Joint Log | Capt Ivanova, Cmdr Dahe'el - "Not A Footprint To Be Seen"

Posted on Fri Oct 17th, 2014 @ 12:58am by Admiral Rochelle Ivanova

2,342 words; about a 12 minute read

Mission: Are You Touched?

The shuttle had been a mistake, but it had smelled like food. Kind of. Someone had left something open, a muffin of some kind, and that had been all it had taken to invite the blue terror in.

And then it closed up like a trap, forcing the little beast to hide itself securely in the shadows under a seat. Being little sometimes had its advantages, even if it left you wide open to a whole host of other nasties. Should the beast have been larger the entire debacle most likely would have been avoided and the Vindicator wouldn't be playing host to a feral little hitchhiker.

On paws no larger than the average human thumb pad, the fuzzy little... thing... darted from the securely docked shuttle and into an opening in the ship's bulkhead, giving it ample access to the Jefferies Tubes and the warm darkness the normally nocturnal creature craved as it easily climbed the length of conduits and wires usually best left for rats, engineers and Executive Officers avoiding taking walks of shame. The best part? There were shinies. Wires glistened in the low light situation, begging for a taste and re-arrangement into a nest in a nook or cranny. Biting through them had become short work, and the thing was quick to assemble quite an assortment of colors and textures to feather its nest with.

What the blue terror didn't know, however, was that power failures -- however minor they had been -- would tip off others to her presence and send them into the tubes to find the source of the problem while it was happily at work, creating its new home... Until something close in the darkness moved. Too close. The creature's massive bat-like ears flattened against it's skull and neck to leave it's curved horns at the ready and its lips were pulled back to reveal tiny, needle-sharp teeth as it huffed, snorted and gurgle-growled its warnings. At just under three pounds of dandelion fluff, however, the blue terror hardly appeared intimidating.

Frustrating...

Somewhere in the system there were bugs... something was going wrong and it annoyed Almar to the point where he had forced himself to crawling through the jefferies tubes himself to find the problem. They had managed to isolate it to one specific section, but this section alone contained a huge number of ducts and panels, all of which could house problems.

Pulling himself through a third jefferies tube, he could hear something on the edge of his senses. The Cardassian's naturally lower hearing was still able to register it as he turned the corner and locked eyes with the most unexpected sight he could have imagined.

To one another they must have seemed like monsters. The heavily furred blue vulpine-like creature and the Cardassian engineer each stared at each other with a heavy mixture of surprise. The hairy one issued a louder warning which quickly escalated into it grabbing one of the wire sections it had stolen and launching itself for Almar, its horns brandished and aimed for his chin. The man's chest then became a perfect launching point, giving the beast leverage enough to spring for another point above him and begin to race down the tubes towards the bridge with its prize firmly locked between two rows of jagged teeth.

A string of curses followed Almar as he thrust himself upwards through the tubes, noting each section as he passed and keeping a mental track of where he was in relation to the rest of the ship, he was heading for the bridge and there were only a limited number of choices for the little blue creature.

Each word was answered with a yip or snarl as the wee beastie climbed and leaped along, it's tail swaying to help it keep balance as it worked along the more precarious parts of the route. A set of loose screws, most likely the handiwork of Danielle Atarah, would end the chase prematurely. Even the slight weight of the blue monster was enough to send the loosened vent crashing from the ceiling and into an opened room below with a loud bang and the squeak of metal as the creature was deposited into a bowl on a cherry wood desk. Rochelle's desk.

The Captain nearly fell backwards out of her chair with a cry, startled out of reading a report while enjoying her traditional favorite chicken salad lunch. Now the desk, the floor and most of her lap enjoyed it as she watched the over turned bowl move along her desk, scraping and snarling as it went. She was about to hit her combadge and call for security when she noticed a small blue-black nose and white fur sticking out from under the rim as it met the edge of the desk in front of her. "What the..." Her voice trailed off as she reached to tip the bowl up, revealing the small creature beneath.

Inside the tubes, Almar could hear the commotion coming from below and already knew where he was. He forced his way through and poked his head down into the ready room, flashing a sly smile at the redheaded Captain, "I'm sorry to disturb you Captain, but I believe you have met the reason behind my... interruption in your personal time, that creature has managed to damage multiple systems throughout the ship."

A snort and a growl erupted from the creature, reverberating through the bowl and buzzing against the Captain's carefully placed fingers. She blinked a couple times, lifting a piece of chicken from the seat next to her lap and offered it to the animal. The growling stopped and the chicken was quickly snatched. "I see..." Rochelle finally met Almar's face with confusion wrought across her brows. Almar could never interrupt her, or so she'd thought until that very moment when her heart slowly began to return to a normal beat.

"What the Hell is it?" She asked and found herself rewarded with a badly chewed and frayed wire section the little monster retrieved from under itself. Rochelle held the piece in her hand, studying it as she half offered it to Almar, not quite sure what else to do. It wasn't every day that something like this happened.

Climbing down from the opening, the Cardassian lowered himself to the deck carefully and reached out for the offending piece of wire, "I have no idea, it's not something I have ever encountered before, but it seems to have made a nest out of wires inside the jefferies tubes, it's interrupted normal operations of numerous systems."

"How bad?" The woman asked as she offered the animal another bite of chicken which it was all too content to take from her. A single one of it's ears twitched back to listen to the approaching Cardassian as he took the wire from Rochelle's lifted hand. "Whatever it is... It likes chicken and isn't a Tribble."

"If it were a Tribble, I think we'd be buried in them by now, we've been experiencing seemingly random malfunctions for a while now," Almar replied with a slight chuckle, "He seems to take at random and never from the same section or grouping of wires, repairs are minor but there are multiple needed."

"She." Rochelle corrected, looking up with a grin as the creature leaped from the desk to her lap and began to clean up what was to be found of the chicken salad that had landed there and in the chair. "If it were a Tribble, I'd be rather upset to say the least and Mr Bernard would be contacting the Klingons for recipes. Seems our little friend is quite greedy and wants one of everything." She said, finding herself petting the little blue terrorist. At least Almar seemed in good humor over the entire situation and the Captain couldn't help but bite her own lip to keep from laughing.

"Well, wherever she has come from, she needs to be confined before she can cause any more serious damage. If she had decided to make her nest closer to engineering, then we may have been looking at a worst case scenario type of thing." the Cardassian replied as he tilted his head to the side, "And I'm sure I don't need to tell you how bad the worst is."

Blinking up at him, Rochelle tilted her own head and nodded. "I know. I don't want to think of that scenario." She replied, her lips pursing and the laughter no longer a threat. "I... Guess I could take her to my quarters? Have your fortify the vents to make sure she can't escape back into the tubes?"

"Your vents are already fortified," the Cardassian replied with another light chuckle, "Or do you forget which position you hold on this ship?" he asked with a slight hint of sarcasm, "The Captain's quarters are always heavily reinforced, recommendations from Starfleet Intelligence during the construction process."

For his troubles and his wit, Almar was rewarded with a roll of her eyes. "And for all of your care and extra security measures, the great Vindicator was nearly taken down by a horned blue fox thing." She teased him, her humor glittering in her eyes.

"Hardly," Almar replied with loud laugh, "But the replicators and lighting systems were on the fritz for a short while."

"Exactly. I didn't get my raktajino this morning." The creature jumped at the sound of laughter and grumble snorted its way down under her desk to continue foraging. Rochelle watched it go and got up, looking down at her sauce splattered uniform. "I guess I need to change, think the replicators are up to snuff or do I have to worry about it spitting out a bunny suit?" It was then that she allowed herself to laugh at the entire situation, gesturing to the open vent, to the mess, the creature poking its head back out to see what was going on and finally at Almar himself. It was either laughter or fury, and laughter won with fistfuls.

"The replicators are working, I needed them online to be able to repair the other systems, with the damage being in such remote sections, its hard to carry all the supplies through the tubes." Almar replied with a bright smile.

"Perfect." Rochelle nodded as she managed to contain herself again and stepped away from her desk, carefully picking her way around the mess as she made her way to the replicators. "At least she didn't make too big of a mess of things." She said as she ordered up a fresh uniform and towels to clean up the mess the creature had transformed her lunch into.

"Perhaps not in here, but as I said, multiple small repairs can often take longer than one larger one due to the distance between them." the Cardassian engineer replied as he fixed his uniform jacket and closed up his toolkit, "I estimate a few hours at the earliest."

Setting the bundle of white, charcoal and red fabrics down on the clean corner of her desk, Rochelle found herself reaching to pluck what looked like dust from the Cardassian's chest. "I know you'll get her back in order and we'll have to keep an eye out to make sure we don't have any other visitors."

"Now we have identified the creature, we can map it's genetic make up and tie the records in to the internal sensors. We failed to pick it up before because it had managed to get into the Jefferies tubes before it could be logged." Almar replied with a nod.

"Understandable. Maybe we'll have to figure out a way to better prepare for the unexpected?" She asked, her head tilting in gentle challenge to the Cardassian's genius mind. She knew he was likely already cooking up some plan to keep more than just chicken salad loving furry blue wire terrorists from impeding the Vindicator's health and progress.

"I have a few plans, some of them even possibly include the same little devices that our resident Ferengi used to help locate you on Notura. They could be quite useful in routine maintenence," Almar responded with a slight nod.

Rochelle nodded in agreement while the blue creature systematically sought out and destroyed each and every chicken target, leaving bits of celery in its wake. "You have my approval to do whatever you deem is necessary."

"Then if there is nothing else, I think I shall make a rather more... predictable exit and get back to work," Almar replied with a soft smile.

"It'll confuse the Hell out of the bridge crew." The redhead grinned and turned to grab a towel with clean up in mind. "You can turn in a report whenever now that we know what the issues stemmed from."

"You'll have one on your desk as soon as I am finished, I'm sure you're yeoman will see to that." the Cardassian replied as he spun on his heel and moved towards the door, "What are you planning to do with the creature?"

"Thank you." She smiled in response and quickly looked down at the creature that was still scavenging under the desk, only the tip of its tail fully visible. "I'm not sure yet... Give it a bath to start, teach it the command codes. Replace someone on the bridge with her." Rochelle's good humor chirped through as she spoke.

"A few candidates spring to mind," Almar replied as he recontinued his exit, "It might be useful to have sickbay look over her, we don't know what she might carry."

The Captain chuckled as the doors opened, "I'll be sure to." She called after him in response and set back to the mess the sudden appearance of the little beast had created. The planet below was filled with surprises and if this was the only thing that had followed the teams up, Rochelle would be thankful.

---

Captain Rochelle Ivanova
Commanding Officer
USS VINDICATOR, NCC 78213-E

Commander Almar Dahe'el
Chief Engineering Officer
USS VINDICATOR

 

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