Rebooting

Posted on 31 Dec 2012 @ 11:32pm by Lieutenant Lilou Zaren
Edited on 31 Dec 2012 @ 11:35pm

2,033 words; about a 10 minute read

Location: USS Galileo, various access shafts
Timeline: MD14 - 0900 hrs

[ON]

The hangar was too bright and her head was still aching from the length of her day. Lilou had been doubling up on shifts since Ensign Parwal had taken maternity leave, which would have been fine if that hadn't also included the hours spent over at the asteroids working on the mining equipment there. As it was, she was starting to wonder if she could actually trust her own judgement due to exhaustion. But the sight of the battered ship coming in through the Algonquin's hanger shields made her clench her teeth. "There wasn't a skirmish today, was there?" she asked, glancing towards N'gare as he headed out for the night.

"Not that I heard of." He whistled, taking in the state of the Type 6, but he was gone before the second came in - almost as battered as the first. Both were barely flying. Fury ignited in Lilou as she watched the damaged ships limping to rest in the hangar.

She knew what would come next. She'd had this dream hundreds of times before. The inevitable comment to the marines piloting the vessels, then the chase, the pain and fear that would leave her crumpled, bleeding, and hiding in an access duct. Then the betrayal of listening to her superiors chastise her for lying about just what had happened to her. For making up the intent she had seen in the eyes of her attackers. The shame and fear that would follow her from that point on.

She watched the doors of the shuttles wheeze and clunk open... but instead of the marines, Klingons poured out of the tiny shuttles. Hundreds of them, too many to have reasonably fit in the small vessels, all of them with phasers blazing. Around her, Lilou could hear the screams of the wounded and dying. Will - strange, kind, forgiving, eye-opening Will - lay bleeding with a bat'leth spearing his middle. The corpse of one of her fellow engineers floated down the gravity-defying corridor, limp and bloated, eyes full of fear and blame. Lilou stumbled through a door, slamming her phaser into the control panel to shut the door behind her as phaser-blasts continued to echo just outside. In the dark room, by the spark of a guttering electrical fire, she saw Quinn spread akimbo on the floor. Watched herself saw his arm off and cauterize the wound. Destroyed. She had destroyed him to keep him alive. Weeping, she skittered over to him and her other self, pressing her chilled hands to his neck to check for a pulse. "I'm so sorry," she whispered wetly. "It's my fault. It's my-"

His eyes opened, clear and humor-filled, and he smiled, a slosh of thick, frothy blood slipping out over his lower lip, "Get back to work, kid."

**

Lilou opened her eyes and stared in silence at the ceiling of the repair duct. There had been a time only weeks before when she would have woken up thrashing and screaming from a dream like that. She could still smell the blood, feel the throbbing of her heart and the blood in her veins. She would have woken, blind with terror and scrambling, unsure of where she was or what was happening. She wouldn't have known where the dream ended and reality began. But she'd been having versions of the same dream for the past fourteen days; every time she shut her eyes, she caught glimpses of the horrors in her head that were waiting to leap back into the forefront of her focus. She was tired of them; she just didn't have the energy to be frightened any more.

She didn't look like a Chief Engineer, not that she was thinking about that at all. She'd stripped down to the bare necessities: coveralls, tool belt and holster, data slings and gloves and goggles. There were shadows under her eyes, smudges on her cheeks, scrapes on her knuckles, and she hadn't showered since they'd entered atmo. Her hair might easily have been becoming a form of intelligent life. It wasn't high on her list of priorities at the moment.

Where was I? she wondered wearily. Scanning the numbers on the nearest hatch, she assembled a mental image of where she was on the ship and then went through the itemized list in her head. Review gravity sensors, test filtration repairs, reconnect auxiliary defense measures... Stretching enough to make her joints pop pleasantly, she dug in her thigh holster for a protein bar and shoved it in her mouth as she resumed her duties. It didn't matter what time it was, what shift it was... She worked until she couldn't, slept when she had to, and then worked again. She had been making a concerted effort to eat and drink enough - that much she had learned when she'd nearly toppled through a ceiling panel from light-headedness two days into the job. Chief Engineer. Merciful spirits. How had that happened?

She finished the protein bar and took a swig from the water bottle at her belt, splashing a little of the water on her face as she walked. She wasn't kidding herself. She knew very well that accepting a rank and administrative promotion and then slipping into the bowels of the ship without so much as a 'thanks for the laughs' was cowardly. She had no trouble with that. Cowardly was better than batshit crazy, which was about how she'd felt when they'd announced her promotions in front of the whole damn crew. From enlisted to Ensign? For what, chopping off her commanding officer's arm in the line of duty? And Quinn hadn't even had the decency or good sense to blame her for it.

She missed him. Gods and spirits, she missed him. Which was ridiculous, because he was still on the bloody ship or at least, near to. Near enough. Right at the tips of her fingers if only she had the gumption to tap her combadge and call him. But she hadn't. Couldn't. She longed for his humor and sense and experience. She was positive that he would have done this job a thousand times better than she was. But she couldn't even bring herself to use the CEO's office in Main Engineering; how could she face the man who still haunted that office? She'd have to see him. She knew that. It was a tiny, tiny ship relative to the rest of the fleet; meeting would be unavoidable once they were away from the starbase, even if he hadn't been Chief of the Boat and therefore someone she absolutely had to remain in contact with when they were flying. And anyway, she wanted to see him. Besides being the best Chief of Engineering she'd ever seen, he was one of her favorite people. But she needed to put her house in order first, which meant getting the Galileo up and ready for her next mission in short order. When that was done, when the Gal was spick and span and shining, then she could take a breath and slip back into the comfort of socializing.

She laughed quietly to herself as she pulled herself up an access ladder. Since when had socializing become something comforting? Will and Quinn had drilled holes in her armored personal defenses. She'd lost Will. Nearly lost Quinn. And Lamar... she bit her lip, kneeling at the top of the ladder to scan the gravity sensor. Green lights. On to the next.

She owed Lamar... something. She wasn't exactly sure what. Not that she didn't understand, intellectually, that there were certain courtesies that needed to be extended to someone one had... liaised with. But she didn't know how to approach him. She wasn't even sure what she was to him, or whether that mattered. The last time she'd spoken with him, she'd been mad with grief and terror and heart-break, covered in blood, and fighting herself as much as the horror-filled situation. She didn't want to go back to that moment, to offer explanations and apologies for her weakness. She didn't want to remember how she'd acted at all. It was mortifying.

Only a couple weeks... It felt like years had passed since the Galileo had taken off on its maiden voyage only to be thrown headlong into one of the bloodiest conflicts in recent history. And the strangest part was that no one seemed to know. None of the mechanics or engineers she'd worked with had even asked. All the excuses about comets and spacial turbulence causing the wreckage seemed to sate their mild curiosity without issue. When she'd checked in with her parents via comm after docking, they'd actually laughed over how she'd overreacted to a 'little bout of engine trouble'. And she'd had to accept that head-patting without a word.

Yes. Years. It felt like years since she'd seen Lamar, felt the brush of his hand over her skin. How had she grown so attached to him? And how, even without having seen him for weeks, did she still feel so sure that he was keeping her secrets? How had that happened? He was a marine. True, she realized that didn't make him as malevolent or callous as most of her experience with that ilk had been, but that had been her perspective when she'd met him. How had she gone from fear to trust in such a short time?

She double checked her data pad and tapped the newest report from her team on repairs being finished on other parts of the ship. There just wasn't time to be afraid any more. She'd survived, which was more than could be said for far too many of her crew on their last mission. She'd survived and her commanding officers had put their faith in her when they'd promoted her. Whether she felt like she deserved to be Chief or not, she was. She had to act like it. She had to keep herself in working order, to be able to keep the Galileo that way. She couldn't be a disposable cog in the wheelhouse anymore. And she was realizing how much she'd used her 'disposable' status as a crutch since her time on the Algonquin. She'd let them convince her she was replaceable. Now she was learning again that she wasn't. Someone else could take her job, but they wouldn't be her. And if Captain Saalm thought that Lilou was what the Galileo needed in Main Engineering, then by the spirits, Lilou was who she would get.

She took another swig of water, tested another connection point, and moved along. The repairs were coming along nicely. Maybe, once they were out of orbit and on their way, she might even sleep in a bed again. That would be nice. Eat a hot meal. Drink... well. More water. Drinking to hide from her own mind needed to be a thing of the past. She had a responsibility to the crew and the captain to be clear-headed at all times. And that meant, wrestling her own vicious demons, even if it terrified her. No time to fear. No time for doubt. Just muscle through it and deal, kid. They weren't necessarily the words Quinn would have said, but hearing them in his voice cheered her somewhat as she poked her head out into an empty corridor and double checked to the left and right.

Soon, she'd see people again. She would meet the new members of the Engineering department and put faces to the voices. She would stop being the Wizard of Oz, hiding behind her combadge and the long list of repairs to be done. She skittered across the corridor and into the access hatch opposite, using the hidden paths to climb and slide to her next destination instead of simply walking and using the turbolifts like a normal person. Soon. But not quite yet. She needed to get a good long look at the clearing repair board. She sniffed, wrinkling her nose; and then she needed a thorough sonic shower.

[OFF]

--

ENS Lilou Peers
Chief Engineering Officer
USS Galileo

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