What Shall We Do With A Drunken Sailor? (Part I of II)

Posted on 30 Jan 2018 @ 4:27pm by Ensign Miraj Derani & Chief Warrant Officer 3 Lamar Darius

2,068 words; about a 10 minute read

Mission: Episode 15 - Emanation
Location: Earth - San Francisco, Sam's Bar and Grill
Timeline: MD 102, 2303 hrs

[ON]

Miraj looked at the bottom of the glass. It took a moment to focus, as she was already two sheets to the wind, and working hard on a third. The rum was gone. That hadn't taken long. She indicated for the barman to give her a refill, and he silently filled her tumbler all but a finger's width to the brim. Then he looked at the depleted level of the bottle. It was half gone. He set it down next to her.

She started to drink it, only the burning sensation in her throat of the neat rum keeping her from drinking it in one go. She wondered how much she needed to obliterate the disappointment. "You don't look like you're having any fun," said a voice. Miraj looked round. The man on the stool next to her was old enough to be her father, going a bit bald, with a few strands fighting a valiant but doomed rearguard action against the retreating hairline.

"I'm not." Miraj replied, speaking slowly, then knocking back another two fingers worth of rum. The action made her sway unsteadily on the stool.

The man helped her balance, one hand on the small of her back. Then he reached over and topped up her drink with the open rum bottle. "You look like a girl who likes to have her bit of fun,"

Miraj drank some more. "I'd rather look like a tht...ss...starfleet officer." she slurred.

"Ah? Didn't pass academy entrance?" The man put his hand on her knee, "Well, there's plenty of ways to take your mind of that?" The hand moved upwards an inch or so.

Miraj looked at his hand in confusion, too unsteady and too drunk to express her surprise that someone would do something so intimate when they'd barely exchanged three words.

"What do you say," he pushed, as his hand got higher, towards the hem of her skirt. "Want to go find somewhere to party, forget your troubles?"

Her head spun. "I don't know," she said, speaking slowly to stop her words slurring.

She tried to turn back to her drink, pull her leg away, but the man pressed closer. "Come on sweetheart, you need to loosen up. It will make you feel better."

Suddenly, from behind both of them, a deep but familiar and jovial voice called out as a new person approached. "Hey, kid!"

Miraj turned, "Lamar!" she squealed in delight, wobbling off the bar stool and tripping over her own feet to give him a clumsy, alcohol infused hug.

Dressed in a casual black t-shirt with blue jeans and beige boots on his feet, Lamar Darius has been passing by the bar called Sam's on the street in San Francisco when he'd spotted a bright pink head of hair he thought looked familiar. A quick detour across the road quickly revealed it was indeed her -- Miraj Derani, his young Boslic department chief. At least, she used to be. Before their ship had been destroyed. He'd served under the ensign for the better part of an Earth year and still had fond memories of her. Unlike most of the sackless ensigns fresh out of the Academy, she was competent and passionate. Not a model officer, but then again no ensign ever was, and he thought she was doing quite well for her first year in.

The creeper next to her looked at Darius's physique, the tall straight body, the broad shoulders and built up arms. He frowned with frustration then made himself scared with an annoyed scowl at the Warrant Officer.

Miraj didn't even notice him going. "Lamar!" she squeaked, rum vapours on her breath as she tried to reach around his shoulders, gave up on trying to reach around and settled for his waist. "Where have you been? I haven't seen you in aaaaaaagggggesssss!" She slurred the last word out with exaggeration.

"I was on vacation!" he answered with a chuckle, returning her hug and lifting her up lightly off her feet before setting her back down. He then lowered his head next to hers with a sideways grin. "Everything okay? How many drinks have you had?" Lamar'd noticed the strange man oddling over Miraj and was grateful he'd left. He wanted to ask if he'd been a bother, but then quickly noticed her intoxication when she squeezed him tightly and breathed on him.

She bit her lip, swayed towards her bottle, checked it, then swigged a mouthful. "One more than a minute ago?" she asked him, before scaling her bar stool. "And there be a tot left. The rum is not gone! Huzzah!" She held the bottle out to him.

Sure, why not? he reasoned with himself while he looked at the alcoholic offer. It was late in the evening and the streets were full of festive young people from all species. Taking the bottle, he took a long drink then handed it back. "So...what are you celebrating?"

Miraj gestured with the bottle, a wild swing that almost took her off the stool "That I, Miraj, am a salty dog who can make the most lubberly of ancient tubs fly like the sprightliest of freshly christened clippers and can make all other buckos, from the scurviest swab to the freshest of sprogs, look like the rankest amateur." She said expansively, swigging back yet more rum. "And that Tom Paris, that Tom Parishhhsh, thinks me - me!- be the greatest coxswain he ever laid a sea-eye on." And then she gave a bitter snort, wavering slightly, "But he wants 'someone with more command experience'." she downed another mouthful. "Not someone barely out the shadow of the foc'sle." And then she belched.

"Uh. Right," Darius replied. He had absolutely no idea what she'd rambled on about in the first part of her sentence, but he caught mention of the famed CO. Something about not having enough pips or postings, he assumed. "So you requested assignment on Voyager and got turned down?" he tried to clarify.

Miraj looked glum. "Voyager, Endeavour, Galileo, Koxinga. Nobody wants me." Another finger of rum disappeared. "And no one be sayin' why. It's like I'm a Jonah."

"Oh. You didn't get the job?" he wondered with a frown. "For any of them?" It sounded ludicrous that she -- a talented conn officer -- couldn't land a posting coming off shore leave. "Even Galileo?" he asked, remembering she'd listed it as one of those she hadn't been approved for.

"At least I got to interview with Voyager." She sighed, giving Lamar another whiff of alcohol fumes. "Endeavour and Koxinga didn't bother to reply and whoever's in charge of Galileo rejected with no reason. Syphilitic bilge sucking dung weasels, the lot of them."

He playfully snatched the bottle from her and took a long drink before handing it back again. "Did you reapply to any of them? I had to do it three times on the Gal to finally get an interview." He then paused and looked at her with curious eyes. "Wait...you don't know?"

"Don't know what?" Miraj slurred, confused. She eyed the rum. It wasn't gone yet, and she was still conscious. That would not do. One or both of them had to be done for by the end of the night.

He leaned close and spoke quietly in her ear, not knowing how many drunk-camouflaged fleet officers might be present at the bar. "Some assignments you have to apply more than once. Especially the volunteer ones. Something about the capn's wanting to make sure they get the best of the best. Hell, I had to request my old assignment in the Orbital Drop Batallion four times before they accepted me for training. And I wasn't some no-good pencil pusher," he chuckled.

Her brows furrowed in confusion as she took it in. "Hold fast, you mean they're jerking me about?" The sadness was being forced out by anger now. "They want me to what? Grovel? Feed their egos by begging to be under their command?" She necked another tot of rum, and said some thing short and anglo-saxon. She didn't give a second's thought to who might be listening. "What makesh them think they're so special that they can play games with people? Why would anyone wanna be on a ship for three days with someone who can't treat them honestly, let alone three years?"

Seeing Miraj drunk and flustered was, admittedly, mildly amusing to the chief warrant officer. He grinned while wrapping a large arm around her slender shoulders. "I feel you, trust me. But it's been fleet standard for hundreds of years that volunteer postings are the hardest to get. Shit, you know why? Because what they don't tell you is that nine out of ten times, that ship ain't coming back and it's a one-way trip in the name of 'exploration'."

She gave him the sort of exasperated sceptical look that only someone who had been a teenager longer than they'd been a legal adult could give someone. "I call bullshit." She said with the firm pronouncement of the well and truly bladdered. "The world be knowing long voyages be dangeroush. No jack'd go on account if they weren't prepared to trade rissshk for the glory." She slugged down some more. There was only about two fingers left in the bottle now. "My lifetime ambition be to fly unteshted spaceships into the'reticooll quantum inver-, invvv-" she gave up, "weird shit no-one understands. We don't need bein' jerked about to know what we be askin' for."

Lamar listened to the strange words that made little sense to him, and instead grabbed the bottle from her hand to take another drink as well. "I don't know about glory but I love a good risk," he chuckled after he swallowed. What accent was she speaking? he wondered. It sounded like old Shakespearian-early-Earth nonsense but he knew little about suck classical matters. "I think you should reapply. Or talk to the cap'n. Just don't let it beat you down. And tell them you know me, I'll give you a good reference,"" he winked.

Miraj snorted and said, in a short, pithy, way, that her opinion on the matter could be summed up in the imperative of copulate with fecal matter. "I'll no be a begging like a cur for a job. All I be needing is eight hundred and fifty hours at the conn to go for the tesht pilot program. A long term voyage is the quickesht way. But I'd rather go be asshigned to a hundred two week survey trips than grovel to some Cap'n who resorts to dick moves."

"Test pilot program?" he wondered, thinking that it sounded like a cool alternate posting. "So you don't want a regular duty post, you're just doing it for the hours?"

"Need a t'oushand hours, all official like, to qualify. Surely, a sailin' the unknown on the raggedy edge be better'n the calm waters o' the trade lanes, but I got plenty 'sperience with rough sailin' already. Jush' need the conn hours. Don't really matter how I get em." The young hybrid tipped her head back and glugged the rum bottle till all but a tiny amount was gone.

"If you don't care how you get 'em, then what's the problem?" he asked. The more he thought about it, the more he realized he didn't understand her situation. Why would she be upset about not getting a posting if it didn't mean much to her? Unless...maybe she did care but was trying to hide it? "I know a couple guys doing courier jobs who I can talk to," he offered. "Nothing exciting but it's some easy light transport in the sectors around here."

"I don't care how I get 'em. But a fine ship would have been nice." She swigged the last of her rum, "And the problem wash that no-one is posting me even to courier jobs. And now the problem is that no-one will post me to anything decent unless I'm prepared to choke on a cap'n's beardsplitter for the privilege."

To be continued...

CWO3 Lamar Darius
Flight Control Officer
USS Galileo-A
[PNPC Saalm]

Ensign Miraj Derani

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