Tiny Ships With Big Dreams

Posted on 23 Jan 2013 @ 7:43pm by Lieutenant Lilou Zaren
Edited on on 23 Jan 2013 @ 8:04pm

5,718 words; about a 29 minute read

Mission: Episode 03 - Frontier
Location: USS Galileo: Deck 4, CSO's Office
Timeline: MD 02: 1000 hrs

[ON]

Lilou nudged her goggles up to her head, sat back from the work station, and rubbed the back of her neck. Her back ached and her eyes were sore from peering through the magnifying lenses, but she was done. She sniffed slightly, taking the remote control and absently switching the little ship on. It whirred slightly, lifting about an inch from the desk, and hovered there. Right, left, up, down, tilt, tilt. She landed it and it powered down. It was a basic little first build ship - a rebuild of the tiny one that she'd taught Rothgra to build and then crushed falling out of a ceiling, but Lilou hoped it would work as a peace offering. Picking up a small brush, she carefully painted 'Panne' on the side in her own too-neat hand.

No time like the present, she thought with an internal, wry chuckle at the terrible pun. She stood, stretching in every way imaginable, then placed the little ship and its control carefully in an empty tool box. It had been an effort to build the replica so quickly, but she didn't really sleep anyway and she wanted to make sure she and the Chief Science Officer were on working terms before they arrived in the Rojar system.

It took less time than she'd have liked getting to the CSO's office. Why did turbo lifts have to be so... turbo? Sometimes she wished there was a 'give me time to think' setting on the things. Instead, she stepped off and found herself in front of the CSO's office in a matter of minutes. The door was open and Maenad Panne was inside looking at some... something. Lilou's expertise lay firmly in the field of engineering and extended not far from that in any direction. She cleared her throat. "Lieutenant."

Maenad looked up from her computer screen. She was familiarising herself with the details of the Rojar System to the letter, so she could recite any detail about anything to anyone without consulting a PADD. Idly, she wondered why the chime hadn't sounded. Straightening her posture, she gave barely a smile. "Ensign Peers," she said, "Can I help you with something?"

Lilou pressed her heels together, straightening just a touch, just to make sure she wasn't slouching. "No, sir, I..." she cleared her throat again. "I wanted to apologize again for... ah... almostcrushingyoutodeathwithanairduct." She wrinkled her nose and continued on, "And to check and make sure you were satisfied with the repair job."

Maenad blinked. Then, she frowned. What did she say? "I..." her frown faded into narrowed eyes. "I, uh... Yes, the repair job was fine," she replied. Meanwhile, she was still trying to figure out what Peers had said first. Trying to buy more time, she took notice at how rigidly Peers was standing. "Miss Peers," she said quietly, "You don't have to steady up around me. We are equals, as far as I am concerned. You are welcome to sit down." She still couldn't figure out what the engineer had said.

Lilou wasn't sure what she'd do if she sat down, but she found herself doing it anyway, which was strange. They weren't equals, in Lilou's mind, not in any way - and it wasn't simply a matter of rank. Maenad was... glossy, like a picture. Cool, and white, and utterly in control. That on its own made Lilou feel like a Cardassian vole by comparison. Maenad Panne was dignified, for crying out loud. Lilou had to actively remember to keep her legs together when she sat down and fell out of ceilings when she was working. She'd be willing to bet Maenad Panne had never catapulted out of anything. She sat in the chair, wondering why she was sitting in the chair, for a ridiculous amount of time. "Oh. I was going to give you this." She plunked the toolbox on the desk.

Maenad watched Miss Peers, finding her to be rather peculiar. She had no idea what she was doing; was she nervous, was there something on her mind? And, still, why had she come up here? And why was she giving her a toolbox? Maenad touched the bone behind her ear with two fingers, rubbing it in a confusion she tried to hide.

"What is this?" she asked, but it was of a more a thought to herself than a question. Between knitted eyebrows, Maenad accepted the box and opened it. She had to straighten her spine to peer inside, looking down into it like a crane. There was a model shuttlecraft, like the one she'd seen a few nights ago in the arboretum. The one that Peers had broken in her unfortunate fall from the sky.

Maenad pulled the model from the box very carefully, with both hands, and held it out in front of her. On the side where the name was written, she read Panne. After me? A bright smile appeared on Maenad's otherwise indifferent visage. "What?" she began to ask, turning it around and looking it over on the other side. "Why?" she was still smiling. "Is this for me?"

Lilou scuffed one boot against the other self-consciously, ducking her head and flushing around the ears with how imminently pleased she was that the CSO seemed to like it. "It's a Waverider. Well, a pilot-less, cargo-less Waverider with remedial sensors, but... Petrov said you thought it was neat. Thought I'd fix it up for you."

"Yes, but..." she trailed off, still smiling. "This is very kind of you," she said to her, setting the shuttle down. Maenad looked at it again, and put her head down to examine it. She touched her painted name on the side with one finger. "It's even got my name on it," she whispered joyfully. Like a little girl on Christmas morning, Maenad just couldn't help herself. She raised her head back eye-level with Peers. "Thank you so much, I really do not know what to say."

"The sensor's pretty weak, and it's only got about a four foot range..." Lilou hedged, ears aglow with pride and pleasure. "I could probably do a better job, but I wanted you to have it before we got to Rojar..." She stared at her boots, trying to figure out what she was supposed to do now. Things had gotten much easier with Kiri when she'd just started saying the things she thought. With Kiri and with Stone. Well. Maybe not 'easier' with Stone, but clearer. "I thought maybe if you saw it working you'd know I'm not just an idiot who falls out of hologram skies." She bit her lip, "It works. You can try it. There's a remote."

Hearing this, Maenad reached back into the toolbox and took out the remote, keeping her eyes on Peer's as she did so. "An idiot?" Maenad repeated as she read over the controls to make sure she didn't crash the thing on her first go. "It isn't your fault that the duct gave out, Miss Peers," she said distantly, while making mental notes on the remote. "I hope I didn't give you the wrong impression," she still sounded distant. "Shall we give this a try?"

The question was rhetorical and, perhaps unfortunately for Peers, Maenad went ahead without waiting for a response. She stood up from behind her desk and stood back. The remote control in her hands, still smiling from ear to ear, she turned it on. The nacelles turned blue and red, just like the real thing, and it slowly rose to a height a foot or two off her desk. She didn't realise she was pressing her tongue through her pursed lips as she rose the shuttle higher. Near the ceiling, it whizzed around the room. "This is amazing," she exclaimed. "Let's try the sensors," Maenad thought. After a few more seconds, she brought the shuttle down to her desk for a smooth landing. She looked at the control pad on the remote and read the results of the scan, which mostly depicted all within the office.

"I am thoroughly impressed, Miss Peers," Maenad was still beaming. "Would you like something? Tea? Coffee? Anything at all."

It took Lilou about half a minute to realize she was being talked to. She'd gotten lost somewhere between Lieutenant Panne smiling and the shuttle and how the shuttle was just slightly off on the tilt and that could be fixed with a minor adjustment to the starboard nacelle which would take no time at all except she hadn't brought her tools with her and there had to be a way to get the sensor to go further without the mechanics of it taking up so much space in the replica, but how, she wasn't sure, she could think about it, maybe Kiri would have an idea- She blinked, finally registering the question. "Wha- no. Oh, no. I'm fine. I'm very good, thank you." She smiled; it was a small, fragile smile, but it was real. "Do you have a favorite ship? We built the Waverider because I was trying to get Rothgra to understand the basics of it, but I could do another one. I mean, if you like it, and you want one, I could do another one. Some time. I mean, in my off time, I could work on it. But... well, I'm sort of babysitting the ship while you all get to go do all the interesting things on the new planets and all, so I probably will have some time if you want."

"Absolutely not," Maenad told her. "I like this one just the way it is. Please, are you sure you do not want anything? Don't be too polite." She took her seat again. "How did you make this? It is very detailed."

"Okay. I-" she looked down at her boots. "I mean, if you were having something, too, I would have water. But it's really no trouble at all, because that's one of the things our replicator actually churns out really well down on seven." She peeked up from her boots. "The ah... so the shuttle." She grinned a little despite herself, "It was an idea I had. That - you know, I learn with my hands and there's only so much you can get from schematics, especially if you think in pictures, because then everything in your head is just two dimensional and that doesn't really help with mechanics, you know? So I thought we could just make a, well, a replica," she pointed to the little shuttle. "Basically do the same things you'd do if you were building the actual shuttle, just on a much, much smaller scale. Lots of tweezers and magnifying lenses, and we had to skimp on some of the operating systems because - well... there weren't the parts in that small a size. So the sensor got a lot weaker, and we dropped the phasers because I figured there was probably a protocol about that somewhere. And the shields, because that's an energy drain, but the rest of it we kept pretty on target. It was... fun, actually. I built a lot of replicas when I was in the Academy, and then on the- on my last ship - so... but they weren't working models and I thought it might be kind of useful for him to feel like he'd really built a ship. Had his hands on one. Even if it was tiny and incomplete. To see he could make something work. And he did. Until... well. Until the autopilot went off. So. I fixed that. And the hull. And paved over the consoles inside to help keep it from getting confused between the consoles and the remotes - I think that was where we went wrong with the other one..." Lilou blinked. How long had she been talking?

"On your previous ship?" Maenad picked out of her miniature speech. She found it all very interesting, however. While she spoke, she replicated the glass of water she'd asked for as well as a cup of tea for herself. Maenad pushed the water over her desk for Peers and she cradled the tea in front of her lips, blowing on it carefully. "How long have you been in Starfleet?" she asked, curiously. Peers couldn't have been that old; she looked young enough to have recently graduated the Academy, and Maenad had just assumed that the Galileo was her first ship.

Lilou tugged her ear, thinking back. "...six? Years? Six years," she asserted. "I was precocious," she added with a duck of her head. "And I didn't go through officer training. Skipped straight to non-com. Well, that's where the real work is for engineers anyway. This," she poked at her collar, "is a new thing." People. People not ships. People. "How long have you?" Stupid, stupid question.

"Ah," Maenad inclined her head; she must have been in the fleet for some time, then - since her late teens or early twenties. She moved the toolbox off her desk, careful not to hit anything. "About the same," she replied. "I joined Starfleet as an instructor at the Academy and became an officer that way; I was a civilian professor before that. When I was offered a job to be among the stars I simply could not refuse." That was the three second answer; Maenad didn't want to start raving about herself. She lifted her tea and blew on it before taking a tiny sip.

Lilou remembered Kiri having said something to that effect. What had she taught? Lilou couldn't remember if she'd heard. She'd mainly been wanting to know if she needed to be wary of the new CSO or not, the details hadn't interested her then. They did now. "What were you teaching?"

"I teach introductory xenoarchaeology and micropaleontology, as well as advanced genetics," Maenad explained. "Taught, rather," she added with an embarrassed shake of her head for misspeaking. She still wrote, but she was no longer a lecturer as she had been only weeks ago. "I specialise in Vulcan archaeology and ancient culture, but I am quite versed many species," she added. "I am also interested in the beginnings of sentient humanoid life and have published one book and dozens of articles on that and related subjects," she finished with a nod. Was she boasting? Modesty. "However," she lowered her head, "My job would be impossible without your expertise, Miss Peers. I am utterly hopeless when it comes to practicality."

"No, ma'am. Your job would be impossible without the expertise of Markum Quinn and the engineers who were responsible for figuring out the methodology behind building this ship and the others in the fleet," Lilou said quietly. "I'm just maintenance in comparison." But it was a nice lie to hear anyway. "Then again, none of us would be out here without people like you paving the way to voyages with articles. So I suppose I should be thanking you for that. Because... honestly, I'd just take any excuse there was to be on a ship like this that was going anywhere for any reason."

Maenad glanced at Peers carefully, not understanding her deprecation. "No, not at all," she said encouragingly. "Without engineers, we still would be living in caves. It is because of people like you, Miss Peers, that I can sit around thinking. And nobody reads articles except for people who like to argue," she added with a thin smile. "Everybody depends on you. Do not undervalue yourself," she was speaking sincerely, softly, in her don't feel bad voice - a voice that she very seldom used honestly.

"Right." Lilou ducked her head. "Well," she said sidestepping the sort of praise because she didn't know how to deal with it. "Lucky for you most people like to argue," a smile fluttered across her lips. "The Klingons must be reading your articles like mad."

"Not only that, but they do not like me all that much," Maenad smiled, looking to the ceiling for pretend forgiveness. "Everything that I say defies all that they believe in, being deeply spiritual as they are," she bit her lip. Was Peers spiritual? She hadn't considered that. Oh god, she hoped not. Maenad took another sip of tea.

"Are they?" Lilou asked, looking up. "I don't know... really anything about their religion. I know plenty about their ships and I've never seen a temple in the schematics. Bajorans have little alcove temples peppering their interiors. What is it that you have to say about xenoanthropology and micropaleontology that would make them dislike you more than... well, than they seem to dislike pretty much everyone else?"

"Oh," she lowered her tea into her lap, "Well, most of my work is based on Richard Galen's studies on the Ancient Humanoid, revealed by Jean-Luc Picard on Vilmor II. It is definitive proof that most, likely all, sentient humanoids descended from them when they sprinkled the galaxy with their genetic coding four and a half billion years ago. By all of us being related them means that we are also related to each other, which I have observed through genetics myself and have written on. This scientific revelation nullifies the very foundation of Klingon belief, and indeed all major religions." Maenad took a quiet breath. "I have had some hostile debates with Klingon clerics, even scientists. The Bajorans are almost, if not more in some cases, defensive to the evidence. I will admit that I have been frightened for my safety on more than one occasion," she grinned.

Lilou looked at the glass of water, slowly dripping condensation onto the desk. "It makes sense in a way, doesn't it? That we'd all come from the same place. I didn't do the homework, you know, but... we're all carbon-based and rely on similar kinds of molecules to breathe. It doesn't sound like a totally outlandish theory." She brushed her fingers over the wet of the glass tentatively. "Seems like a lot of things people believe were meant to bring them together and somehow ended up splitting them apart. Faith's tricky that way, huh?" She glanced up, "Are you hoping to find something, in the Rajor system? More evidence?"

"I hope," Maenad nodded, "But it doesn't look like there is any intelligent life thus far. It seems like a pretty dead system," she reflected. All this talk about herself was making her uncomfortable. "Have you ever explored an uncharted system before?"

Lilou shook her head. Had she ever explored anything? Outside of a lab? "It's exciting," she whispered. "I wish I could go down. Step foot on a world that's... untouched. That must be just... mind-boggling."

The idea had always enticed Maenad as well. "I know," she said. "If the captain will allow it, I will try to get you on one of the away teams," she offered.

Lilou blinked twice, her gaze slipping to the lieutenant's. "...you would do that?" she asked, genuinely blown away by the mere offer. Of course, she knew that even with Panne saying something on her behalf she probably wouldn't get to set foot on any of the moons. Her place was with the Galileo and she was happy with that. Content. But... to even get to think about the possibility of a moment like that... The hope was almost enough to sate her. Not quite, but almost.

"Of course; you made and named a shuttlecraft after me," Maenad playfully reminded her. "It is the least I can do. I will speak to Commander Holliday about it."

"I... if you're sure." Lilou bit her lip on a grin. "It means a lot, just that you'd ask, no matter what happens. So thanks."

"Yes, of course," Maenad insisted. "It is done." She had never been the first on a planet either, so she was equally as excited as Peers. But, Maenad had a weird way of showing her excitement, and didn't really show much of anything right now. For some reason she remembered back to when she was little around Christmas time; her parents would always berate her for not appreciating her gifts or being excited on Christmas Eve, but she always was very pleased and very excited for both. What was expected to do, literally bounce off the walls? She nodded a few times, took another sip of tea, and chewed a piece of dead skin off her bottom lip.

"Have you finished all the repairs?" Maenad asked. The ship seemed to be brand new again.

Lilou nodded quickly. "I mean there's always something, of course, but most of the complaints that we're getting are actually misdirected from Operations. We're running system diagnostics and always looking for ways to upgrade and improve, but for the most part my job has become filling out all the forms for all the repairs we did back on Vega. Who did what, for how long, with what services from off-ship versus in-house engineers..." She carefully lifted the glass and finally took a sip. "I haven't seen any of the sensor data. Do you think there's a chance that these can actually be new colonies?"

"The majority of the solid bodies consist of moons surrounding the gas giants; the smaller planets are incapable of supporting life as we know it, other than bacteria and microbes," Maenad narrowed her eyes, staring just over Peers' shoulder to the window, but didn't actually look through it. "I suppose it is conceivable that some of the moons may be colonisable or suitable for life," she shrugged. "M-class moons are uncommon, but they do exist." She began to daydream about the rocky moons that had no atmosphere. "I can imagine some of the views from them: a massive swirling gas giant taking up most of the sky; a half dozen moons of varying colours and sizes speckled throughout the star-strewn sky. It will be magnificent."

The engineer closed her eyes, summoning up the image in her mind. Why, she wondered, why sky so terrifying when space, which went farther and deeper than any sky could, was so welcoming? Maybe it was familiarity; she hadn't been on a planet until she'd been sent their for school. Alone for the first time. Really alone. Or the sense of gravity that was on planets, pushing the bodies on their surfaces inexorably down towards their cores. But space... it was endless, weightless, and so completely full of possibilities. Just the sight of this new system from the observation deck would be worth the trip, even if she never got any closer to any of the moons than that. An entire system that had somehow evaded explorers for all this time, so close... She rested her lips against the cool side of the glass and smiled.

There was something about Peers that Maenad couldn't quite place. She seemed distant, unreachable. She seemed sheltered and eager to please, but also strikingly independent, strong-willed, and, determined. Even though she was small, Maenad thought her to be incredibly tough, both physically and mentally. But there was more to her than that. It was like she was in some far off place, longing to go home to be with people she could be around. But where that home was or who those people were, Maenad couldn't tell. For a brief moment, she thought she knew, but it had come and gone before she could catch it. "Are you from Trill?" she returned Peers' smile. "I have only been there once, when I was very small."

"My father is," Lilou explained, still picturing a magnificent gas giant churning in the void. Slowly she opened her eyes again, "What was it like? Where did you go?"

"I went with my parents, but I don't remember where or why," Maenad explained. "I remember it was nice, though. Where we went, the city was built into a hillside surrounded by thick forest. It was a wonderful place. Where did you grow up?" It would have been some coincidence if she gone to the same place she had lived, Maenad thought.

"The Qin-Harbinger Research Station," Lilou answered. The Federation and its laws and protection had made it possible for anyone to be from anywhere, but the expectations remained the same. And still, despite the fact that she'd spoken on this subject so many times before, she still felt a pang of longing. Her father had been exiled from Trill and, though he'd never explained exactly why that was, she got the impression that whatever it had been had been quite serious. And something that her father still disagreed with. But whatever it was, it was something he had done. It still didn't make sense to her why she was being punished and kept away because of it. "It's a Stardock in Alpha Centauri," she added. "I've seen a sliver of Trill though, through the lens of the holodeck. It's..." The only sky that hasn't made me shudder. "Nice." She sipped from the glass, "What about you? I mean, where did you grow up?"

She was born in space, Maenad recalled giving her opinions on children in space to Kiri. She felt a twinge of guilt, but pushed the thoughts out of her mind. "I grew up on Earth," Maenad said. "I am from Nantes in la France," she hadn't noticed she'd given them French pronunciations. "I spent most of my childhood there, but my parents shipped of me off to a boarding school when I was eleven or twelve, I think it was, in Montreal, Quebec. I lived there for a few years as well, and that is also where I went to university for some time."

"Oh?" Lilou perked up. "Which boarding school? I was at Foxcroft Academy, in upstate New York." She hadn't traveled from the school for any of their sporting events, but she had done some of the scholastic ones. She couldn't remember where all she'd been for those - math competitions and robotics competitions; it had been a long time since and she'd always transported directly to the place on the day then back. It rather took the sense of 'travel' out of the whole experience.

"Academie Renault," she said. "I have been to New York as well," Maenad said. "City, but not anywhere else." Thinking back, Maenad hated boarding school. It was some of the worst and most lonely years of her life; she went from being loved and nurtured in France to being stuck in a strange place with strict teachers and students who made fun of her French. It was awful. "Did you like boarding school?"

Lilou thought back on her days at Foxcroft with a wistful tilt of her brows. "I think I did. Yes. It was the first time I'd ever really been around children my own age. The only thing I didn't like was that it was on Earth," she admitted. "Planetary gravity was foreign to me and took some getting used to. That and sand. And dirt. We had grit and dust on the station, but mounds of dirt and grass were contained in the arboretum not... running everywhere willy-nilly."

"Hm," Maenad crossed her arms, sitting back in her chair with narrowed eyes. "Was that the first time you'd ever been on a planet? How old were you?"

"Twelve," Lilou nodded, then paused, swallowing hard, as she noticed the lieutenant's expression. "Not that there's anything wrong with dirt-si... planet-side. I just wasn't used to it."

Maintaining her expression, Maenad let out a slow breath. Twelve years of childhood cooped on a station; the thought filled her with sorrow. The lovely Miss Peers, or the imagined little Lilou, being denied a proper childhood upset her. "No, that's quite all right," Maenad smiled. "We each have our preferences," she took a thoughtful sip of tea, turning in her chair so that she could properly cross her legs. "If you don't mind me asking, what was it like being a little girl on a space station? I didn't consider a life in space until fairly recently."

What was it like? she wondered. Compared to what? "It was... I don't know," she admitted with a slight shrug. "Like being a child. Just... there was me, and a boy named Ramses, who was a half-year younger than me and half-Vulcan; we stole peanuts from the bar when no one was looking. Aside from him, it was mostly classes. Like any childhood, I imagine. Math, gymnastics, basic Federation history, science, Trill literature, Terran literature, more math-" she added as a joke, although it probably wasn't funny to anyone but her. "My mother started me in basic phaser training when I was ten; that was fun. But there were a lot of rules to follow. I mean, you accidentally mis-route a conductor in a robotics project on Earth, you have to rebuild the desks, maybe. You do that same thing on a space station, you might cause a seal to break, release atmo, break down gravity for the deck, any number of things."

As Peers talked, Maenad slowly nodded while contemplating all that she heard. While she wandered along the riverside and played hide and seek in the woods, Peers was no doubt immersed in training to become the person sitting here now. She might not have known it at the time, but here she was, a chief engineer on the fleet's leading science ship at twenty-six. Maenad was still in school at twenty-six, earning her PhD while teaching archaeology. It might not have outwardly seemed this way, but Maenad admired Miss Peers; she had accomplished so much that Maenad never could have dreamed of at the same age. She grinned, looking at the teacup held in her lap. "When you weren't stealing peanuts, were you planning on becoming an engineer?" she turned her head to hopefully share a smile.

I was planning on designing the most amazing starships for Trill's planetary fleet, she thought. "Something like that," she said. "Or the universe had it planned for me. I used to imagine I could hear the station talking to me; replicators telling me their troubles." She was talking far too much. Far more than she ever did. Caught off guard, she ducked her head, her ears growing red again. "How recently?" she asked, changing the subject. "I mean, how recently did you decide to leave Earth?"

"Oh," Maenad looked away, trying to remember. "It would have been only two years ago, I think. And it was only supposed to be during the summer months between classes. I taught and did personal research during the school year, and served as a science officer in training on Federation starships. It was not until a little over a year ago that I wanted to stay as a permanent science chief." Maenad finished the rest of her tea and set the cup on the desk. Before continuing, she licked her lips. "I was teaching at the Academy just a few weeks ago, thinking that I would not be posted until next year. In fact, I was attending a conference on Vulcan and doing archival research when I was summoned back to Earth for new orders. I was not impressed, at first, but by the time I'd arrived at Vega I was looking forward to it."

"You weren't impressed?" Lilou asked, confused by the language. By the orders? The position? The ship? Not the ship, surely.

"I am sorry," she shook her head, "I was angry that I had been reassigned so suddenly, and without being consulted." Maenad kept it secret that she hadn't even heard of the Galileo or its significance until she'd been transferred. It was then that she realised how long Peers has been visiting, and a wave of concern spread through her chest. "I hope that I haven't kept you too long, Miss Peers. If you have things to be doing, don't feel like you have to stay on my account."

"What- oh," Lilou hadn't even been paying attention to the time. She'd meant to make her apology, give the COS the shuttle, and get out of the way before she could much things up again. How had she come to be sitting there having a more honest conversation than she'd had with almost anyone on the ship since... Since Will. She bit her lip as her chest suddenly ached at the thought of him. Her first real friend since her world had been crushed and remade differently on the Algonquin. "No, I- I mean, if you're busy, I can- you are. Of course you are. You've got the mission to prepare for, so, I'll just-" She stood, putting the glass down. "Thank you for the conversation."

Maenad stood too, out of politeness' sake. "I have time," she said, weakly. But Peers seemed ready to leave. Maenad thought to herself that she had ruined a good conversation yet again, but it didn't stick. She had enjoyed the past while and was glad she had a feel for the engineer. "Thank you again for the shuttle," she smiled.

"Thank you for the recommendation," Lilou bowed her head, scuffing one boot against the back of the other. "For what it's worth, I'm glad you were reassigned."

That made a soft flush in Maenad's cheeks. It always felt nice to be appreciated. "Thank you," she beamed. "I enjoyed your company; come back any time. And I promise that I will speak to the commander."

Lilou grabbed her toolbox from the floor beside Maenad's desk and backed out a few steps. "I'd like that," she whispered. "I'd like that very much." She wasn't talking about the recommendation anymore, but it might not have been clear. All she could think was that Maenad looked much prettier with blood rising underneath her pale cheeks. She blinked twice, feeling as though her heart might be fluttering. "Tha- have a- good luck with your research," she stuttered and ducked out of the office.

[OFF]

ENS Lilou Peers
Chief Engineering Officer
USS Galileo

Lieutenant (JG) Maenad Panne
Chief Science Officer
USS Galileo

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