Crunching the Dragon

Posted on 04 Mar 2015 @ 6:57am by Lieutenant Asahi Kita & Petty Officer 3rd Class Ellsworth Hudson

2,891 words; about a 14 minute read

Mission: Episode 07 - Sojourn
Location: USS Galileo - Deck 5, Holodeck 2
Timeline: MD 45 - 1332 Hrs

ON

It hadn't been Asahi's intention to check on the holodecks just hours before the Galileo's departure, but he had heard word that there was a minor malfunction that just could not have been neglected. If the issue didn't have to do with the holomatter's radius projection program, the Chief of Engineering wouldn't have dragged his toolbox all the way up and far enough away from his office, where he thought himself more useful.

At some point, he had found it necessary to make a call to Operations, though all anyone could have made of the request was a garble, followed by an indistinct, animalistic bellow, which was followed shortly thereafter by a string of colorful yet highly muffled Denobulan. "I don't care who comes down here, I just need an extra set of hands, goddamnit!" were the only clear words that could have been made out, before Asahi cut the comm link and returned to his angry tantrum.

To the unlucky fellow who decided to respond to Asahi's plea, they would have found the Holodeck's outside display blinking the words 'MAINTENANCE MODE' in alarming, red letters, and a black and white sheepdog sitting not too far from the entrance, waiting obediently for its master to return.

Ellsworth hated covering for people, mostly because he didn't know how to do anyone else's job; he barely knew how to do his own. So when the call from the holodeck came in and he happened to be the operations "officer" on duty, it gave him a sense of impending dread. He didn't know the first thing about fixing holodecks or regulating power flow or repairing ODN junctions, and he had every intention of going down to the holodeck and telling whoever that himself. Arriving to find the sheepdog outside the door, he wondered briefly if this was one of those incidents he'd read about where holodeck characters "escaped" from the holodeck. If so, at least it was just a dog and not a rabid targ.

Upon entering the holodeck, a large, angry-looking, green and blue dragon stood out against the black and yellow grid. Hanging in-between the otherwise threatening creature's teeth was the tiny engineer, who seemed to have gotten himself 'eaten' between his request at Operations and now. The creature was otherwise immobile, and Asahi himself seemed alive and well, considering the flailing his legs seemed to be doing, as that was all that could have been made out from the entrance of the holodeck. "Computer, for the last time, END PROGRAM!" was bellowed from the depths of the dragon's belly, though the command went absolutely ignored.

Ellsworth had quickly made the transition from being alarmed to amused as he heard the voice reverberate within the dragon and saw the kicking legs sticking out of its mouth. Poor guy. Probably some low-level nobody like me, abandoned down here in the holodeck. He grinned to himself, folded his arms, and leaned back against the archway. No reason he couldn't have a little fun...

"Something tells me the computer isn't listening."

"That's because the computer isn't registering Federation Standard as a language and I can't tell why." Asahi could have theorized why for an hour, but he didn't have time to pontificate. The flailing stopped as the engineer came to a realization. "... Wait, is there someone else out there? How far up am I? Did anything else spawn? What's going on out there?"

"Oh, I'd say it looks like you're about 6 meters up, but then again you know how tricky the holodeck can be. Maybe you're really only 6 inches off the floor," Ellsworth said, grinning. "Just looks like a big lizard thing to me, nothing else out here except me. It's got wings, though. You don't think it's going to fly off with you, will it? I wonder how come the computer isn't recognizing your language. Maybe I should just pop open this control panel and start rearranging isolinear chips until it starts working." His grin broadened; engineers hated it when you touched their isolinear chips.

Asahi couldn't have been certain, but he could have almost swore whoever this was had been enjoying this moment. If it were anyone else, he may have found this hilarious himself; it wasn't every day you saw someone's fanny hanging out of a holodeck simulation like this. He may have even laughed at himself if he were in a better mood, but of course that was not the case, especially when he heard the words 'isolinear chips' come out of the other's mouth. "Don't you dare!" What kind of Operations officer was this, anyway? Surely they knew that rearranging isolinear chips in a holodeck program could have had dire consequences. Not that he could have thought of anything off the top of his head, but there were consequences and they were dire!

Huffing, Asahi wiggled, placing both feet at the edge of the creature's mouth in an attempt to pull himself out of the sticky situation. "Just help me get out of here. I froze the program, so it won't attack you-I don't think-then we can dismantle this blasted Holodeck and turn it into a freezer or whatever you want, I don't care."

"A day spa with a sauna and a heated pool and a holographic Nuvian masseuse, because we shouldn't let the holoemitters go to complete waste, right?" Ellsworth said, peeling himself off the wall to walk over to the enormous creature. He eyed it, looking for the best hand and foot holds, then took to climbing up the creature. It reminded him of his youth, scaling fruit trees in the courtyards of his various foster homes to escape whatever "horrible" family he'd been sent to live with.

Eventually, Ellsworth made his way up the dragon's neck and clambered on top of its head. Holding on to the horns, he leaned over to the side and stuck in head as far as he could into the mouth.

"Hmm, kinda dank in here, huh?"

From the inside of the creature's gullet, it seemed almost peaceful, in that dark, dreary kind of way. If you ignored the teeth, it was sort of homely. "I was thinking of making it the decor in my quarters. What better way to welcome people, right? 'Welcome to my humble abode. Thought Engineering was crazy? Well, let me prove you wrong with the insides of this dragon."

He sighed, wiggling around best he could to give the other a good look. "I think they'd send me on mental health leave with that, if they could afford to."

It was hard to tell in the dim light of the dragon's interior, but the engineer's face looked very familiar. Ellsworth squinted and then went wide-eyed - he'd been taking it in stride so far, but he was pretty sure you weren't supposed to be mouthing off to the ship's chief engineer. He cringed a little, thinking how long of a lecture this was going to draw out of Van Zyl should he find out about it.

"I'm so sorry, Lieutenant Kita, I didn't realize it was you," Ellsworth mumbled. "Uhhh, I'm not sure how I can... Er, I mean, what can I do to help, sir?"

Asahi gave it a good attempt to wiggle around and figure out who was talking to him. The angle was all off, and all he could see was a hand-or was that a nose? He grunted. "It's not like my pips are on my kiester. Just help me out of here. I can't tell if it's the uniform or the belt or what, but something's stuck on this thing's teeth and now I can't get out." He pulled to prove his point, revealing the bunch of fabric that had caught on one of the beast's lower teeth. "Then you can help me fix the gaping hole Captain Holliday managed to put in the damned thing."

Ellsworth stared for a moment, watching. The fabric was on the upper part of his uniform, on his side and waist. He had no idea how to help without touching him, and he had no idea how to touch an officer without touching an officer. His recent challenges with the fraternization policies and the resurgent need to "make it" in Starfleet had left him completely paranoid about what was and was not appropriate behavior.

"Uh, okay. This is the captain's fault? Or you named this thing Captain Holliday?" Ellsworth asked, reaching into the monster's gaping maw. He worked at the fabric and the razor sharp teeth, trying to untangle them from one another. "Sorry, this might tickle. This isn't really in the Ops manual, so I'm kinda wingin' it..."

"Tickling's the least of my worries-er... what was your name again?." Oblivious to Ellsworth's concerns, Asahi adjusted his position, leaning back in the hopes that he would be freed from this faster. "Holliday had to go through a last-minute holodeck program. Stress-reliever or something like that. The dragon's one of my program subjects-though, now that you mention it, I might name this thing that. He's just as stubborn."

"I'm Hudson. Er, Petty Officer Third Class Ellsworth Hudson, sir," Ellsworth said, correcting himself. He tried his best to speed up the process of extracting the chief engineer from the dragon's mouth, feeling more than a little nervous about the content of the discussion. Were they supposed to be speaking about the captain like that? He'd never even seen the man, but by reputation he didn't seem like the sort of person one should call 'stubborn.' Maybe the senior staff were allowed extraordinary liberties... "Are you sure you don't want me to, uh... You know, like, get somebody else? I know a lot about logistics and supply routes, but...."

"Hudson?..." The name sounded vaguely familiar. It was likely they had worked on some sort of project together, which made sense, seeing as Operations worked intimately close with Engineering. He frowned, as Ellsworth continued. "... Supply routes? Logistics? What's your-"

As soon as the material had been freed from the maw of the terrible beastie, Asahi slipped out of its mouth, falling backwards onto the ground below with a whomp! He stared up at the ceiling of the holodeck, shocked, blinking rapidly for a few short moments. His frown returned shortly after, as a realization washed over him. "You aren't part of the software end of Operations, huh?"

Ellsworth stifled a laugh as Asahi tumbled to the floor. Straddling the head of the dragon, he grinned down at the chief engineer, partially delighted by the fall, partially surprised by how young and cute, and partially amused at the suggestion he had anything to do with "real" Operations work. "Nope, I'm the quartermaster. I order stuff and scan cargo. I don't know anything about holodecks... But I can follow directions." His brow furrowed. "Usually."

"Hell." As Asahi stared up at the young Quartermaster, all he could truly think about was what karmic force he had upset this time around. He couldn't blame Ellsworth for the bizarre turn of events (he didn't expect the younger man to have volunteered to tinker in the holodeck), but Asahi didn't have a huge number of options to turn his frustration toward. "Well, it really shouldn't take that long. All I really needed was for someone to run-into the software codings and temporarily disable the language settings so I could turn Big Blue here off. Thought I could do it myself, but it needs an Ops clearance to get in and I can't tell why."

"Oh," Ellsworth said. He didn't understand anything except 'Ops clearance' but at least that was something he could do. He shifted around the dragon's head, slid down the neck and hit the deck with a thud. He took a little bow then grinned on the way to the arch, where he input his low-level Ops credentials. "Sorry I can't be more help, sir. Maybe next time I can order you a sword and shield? Maybe some armor?"

Asahi sat up, frowning. "Ops clearance saved me the trouble of having to re-route the security system and causing a ruckus with another part of the staff, so I'd say you helped out tremendously." As he waited for the computer to give a chime, he snorted out a laugh. "You should see the whole program when it's not glitching out. I have it set up to continue stories and set difficulty levels and 'classes,' so to speak. Though I do appreciate the offer."

Ellsworth looked quite pleased with the praise and lifted an eyebrow at the description of the program. "That sounds like fun! They had a place like that in the capital on Risa. I mean, those kind of programs. Some Terran ran it. It was mostly like a place to drop your kids, but sometimes I'd go." He grinned sheepishly. "I thought it was fun. You could throw fireballs and stuff. Can you do that in your program?"

"You mean like mages?" Standing and straightening up, Asahi nodded. He hadn't had anyone show an interest in such programming in awhile, so he was more than happy to brag about it. "Yep. I'm working out the kinks for the higher level spells-if you're overzealous and not careful, you could do some serious internal holodeck damage... then again, the same could be said for a sword or an axe."

"Yes, like mages! I don't like those other ones. It's too close. I once went on a holodeck excursion with petty officer Evek and there were these zombie things you had to hit in the head with like...picks and stuff. Their brains would explode everywhere! It was so disgusting," Ellsworth said, wrinkling up his nose at the thought of simulated goo on his clothing. "I'd rather strike them down with a lightning bolt or something. It's much less messy, no blood on your shoes or anything."

Asahi's nose crinkled. "Zombies?" That was one scenario the engineer had left out of his holodeck programming attempts. The last thing he wanted was a psychiatric evaluation because he was bashing heads of pretend-undead. "Dragons and demons are better. You've got something there with the lightning bolts though, I haven't thought about adding electricity attacks to the program. It might be something to work on..."

Now in a much more composed state, Asahi turned toward the great offending beast. "Computer, end program!" The hologram shimmered, before dispersing into thin air, revealing the gash in the holodeck wall behind it. "... Well... Ellsworth was it?-Thanks. If you ever wanna slip away for some holodeck time, I can add you to the access list, and you can mess around in it and tell me what you think. Maybe we can go on a joint adventure through it some time?"

Ellsworth stared at the hole in the wall with wide eyes, thankful he didn't have to try to repair it. "Uh, what?" He blinked and turned to look at Asahi; the prospect of being invited to something by a member of the senior staff would have ordinarily been paralyzingly exciting and frightening, but the chief engineer seemed so amiable that he felt comfortable enough to answer. "Of course, sir, that would be great! Uh, if you don't mind... I didn't mean to invite myself."

Asahi seemed ignorant of the gaping tear in the holodeck. "Don't be silly, I invited you. It's something I developed over the past year, so I'd love some feedback on it. Besides, sometimes simms are better with company. If it makes you feel better, I could ask you to order some panelling to replace the damaged holodeck bulkhead in exchange or something."

A Van Zyl Lecture surfaced in his head about the importance of avoiding favoritism and not engaging in 'favors.' Ellsworth fought to roll his eyes after recalling it and ultimately decided that something a senior officer requests probably trumped some minor regulation; besides, the hole would have to be repaired sooner or later, so why not sooner?

"Sure! That works. I bet I could even get someone from starbase to bring it over before we push off. I'm pretty sure one of the guys in supply control likes me," Ellsworth said with a sheepish grin. "And, uh, you can just let me know when you plan to run the simulation again? I'll read up on it and come prepared, promise!"

Asahi was clearly of a different mindset, focusing more on socializing as opposed to protocol and random etiquette. "That'd be great. I didn't think anyone would have had time to poke in a holodeck during these Klingon wargames, but at least now Engineering won't have to hear about the random hovering square in their scenarios." Tilting his head to get a better look at Ellsworth, he smiled. "I'll send you some good reference material on the world I modeled it after."

"Okay!" Ellsworth said, sounding a little overenthusiastic. Reference material sounded a lot like 'reading' to him, but the idea of the simulation itself was appealing enough to endure such a torturous task. "It's a deal!"

OFF

PO3 Ellsworth Hudson
Quartermaster
USS Galileo
[ PNPC - Mott ]

Lieutenant Asahi Kita
Chief Engineering OFficer
USS Galileo

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