A Late Night

Posted on 03 Oct 2012 @ 7:03am by
Edited on on 03 Oct 2012 @ 7:22am

1,890 words; about a 9 minute read

Mission: Episode 02 - Resupply
Location: Vulcan Capital City, Vulcan
Timeline: MD02, 01:00

There were three messages waiting for Maenad in her hotel room. The room's automated greeting had told her so once the door had closed. The lights had also turned themselves on for her, but she immediately dimmed them. Her head was still swimming in romulan ale, but she wasn't complaining. After kicking off her shoes, she made her way to the computer desk and turned it on.

The first message was from Starfleet Academy asking if her accommodations were suitable, the second was from the Archives, and the third was from Ben telling her that representatives from the Science Academy were looking for her. She sighed, feeling the sudden tide of fatigue beginning to roll in. She went through the Archives' message first, learning that they had deposited her requests with the hotel staff downstairs, saving her from having to make the trip herself. That was a relief. She didn't bother opening the other two and turned the computer off, letting out a long audible sigh as she leant back in her chair.

She didn't know how long she sat like that, probably five minutes or so, maybe longer, but eventually she got up and walked into the bathroom. She appeared ghostly in the mirror; her skin was stark white against the blackness of the living room behind her. Maenad paused to look herself over, staring herself in the eyes for several seconds. Red veins grew out from around her green irises. Her hair was just as black as the living room and still looked the same way that it had several hours ago. Only her eyes, and the grey patches forming under them, revealed just how tired she was.

Maenad turned on the cold water and let it run for about ten seconds to get it colder, holding a wrist under the tap until she felt it was right. She cupped some water and splashed it on her face several times before drying with a hand-cloth. Some of her lipstick and eyeliner had come off, she saw, but didn't care. She was just trying to jolt herself awake. She added hot water to the cold so she could properly wash herself; after a few minutes of wiping her lips and padding her cheeks and eyes with a soapy cloth, and after repeated careful examinations in the mirror, she dried herself and returned to the living room.

Standing now in the darkness, Maenad undressed herself for sleep. Though, as she started toward bed, she stopped just before pulling back the covers. Standing there she felt strange, and frowned. She was thinking of what she was supposed to do now. The deafening ring of silence seemed louder than normal to her. It was almost midnight, she knew, and a second ago she hadn't contemplated anything other than going to bed. But, the water had woken her up, and she wasn't the kind of person who went to bed if only because it was late. Maenad was always up late. It wasn't an abnormal thing for her to go to bed as the sun started coming up, really. Midnight was usually early, in fact.

Maenad knew that the water had tricked her into thinking she was more awake than she actually was. She really was ready to sleep; it had been an incredibly long day, after all. If she were to go to sleep now, she could get up early and on be her way back to Earth first thing. Or, she thought, I could leave now and be back on Earth by lunchtime tomorrow. Her business was finished on Vulcan, too - thanks to the Archives delivering her requests rather than making her go them.

She looked at the crumpled white dress on the floor and then to her suitcase beside the computer desk. She could sleep in the living section of the shuttle. There was a bed back there, Maenad reminded herself. Set it to autopilot and sleep the whole way. Get to Earth almost a whole day earlier and get a headstart on your project. She sighed. Just like that, she was getting dressed again. Maenad threw on a pair of old pants and a wool sweater, stuffed her dress into the suitcase, and zipped it up.

"Computer, delete all messages sent to Maenad Panne." She said as she stuck her feet into her everyday boots. Before she left, Maenad pulled back the window curtains for a quick look outside. From thirty storeys up, she could see quite a distance over the Vulcan capital. She watched the twinkling lights of the skyscrapers and flying vehicles for a few seconds before looking up at the starry sky. Vulcan looked better at night, she thought; the day looked way too dusty. Almost like Mars.

Maenad, picking up her suitcase along the way, walked to the door and, before leaving for the last time, made a visual scan of her room for any lefth belogings. The elevator was shortly down the hall, but her long legs made purposeful strides. The faster she was out of here, the better. It took a minute or two to get down to the hotel lobby; at this hour when everyone was asleep, the elevator thankfully didn't stop on any other floors.

When the doors parted, Maenad stepped out into the expansive and rather bland-looking lobby of the hotel. There were leather chairs and sofas off to one side and a few computer access terminals, knock-offs of Vulcan artefacts on carefully arranged plinths, and a dark red carpet that led to the exit, or the entrance depending on how you looked at it, on top of a luxurious mineral floor. The lighting came from shaded lights on the wall that lit the ceiling which made, thought Maenad, a comfortable atmosphere. There was a gentle harp-like music playing over the communication system that completed everything.


"One room for two," Maenad overheard the male of a male/female couple ask the receptionist. She was standing three or four metres behind them waiting to check out. The clerk gave directions to their room and instructions on what sort of services the hotel offered and whatever else he thought was necessary. Maenad had been given the whole spiel on her arrival too, but she couldn't remember everything that she had been told. That, or she hadn't fully listened. The vulcans turned around, both nodded to her, and they walked, arm in arm, toward the elevator. Maenad thought it was odd that two vulcans might share a hotel room for a night - vulcans didn't strike her as the love-making type. She made a mental shrug of it; maybe they were just going to sleep and that was it, maybe she was jumping to conclusions. She hoped not.

"Checking out?" The clerk asked, pulling Maenad from her thoughts. She set her suitcase on the floor next to her.

"Yes," she replied. "Maenad Panne."

The male clerk made some adjustments on the computer and nodded to her. "Thank you."

"The Vulcan Archives left some packages for me." She said, handing him a piece of Starfleet identification.

"Ah, yes," the vulcan nodded. "One moment." He disappeared into a back room and returned a moment later with a large package.

Maenad flashed her eyebrows at him, "Thank you." She took the package under one arm and picked up her suitcase with the other, and began walking not toward the exit but toward the accessway to the hotel's shuttlebay where she had left her Type 11 - she wished it were hers, it was the Academy's. The heavy shuttlebay doors opened after unlocking for her and she stepped into the massive room. There were at least a dozen shuttlecraft of varying makes parked throughout the bay. Hers wasn't a far walk, no more than twenty metres.

Her boots clacked against the metal floor, echoing off the high walls and ceiling. There was a white noise of air-exchange coming from the vents high above; Maenad realised that it was much colder in here than it was in the hotel, feeling a shiver climb up her spine. Arriving at her shuttle, the Type 11, she stood before it, taking in its size. When thinking of shuttlecraft, she always imagined them to be much smaller than they truly were. Standing next to a Type 11 made her feel tiny; yes, the Type 11 was a larger shuttle than, say, the common Types 6, 9, or 15, but still. After a moment, Maenad activated the door and climbed inside.

She left her things in the shuttle's living area, opened the door to the cockpit and took a seat. She activated the shuttle's systems and ran through a series of checks before starting the launch sequence. Satisfied, Maenad hailed the controller that she was ready to depart and promptly received clearance. She carefully raised the shuttle off the floor just as the shuttlebay doors had finished opening, then maneuvered it forward over the other few shuttles beneath. A bit nervously and probably to an observer much too slowly, Maenad brought the shuttle to the doors and out into the night Vulcan air. For somebody who wasn't a pilot by trade, she preferred to play it safe. Low-level and cramped flying was not something that she particularly enjoyed.

Once Maenad had cleared the city and the traffic lanes, she took the shuttle up and into space. She found it exciting now; spaceflight was something that people, herself included, often took for granted. With transporters, it was rare that people got to observe the transition from planet to space. Rising from the ground to see the city, the terrain, the clouds and upper atmosphere, the curvature of the planet and then that beautiful flux of black and blue sky that happened at only the highest altitudes. From daylight to real sunlight, the only separation being the ship's hull - there was a lot more going on than people typically thought and Maenad found it wonderful.

She sent a message to Starfleet informing them to expect her arrival at eleven-thirty in the morning, perhaps sooner, a journey of ten or so hours, and informed Vulcan that she was leaving orbit. Before plotting the final course, Maenad spent a few minutes appreciating the beauty of Vulcan from space. It looked much nicer from up here, she thought. Finally, she turned away and focused on the starchart displayed on the console in front of her. She made a course for the Sol system, making minor corrections around objects she didn't want to deal with or go near. The lanes between Vulcan and Earth were uneventful at best and travelled more than well enough for her to be concerned about anything. She jumped to warp six, felt the vibrations in her feet and welcomed the background noise of the engines in her ears.

For a few minutes she watched the starfield stretch past the windows before making her return to the living area. She left the cockpit door open for comfort's sake and sat on the bed that she had set up for her trip to Vulcan several days ago. She then took off her shoes and clothes for the second time that night and climbed beneath the covers. She told the computer to turn off the lights and to inform her of anything relevant to her course. Within minutes she was fast asleep.

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