Harsh Welcoming

Posted on 21 Jul 2023 @ 9:05pm by Ensign Tora Zalos & Commander Morgan Tarin

4,318 words; about a 22 minute read

Mission: Episode 18 - Cold Station 31
Location: Regula I - Level 16, Senior Office Module
Timeline: MD 16, 2106 hrs

[ON]

The exit door from Regula I's forward-side docking and transporter module hissed open at approximately 2100 hours local time. Out stepped Commander Morgan Tarin in all of her fatigued glory; a tall and light-skinned Human woman dressed in a traditional red-collared collared uniform with three solid gold rank pips adorning her collar. Her hazel eyes remained piercing as she took in the sight her old-yet-new surroundings. With a momentary pause, she halted to reshuffle her small duffle bag from one shoulder to the other in order to push some of her loosely-curled dark brown hair back behind one ear. Then she was back to business, resuming her long strides while quickly walking through the corridor toward her designated senior officer module where she might finally be able to finish her administrative duties then get a few hours of sleep.

Tarin paid little attention to the personnel around her while she walked. Scatterings of civilian scientists and the occasional Starfleet officer were a standard sight dating back to when she'd been the station's strategic operations officer. That portion of her career felt like a short lifetime ago before she'd been assigned as Galileo's temporary captain just three weeks prior. This new assignment had been good for her, all things considered. At least, so she thought. The burden of command was new yet also not too unfamiliar from her previous days as first officer aboard USS Lexington. But it meant she was the one ultimately responsible for everything aboard her starship. And it meant she was the first one aboard and the last one to depart during docking evolutions.

Tora had expected her first glimpses of the Galileo to be of it in its battle damaged state - seeing it for the first time had been the idea, of course. She hadn't expected it to be as bad as it now was, though - gosh, what exactly had happened to her to put her in such a state? She'd positioned herself at the docking module amongst the smattering of personnel waiting to welcome the Galileo's crew back, chatting to the occasional crew member as they walked by her. You know, to get to know them. She was going to work with them for the next few years after all.

Of particular notice was the last person to exit the ship - she hadn't counted exactly how many people had offloaded, but this woman seemed to be the last for a while at least. Tora hadn't exactly seen the entire crew roster, but judging by her rank and the color of her uniform it wasn't too hard to guess who she was.

"Commander Blake? Hi! I'm ensign Tora Zalos, I'll be joining the crew of the Galileo..." She smiled and held up the PADD containing her transfer orders for her to see as she trotted alongside her.

Morgan barely broke stride except to quickly observe the Cardassian woman then lightly snatch the offered PADD from her gray-skinned hand. "I'm not Commander Blake," she corrected with little patience. "She left the ship an hour ago. I'm Commander Tarin. Acting captain of Galileo." She teetered on the precipice of rudeness and sternness before looking the new, youthful-looking ensign in her amber eyes. She suppressed a sigh. "Walk with me." Tarin continued to pace down the corridor without a word.

As a reptilian Tora had no hair on her arms and legs - but when the Commander stared her in the eyes so sternly it made her skin prickle she understood for a brief moment what her friends meant when they said their hair stood on end. It didn't feel good. She could've sworn her entire career, all six months of it, flashed before her eyes as the woman snatched her PADD straight out of her hands. Walk with me. Now that didn't sound good. The Cardassian swallowed thickly as her smile evaporated like a puddle of water left out in the scorching sun. "Yes, ma'am." She replied, now considerably less upbeat as she followed the woman down the corridor. She'd done it now. Like, really, really done it. Next thing she knew she was going to be dressed down in an office somewhere and possibly have a strongly worded note to the actual first officer. Way to start off her career proper.

The two of them proceeded down the main corridors of Level 16, passing the main hub and stairways to the promenade before moving to the far side of Regula I's central corridors. Morgan's private module was near the very end, and after a quick turn at a hub junction, she continued down a smaller auxiliary corridor until she found her office. Her long fingers tapped her authorization code into the small LCARS panel then the door hissed open. She stepped inside and immediately dropped her bag next to the entrance before heading straight to the small couch opposite of the desk and terminal station.

Now she let out a sigh, the one she'd suppressed for several minutes. She rubbed her hands against her forehead then started to unzip the front of her uniform jacket. Morgan looked back at the young officer, almost forgetting she was still in tow. "Grab a chair and sit down. Ensign...Zalor?"

"Zalos, ma'am." Tora corrected as she sat down across from the woman, visibly more nervous than when they'd first met. In her mind she was still expecting to be dressed down for her blunder, of course - the poor thing looked a little bit like a scared animal in a cage. Which this office wasn't quite, but the feeling of being trapped still remained.

Zalos. With an 's'. Morgan made a mental note to remember the surname while peeling the remainder of her uniform jacket from her torso. Her bare arms and shoulders were now exposed with only her gray and black Starfleet vest covering her chest. Her toned arms and physique became apparent, and so did her new disruptor scar which was half-exposed along the side of her right pectoral. She tossed her uniform to the side then sank back into the furniture. "Zalos..." repeated the commander to commit it to memory. "You look young."

"I'm twenty-two, ma'am. I just graduated from Starfleet Academy six months ago." Tora said with a nervous smile. The Commander was fit, vsry much so. No doubt she had a wealth of experience behind her. And that scar... Tora wondered how old that was. It didn't look very new, but then again she was hardly an acceptable judge of such things when she wasn't trained as a nurse. "I know, it's quite young... most of mt classmates were nineteen or twenty when I first met them in the first year."

The captain considered the ensign's age then remembered that she, herself, had been younger than Zalos during her own Academy years before the war broke out. Those memories suddenly forced her thoughts to turn elsewhere, to a darker portion of her past. The new elephant in the room now needed to be addressed...sooner rather than later, for both of their pieces of mind. "You were a child when the war started?" she matter-of-factly stated with dry tonality. The PADD handed to her by the science officer lay face down on the couch next to her. Morgan had no interest in reading a personnel file when she could ascertain much more in person. "On Cardassia Prime?"

"Well, yes. I was seven years old at the time." Tora wrinkled her nose. "Mother and father sent me off to Risa with my uncle. To protect me. I didn't even realize until much later." Tora's amber eyes seemed a little bit less bright now; she glanced down at the tabletop, fingers clasped together. "And I lived there till I was about sixteen. My uncle never left, and so I stayed with him and his wife." She smiled wanly. "It's quite weird, I know. But that's me. I spent a bit of time as a dabo girl before leaving for Starfleet Academy." Following a brief pause and a sheepish smile she added, "I hope that's not too weird..."

Unbeknownst to the commander, her hazel gaze had turned severe while staring at the fledgling officer and listening to her story. That same gaze soon became savage, even, while Tarin began recalling her early career aboard USS Yeager when she was a young conn officer late in Dominion War. The Saber-class was the tip of the spear; the vanguard at every offensive assault and defensive operation she'd participated in. She remembered it all; facing down the remains of the Cardassian First Order and the Jem'Hadar battlecruisers and attack wings supporting them. She remembered the explosions of Starfleet vessels on the main viewscreen prefaced only by their captains' frantic 'abandon ship' calls over the fleet's comm channel mere seconds before their warp cores went critical. She remembered maneuvering her own starship to avoid combat debris fields full of broken nacelles, shattered saucer sections and dead Starfleet crew members drifting through the void while bouncing off the ship's hull. She remembered all of it.

Tarin blinked then exhaled, realizing she'd been holding a deep breath for almost half-a-minute. "Were your parents 'occupiers'? Your uncle?" she forcefully questioned, using loaded yet somewhat diplomatic terminology. It was quite clear what she meant. "What did they want to protect you from?"

Tora blinked hard at the sudden flintiness of the Commander's words and phrasing. Clearly the topic of the Dominion War was a heavy one for her, rightly so, as it had been for a great many of her instructors. Most had given her dirty looks, but that was all. One of them had refused to teach her and branded her a spy - like, what had she thought Tora was going to do with what she learned?

"I- I'm not sure." She answered as evenly as she could. If she sounded hesitant she guessed that the Commander would only become more incensed. "Protect me from the war, I suppose. That's what my uncle told me. Were any of them party to the Occupation? I- I really don't know. I know my father was with the military, and my uncle retired from it..." Tora swallowed thickly. "My parents died resisting the Dominion while I lived on Risa. I don't know if anyone was involved. W-Why do you ask?"

Tarin's thin eyebrows raised several centimeters. "You're 'not sure'? You 'don't know'?" She creased her brow with disdain then leaned forward after learning both her father and his brother were apparently members of the Cardassian military...the same military she'd fought in battle and had been her sworn enemy bent on conquering the Federation. "That's not good enough, ensign. I asked you a question and I expect you to answer it. Were your parents occupiers??" she forcefully repeated, the top of her chest now flushing with building anger.

Tora flinched violently as the woman's sudden outburst. Clearly she had something against her people - or at least those who'd been party to the Bajoran Occupation - which made her wonder why she was now interrogating her for information she did not possess. "I don't know!" She squeaked, insistent. "I really don't know! My parents never mentioned being involved and neither did my uncle, and I never asked!" It was an honest an answer as she could've given. Had she given any form of definite answet she suspected that the Commmander would've then gone on to accuse her of lying or outing her family - perhaps this was a test of her resolve, or loyalty, or both. She suspected that it was both. Starfleet officers needed both, didn't they?

"You. Never. Asked," repeated Tarin with punctuation on each word. "Because of willful ignorance, or fear of learning the truth?" she chastised. The commander rose from her seat back to her full height then paced across the front of the sofa in the office module. The bright purple hues from Remidia's atmosphere were coming into view through the viewport, backdropped by the extraordinary red, blue and pink colorations of the nearby Mutara Nebula. "I need to know, ensign, if you're the daughter of Cardassian military war criminals who sent you off-world to be raised on a pleasure planet to escape their affiliation...or if you're the daughter of the few respectable Cardassians who did the right thing and wanted you to have a better life. A life they knew would never happen on your homeworld because of their actions." She looked Zalos in her amber eyes again. "Last chance before I put you on the next transport back to Earth."

"I- If it's anything to you, Commander, I'd like to think it's the latter." Tora replied meekly. "My uncle was never anything but kind, both to me and to everyone around him, Cardassian or not. He used to tell me how he'd seen terrible things as an officer of the military and how he never wanted anyone else to experience them. He never mentioned Bajorans specifically, but he did say that he'd had to do unkind things to people. I was eight or nine, I think he didn't want to scare me." She took a deep, rattling breath before continuing to speak: "My- My father wasn't home often. Most of the time my mother raised me while he served in space. When he was home I don't recall him ever teaching me to hate anyone or think of myself as better than anyone else."

"But I've said what I can, Commander. That's really all I know about them. If..." Tora moistened her lips. "With all due respect, if you still think I'm the daughter of war criminals, I can't stop you. Please do as you feel is appropriate."

Morgan listened to the ensign's defense then turned her back to face the viewport. There, while looking out into the vast expanse of space, she again recalled her combat operations against the Dominion when she was barely a year older than Zalos was now. It was hard for her to accept what the young Cardassian was saying. So hard, yet necessary. Times changed and so did perspectives of the galaxy. She swallowed a salty lump down her throat then turned her head to the side. "I won't blame you for the sins of your guardians. You're your own individual and you've obviously accomplished much in your life to graduate from the Academy." Morgan returned back to her small couch then looked back to Tora. "So why are you here, ensign?"

Tora exhaled a huge, huge sigh of relief. Thank goodness. "I grew interested in people while living on Risa and meeting with them in the resort's library as I read books there on my own. So I wanted to experience the wider galaxy for myself. Risa is only one planet in this vast expanse we call space, as is Cardassia. So I left home and worked as a dabo girl on Deep Space Seven for a while before applying to Starfleet Academy." A brief pause ensued before she added, "The crew there helped me study. Their captain wrote my letter of recommendation. So here I am. Of course, if you mean why I'm here here, then... I don't really know." She admitted sheepishly. "But I intend to use this opportunity to its fullest."

Work as a dabo girl was controversial in some circumstances, yet Morgan had seen many more unorthodox pathways to Starfleet. Afterall, she'd been born and raised in New York City, a capitol metropolis on Earth with a prolific population of non-Humans. Her thoughts returned to the ensign's presence. "No. I mean to ask, why are you here, at Regula I in the farthest sector of Federation space for your first posting when you could have taken an assignment anywhere else in the core worlds?"

"I wanted to go as far as I possibly could! The further you go the less you know, and the less you know the more things can happen!" Tora seemed to brighten up consideray as she talked, freed from the worrying pressure that the Commander had given off earlier. "I know that that's not how it always works, and that it's a little naive for me to think that way, but I like a challenge." She replied. "I also know it can be quite dangerous - but I accept the risk. I'm just excited to get started."

The bare-armed commander glanced up to the ceiling while biting down on her lower lip. "Ensign, a challenge is trying to pry information out of a Yridian without offering any gold-pressed latinum in return," she corrected with a firm shake of her head. "This, here in the Pleaides Cluster," she waved her hand around the room to indicate the station and its surrounding space, "is what my people call 'a hard deal'. We're six months from Earth at high warp with multi-hour comms delays, a supply line as inconsistent as the length of a Cardassian vole's tail, and no colonized planets within 20 lightyears. The Gorn homeworld is to the galactic northeast and the Tholians are to the west. In my three years deployed out here, we've already lost seven starships. This isn't a place where young, aspiring officers like yourself usually come with 'excitement'."

"No, it definitely doesn't sound like one." Tora agreed. "But it excites me nonetheless. Sometimes it's in the most dangerous places that you find little nuggets of something beautiful, know what I mean? Maybe we'll make a new friend or two out here. That's a possibility no matter how tiny, isn't it?"

"All due respect, Commander, call me delusional or idealistic if you feel that's appropriate. But living on Risa taught me to appreciate every good thing I can get, no matter how tiny it is. I know there might not be a whole lot of them out here, with danger surrounding us and all... but I think there's something to be had out here. I'm happy with the Galileo as my first assignment and that's that." She tried for an optimistic smile, amber eyes twinkling.

Morgan bit her bottom lip again in front of the new Galileo candidate. She appeared so youthful and eager to contribute, and that was the exact type of mentality that got people killed in the Pleiades Cluster. The commander didn't want the Cardassian's death on her conscious in the coming years. Not another one. "Look, Zalor," she hoped she pronounced the name correctly this time, "I don't think you're delusional. But you are idealistic and naive. I told you this assignment is a hard deal, and that means you need to be hard to survive out here. This isn't the Academy anymore. Are you willing to do that? Build yourself into a front-line Starfleet officer?"

"Of course, Commander. And it's Zalos, not Zalor." Tora said with a giggle. Well, wih that at least she could have something to laugh about. Imagine not being able to pronounce someone's name after they've said it twice to you! "I'm always willing to learn and get better. I promise you I won't disappoint you."

A long silence punctuated the room. Morgan finally looked back to the PADD next to her on the sofa, the one containing the new junior officer's transfer orders. She picked it up then held it in her palm, her posture now leaned back again against the rear cushion. There, she took her time to scroll through its contents including the ensign's Academy records, recommendations and notations, physical profile, and psychological analysis. The commander scrolled up then down. Back down then back up while scrutinizing several sections of Zalos' file. She seemed to repeat the procedure for more than a minute.

Tora sat nervously as she waited for the Commander to say something, anything at all. She could appreciate being meticulous and making sure that everything was in order, but Tarin made her feel uneasy just sitting there; perhaps she still didn't believe that she was just an ordinary woman? She couldn't sweat, being reptilian, but if she could she imagined beads of it would've been dripping down her forehead at that moment.

The New York-native acting captain continued to read through the PADD. Privately evaluating. Judging. Ultimately determining if this new young woman in front of her was fit for duty aboard her starship in one of the most dangerous places within Federation territory. She re-read Zalos' pre-Academy history several times, making mental notes of her time spent on DS7 as a youth. "Captain Templeton spoke highly of you in her recommendation," she couldn't help but comment.

Tora's cheeks turned a shade of slightly darker gray than the rest of her face. She'd read over the captain's remarks herself, of course, and had honestly been flattered that the woman had deigned to speak so highly of her. She was, after all, fairly ordinary if not for an unusual upbringing - in her opinion, at least. "She did. I'm grateful that she did. I'm still thinking of ways to repay her whenever we next meet. Though I suppose the best I can do is to just do well as an officer. That way she'll know her recommendation wasn't wasted." It would've broken the woman's heart to see Tora fail, that much she'd realized from spesking with the kind, chestnut-haired woman - which only made her feel more obliged to show her that she could become something.

There was a welcome component of maturity present in the ensign's last comment. Tarin privately appreciated that. "I've met the captain before at a command seminar earlier in my career. I don't think she'd ask anything more or less from you," agreed the senior officer while finishing her appraisal of Zalos' file. "Xenoanthropology...you have an aptitude for studying foreign cultures and societies." It wasn't a question but rather a mental note spoken aloud. "I think we'll struggle to find a surplus of those in this star cluster," she dryly commented.

"I hope to be able to contribute, Commander. I'm sure there's still quite a lot to discover in this part of space and I'm hoping to be a part of it." Tora declared proudly. "I'm glad she thinks of me that way, though. Honestly all I did was talk to a lot of people as a dabo girl and get to know them that way - I think her crew mentioned it to her during a meeting, or something."

Tarin had read enough and tossed the woman's transfer PADD back on the sofa next to her leg. "Galileo's new chief science officer hasn't been assigned yet. The last one resigned several weeks ago, which means your department will be understaffed for the time being." All departments were currently understaffed aboard the Nova-class starship. "You'll be looking at extended shifts and long hours with extra work and responsibility to help oversee science and research operations. This won't be a pleasure tour, ensign. Understood?"

"I did not come into Starfleet expecting any of my assignments to be pleasure tours or easy, Commander. I expected to have to work my worth - and I intend to. Promise." The Cardassian replied, resolute determination gleaming in her amber eyes. "I'll just make do with the time I do have. It's the best thing I can do." She meant every word, and she hoped the Commander could hear it in her voice.

"Good." Tarin was satisfied enough with the response. Time would ultimately be the final judge of the young officer's work ethic and resolve. For now, she found no reason to deny Zalos' assignment. Galileo needed new personnel, especially of the ambitious variety. And as much as the commander had tried to temper expectations, the Pleiades Cluster was truly the final frontier. It was an opportunity many officers and personnel would jump at if given the chance.

Looking back at the PADD, Tarin reached over then pressed her thumb into the small signature section of the device. A soft confirmation chirp sounded before she handed it back to the Cardassian. The CO stretched her arms again then stood from the couch while pushing her dark hair back behind her ears. A sonic shower was long overdue. "Orders approved. Welcome to Galileo, ensign." She formally extended her hand for Zalos to shake. "Any questions?"

"Not at the moment, Commander. I'm just glad to be part of the crew." Tora said with a cheerful smile. "And to meet the rest, when I can. May I elsewise be of assistance? Here and now, I mean." She reached out and shook the offered hand. She must've felt really weird to touch, she thought. People told her that sometimes. Imagine scales, but skin, but also not. So leathery and without much warmth but soft. Weird.

"Check in with Administrator Frost. She's the station's civilian commander and might have something for you to stay occupied." Tarin released the woman's hand; Cardassians were certainly unique, and though she sometimes struggled to set aside her prejudice, Zalos' presence was a hallmark of the Federation's unified vision. "Get a light meal then some sleep. I'll see you at 0700 in the holodeck for PT. Dismissed."

PT? She hadn't done any in a long while (that, and she was supposed to join the crew for their break, god!) - not that she actually minded, really. She had to stay looking good somehow, didn't she? She could use a run after all the bingeing on the station's replicator menu she'd been doing.

"I'll see you then." She agreed, before departing the Commander's office.

[OFF]

--

CMDR Morgan Tarin
Acting Commanding Officer
USS Galileo-A

ENS Tora Zalos
Science Officer
USS Galileo-A

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