A Little Night Music - Part 2

“Crewman Brice, the Captain is waiting for her meal.”

Nola juggled the large duty PADD under her right arm, while trying not to spill the contents of the tray – what cosmic idiot chose tomato soup? – she carried. Oh, and also dodge the people that suddenly appeared in the corridor between the Mess Hall and the Turbolift, people who seemed to act as if she wore a personal cloaking device. For a ship that only held forty people, some places could end up feeling like Rush Hour at Barsoom Spaceport… even this late at night.

Someone – Lt Wixtar, the ship’s Chief of Security – bumped into her as she stood waiting for the turbolift, the huge Bolian just continuing onward, without even acknowledging her presence. Well, excuse YOU, you big blue mountain. She stepped inside as the doors parted. “Bridge.”

And as she felt herself ascend, once more she tried to compose herself, preparing for when she emerged at her destination. It was just another functional part of the ship, she reminded herself. Nothing to get excited about. It was just like Engineering, or the Cargo Bays, or the Computer Core-

And then the doors parted, taking with them all her feeble attempts to remain insouciant, as she stepped out once more into the one place on a starship, even one as small and insignificant as this, that everyone wanted to be, and don’t try and convince her otherwise.

The Bridge seemed livelier now than during her previous visits – wasn’t Gamma meant to be the quietest shift? – with officers and crew on the outer circle seated or standing at various stations, communicating with each other, the departments in the rest of the ship, or the Universe at large, while data and images fought for attention on surrounding displays. A simple shiny metal rail separated the outer circle from the inner, within which sat the Helm and Navigation stations, both currently manned, and behind them, the Captain’s Chair… currently unmanned.

All three positions faced a wide viewscreen now dominated by a starscape dilated into a tunnel as the Harken streamed along at high warp… wow, those old duotronic circuits on Beta Omicron must really need replacing-

“Crewman?”

But then her awe at being here, at seeing all this, the quintessence of her dreams, was eclipsed by umbrage. Where was their Commanding Officer? Where was Captain Mystery?

“Crewman Brice?”

If Nola had been in command, she wouldn’t have been hiding in her office like some hermit, playing her atrocious music! She would have been out here, doing her job! That centre seat deserved to be filled, and by someone more appreciative of the honour-

“Harken to Crewman Brice: are you receiving me, over?”

She started, spilling some more of the contents of the tray, as she realised the senior officer addressing her was practically in her face, and the eyes of nearly everyone on the Bridge were now on her. “Sir! Commander! Mr Gallop!”

Commander Henry Gallop, an older human with the wide shoulders, cornfield-blonde hair greying at the temples, and broad, dimpled chin, and who looked like the current Starfleet uniform of burgundy wraparound jacket, bloused black trousers and boots had been designed specifically for him, smirked with genuine amusement. “Excellent, Ms Brice: you know all the proper ways to address the First Officer. Now, have you just come to visit, or-”

Nola swallowed and indicated the tray, almost dropping the PADD under her arm again. “I brought food, Sir!”

“Thank you, but I’ve eaten already, and I want to pass my next physical. Unless it’s just for you?”

“N-No, Sir! It’s for the Captain-” she blurted out, too late recognising that he was teasing her. Smooth, Nola, smooth. How did you manage to leave Mars without someone selling you Curiosity Canyon?

Gallop straightened up. “She’s in her office. Do you need directions there?”

“No, Sir!” She turned towards the narrow door of the Captain’s Office immediately to the left of the turbolift, already hearing the music – or what was trying to pass as music – from within, and braced herself as she proceeded.

A din assaulted her ears, a discordant battle of string, brass and percussion for dominance, with voices shouting over each other; she felt like she had been dropped in the middle of a Klingon opera, or a riot… but with more electric guitars. It was apparently an example of Terran New Classical from about three centuries ago, Roll and Rock, and the Captain was apparently a fan.

Nola was not, preferring Martian Blues (at least you could understand the lyrics), and hearing this discord now, she could believe the stories about most of those old artists being on recreational hallucinogens-

“What’s our ETA to Agocho, Henry?” a voice with a crisp English accent asked over the noise.

Nola glanced around, before realising the voice had come from behind the desk, with the question addressed to the First Officer. She cleared her throat. “Um, Ma’am, it’s Crewman Brice-”

“Pause Mix.” In the sudden, blessed silence, a head popped up into view: a woman in her late forties or early fifties, with coffee-coloured skin, aquiline nose, full lips, a thick mane of shiny sable hair tied into one large braid that hung down over her left shoulder, and almond-coloured, almond-shaped eyes that now fixed on her accusingly. “You’re not Commander Gallop.”

Nola blinked. “Um, no, Ma’am. I brought you food-”

As she raised the tray, the PADD finally escaped from under her arm and struck her left foot. She winced, biting back a curse, feeling it even through the reinforced material of her boot.

Captain Audea Mistry regarded her, before replying with a slight, humanising smile, “It might be selfish of me, but if you had to drop something, I’m glad it wasn’t the tray. Put it over there, please, Brice.”

Nola nodded and complied, flexing her toes within her boot to confirm no breakage, before returning and retrieving the PADD. “Um, Ma’am, I need your signature on these Quartermaster and Chief Medical Officer reports-”

But Mistry had already ducked behind the desk again. “Later. Leave it. I’m busy right now. Resume Mix.”

The chaos returned. Nola stood there, nonplussed, before leaning over, peering down. The older woman was sitting cross-legged on the floor, her back against her desk and her boots and socks cast aside, studying a large PADD with a number of acoustic wavelength patterns, her fingers twitching seemingly at random… or as if she was playing an invisible piano, occasionally stopping to pick up a pen and make notations.

She stared in disbelief. Mistry was in here, composing music? What the Hell? She was supposed to be on duty! And wait- the First Officer was commanding Beta Shift tonight! Why was he still on the Bridge, covering for her while she indulged herself in here?

Now Mistry looked up, looking startled, raising her voice over the noise. “Can I help you, Crewman?”

Nola felt herself flush under the sudden scrutiny. “Um, can I, uh, do anything for you, Ma’am?”

“Thank you, no.”

“Are you sure, Ma’am? I can straighten out your desk...” She reached out, lifting up a PADD, her touch reawakening it to reveal a message titled PRIORITY ONE ALERT MESSAGE: COMMODORE GARROVICK-

The Captain suddenly bolted to her feet, reaching out and grabbing the PADD from Nola’s hands. “You can mind your own bloody business and leave, Crewman, that’s what you can do! Dismissed!”

Nola snapped to attention, feeling like she was having a warp core breach inside her. “Yes, Ma’am! Sorry, Ma’am!” She nearly tripped over her own feet as she spun and departed. Back on the Bridge, she recovered. Wow, Nola, what a way to end your career before it’s even started…

As she focused on slowing down her pulse, she looked up to see Petty Officer Olsen speaking with Gallop. “Sir, the Chief wanted me to remind you that we can sustain Warp 8 for only another 2 hours before the coils overheat.”

The First Officer appeared as nonchalant as always, standing there with his hands behind his back. “Really? And did you clean out the instances of profanity of his original message?”

The young redhead tried to suppress a smirk. And failed. “One or two, Sir.”

Gallop nodded. “Well, you can tell Chief Kitchener that we’ll be reaching Agocho before-” Then he stopped, noticing Nola standing there. “Why are you back out here, Crewman?”

She felt her face Supernova. “I, ah, I think I upset the Captain, Sir. She dismissed me.” At his continued gaze, she elaborated, “I, ah, don’t know where to go.”

Gallop nodded in empathy, approaching her, “Don’t take it personally, she gets that way when there’s a problem dropped in her lap. Get yourself another PADD, I’ll give you access to my mailbox. You can schedule all the requested meetings, required performance reviews and inspections for the next four weeks, around my duty shifts, until the Captain calms down. Work in the Mess Hall, it’s close for when she inevitably calls you back.”

“Aye, Sir.” She breathed out, turning and departing before she screwed up in some other way.

*

She seated herself down near the windows, avoiding those coming in for an after- midnight snack after tonight’s movie in the ship’s Assembly Bay, and ran through Gallop’s work, hoping he was right and Mistry would calm down; the woman looked mad enough to chew through the hull.

But the more she worked, the more Nola’s instincts to criticise turned back outward. She hadn’t really done anything to warrant that extreme reaction from Mistry, just accidentally read the header of a message. More than likely, Mistry was reacting to save face, having been caught playing around in her office while the ship was racing towards- well, it wasn’t Beta Omicron now. It hadn’t been for some hours, not since her meeting earlier with the Second Officer. But where? And what if anything did it have to do with orders received from a Commodore Garrovick?

Her confusion strengthened as she checked the most up to date ship’s logs… which indicated they were at Beta Omicron? She rechecked them; Commander Gallop had personally updated them an hour ago!

He and Mistry had both mentioned ‘Agocho’ separately; a quick check of the database turned up the Agocho Cloud, a thick accumulation of dark matter material stretched out over ten cubic light years of space in a neighbouring sector. It was apparently a long-established spatial navigational hazard, best avoided. So why the rush to get there? And the secrecy?

“Belle Fille!”

She looked up to see her fellow Baby Blues enter and approach, T’Shak moving directly to the synthesisers, Sebastiere sliding into an adjacent chair, sitting on it backwards and grinning. “You were sorely missed tonight, Cherie. Your beauty would have far outshone that upon the screen.”

Granch wrinkled his snout at the humans as he sat down opposite. “Get a room already, Canoodlian.”

“It’s ‘Canadian’, not ‘Canoodlian’, Porcelet.”

Nola looked up at the Tellarite, indicating Sebastiere. “For the record, he and I will never get a room together.”

“I meant for him and his one true love: himself.”

His bunkmate frowned at him. “That’s… probably only partly true.”

The Vulcan returned with a tray of drinks, setting it down on the table and looking to Nola. “As you are on duty and have a coffee already at hand, I have foregone providing one for you, but I will offer you a check for the rain.”

“Huh?”

“Raincheck,” Sebastiere explained. “It was mentioned in the movie tonight. I spent most of the time expaining all the old references.” He nodded to her PADD. “So what has Captain Mystery got you doing?”

“It’s Gallop, not Mistry who gave me this. Mistry’s sitting on the floor behind the desk in her office, listening to her so-called music. Hey, weren’t you supposed to be supporting the Engineering Team at Beta Omicron in Beta Shift? What happened?”

He nodded. “I was reassigned. Why, what’s up?”

She glanced around, making sure no one was nearby, before setting aside her PADD and leaning in. “We’re not going there. We’re on a secret mission, to a dark matter nebula.” Her eyes gleamed. “What do you think we’ll find there?”

T’Shak cradled her mug of mint tea. “Dark matter.”

Nola glared at her bunkmate. “You keep making bad jokes like that, and they’ll take away your licence to practice as a Vulcan.”

T’Shak remained unrepentant. “You are clearly mistaken; I do not make jokes, bad or otherwise.”

Granch’s snout wrinkled. “A secret mission, you say? Someone’s been at the Spican flame whiskey.”

Sebastiere smiled. “It is a bit of a stretch, Cherie. We’re an ordinary maintenance ship! Things like that don’t happen to us!”

“I must disagree,” T’Shak offered. “There was an unexpected course change, and an increase in speed to Maximum. And Lt Wixtar reassigned me to run checks on the torpedo magazine bay.”

Nola frowned at her. “Why didn’t you say something sooner?”

“I could have… but then I would have had to kill you.”

Nola’s jaw dropped.

“That line was in the movie tonight, too,” Sebastiere informed her. “What’s this about a dark matter nebula? What have you heard?”

“We’re headed for the Agocho Cloud, at Warp 8. It’s listed as a navigational hazard.”

Granch harrumphed. “So? There’ll be automated safety markers around that that probably need repairing. I still don't see why you think it a secret mission?”

Nola handed him her PADD. “Because we’ve been on our way there for hours now... and the official logs say we’re still headed for Beta Omicron.”

The Tellarite grunted… until he squinted at the data, handing it to Sebastiere, who then passed it to T’Shak, who offered a cursory glance at the text before returning it to Nola. “Interesting.”

“‘Interesting’? Is that all you have to say? Aren’t you excited? Don’t you want to know what we’ll be facing?”

T’Shak raised an eyebrow. “I daresay you’ll know before the rest of us. Assuming you do not remain here for the duration of your shift.”

Sebastiere’s brow furrowed. “Why are you down here anyway? Captain Mystery kick you out?”

Nola flushed, the joke more accurate than she would have preferred. “Oh, I, ah couldn’t get any work done up there with the Captain’s insane music playing. How did anyone in the Twentieth Century listen to that garbage?”

Before anyone could respond, the Mess Hall doors slid open, and they looked up to see a large, elderly, round-bellied Caitian male with dark fur turning grey-white along the underside of his muzzle, a pair of old-fashioned spectacles, and tall, sharp-pointed ears. He wore an elegant slate-grey civilian suit, and supported himself on a black Caitian sablewood cane, his tail swishing lazily behind him as he smiled and nodded to the young Crewmen, and hobbled up to the food synthesisers, keying in his account number and trying to work the controls- once, then again, and again, each time muttering to himself in annoyance.

Nola smiled in his direction. She had dealt with Professor Mrolo S’Li more than once, and half the time, he seemed to forget where he even was, let alone have trouble with the more basic tasks… like accessing a meal. Now he was grumbling to himself, or to the synthesiser, or both. She shook her head at her friends and rose, joining the Professor at the wall. “Sir? May I help?”

S’Li glanced at her through his spectacles, his bronze eyes narrowing. “Oh, yes, yes, Dear Cub, please!” He cancelled his ID entry and shook a furry fist at the display. “I’m trying to order a doner kebab – it’s the closest thing to shuris that I can find – but each time I try, it wants to offer me...” He leaned in, peering at the display. “Mother’s Cubs, what’s Dopey Atsa?”

Nola smiled. “‘Dopiaza’. It’s an Earth dish, Sir, like the kebab. And I can see where you’re going wrong. Here, let me show you.” She keyed in her own account number in demonstration, and quickly brought up the desired dish, the slot sliding up to reveal a mass of roasted meat slathered in onions and garlic sauce, and tightly packed into a pitta bread.

“Ahhh, delightful!” S’Li reached in, lifted up the kebab and brought it to his snout, sniffing and chuckling. “Thank you, Dear Cub, thank you! I’m so sorry for taking you away from your friends! I feel like such a senile old tail chaser!”

She waved off his words. “I’m happy to help you, Sir! Anytime!”

He took a bite out of the kebab, nodding and making approving sounds as he departed briskly, carrying his cane now rather than leaning on it.

Nola returned to her place, pleased at helping S’Li and lifted up her coffee. “There’s my good deed for the day done. What a sweet old cat.”

T’Shak leaned back in her seat, “He tricked you into using your own credits to get him the kebab.”

She blinked. “Excuse me?”

Granch chortled. “He helped develop the latest version of the Universal Translator, Human! You think he can’t work out a simple food synthesiser?”

Sebastiere grinned. “You got off lucky; he once conned a plate of fried chicken from me.”

Nola ground her teeth.

Part 3