A Gift

Posted on 11 Jun 2013 @ 1:05am by Amril & Rear Admiral Lirha Saalm

2,212 words; about a 11 minute read

Mission: Episode 03 - Frontier
Location: USS Galileo - Deck 2, Captain's Quarters
Timeline: MD 06: 1730 hours

[ON]

Amril walked through the corridors of the Galileo, carrying a small object wrapped in cloth. He stopped outside of the Captain's quarters and tapped the panel to chime in.

After a surprise counseling visit from Lieutenant Carlisle who had departed just ten minutes prior, Lirha found herself once again alone in her quarters and browsing through a stream of info on her PADD. She had just settled back into her couch when the chime rang again, forcing the Orion captain to groan with frustration and toss the sleek gray device to the side of the cushions. Straightening herself up in her seat, she looked towards the door and called out in a soft voice. "Enter."

Amril glanced around the room carefully as the door opened and, after a moment's hesitation, stepped inside. "Good evening, captain," he said with his usual pleasantness. "I picked up a 'souvenir' during our survey, as promised. I thought this would be a good opportunity to expand my social interaction with the crew." By the crew, of course, he must have meant the captain, seeing as she was the only one he was socializing with at that moment.

Lirha watched Amril enter the room and smiled warmly at him. It was strange...for some reason she never felt prejudice or ill will towards him like she had detected among other members of her crew. Rather, she actually enjoyed his upbeat and pleasant nature, regardless of his people's history and genetic manipulation. And... he had brought her a souvenir.

"Oh... yes, of course." she replied, then scooted over on the couch and motioned for him to join her. "Please sit. I was just reviewing some of our survey logs but a break from my reading would be nice. So... what did you get me?" she asked curiously.

With a slight nod, the vorta walked over to the captain and sat himself down beside her. He lifted the badly wrapped object and offered it to her. "I believe it is supposed to be a surprise until you unwrap it," Amril suggested helpfully.

The captain grinned at him then took the unknown object and gently set it on her lap where she proceeded to delicately unwrap it. It looked...very plain, like a piece of a metallic alloy. Curiously, she glanced back up at him, not exactly sure what she was looking at.

Inside the cloth was a shard of twisted metal, or that is all it seemed to be at first. On closer inspection, Lirha could see that it was in fact a device of some sort, badly damaged. In the center there was an opening, a compartment, and caught in the death grip of twisted metal was a single data chip, a circle of rose-colored glass with a crack running down its center, held together only by the device ensnaring it. Despite the many years it must have spent on the planet, the surface of the chip was clear as the day it was first produced, although the device around it was not.

Inspecting the item further, Lirha noticed that it was not a random piece of metal, but in fact had some sort of small circular device imbedded in the center. "Oh my..." she muttered as she held it up and continued to study it. "It looks like it could be a recording device of some sort. Similar to our isolinear optical chips." she commented.

Amril watched the captain examine his gift. "It was the only piece in the library I could sneak past Donati," he admitted, "He would never let me get away with a complete data chip. Whatever it does, it might still work if we can get it powered and fixed a bit."

"Well... you are our operations chief." the captain replied with a friendly smirk. "Would you like to give it a try? I believe I have a toolkit in my closet..." she offered, feeling excited by the possibility of getting the chip functioning and potentially discovering the secrets to an ancient civilization.

"All right," Amril agreed, giving a nod and rising, "I believe I should work at the table."

"Yes, of course." Lirha agreed, then stood from her seat and wandered over to her desk's computer terminal where she input her password to unlock it. Turning around, she then moved to one of the nearby storage closets and procured a small gray toolbox full of random engineering devices, then returned to the desk and set them down to the side. She motioned with her green hand towards the vacant seat, indicating for Amril to begin when ready.

Amril sat down and examined the tools he was only partially familiar with. He took a scanner he'd seen some engineers use when working with the ship's computer systems and ran it over the device he'd brought back. "Were you an engineer before you were a captain?" he asked as he worked.

"No, however I started my career as an operations officer much like yourself. I was a communications specialist, specifically." she answered. "But Ops and Engineering share some similar duties and I suppose I sort of picked up a few nuances from my previous postings." she elaborated with a soft laugh.

"I've found that I am not well-suited for engineering," Amril said, looking up, "There's a holographic emitter of some kind, but it's broken. Can you replicate an omnidirectional matrix diode?" Turning his eyes back to his work he continued the conversation, as he picked up another tool and fiddled with the metal device, "I lack the technical knowledge and dexterity, though I understand things like warp fields easily. Applying it to your ships has been a challenge. Oh, we need to power it. Do you have some kind of power node?"

At that moment, Lirha wished that they were in one of Galileo's science labs with ample equipment and space all around them. It was still an option in her mind, but instead she fortunately knew that she would be able to provide the proper components from her quarters' advanced replicator.

Moving away from the desk and procuring the two devices, she promptly returned to Amril's side and set the objects down on the table for him to use. "Did the Dominion use replicator technology similar to ours?" she wondered.

"No," Amril answered absently as he worked, "we use protein sequencing though. Jem'Hadar only need Ketracel-white and we vorta prefer simple food which is grown on our planets. I believe some replicator technology was acquired by members of the Dominion, however, they may have adapted it for their own uses."

"Interesting..." the captain mumbled more to herself than anyone else. "And what did the Dominion do if they needed to synthesize new materials or components to perform ship repairs while in space?"

Amril leaned forward, squinting at the tools he was working with. "There are often ship components available. Unless one of our larger ships carry both supplies and vorta engineers, there is no point in having replicable parts, because the ship would not be easily repaired."

Lirha slowly nodded to herself. The explanation made sense, albeit in a terribly crude and efficient manner. She also didn't get the impression that the Dominion were much into exploring or deploying single starship cruisers to different corners of the galaxy like the Federation was accustomed to.

A few more minutes passed before Amril got the power cell hooked to the alien device. A hologram flickered over the datachip and formed a broken image of an alien woman, elaborately dressed. Her ethereal holographic body walked across an invisible floor. Then, she started to sing. Although the sounds were broken in places, and rarely clear, the song was an artful combination of operatic power and grandeur with the soothing emotion of a lullaby.

"A song?" Amril asked, giving the control pad a light touch. The image flickered and resolidified with a second broken holographic projection, symbols that flickered in and out of existence with the hologram's song.

"Indeed." came the captain's reply as she stared at the holographic image, the first one ever seen which showed what the native species looked like.

Lirha listened to the melody and smiled to herself. It was strange... alien in nature with a language she did not understand, but it was brilliantly composed and the image of the Rojarian seemed to indicate a high-level performance.

"Ah," Amril mused. "This chip holds the secret to pronunciation of their language... the words must correspond to the sounds..."

Staring at some of the alien glyphs and symbols in the hologram, she nodded in agreement. "A job for our language specialist, Ensign Nichols, no doubt." she commented while continuing to listen to the musical composition. "This is a wonderful piece...although I do not understand a single word." she added with a light laugh. "Do you suppose these people were very fond of the arts?"

"I'm not sure it's worth giving to the ensign..." Amril mused, focusing on her first comment still as his violet eyes remained fixed upon the singing figure. "It's a gift after all..." He blinked then, turning his head and looking at the captain. "Arts? I suppose they might be. How can you tell?"

"Well," Lirha began with a soft sigh as she began to point to different aspects of the holographic performance. "The physical nature - the stature, poise, and confidence of the performer - all suggest a rather experienced individual who has no doubt done this many times before. And such repetition suggests a culture which would probably not suppress this form of entertainment, or else it would not have been recited to such a degree of perfection..." she paused for a second to consider the song again. "Or...perhaps it is a form of storytelling, one which passes on the history and values of their culture to future generations?" she hypothesized.

"We'd need to translate the language," Amril said, "to know for sure. But you're right, it seems they have a musical tradition."

"I can begin to run the speech and symbols through the universal translator. It might take a while to decipher since we have no original frame of reference, but we should be able to get a general gist of what she is saying." she proposed.

Amril nodded. "That sounds like a good idea," he agreed, smiling. He put the tools down and started to put them back in their case. "This is the first time I've ever fixed a piece of alien technology," he observed, "Only Dominion. Well, seems I have some skill for engineering."

Lirha smiled. "Yes, it seems you do." she replied, then thoughtfully posed a question for the man. "How are you enjoying the nuances of exploration, so far? Did you find yourself enjoying your time on the surface?" she asked.

"Oh, very much," Amril said, an excited note inflecting his words, "It was absolutely thrilling to explore a planet abandoned by an entire race, with their civilization left behind. I am not sure what it is, but I find the idea so stimulating; it offers many different possible scenarios for me to analyze."

Agreeing wholeheartedly with the operations chief's assessment, Lirha realized that was one of the primary reasons she had joined Starfleet - to explore the unknown and piece together the mysteries of the galaxy. "There are indeed many scenarios," she said, "and part of our job in this system is to attempt to find the most logical one for their disappearance. There is obviously evidence of war with Borg forces but... that surely cannot be the end of this entire race..." she reflected in deep thought.

"I may not appreciate the beauty of a planet or nebula," Amril agreed, "but this is exciting. I want to know what happened to them," he sounded as if he were experiencing such thoughts for the first time, working through them, albeit quickly, as he said them, "I want to be the one to find out the truth." He chuckled. "It's perfectly selfish, I'm not serving the Founders, not even the ship, I just want to find out for myself." His violet eyes cast a sidelong glance at Lirha, "Isn't that odd? What is that desire, captain?"

"I believe it is the desire for knowledge, and it means you are becoming quite the explorer." she answered with satisfied grin. She was pleased to see that Amril was acclimating himself well to his duties aboard the ship, even going so far as to adopt the Federation's curious and exploratory nature.

"Ah, that is good," Amril mused aloud, his eyes returning to the singing hologram with its shaky image and broken sounds.

Lirha sat on the corner of the desk next to Amril and an awkward silence developed between them as they both listened to and watched the musical performance. Some of the data was corrupted and not as clear as she would have liked, but nevertheless, a find as substantial as this was truly groundbreaking. Hopefully, other members of Galileo's away teams would no doubt present their own finds in due time.

[OFF]

--

CAPT Lirha Saalm
Commanding Officer
USS Galileo

Lieutenant Amril
Chief Operations Officer
USS Galileo
played by Psylus Anon

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