Better Late Than Never

Posted on Sat Nov 24th, 2018 @ 5:14pm by Lieutenant Commander Mnhei'sahe Dox & Commander Rita Paris

Mission: Escaped Pantheons
Location: USS Hera, Deck 4, Flight Control Operations
Timeline: 2395, en route to the Galactic Core

Another long starship day aboard the USS Hera had brought them one day closer to the mission and confrontation with gods and Texans and who knew what within a spatial distortion that was likely a gateway to another dimension. Which was pretty much business as usual for the mighty startship.

As the day was winding down as 22:00 hours approached, Commander Rita Paris was considering calling it a day and heading for her quarters, when a report was filed- progress report for the experimental imaging processor that Ensign Gonadie had devised that Lieutenant Junior Grade Dox was killing herself to try to master, because she felt the weight of responsibility for the starship Hera and all of the lives aboard her if she screwed up this particular mission. Reading through the report, Paris sighed and shook her head.

You gave her reign on this one so she's going to drive herself too hard, deprive herself of sleep and obsess over it because she doesn't want to let you down, the Captain down, the crew down, the ship down... so she's going to burn herself out until she does just that. Can't tell her to relax about it because that'll be counter-productive. Can't tell her it'll be fine because you don't know. Can't inflict a curfew on her or you are treating her like a child. If she wants to overwork herself, that's her right, just like it was yours when you were in her shoes.

Thinking back, Rita briefly wondered if she had been that nervous and insecure at that stage of her career. Fortunately, a bit of her Vulcan husband's brilliant psyche which possessed total recall lived within her mind, and was quite willing to show her a number of images in quick montage of Rita as seen from the outside as the junior officer in constant need of approval and reinforcement and emotional succor. Oh, right. I made Dox look like she has it together.

What she had learned in the intervening years was perhaps how better to deal with the stress, especially the kind that was almost exclusively self-generated. And in this case, she had an idea. Tapping at her ever-present PaDD, she located LTJG Dox on, unsurprisingly, flight control. Time to go be a sentimental old lady... well, more sentimental than normal...

Strolling casually into the flight control office on Deck 4, the Hera's first officer seemed surprised to see anyone there. "Oh... sorry Lieutenant. I was just coming to poke around and take in the view and be maudlin for a moment. I didn't expect anyone to still be here at this hour."

That part was at least partially true- she had not expected to find Dox there, she'd only been alerted by late-night report updates.

At the desk, Lieutenant Junior Grade Melanie Dox was leaning on her hands as she reviewed a graph of performance stats from the last few days. The entrance of Rita Paris snapped her out of the focus she was partly trapped in and she jolted up straight, slightly startled, but not overtly so. "Oh, Commander Paris. Pardon me. Uh, yes. I was reviewing some data from today's sim tests."

"Nothing to be pardoned, it's your office, Lieutenant," Paris said distractedly as she walked slowly toward the flight deck, looking decidedly distant, her eyes unfocused and her hands on her rounded hips. "Your duty rosters are all filed, and your paperwork's in order. Having Gonadie check your work to learn from your mistakes without them showing?"

"Absolutely. She's been invaluable in the process. Obviously, as she literally wrote the book on this technology." Dox patted the top of the experimental flight control helmet on her desk, still hardwired into the computer interface of the office.

"I know it's all in my reports, but I really think we're all making some positive headway. With Doctor Dael's help, we've been able to significantly reduced the nausea and headaches to a manageable level and it's increased simulation success rates to..." Dox leaned over to look at the readout on her screen to confirm what she was fairly sure she remembered. "93 percent."

In spite of the anxiety that Dox still had churning in her stomach, she was actually quite pleased with how things were progressing.

As for Rita, she stared out at the flight deck listening to the progress report on a subject she hadn't brought up. Dox's focus was getting a bit myopic- had to get her to think about something else other than the rat maze of the obsession at hand. "Good, good. What was the name of that ship you grew up on? I'm not sure if you told me and I forgot or you never actually mentioned the name?"

With a change of subject that felt to Melanie like turning off the warp core while at Warp 9, her brain locked up for a full second and a half. "Uh..." her face scrunched slightly as the topic brought up more than it's share of mixed emotions and she ran a finger across the top of her right ear as she processed the question.

While it felt like an eternity to Dox, the pause was no longer than another second. "It... It was called the Forrager. I don't think the name ever came up, actually."

"Well, then I feel better about not knowing the name," Paris spared the young officer a glance and a grin before returning to her reverie of the flight deck. "D'ya ever miss it... the sounds, the smells, the constant background thrum of the engines and the feel of the vibratory patterns in the deckplates? I've never served on a small trading ship but that's what I imagine it's like?"

The initial anxiety of the change of subject for Dox let itself go quickly with the casual tone Rita Paris was presenting. Sitting back in her seat, Melanie Dox's mind drifted back to her often turbulent childhood. But thanks to the specific questions, she found herself reminiscing on the positive for a change.

"Sometimes, yeah. It shook at warp like it was falling apart and the engine knocked like crazy, but sometimes I do kinda miss it." She smiled slightly at the First Officer and ran her fingers through her recently cut and much shorter hair. "It was really the background noise of... My life. Sometimes it's absence gets... Loud."

"My little brother Albert..." Paris responded, her voice a bit distant as she recalled a bit herself. "Almost all of my earliest memories have him caterwauling in the background or in my face. He was such a fussy, unhappy baby all the time, and when Mama passed away I was the new babysitter. So for me it was his wailing and blubbering and poopy diapers. It was like he lived to make me change his diapers, and he stayed in diapers until he was five years old. No kidding."

"Wow... That's something I can say I'm glad hasn't come up in my life so far." Dox let out a slightly nervous laugh at the thought. "Not that I know the smells on the Forrager we're much better. Especially when our cargo was livestock."

"I can imagine!" Paris laughed at that, briefly wondering what alien livestock might be like these days. "Okay, weirdest cargo you ever hauled?"

"Weirdest? Hmm..." Melanie was now much more relaxed and no longer thinking of her work at all. She smiled figuring that this was probably Rita Paris' intention as she was aware that she was putting in intense hours. But in the moment, she was just enjoying the conversation and the opportunity to reminice on the positive side of her childhood for a change.

"It's hard to say. I guess, maybe..." Then a memory popped to the front of her mind and she laughed out loud. "Ha! Okay... Weirdest. I just remembered. So, we were running cargo between Romulus and Ferenginar. We swapped ten crates of Romulan Ale for what we told were top secret Ferengi power cells." She had begun gesturing with her hands as she talked.

"Then, three days out of Ferengi space and we hit a patch of gravimetric turbulence and the whole cargo bay was shook up hard. After which, the boxes started MOANING! like a little sound loop of nasal moaning. My Mother opens up a crate worrying that we were tricked Into carrying actual... People of something."

At which point Dox put her hands together as if holding a very thick sword. "Weird, big Ferengi... dildos of some kind. Like, translucent Amber rubbery... Wands with handles in the shape of there ears at the top that actually made moaning sounds and glowed when you grabbed the ears." She snickered loudly at the memory.

"Well, to it's credit, it does sound memorable at least!" Paris laughed along, filing away to look up what a Ferengi was later. "So it's my understanding that on ships such as the Forrager, they tend to have repetitive maintenance quirks. What was the most common repair you remember as a kid?"

The topic leaping felt somewhat random, but Melanie was now relaxed enough to just go with it without having the think too much about it. "I'd say the biggest problem that kept breaking was the environmental power system. We had to bundle up a lot because the internal heating tended to cut out when power was rerouted to the warp drive. No matter how many times we fixed it, it just kept breaking down."

Thinking about it, Melanie's expression went slightly wistful at the thought. "Until my last day there, the heat kicked off at warp."

"Ever been interrogated, Dox?" Paris asked casually, still focused on the flight deck, one hand coming up to touch the transparent aluminum aft wall of the office. "They usually call it a 'debriefing' these days, because we're much more civilized. But it's an interrogation all the same... just being pelted with questions, digging around seemingly at random as if looking for something but it isn't clear what it is they want to know?"

Instantly, Dox's heart sank into her stomach. She had let her guard down completely and was suddenly beginning to feel stupid for doing so. Closing her eyes for a brief moment, she replied. "Yes. Yes, I have."

"Then you ought to recognize when your first officer is doing it to you. I've been asking you one question after the other, and you've been answering. It's not a conversation, because you aren't asking any questions, just me. Seven so far." Turning to regard the chief flight control officer, Paris leaned against the transparent aluminum wall. "You're exhausted, Dox. Mentally if not physically. I could have just led you down the primrose path here and kept you going, wrapped it all up at 20 questions and then let you wander off feeling unburdened, but frankly I respect you a little more than that. If I got this far without you wondering what's up and saying so, that tells me you aren't firing on all thrusters."

"So why do you suspect that may be, Miss Dox?" Throughout it all, the tone of the commander's voice was still calm, low and private. Though they were the only ones here, still, the ancient astronaut's demeanor was easygoing and her tone almost soothing. It should be clear to Dox that she wasn't in trouble- but then, she wasn't, as observed, at her best at the moment.

Sighing as she began catching up with the point, Dox replied. "Because I'm still here. Still working when I probably should have packed it in for the evening and tried to get some rest so I'm not exhausted and strung out." She didn't phrase it like a question, but more a statement that she already knew was true.

"Your hard work and diligence are appreciated, Miss Dox. And I know that you feel a great degree of responsibility what with the lives of everyone aboard seemingly riding upon your shoulders." Stepping away from the transparent bulkhead, Rita Paris took a slow step in the direction of her subordinate. "Because it definitely feels that way, and you are working night and day trying to validate that trust, running as fast as you can to stay ahead of the possibility of failure, because failure is not an option. How'm I doing?"

Feeling extremely embarrassed that she was once again led on what felt like a long walk around the ship to get back to where she had started, Dox was second guessing herself as much as her first day on the Hera. But she answered directly and honestly, feeling extremely humbled once again. "That sounds... Very much on point, Commander."

Her tone was tired and somewhat defeated sounding. Dox could fly a starship like she was born to do so, but when it came to interacting with her First Officer, she was proving to always be ten steps behind and she was beginning to internally curse herself for feeling like an idiot again. Which, when she thought about it only served to reinforce Rita Paris' point about how exhausted she was.

Stepping over, Paris dropped to one knee next to the seated lieutenant junior grade. Parking one arm over her knee, Paris looked up at Melanie Dox. "It's a team effort, Lieutenant. Everyone will do their part, and so will you. If we didn't have the utmost faith in you, then you wouldn't be on that bridge. You will do your best, and hopefully as we all do the same, that will be enough. At least we already know it can be done, right?"

"Point being, hyperfocus can actually be detrimental, especially for a pilot, so... it's my job to watch out for these things and offer you course corrections. You are doing nothing wrong, bear in mind- I'm just meddling because I am your superior officer. And maybe it is kind of mean for me to come at these lessons as I do, walking you around to the point." Paris cocked her head back a bit as she looked up at Dox. "It seems gentler to prove the point before making it with you, somehow."

Emotionally, Melanie was drained and she knew that it was because Paris was right. But it felt at least a little better to hear Rita explain her reasoning. It was a reminder that the First Officer had her Junior Lieutenant's best interests in mind.

She flumped back in her chair a bit and ran her hand through her hair as she sighed. With a slightly awkward smile, she replied. "You're right. I know. I think... I think I'm more scared of screwing up on the bridge than I am of the... space gods out there." Whatever part of Dox's mind that worried about military protocol had already gone to bed and she was just expressing how she felt.

It wasn't overly emotional or anxious, it was just honest and Dox felt like being anything less than completely honest served no purpose in this moment. "Fvadt..." She muttered slightly, not even thinking twice about slipping into Romulan for the moment. "I'll... try and remember this all and be better. Which, I suppose means not always worrying about actively TRYING to be better." Chuckling slightly at the somewhat paradoxical idea.

"Exactly. Look, there will be a time and a place to overwork yourself and drive the problem to the ground. And I know when that moment comes you will rise to it. But part of the job is knowing the difference between when that moment has come, or you are just in a little too deep and driving yourself a little too hard. Guilty," Paris stood, took a stretch toward the overhead, and tugged her uniform down again then settled her skirted behind against the desk. "At the moment, I am supposed to be making something for dinner, which at this rate is definitely going to be replicated if not produced by Sonak, which, see, that might go well for me after all."

"Point being, I am not there. I am down on Deck 4 lecturing one of my promising junior officers because I am a den mother and that's always how I've worked with the crews. So while I am delivering the lecture on hyperfocus and overworking I am in point of fact hypocritically overworking myself as I do so. The difference," Paris stood and offered one of those million watt smiles. "Is that this is important, so it's a duty I should be tending to right in this moment. So, fully justified minor overworking."

"You'll find the balance and get the hang of it, you just have to be aware of it. And of course the dangers of hyperfocus." Paris half-turned away, then turned back. "If you feel that I'm critical of you, Miss Dox, it's because I see so much in you, and... I want to help you find it. I do hope you understand that."

For her part, Dox was getting over her initial and emotional reaction to see what Rita Paris was trying to do, and she understood its importance. "I think I do, Commander." Then, with a slightly nervous chuckle, she added. "Definitely something worth sleeping on."

"Precisely so," Rita agreed, then realizing she wasn't exactly sounding like herself. "C'mom Melanie. Put your bucket down, get some sleep and in the morning you can start back in on it. Or you could arrange a competition among the shuttle pilots for some extra liberty for a morale boosting performance incentive. Or organize a 5K on the flight deck to make sure everybody passes their physical qualifying tests that are coming up again soon, and show them the chief will be out there running with the best of them. You get the idea," Paris offered with a smile, which was warm and genuine- the smile of an encouraging big sister who supported and understood.

"All good ideas..." Melanie said as she shut down her computer and stood up. "...that I will think more about in the morning for sure." She smiled as she stretched slightly.

"Atta girl. You are doing a good job, Chief. Thanks for taking the minor course correction in stride. This technology might just be revolutionary in Starfleet, so you might be working with it for quite some time, or you might get sick of it and hand it over to the R&D boys. But that's all tomorrow. For tonight, how about you get a hot shower and a little unwinding time in, eh?" Pris grinned at the junior officer, eyebrows wiggling. "And I have to say, I love the new 'do. So many girls get their identity and femininity tied up in their hair, and a short cut can be just as feminine and cute. You made a great choice, I really like it!"

While many women might take the moment for false flattery only to expect to be mocked her behind their back, Rita Paris had earned her reputation for honesty on the USS Hera. Besides, she herself maintained a short but stylish haircut, thus clearly she practiced what she preached, in this as in apparently all things.

Having momentarily forgotten, Melanie turned her eyes up towards her head before remembering. "Huh... Oh, yeah. Thanks. I needed to get it cut down just to fit my head in the helmet right." She chuckled, "But I kinda loved how it came out. Thanks."

"You are welcome. I'll see you in the morning, eh Chief? Tomorrow is another fine Starfleet day..." Paris made her way to the door, talking over her shoulder as she walked. There was no need to urge Dox out before her- the point had been made, and Melanie Dox was nobody's fool. The first officer's work here was done, and she knew when and how to make an exit.

"Goodnight, Commander." Melanie replied as she turned for a moment, looking at the window overlooking the flight deck that Rita Paris had been staring out earlier. It was a magnificent view of the deck, that was now quiet for the evening shift. and she smiled.

"Computer, lights," was the last thing Melanie Dox said, before leaving the now empty Flight Control office for some much needed sleep. Tomorrow would indeed be another fine day in Starfleet.