Head Above Water

Posted on 06 Oct 2014 @ 11:38pm by Lieutenant Oren Idris Ph.D. & Commander Andreus Kohl

2,614 words; about a 13 minute read

Mission: Episode 06 - Legend of Souls
Location: USS Galileo - Deck 4, Multi-purpose lab
Timeline: MD 07 - 1900 hrs

[ON]

Taking advantage of the long detour after his meeting with Hudson, Oren decided to finally change into his uniform. As much as it pained him, he felt it wouldn't go over very well if he showed up to the lab in his current outfit of tight lavender coloured trousers and white button down, on only his third day of work. That was at least a day 30 move. So, after a quick shower, Oren pushed his damp hair back from his face and set off to the labs in the hopes of seeing the team making progress in their attempt to neutralise the tribble threat.

There was a cluster of tribbles sitting idly within the holographic tank in multi-purpose lab six. At this point, it was more surprising to see a patch of deck-plating cluttered by only four tribbles, rather than piles and piles of them. Seated on a chair just outside the micro-holodeck was Andreus Kohl, but he had had enough of sitting. Kohl rose to his feet, settled his palms on his hips, and arched his back in a sustained stretch. Striding slowly, Kohl approached the LCARS console where he had stored his single-dose hypospray. He took up the analgesic and he applied it to his own neck. The effect was nearly instantaneous. Once Kohl moved to stand behind his chair, he returned his eyes to the holo-tank. He reached up to grip the headphones over his ears and adjust where they were resting on his head.

Outside the transparent doors of the lab, Oren walked towards his office with a hurried pace only to stop dead in his tracks at the flash of a teal uniform in his peripheral vision. Walking backwards until the inside of the lab was in his line of sight, Oren planned to speak and make his presence known when he saw Kohl standing there, pressing a hypo to his neck. Was he taking drugs? He watched the man walk back and adjust his headphones, suddenly feeling incredibly stupid for changing into his uniform. If this was the level of professionalism the assistant head of the department was showing, who was he stick to any actual rules of conduct?

Turning, he walked through the doors and into the lab, keeping his eyes on Kohl until he finally stepped in front of him, looking at him over the holo-tank and waiting for the Argelian to notice him.

"Good evening, Oren!" Kohl said, far too loudly, as he was speaking over the sounds only he could hear on his headphones. He smiled at Oren in the same way he would smile at a crew-member who was walking towards him in a corridor and there wasn't enough time to make proper greetings. The expression was pleasant enough, but perfunctory. Kohl pulled the headphones from his ears and hung them 'round the back of his neck. "How can I assist you?"

"What are you taking in those things?" Oren suddenly asked, motioning to the hypospray with his hand. He wouldn't usually be so blunt right at the beginning of a conversation, but it seemed to be that kind of day. And how would one approach the subject of one of their department heads administering a hypo in the middle of their shift? It certainly wasn't in any training he'd received.

Kohl pursed his lips and tilted his head, making a show of following Oren's hand to the hypospray on the table. Kohl then swung his head back to stare Oren hard in the eyes. "Funny that," Kohl said without humour. "I knew you had a Ph.D., but I didn't know you were a medical doctor."

Oren raised a disbelieving eyebrow at him as a spike of anger ran through his body. Anger wasn't an emotion he dealt with often, or very well.

"Really? That's how you want to continue this conversation? By making a sarcastic comment about my intelligence simply because I said 'those things' instead of 'hypospray'?" Oren was tempted to add a sarcastic comment of his own regarding Kohl's maturity once again coming to light, but that would just be stooping to the same level the other man was on.

"If you'd actually taken the time to be informed about your own staff, you'd know I was also a nurse, but I suppose false expectations seem to be a running theme in our talks," Oren commented, resting his hands on his hips.

Kohl took a step closer to Oren, and he reached over to lay a hand on the slighter man's shoulder. "Oren," Kohl said softly and slowly. "Please don't visit my intentions. What I said-- what it meant was that my medical treatment is a matter between me and my doctor only. I'm not--" --Kohl shook his head in some confusion-- "I'm not clear about the rest of that..."

Oren sighed, glancing at the hand on his shoulder. He wasn't to fond of touching when it came from people he didn't know and/or didn't particularly like but, for the sake of not starting another argument, Oren ignored it.

"Never mind," he dismissed, looking over at the small holodeck. "What are you doing in here?" 'Besides drugs and listening to music'

Stepping closer to the soundproofed holo-tank, Kohl angled his gaze over to the tribbles within. He lifted one headphone up to his left ear, listened for the sound, and he laid it down on his shoulder again. "Oren," Kohl asked, "When tribbles are singing, what do you think they sing about?"

His eyebrows raising in surprise at the odd question, Oren walked over until he was standing by Kohl's side, staring at the tribbles. He was quiet, mulling it over for a moment before replying.

"I think 'singing' might be a slightly more romantic term than I would've used," he admitted, looking up at Kohl finally. "I imagine it's their way of communicating with one another. I think they reproduce asexually, so I don't think it's a mating call." Watching the small fuzzy animals inside the cage, Oren frowned suddenly.

"Maybe they know what some people want to do with them. Maybe they're not singing at all, maybe they're crying. Or screaming." It was a horrifying thought, but he couldn't shake it. There was still so little they knew about these cute but pitiful creatures, the possibilities were almost endless.

"That's what we're trying to determine," Kohl said, answering Oren's question of a couple minutes earlier. "Or rather, we're reading past reports and investigating for ourselves to determine what sounds, scents or visual stimulus will lure tribbles into a location. Or scare them out."

"Judging by your question, I'm assuming you haven't made it very far," Oren said, walking around the tank. "What have you tried?"

Kohl lifted up a PADD from the workstation and he swiped his fingers across the display. He accessed a summary of the hundreds of Tribble experiments completed by Kohl and other members of the Science team. With the results on the display, Kohl handed it over to Oren, and he bit back a reference to the last time Kohl had shared his work with Oren.

"Wow," Oren commented spontaneously. He couldn't help it, seeing the sheer diversity and number of tests the team had done. They really did have some talented people working on the Galileo and he was glad he could work close to them if not directly with very often. His own field often seemed miles away from the mix of chemistrs, biologists and physicists that he wondered what his use was. He certainly didn't feel very useful on the current mission.

"This is really impressive," he said, looking up at Kohl and meeting his eyes. "I spoke to the Chief Engineer earlier about an idea I had. I thought it would work if we just transported as many tribbles as possible into the transport buffer and just kept them there as a temporary solution. We both agreed that, while it probably won't work for the entire tribble population on board, if we combine it with some other ideas, it could at least give us some relief until the whole mess in the mine is sorted."

Kohl took back the PADD, taking another look at the list for himself. "We have an amazing group of scientists on board, when we can herd them into the same direction," Kohl said, at first, in acknowledgement of Oren's first comment. Kohl set the PADD aside, and he said, "Transporter buffers. Huh. Do we have resources to build or replicate more buffers? Expand our capacity?"

Oren frowned. "I...I didn't ask." Now he felt a bit embarrassed. That hadn't even crossed his mind! He fidgeted slightly but stopped almost too suddenly when he noticed the nervous habit, trying to compose himself. "I don't know. I'm not really good with...technology," he admitted, not meeting Kohl's eyes and looking incredibly young as he failed to find an answer.

"The engineers would feel insecure if we all were," Kohl remarked, with a shrug and a matter-of-fact timbre. While Oren was looking anywhere but at Kohl, Kohl glanced down at the PADD one again before staring down the tribbles. He asked, "When do you suppose you'll put your temporary solution to the test?"

"Hopefully in the morning. But that honestly doesn't matter since, by tomorrow night, we'll be overrun," Oren explained, shaking his head in defeat at the entire situation. His first week on the Galileo was proving to be quite a bit more eventful than he'd imagined.

"What about you? Do you think any of these ideas look promising? Don't misunderstand, they're all impressive and promising in the long run, but do you think any of them could bear fruit in the next 24 hours?" After his last conversation with Andreus, he didn't want to get into another conflict. Even though, last time, he was a 100% in the right.

Kohl's head bobbed from side to side as he considered his words. The pause between question and answer was far longer than it normally would be for Kohl, and when his response came, it came haltingly. "We can't seem to lure the herd. No matter what foodstuffs or tribble pheromones we simulate or replicate, we can't seem to bring them rolling en masse towards a desired location with any urgency," Kohl said. "What we have been able to do is frighten them. There is a substance we can simulate that will consistently send every tribble tumbling in the opposite direction." He paused, and he waited until he met Oren's eyes. Only once Kohl was certain he had Oren's full attention, Kohl said, "Klingon sweat."

Oren could feel the tension rise during the pause in Kohl's statement and, as it was finally revealed, a disgusted look showed up on his face immediately.

"Klingon sweat? Ew..." he said, shuddering at the thought of what such a substance could smell like if it was artificially made. Klingons had always been a sore subject for Oren. As an Anthropologist, he prided himself of being able to understand and identify with most species, but with Klingons it was next to impossible. While he enjoyed their history, their entire culture was extremely unnerving and upsetting for him. Their hygiene habits didn't help their case in his book either.

"So...what? Would you release the substance into the shafts to drive the tribbles out. I mean, even if we manage to just clear the most sensitive parts of the ship, it would lessen the damage they could do." Oren couldn't believe his first mission coming back to Starfleet was going to involve spraying Tribbles with Klingon sweat. He felt the urge to pinch himself just so that he would wake up.

Kohl nodded as Oren spoke, but he held his tongue. Guarded. He paused again to consider Oren's words, and he shrugged with his palms up. "That sums it up, yeah," Kohl said, vaguely apologetic. He waggled a finger at the holo-tank. "Want a whiff?"

"Ugh..." Oren groaned, staring at the holo-tank with a mixture of apprehension and curiosity. If this wasn't proof that even the strangest things had scientific value, nothing did.

"I'm going to regret this," he said, a smile tugging at the edge of his lips. "But in the interest of science..." He sighed dramatically. "Yes, definitely." Oren grinned curiously despite himself as he walked closer to the holo-taking.

When it finally hit him, he gagged immediately; he'd always been sensitive to smells. Turning a little green, he looked up at Kohl. "I don't know what I was expecting," he admitted, hand on his chest, hoping he wouldn't throw up.

"Some individuals have an appealing musk," said Kohl; the admission slipped out of his lips before he could remember how little of himself he wanted to reveal to Oren. "Regardless of what they look like or behave like. A Klingon could... possibly have an appealing musk." --He pointed at the holo-tank again-- "Just not the one this scent is based on. This one was dying from some kind of renal failure, I would imagine."

And they say I'm weird. Oren gave Kohl a searching look, trying to get a read on him. He'd never really come into contact with many Argelians, and he knew better than to lump all of the individuals of a race into one category, so he wasn't quite sure what to think of him yet. He was definitely a strange one, of that Oren was certain. What he wasn't certain of is whether he liked that or not. Usually, he'd always found the strangest people to be most interesting, but there was just something about Kohl that made him wary, some instinct inside of him telling him something was off about the lieutenant.

"To me, it's like he's already dead," he admitted, deciding to not comment of Kohl's strange preferences. "Maybe we should have Stace speak to Kita about this."

"You're right, of course," said Kohl. His thoughts remained with the troubles at hand, rather than Oren, the man. Kohl looked down at his PADD, and the results from the team's numerous experiments. Only when he met Oren's eyes again did Kohl remark, "All these tests will have been for nothing if we can't actually use it to drive the tribbles away from Galileo's critical systems."

Nodding, Oren took a step towards the holo-tank, looking at the tiny tribbles inside, so helpless. He wondered if they knew what was happening around them or if whatever measures they were going to take against them in the next few days would come as a complete shock.

While it looked to Kohl that Oren was examining, (or telepathically communicating?), with the tribbles, he watched Oren with a raised eyebrow and then he looked away. Kohl's hands could never be still for long. He flipped his PADD between his hands, and he scanned the display for any new results from the rest of the science team. He tapped on one that looked promising, and read the details.

"I'll see," Kohl said, "if I can grab some time with Stace now." He offered a bit of a smile to Oren, and a nod. "Thank you for sharing your thoughts."

Oren gave him a half smile and shrugged. "For what it was worth," he said with a self-deprecating chuckle. Returning the nod with one of his own, Oren turned back to the holo-tank and the tribbles, once again lost in his thoughts.


[OFF]

Oren Idris, Ph.D.
Archaeologist/Anthropologist
USS Galileo

Lieutenant Andreus Kohl
Assistant Chief Science Officer
USS Galileo

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