Whispers in the Night (part 1)

Posted on Sat Aug 30th, 2014 @ 1:00pm by Captain T'mpest Michaels & Commander Rylie Cattmor & Lieutenant Commander T'kaarch

831 words; about a 4 minute read

Mission: What Dreams May Come
Location: Various
Timeline: Current

ON

T'kaarch was sitting on a white horse. Have you ever seen a cat-person riding a white horse? It's quite a sight, I tell you. He finally arrived at a bouncy, furry castle, where a cute Human princess...

T'kaarch startled awake from the dream. He looked around, and saw he was in the mess hall on a bunk bed, same as - well, as long as he could remember. He sat up, careful for the fallen bulkhead which more-or-less cleaved the makeshift sleeping room in two. Showers were a luxury they couldn't afford, so he immediately gotten into his stained, scorched Ensign uniform. Immediately, a big, looming Commander stood in front of him.

"ENSIGN T'KAARCH!" He bellowed, "Why are you not on your post?!" Immediately followed by a shock on the left of his head, as the baton of the officer connected to his face. Crawling, and half-crying already, he scuttled out of the sleeping chamber to report onto the bridge.

~~~~

She hated working like this; straight out on her back in a jeffries tube looking up into the tiny recessed panels that littered their way along such areas of a starship. The one bright spot was that there was no real distractions, no thoughts rampaging around these empty parts of the ship, and so the only part of uncomfortable feelings that Rylie was experiencing came from the cramped nature of the workspace.

Rylie set down the stembolt releaser and reached across for the decoupler only to find that it wasn't there, or at least not where she thought she'd stowed it. She sat up, more annoyed than tired, and as she suspected it was nowhere to be seen. She exhaled sharply, concluding that she must have left it outside on the previous job and started manoeuvring around to collect it. Just as she'd moved around however, the hatch to the tube slammed shut and locked from the outside. She looked back the other way and the section seal suddenly came together as well and magnetically locked.

Not usually one to panic unless deemed necessary, Rylie went to tap her combadge and ended up tapping her uniform, ultimately finding that it had followed in her decoupler's vanishing act. Then she heard something, some strange hissing noise before she could feel the air getting very thin and realising that the environmentals were being rerouted. She hurriedly worked her way toward the hatch and started banging on it as hard and as loud as she could, but it was ultimately no use - the section had already been vacated, and she was too light-headed to be able to function and do anything about it.

She collapsed, or so it seemed, onto her, well, a pillow with the intense feeling of falling before waking with a start. It was probably lucky that she'd been forced to wear the neural inhibitor to curb her teek abilities and to dull any teep traits as shocks like that to her system usually ended up damaging at least something, and the bulkheads of Ranger were in no condition to take it. She sat and swung her legs off the low makeshift bed, straying thoughts leading back to the dream.

No, that was no dream; that was yesterday afternoon, only then she'd had her combadge and they'd gotten her out in time. The place is still a mess, she thought as she stood wearily and pulled on her gloves, hiding her scarred hands - she was already in her uniform that she couldn't change due to the severe budgeting of computer and power resources they had had to work out - and headed out the open door.

~~~~

T'mpest woke with a start, her heart pounding in her chest. "Computer, lights." She looked around her room to make sure she was truly alone. Vlad. She hadn't thought of him since she'd been given command of the Ranger. He hadn't contacted her once since he left the ship and she was sure he'd moved on, but that dream... Vlad, dangling from a tree, his neck broken. "Computer, play Scottish ballads." She didn't care which ones, she needed to get the image out of her head and music often helped.

It still wasn't working. The image was too vivid. Vlad was NOT dead. He simply ... moved on. But the image refused to fade as most dreams did. Finally giving up on sheep, she got up and padded barefoot to the bookshelf and took down the bagpipes on the top. Another thing she hadn't done since taking command -- played her bagpipes. As softly as she could, she began to play along with the ballads. An hour of this, then an hour of meditation, she promised herself. Between the two, she would be fine. She hoped.

(To be continued...)

Lieutenant T'kaarch
Chief Science Officer
USS Ranger

Lieutenant Commander Rylie Cattmor
Executive Officer
USS Ranger

Commander T'mpest Michaels
Commanding Officer
USS Ranger

 

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