita Paris & Lieutenant Commander Thex sh'Zoarhi & Lieutenant Samuel Clemens XV

Mission: Holographic Horrors
Location: Artan Family Orbital Fortress, resort lodge
Timeline: 2395

Thex awakened from a deep sleep to find Rita's lanky leg over her own, and the buxom beauty's arm draped across her abdomen. The last thing she recalled doing was just... wanting to freshen up, maybe go back out after skating.

She'd sat down and... that was it, apparently. Last night's clothes were plastered all over her, since she'd apparently slept with a human blast furnace at point blank range behind her.

The azure engineer checked the chronometer on the nightstand, and was shocked to discover that some twelve hours or so had passed since she came in last night. It was now nearly 08:00 hours, local time, and she desperately needed to go shower and cool off.

Extracting herself from the bronze cage she was in wasn't an easy task. Every time she managed to move Rita's arm or leg far enough to escape, the golden blonde grunted, and rolled, and twisted in some bizzare Escheresque way and she was back on the ceiling, staring across the way to the floor below, figuratively.

She finally settled for arching her back and folding her limbs back until her dorsal profile was smaller than her bestie's arm would move, due to the pilot's significant assets capturing her own limb.

Thankful for her racial abilities, she literally rolled out of the small gap this provided, and reconstituted her normal posture outside the fleshy fence of her best friend's unconscious form. Sitting up, she noticed a message indicator on the chono, flashing with a somewhat urgent pattern.

Tapping the screen, she read the breakfast invitation from one Lieutenant Samuel Clemens, addressed to Rita and her 'lovely best friend, for this 'morning', at their convenience. As she noted the pool of drool under Rita's open mouth, which had begun making a sound similar to a phaser drill unit, she briefly considered waking her to get ready- but paused, realizing that Rita probably hadn't slept this well in, well, forever.

Pulling the sheet up over her dear friend, she proceeded to get herself ready to go see who this Clemens fellow was, exactly.

It didn't take the Andorian long to use the sonic shower and change into a pale blue t-shirt and light grey trousers. She checked on Rita to make sure the human was okay before quietly leaving the room, closing the door behind her. She walked through the halls of the lodge until she reached the dining area. Noting the human male with the flame-red hair, she walked over to the table he was sitting at. "Samuel Clemens?" she asked politely.

Sipping a brown liquid with ice cubes floating in it, with a slice of lemon split over the edge of a glass, the human in question immediately set the glass on the table, and stood up, stepping around the table to pull out a chair for the sapphire invitee. "At yah suhviss, madam." He looked around, briefly, adding, "...may ah assume that Miss Rita is still enjoyin' huh well-uhned rest after owah delightful evenin?"

"Yes, she's still asleep. She needs it, given what she's been through recently, so I left her to sleep. So you're the new Assistant Engineer I'll be working with?" the Andorian replied as she offered her hand.

Taking the diminutive indigo hand firmly, Clemens got right to business, as it were. "Sam Clemens, thuh fif'teenth, atchyer suhvice, Ma'am. Pleased tah be part of thuh crew, an' lookin' foahwuhd tah all thuh strangeness out this a'way." He returned to his side of the table, simultaneously making a hand motion to attract a server, so they could order some grub. He waited until she seated herself, before sitting, himself.

"Oh you'll see strange all right, especially on this ship." Thex replied with a warm grin, as she looked at the server. "Can I get a large plate of scrambled eggs, toast, and bacon, with an Andorian ale?" she asked politely, before looking at what her human companion would be ordering.

Clemens stretched, and yawned, as he looked over the menu. "Ah think ah'll have me ah big, fat omelette, swiss cheese, mushrooms, coahn'd beef hash, no unyuns, and smuthuh'd in holl'n'daze sawse. A tall stack'uh flapjacks, drippin' with buttuh an' boy'zen'berrah sawse, please."

The server seemed unfazed by the large order from the small man, nodded, and asked if there would be anything else.

Thex shook her head in a gesture which caused the server to dematerialise. "They're holograms," Thex said, as she noted the look of confusion on the man's face. "So why did you want to transfer to the Hera?" the Andorian asked politely.

"...not everaone workin' foah these places is glora-fried photons. Ah kin attest that they've got a local workfoahse, as well." replied the engineer cum infiltration specialist. He came back to the topic at hand.

"Ah reckon 'Fleet sent me way out heah to help out with th'backfillin' of Hera's crew. Ah had no idea that Miss Ritah's bestie was, in fact, mah new depahtment head, though. Ah'm verrah pleased tuh meetcha, Ma'am," the human hair factory finished.

"Please don't call me ma'am, just call me Thex. Being called ma'am makes me feel old." replied the Andorian as a server arrived with their food. The Andorian smiled, as the smell of bacon and eggs filled her nostrils.

The Jupiter II-size omelette landed in front of Sam, who wasted no time in smothering it with ketchup, and letting his flapjacks soak in all the butter and syrup, as he dug into the giant egg conflagration.

"Mmmmm, mmmmm, MMMMM, that's th'GOOD stuff! Ah am so verra glad that we live in th'Age of Enlightenment a'Technology. How 'bout yerself, boss? What got you 'board th'Hera?"

"I was looking for a Chief of Engineering posting, and the Hera was in need of one. Besides, I'd heard it was an exciting post, and I'm sure my experience with Intelligence helped land me the job. " Thex said, as she took a sip of the blue Andorian ale.

As Sam sipped his tall iced tea, he was careful not to let his face show any reaction to the mention of SFI by his new Chief. Instead, he grinned, and leaned in, just a bit.

"Ah've heard tell that th'Hera's had a whole mess uv crazy goin's-on, with spooks'n'muhnstahs, an' hollagraffick shee'nanigans, just fer stahtuhs. Why, mah greaht-aunt Whoopeh usetah tell us stoah'ries 'bout how some are'yahs of th'galaxy was haunted, n'such. You evah see ennah ghosties out heah, Cuh'man'duh?" he asked, emoting with his copious eyebrows.

"Well, I have encountered one ghost. She haunted the main engineering bay for a while until we realized she was no real ghost." The Andorian replied slyly.

"I was too a ghost. I dove into a panel because I thought you guys were Mirror Universe or a dark Starfleet- I was immaterial for crying out loud. At least this time around people could see me," Rita Paris muttered as she shuffled in, wearing her stretched out sweater from the night before. Apparently she had pullet it down sufficiently to make a somewhat scandalously short minidress out of it, though she was displaying some rather brobdingnagian cleavage in the process. Padding barefoot to a chair, she dropped herself unceremoniously into an unoccupied chair.

"I need coffee, water and bacon, in that order..." the leggy lieutenant muttered as she squinted around for a server, though none too quickly since she didn't want to aggravate the drum and fife core currently holding a concert in her cerebrum.

"You heard the lady." Thex said to the servers as her friend sat down next to her. "Hangover?" the petite engineer asked politely.

"I think I fell off the wagon last night, and apparently the wagon dragged me all the way through town," the buxom blonde muttered, covering her eyes with her arm as she awaited life-affirming fluids. "Sam, that is absolutely the last time I try to keep up with you in a bar..."

"Ah, Miss Ritah. Ah'm afraid mah g'netics got th'better of yuh. Th'Clemens clan has been drinkin' hahd fuh gen'rations, now," the mustachioed manipulator confessed, more sheepishly than expected, as he sat back down, having popped to his feet by sheer reflex from his raising.

"So...ya came in phased?"


"Yuuuuup. Got this thing with transporters," the waitress arrived with the water and the coffee, and Rita paused to drop the arm from her eyes and snatch up the coffee. Bringing it toward her core as her shoulders narrowed and she hunched toward the life-giving drink of her people. Closing her eyes, the displaced damsel inhaled deeply of the scent, then sipped it. Followed by a few gulps of the coffee, draining the cup. Grabbing the ice water smoothly the lovely lieutenant chugged it down in a number of long gulps, then set the water glass back down on the table with a musical clinking of the ice cubes. When she spoke, she sounded reasonably sober.

"Ionization causes transporters to behave in a number of ways that are not well understood. Apparently, according to some variance in my quantum field, I also interfere with that operation in that I can be rendered a transphasic entity. I spent 4 years, 7 months, two days as an immaterial ghost." Sam started to speak up to redirect the conversation, but Rita was still talking anyway.

"I haunted the Constitution for her five year mission. The mission I was supposed to go on, chief helmsman. It was gonna be the adventure of a lifetime, it was going to make my career, I'd finally get the chance to prove myself. But, ah, that wasn't how it went." Paris waved the empty coffee cup for a refil. "Dear old dad, had some jackass mercenary sabotage the transporter, 'just to scare me'. That's what he said at his court-martial, according to the record. And I spent almost the entire mission not being able to sleep, eat, touch anything or be touched. I was attached to the warp field, and sustained by it. Was kind of a living hell."

Looking around, Rita realized that diners at nearby tables were listening as well , so she bought the mood up a bit. "But they figured out how to put me back together back then, and they did it here in no time. Not even sure how long I was aboard. It's all kinda hazy when I'm beamed apart. No pain, on the bright side. I barely remember being in Engineering, I think that was the first time I had it together enough to read a panel. I had no idea where I was."

"Glad you asked, Sam?" Rita grinned at him, having gone from hungover to haunted to happy again in one monologue, even as her bacon arrived. "I'm not classified, just a chronodimensional footnote in history."

"You're not a 'footnote', Rita. You're a member of the family that is the starship Hera, and you're important to us," her Andorian friend replied between her mouthfuls of her food.

As he finished his breakfast and turned up the last of his apple juice, Sam pondered the rapidfire change in Rita's disposition, even as he replied, "Well, ah'm nevuh sorreh t'ask about a lady's well-bein', Miss Ritah. Ah reckon y'all got it figyuh'd out well-enough t'keep yuh heah, instead've floatin' 'round th'cosmos like some sorta cosmic Dutchman." He stood, and bowed slightly to both of his new crewmates.

"Ah'll take mah leave of y'all, if'n y'don't mind. Reckon ah've got a whole heap uh'stuff t'git in place, if'n ah'm gonna be ready fer mah first day." The dapper tinkering soldier-spy tipped his hat to them, and with a smile like a phaser bolt, he was off.

"He seems nice for a spy... but that mustache..." Paris chuckled after the Missourian had departed.

Thex smiled at her friend as she paused from her food. " He sure does doesn't he. He's going to be interesting to work with." She said before she changed the subjected to a joke to take her friend's mind of her glumness.

"So a human, an Andorian and a walrus walk into a bar..."