Preemptive Pneumonics (Part 1 of 2)

Posted on 09 Jun 2012 @ 11:51am by Lieutenant Lilou Zaren & Chief Warrant Officer 3 Lamar Darius

2,402 words; about a 12 minute read

Mission: Episode 01 - Project Sienna
Location: USS Galileo - Deck 7/8, Various
Timeline: MD 07 - 0015 hrs

[ON]

At the end of her shift, Lilou was exhausted. Her mind was spinning with numbers and functions, working through the calculations that weren't coming to the right answers yet for her. Sometimes, it took a little while of running those problems on her back burner before a solution came to her. But for now, she'd told Lamar she'd help him with his studies. And she hoped that in doing so, she could figure out... Well... Him. Not that she thought she would. Not tonight. Probably not any time soon. But he was a problem. He didn't fit her expectations. And until she could work her mind around the conflicting information, it was going to eat at her. She knew herself well enough to know that. Sitting down on the ground outside main engineering, she crossed her legs and pulled out her PADD to review the flight control console and basic testing information while she waited for him to make his way past on his midnight walk.

After his holodeck session with Lilou several hours previous, Lamar had grabbed a quick meal at the mess hall, followed by a relaxing sonic shower in his quarters. It had been a long, stressful day already, and as he put on a clean and pressed uniform, he welcomed the chance to finally get some rest. But first, he still had to complete his walk-through of the ship and then spend an hour or two studying for his flight qualification exam next week. Probably just an hour, he decided to himself. His extracurricular activities in the holodeck had drained the life from him, and he was now operating on autopilot as he wandered through the corridors of Deck 7. Barely any personnel were about, except for a Bolian crew member who nodded curtly to Lamar as he passed. Replying in kind, the chief moved past him and further down the hallway. As he rounded a T junction on his way to check main engineering, he squinted from a distance as he saw what appeared to be a woman sitting on the ground outside of main engineering. Strange, he thought, then frowned as he looked closer. Lilou? he wondered as he noticed her familiar frame.

His mind had been preoccupied with thoughts of her ever since he had left the holodeck. He couldn't deny to himself that she seemed a bit awkward and timid sometimes...and after the mess hall incident, he had been tempted to refer her to counseling out of concern for her mental state. But...he liked her. She was funny, often times unintentionally, and she made him laugh. She was also smart and full of ingenuity as she had just shown him earlier in the evening. And, of course, she was beautiful, especially underneath her engineering jumpsuit. Clasping his hands behind his back, he slowly approached her and stopped several feet away. "Hey." he said with a small smile, happy to see her.

She looked up from her PADD with her own small smile. "Hey," she replied, eased a bit by his demeanor. Maybe she really had been oversensitive earlier. It was so hard to distinguish between what she saw in others and what they actually felt; every reaction felt so real and absolute to her. Like now, he seemed wary standing far back from her despite the decided lack of physical barriers only a few hours before. How did people decide when what was appropriate? How was she supposed to know? Where were the rulebooks on that? She wondered if he'd forgotten that he'd asked for her help. He might have. It wasn't a big deal if that was the case; she could easily just go back to her quarters, sack out for a few hours, and get a jump on the next day. She'd done far more socializing in the last twenty-four hours than she had in months. It was a little exhausting. But also rewarding; at least, her time with Lamar and Will had been. 'People before ships,' she remembered the mantra her mother had given her to remember. Maybe not 'before', she conceded privately, but perhaps 'as well as'. "How's the walk?"

"Pretty routine so far," he replied with a shrug, "I'm almost finished, just have to check main engineering and some of the labs, then a final short trip down to Deck Eight." he replied, then bent over slightly and offered his large hand to help her up off the floor. "How was the rest of your shift? he asked, wondering if she had made any more progress with her new inventions.

"Worked myself into a mathematical and chemical corner," she admitted, taking his hand and standing. "It's on simmer right now," she lifted a shoulder, "but it'll come." She pressed her lips together in an awkward little smile. "I've been reviewing flight protocols and manual plotting guides. I forgot how much fun the word problems were."

"Fun?" he replied with a tilt of his head as he looked at Lilou, still holding onto her hand and giving it an affectionate squeeze. "I think me and you might have different ideas of fun." he said with a light laugh. "You know, I've never been very good at standardized testing..." he admitted. With a quick glance down the corridors to make sure there was no one in sight, he turned back to the young engineer and leaned down, placing a kiss on her soft lips. Although relationships aboard starships were generally accepted in Starfleet, he had to be careful to keep his personal life private and not let it visibly spill over into his professional duties. He was, afterall, the Chief of the Boat, and it was his job to set the example for the enlisted personnel and junior crew.

For a second, she thought that he was nervous about someone overhearing his lamentations about testing, but then he bent to kiss her and she deduced he was worried about someone seeing them. That was fine. She didn't really know what 'they' were exactly and she certainly wasn't a great fan of public displays of... well. Anything, affection included. There had been a time... but that was past. Now everything in the public eye seemed like an indication of weakness. She kissed him back, enjoying the pressure and the temporary evidence that she had not, in fact, irritated him past redemption, then drew back with a little smile. "It's not really standardized - the testing - from what I hear. It's just an overall workthrough of the basic tenets you should know to receive your certification. Tests are an opportunity to show off everything you know. Most of the time, you won't need more than really basic mechanics, but..." she grinned. "Maybe you just aren't thinking about them the right way."

"Probably not." he replied, in agreement that he could probably be doing his academics in a more efficient manner. What particular manner that was, he had no idea, but simply staring at PADD after PADD of study materials had been a tedious and difficult way for him to lean all of the required information. Looking down at their hands, he played with her fingers, rubbing his thumb softly over her small knuckles. "You're going to help me study, right?" he asked, hopeful that she would take him up on his previous offer.

"No," she said with a shake of her head, "I just decided to review my notes from Academy so I could tell you how easy it is." She smiled up at him, "Any particular things you want to work on?"

Lamar couldn't exactly be sure if she was being serious or simply sarcastic. Her social cues were sometimes hard for him to read, but he finally assumed that her smile meant she was just being smart with him. Which was fine, since he actually preferred women with a little spunk. Another quick glance up and down the corridor proved they were still alone, and he wrapped his hands around her waist and rubbed them lightly over her butt. "Well...I can think of a few things." he replied with a grin, not exactly referencing his studies.

Her brows drew together. "I was not aware that I'd written the methods of flight path specification there," she murmured, with an innocent blink. "Nor that I'd apparently written them in Braille. What were they again?"

Trying his best to keep a straight face, he moved his hands around slowly as he rubbed her, glancing up at the ceiling in mock thought as he pretended to read the blind man's language. "Mmm," he said as he found an especially fleshy area, "From what I can make out, it says that protocol requires all warp-factor course calculations be cross-checked through Starfleet's navigational database before being inputted into the nav computer." he said.

Smoothing her hands up his sleeves, she squeezed his upper arms lightly. The pleasure from the contact was warring with the very alert part of her brain that reminded her nanosecond by nanosecond that they were in a very public corridor. Sense won this round. "I think you're reading the wrong notes." She ducked out of his grasp just in time for the door to main engineering to open to reveal Rothgra taking off late from his shift. Silent nods were exchanged and the young Trill strode off towards the turbo lift. Lilou arched a brow at Lamar, "Methods of flight path specification. Not calculation protocols. You were checking engineering?"

Lamar heard the door next to them swish open and quickly shifted his position to casually lean against the wall as a junior officer passed, nodding to Lilou as he proceeded to wander down the corridor. That was close, he thought. Too close. They probably should get out of the main corridor and somewhere more private, he reasoned. "Yeah, I might as well finish up before it gets too late." he replied with a nod. "Want to walk with me?" he asked, "I only have a few more rooms to go on this deck, then a quick check of Deck Eight."

She gave a little nod accompanied by a hum and followed him into main engineering, crossing her wrists behind her back. "Don't mind the dead men walking; that's just Gamma shift," she murmured. "How would you know if something was amiss down here?" she asked. "What if the whole department went mad and decided to calmly watch the consoles while the engines prepared to overload?"

"Well then I guess we would be preparing for a warp core breach." he replied with a chuckle. With a quick shake of his head, he went on to elaborate. "I'm not an engineer or an operations officer, so I guess I wouldn't be able to really tell if crew members were neglecting their duties unless it was clearly visible. But that's not really what a walk-through is for; I'm more looking for any potential security problems or anything that might warrant an emergency. For example, suppose a crewman had a sudden medical emergency and collapsed on the floor near an alcove, or inside of a rarely-visited storage room...if no one was around to find and help them, they might not survive until the next shift's personnel arrive." he said, citing a rather extreme yet plausible example.

She'd spent hours broken and bleeding in an access hatch, slipping in and out of consciousness, before she'd managed to climb up through the bowels of the ship to the hatch just outside sickbay. Her chest felt tight; gritting her teeth, she made herself focus on the nearest console, studying the warp core outputs until it slowly loosened again. How different would things have been if someone had found her and brought her out? She thought about the following week she'd spent in the sickbay having bones and organs repaired, making her report and all the wonderful things that had ensued. It all would have come, just the same, only sooner. But if someone had walked through when they were actually... that might have made a difference. Maybe. Or there'd have been another body lying in sickbay. She shook her head, dragging herself back to the present, unsure how much time had passed. "Hm? Oh, right, well, that's- good," she said, lightly touching the side of her jaw, her nose. Fine now. I'm fine now. "Might want to try a lifeforms scanner while you do it. Sometimes people are where you don't expect them to be."

Lamar watched as Lilou seemed to lose herself in her thoughts for several moments, touching different part of her face before finally responding to him. Something about her reply seemed...strange, but he was unable to put his finger on exactly why. "A life-form scanner?" he asked, then paused for a moment in thought. "Well, I check all of the rooms on the ship during my walk-through...so aside from the Jeffries tubes and access hatches, I pretty much cover all of the ship. And I can't imagine that anyone would be stuck in either of those without a reason to be there." he said. It was not as if he was looking for stowaways, rather just to make sure the crew was safe and the ship was in order.

"Mm," she concurred absently. It was a common point of view. She and the other engineers spent a large percentage of their time crawling around the access hatches and ducts of the ship on routine maintenance and checks, but no one seemed to remember that. Sometimes she wondered if Command thought that they actually did all their work from the observation consoles in main engineering. That the ODN lines repaired themselves at the touch of a button. She'd learned better than to try and convince anyone outside of her own department of the facts. It was out of character for her to have brought it up at all. Maybe it had been the memory. Or the fact that Lamar had appeared so conscientious. Either way, she knew her place and telling him how to do his job sure as hell wasn't it.

To Be Continued

[OFF]
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MWO Lilou Peers
Assistant Chief Engineering Officer
USS Galileo

MCPO Lamar Darius
Chief of the Boat
USS Galileo
NPC'd by Lirha Saalm

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