Picking the Brains

Posted on Mon Jun 5th, 2017 @ 11:24am by Lieutenant JG Elliot Keller & Lieutenant Commander Ziyal Tajor

Mission: Awakening
Location: Mess Hall, USS Victory

Elliot rubbed his neck and yawned as he walked down the hallway towards the Mess Hall. The young Diplomat had not expected his day to turn out the way it did but it was still staggering to see how quickly the situation had changed.

Ziyal for her part felt weary and hungry. At the moment, hungry outweighed the weary and so she headed to the mess hall. She joined Elliot walking down the corridor. She tried to smile at him, "Hey." She said.

"Hey." He said in reply as he slowed down to match her pace. "Let me guess you've not eaten since we left and now you could eat absolutely anything?"

Ziyal nodded, "Pretty much. I should be hungry, but I'm probably just going to pick at it. At least you aren't wondering if you could have saved them."

Elliot nodded. "Yeah that's a tough call to make, personally Cordale made the right choice he put the safety of the team first."

Ziyal shook her head, "No, Cordale was ready to go in there to save them, even with them refusing and Hel looked like she was about to jump in until I said something. Cor took my advice, if he hadn't, then... then... well who knows what would have happened."

"We'd be scooping you guys up with shovels." Elliot said bluntly to Ziyal as the two of them entered the Mess Hall.

"Perhaps, but we don't know how bad the damage was, I never saw any kind of damage report. I suspect that it was mainly targeted at killing the engineers and cutting the command and power links. With those two linkages down and more importantly, no one to fix them, it decays and falls. However, if we could have repaired the power linkages and gotten even a rudimentary control linkage, we might have kept it up for long enough that it did not have to come down." Ziyal explained.

"But in doing so you would have broken the first contact rule and also offended the laws and customs of an Alien Culture." Elliot said as he proceeded to the Replicator and keyed in his information. "It's a very grey area."

Ziyal followed him, getting herself a Cardassian pie. "Which is what I said. However, it seems entirely possible that if we had succeeded, then they would conveniently forget that we had broken some rules to do it."

He shook his head. "Doubt it. They were very open with the Captain and myself when we met them but you could sense that they were reluctant to be too open."

Ziyal nodded as she sat. "Perhaps, but knowing there is nothing you can do only goes so far."

He nodded. "I guess so, but again my job is to sit down and talk with these people." Elliot commented as he took the seat opposite her. "Your job is to assess and analyse."

Ziyal picked at the pie dispassionately despite her hunger. "At Headquarters, we got situations and numbers like this all the time. It was routine. The Federation's a big place, and one in a trillion chance happens every day. Somehow, being out here, meeting them, however briefly makes it different some how."

"I thought that when i was assigned here." Elliot said. "For a young ensign on his first assignment you know?"

"I'm not quite sure how you mean that." Ziyal said, slightly confused.

"Id been out of the Academy and served on Earth for the majority of the time, until Victory was assigned to the Gamma Quadrant and then I took the chance to go into Deep Space for the first time."

"So what do you think is the diffrence?" Ziyal asked.

"A Starship means you have to rely on the people above you to make the right calls." Elliot commented to Ziyal. "The Captain, the XO and Cor are the ones who decide what happens out here and how we go about it but at HQ there are thousands of people and it's easy to get lost in the shuffle."

Ziyal nodded, "Interesting, I kinda see it the other way. Instead of relying on those above you to make the right calls here, you have to make the right calls. While at headquarters, you have to trust others that they are making the right calls. At headquarters, you have to trust those above you to make the right decision with the info you give them. You do a bad analysis, then there are others around you to cancel it out. However, out here, your analysis really matters. It's your analysis that the Captain is depending on to make his decision. You give him a bad analysis, it's your fault he makes a bad decision."

"I can see your point." Elliot responded to Ziyal. "But then again we can also look at in terms of in both cases those decisions have long standing repercussions." He said to her. "Career ended in extreme cases."

"And possibly life ending ones out here. I don't think it's possible to get executed for anything you do at Star Fleet Headquarters. Well, not unless you got shot taking a phaser to the guy who decided that a fifteenth briefing on things you already know was a good idea." Ziyal said, trying to be humorous, despite her still uneaten food.

"In a Mirror Universe it'd be common." Elliot said in response. "Or in the Klingon Empire."

"If we were in the Mirror universe, I'd probably either be dead or an admiral already with all of the long boring meetings I've wanted to kill someone at." Ziyal said, smiling gently and taking a bite of the pie.

"You're scary sometimes you know? A good friend but scary." Elliot chuckled as he ate his food.

"Please, you are a diplomat. You can't tell me that there haven't been meetings where you wished you could just shoot them or yourself so you could get it over with." Ziyal said teasingly.

"First off I'm not allowed to carry a Phser unless authorised to do so and secondly I'm a terrible shot." He smirked in response.

"You want to be a good shot?" Ziyal asked, curious.

He shrugged. "I hadn't really given It That much thought I must admit."

Ziyal nodded, "Shooting can be a lot of fun, it's like a sport. I know officers who got their expert marksmanship badges because it was fun, not because they thought they were going to need it. It's a tool, one that can come in very handy, even when you are not in a war. The colony I grew up on had lots of poisonous snakes, and my parents kept a disruptor by the door to shoot them. My grandfather used to take me hunting. It's also useful when you are in a war for obvious reasons."

"I guess I never gave it much thought." He said with a soft smile. "I guess a little practice couldn't hurt could it?"

"Awesome, I'll help. We'll get you shooting expert in no time." Ziyal said with a smile before finishing her pie.

The two Lieutenants continued to converse over their food. In a short space of time the two of them had become good friends and given the last few weeks friendship,was important.