To See The Stars...

Posted on 18 Sep 2014 @ 7:19pm by Petty Officer 3rd Class Ellsworth Hudson & Petty Officer 1st Class Oliver Morris

842 words; about a 4 minute read

Mission: Episode 06 - Legend of Souls
Location: USS Galileo - Deck 4, Quarters 04-1007 EN
Timeline: MD07: 1300 hrs

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Ellsworth looked down into his lap at the furry tribble and then glanced upward at the ceiling panel now swinging wide open. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath while the tribble settled in comfortably on the PADD he'd been reading. The calm he'd hoped might settle over him wasn't taking effect no matter how much he controlled his breath so he finally gave the PADD a quick, aggressive flip to send the tribble flying.

"If I see one more of those things, I'm going to get a phaser!" he shouted to no one in particular, although given the closeness of the quarters it would be impossible for Ollie not to have heard him.

Oliver sat at the only desk in the room reading up on current flight tactics for the ship when a furry blob came down onto his hands. "If they weren't so cute I'd be right behind you." He began to instinctively pet the cooing animal. "I did sit on one in Sickbay a few hours ago."

Cute was a guy with golden locks, green eyes and smooth skin. Cute was a little umbrella in your drink at the beach. Cute was a baby Altassian snowbear rolling down a powdery hill. Cute was not these stupid fuzzballs that ate everything in sight, caused system failures and made it impossible to store anything on the ship, much less keep a proper inventory. They'd made his job about a thousand times harder than it ever should have been, not to mention the headache it was going to cause when it came time to resupply.

"Maybe you sat on it hard enough that it told its friends to vacate the premises," Ellsworth grumbled, stretching out on his bunk and abandoning the work on his PADD. He tried to think of more pleasant things: the flirty new science officer, K'os, cute little umbrellas in your drink on the beach. It seemed to help. A little. "So, Ollie, what have you been up to? How's the Commodore? I was afraid she might send you down to the surface..."

He rolled over on his side and watched his roommate at the desk, awaiting the reply. Ellsworth still had a hard time looking at him - even the back of his head - and keeping pure thoughts, but he'd definitely started to feel some platonic affection for the ship's yeoman since they'd been underway.

"She's doing fine. A little nervous with her position but doing fine. I've had very few personal conversation with her since I came aboard. Most of the time we've kept our relationship professional." Oliver turned his chair around and threw his feet on the table. "Between you and me I think this mission is getting to all of us."

Ellsworth let his face fall into the misery he'd been feeling. "Ugh, I know! These tribbles are a nightmare for inventory management, and I heard they're messing with ships's systems and stuff. And then those people getting hurt on the planet..." For a long moment, he looked contemplative before speaking quietly. "I didn't think Starfleet was going to be quite like this. I don't know if I'm cut out for it."

"Bull! You are cut out for it. What's going on right now is a rarity. Most of it is tedious work. But ask Kirk, Harriman, Picard, even Janeway! At one point in their lives they've thought the same. But you know what? There was something that changed their minds." Oliver stood up and pointed to the wall screen where Oliver had programmed to always show the view from outside. "That. The chance to see a planet from the other side. To see the stars up close. If you think that isn't enough to keep you here then you can leave."

Ellsworth rolled on to his back and let his head hang off the side of the bunk, watching Ollie and then the viewscreen. The thought of just getting up and leaving the ship and Starfleet via the airlock made him giggle a little bit, though he quickly clammed up. That didn't seem like an appropriate response to his stirring speech.

"I don't think I'll be a Picard or Janeway," Ellsworth said quietly. "But I did join to see new places. New planets and stars, new people... I didn't know 'haunted mines' and 'hordes of tribbles' would be on the menu, too, but I guess you don't always get what you expect, right?"

From up here it didn't seem so bad. Besides, all he had to do was restock stuff. No one was ever going to send him into a haunted mine. If the worst of his problems centered on tribbles, that seemed easy enough. Better than his life back on Risa, he reflected bitterly. Ellsworth turned his attention to the viewscreen again and watched the endless space with Ollie, quietly admiring the mining colony and the stars.

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PO3 Ellsworth Hudson
Quartermaster
USS Galileo
[ PNPC - Mott ]

&

PO1 Oliver Morris
Yeoman
USS Galileo

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