JL | Cmdr Dahe'el, Cmdr Grant - "What Is A Fire, And Why Does It... What's The Word... Burn?'

Posted on Fri Mar 6th, 2015 @ 11:00pm by Commander Logan Grant, PhD.

903 words; about a 5 minute read

Mission: A Spot To Kill

Hours ticked on into days and Logan had sincerely began to wonder if maybe the Cardassian he sought had somehow managed to escape the ship. Aside from the Horizon and the Liberty, every craft aboard the Vindicator was stowed and accounted for. Without her second officer being present, Logan had been thrust into the role of command while Amelia and Rochelle toiled away on the planet below and with the ship simply hovering in orbit, it had given the Kiwi counselor a chance to stop and truly asses the situation.

Rochelle had traded her career and her life for Almar. Almar was in hiding after a very public shaming complete with an almost audible fracture of his heart. If the entire ordeal hadn't been so incredibly fucked up, Logan likely would have sat back, smiled, and chalked it up to the Cardassian figuring himself out. But that wasn't the case. Everything was so very convoluted, broken, and tragically spiraling into the deepest depths of disrepair - everything, that was, aside from the ship. The replicators had gone off line for the better part of an hour only to come back up in fine working order with no real explanation behind such a sudden 'miracle'. That had been Logan's first clue that the Engineer was still aboard and simply hiding.

Hiding from what? Shame. Fear. Anger... Love.

The counselor cursed himself as his foothold slipped from a ladder rung, nearly sending him toppling to what likely would have been an early grave. The Jefferies tubes were no place for a man with a bum leg, but duty and friendship directed him to do the downright suicidal. White knuckled, he clung to a bar and hauled himself higher, giving his injured leg a better chance to obtain purchase on the non-skid surface of the ladder. "Commander Dahe'el!" He hollered. The ship hummed back in response as if to shrug and smile, coyly hiding her lover's whereabouts. Andrea would likely kill him if she found out where he was. "Hiding isn't going to change things! If we work together then we can 'avago at getting her back, if we don't..." Logan grimaced, "That's it. Game over. You play Phantom of the Vindicator for the rest of your days and she grows old and dies after a life of misery beside some Aquaman wannabe. Choice is yours, mate!"

The voice echoed through the bowels of the ship and fell on deaf ears, quite literally, his dulled hearing meant that the Cardassian couldn't hear the counselor calling out for him in an attempt to find him, since returning from the ship Almar had collected a few items from his quarters and made his way deep into the ship, to the parts that weren't listed on any display, weren't listed on any of the diagrams of the ship, the hidden jefferies tubes which served as the last refuge of the people who constructed the ship, he sat in a dead end with his legs crossed, his hair down lying across his shoulders and a padd laying in his lap.

Nothing. The hollow sound of lifeless tubes only served to irritate the out of place counselor. He cursed again, a four letter word being spit from his lips and he climbed higher to a junction and couldn't help but notice wires disappearing deep into a panel. Lights blinked as he managed to roost against the added support of the cross-roads and pulled the panel cover off. It was like Christmas morning in there, all of the circuits flashing and threatening him not to do anything stupid. "Blue wire...Green wire... Where the Christ is the bloody blue and yellow striped wi-- AH HA!" He tugged it, harmless sparks flew, and the lights went out along that particular section of the tubes. While triumphant, Logan couldn't help but feel like he'd signed his own death note. "Fanbloodytastic. Here lizard lizard lizard." He grumbled to himself and resolved to waiting out the hiding Engineer.

Almar opened his eyes as one of the alarms went off on his padd and alerted him to one of the nearby systems going down. It also flashed up with a lifesign on the internal sensors, someone was looking for him and he wasn't ready to be found yet. a few buttons were tapped and he arranged for the power to bypass the damaged circuits and caused the lights to flicker back on in the junction where Grant was playing with wires.

"GOD DAMN IT, DAHE`EL!" Logan sore as the lights came back to life. He cursed the Engineer's wizardry and his ability to adapt. "If you just spent a fraction of the time pushing Rochelle's buttons, we wouldn't be in this fucking mess." He spat and shook his head, abundantly clear that unless the Cardassian wanted to be found, it wasn't going to happen. Retreating back down the tubes the way he'd come simply wasn't an option with his bum leg, and to the right and down a few meters he knew he'd find a hatch leading to sickbay and out from the insanity of the inner bowels that made up the ship. Almar was alive and mostly functional, to the counselor that came as a small success for the day even if he hadn't caught sight of the man.

END.

Commander Almar Dahe'el
Chief Engineer
USS VINDICATOR

&

Commander Logan Grant
Acting Chief Counselor
USS VINDICATOR

 

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