His ready room was bigger. He hadn't noticed it before, but as he lay back on the couch behind his desk, thinking back on Celeris, his new ready room seemed bigger. He glanced at his jacket, thrown over his desk chair. In place of his usual engineering gold was logistics green, another change in his command. So much had changed in the last few days.
Davin sat up slowly to bring himself into frame, his head in his hands. "It's day... I don't know... after the Undine attack... I got word from Kaol, the current count is one hundred sixteen survivors from Celeris. Out of a crew of four hundred fifty... Kaeni went down with the ship. They can't even recover anything with the Undine in the sphere..." His hands fall to his lap, the SubCommander tilting his head back to stare up at the ceiling. "Still no word on Dawsons, need to assign Nethali her quarters... and figure out where in the Void her shuttle is going to fit in the hangar. Elements, I ought to just assign her a scorpion, but..."
He sniffles, and only now looks toward the camera, wiping absently at his face as if unsure of what else to do. "First log on a new ship, and I'm just... Hardly an auspicious beginning, huh?" The sound he makes isn't quite a chuckle, it's too choked for that. "But I've got some things in the works... Need to see if Sevaal can find someone for me. Kererek won't help me, but..."
The recording goes silent for a long moment, Davin staring off at something just outside of the frame. "I can't do nothing. I just... I can't. Computer, end log."
Four ships, a dozen formal logs, and yet this is the first time the SubCommander is actually sitting at his desk to record a report. Then again, one of the screens behind him is open on a game of 'The Ancient Tomes: Staredge', so maybe things weren't as different as they seemed.
"Aithaen, faiihr." Chirp. Davin leans back in his chair, bringing a hand to his chin. "I'll be honest, I almost forgot about the Getri Esahr situation... Though in my defense, we were just attacked by a hostile force from another universe... again." His brow furrows and he shakes his head. "Y'know, a part of me honestly misses dealing with the Tal Shiar... Things were simpler then, at least. We were the good guys, they were the bad guys, and until the Elachi got involved there was almost no shapeshifting."
He runs a hand through his hair and sighs. "So y'know what? I'm just going to focus on something nice and simple for a little while. I'm going to take my ship, go find myself a fugitive, and bring him to justice." A clap of his hands emphasizes the point, and the SubCommander grins widely. "I'm not going to bother with the other universes, I'm not going to get myself involved in any esoteric moral debates about justice, I'm just going to go find a dangerous man, shoot at him a little, an hopefully at the end of things he won't be quite so dangerous."
Davin turned the empty bottle over in his hands. In the pale blue glass he saw himself reflected, stared back into his bloodshot eyes, saw himself as he never wanted to be seen. Drunk. Hurt. Weak. In an instant the bottle was across the room, shattered against the wall into so many glittering shards in the vain hope that he could somehow turn this sorrow into anger, an emotion he could bear to be seen expressing, that he knew how to handle.
The effort proved as empty as the four other bottles at his feet. "A'thaen," he slurred, "f'iihr."
The SubCommander sat at the end of his couch, staring down at his now empty hands. He chuckled, but there was a pain in that sound that the kali-fal only made more apparent. " 's almos' funny... Almos'..." He wipes absently at his eyes, chuckling again. "Shoulda jus' asked... Why'd I get m'self tied up in all'a this anyway, huh? I'm a fvadt... officer of the Romulan Republic." He enunciated the last sentence, and even puffed out his chest, but that only sent him slumping against the back of the couch, his head tilted back to stare at the ceiling.
"I'm an engineer... a soldier! Not a... couns'ler, or a..." The thought trailed off and Davin grew silent for a few long moments, listing to one side until he lay on his side across the couch. "Humans..." He said simply, and started to struggle with his jacket. A few moments of fighting saw the SubCommander finally wrestle the garment off and pull it up over his head. "A'thaen... mms'akhh... mos'akhiy..."
The picture cut to black for an instant before the camera adjusted to the lack of light, showing the dim ready room bathed in the blue-green glow of the monitors at Davins desk. The last five minutes of the video were just the dark ready room, quiet and still until the recording timed out, ending itself.
Davin breathed a long sigh and ran both hands through his hair, his bridge crew beginning to whisper the instant the viewscreen went dark. Well, except for Lir.
"That was the Proconsul! Davin!" She practically squealed in her excitement, bouncing at her post by the helm. For his part, the SubCommander was still reeling. "I'm surprised he didn't make you a Commander right then! 'For your service to the Republic, you have my gratitude'." Lir's impression of D'Tan was... less than accurate, but it seemed her enthusiasm was inescapable.
"I'll have to let General..." Davins face fell as his voice trailed off. "...Fvadt, I forgot his name." His eyes grew distant as he struggled to remember, before it suddenly occurs to him all at once. "Wrot'ka! ...Wort'ka? No, definitely Wrot'ka. I'll need to let him know Kererek approved those patrols he wanted."
Lir giggled, moving to take a position beside the captains chair. "Did you see the look on Kery's face when you told him they wanted Nimbus? I thought he was going to personally fly the Llieset to Qo'nos!"
"It was a bold move," Sevius chimed in from the back of the bridge. "Go behind the Republics back and get a stronghold in Tau Dewa a days warp from Mol'Rihan."
"No," Davin said, shaking his head, "that wasn't what they were after. They knew the Federation wasn't going to give them Nimbus, and they wanted to see what they could get out of it."
"Did you see how green D'Tan turned when you told him they tried to cut the Republic out of negotiations?" Lir was sitting atop her console now, idly kicking her legs in the air. "I thought he was going to ex-plode!" She threw her hands up to mime an explosion, and then hopped down from her impromptu seat to rush to the turbo lift. "And why are we not in the lounge drinking right now!? A call from the Proconsul is reason to celebrate!"
And that was all the prompting the bridge crew needed to do just that.
It was a good thing that Omega had been about his size, otherwise Davin wouldn't have known what to do with the suit. He wasn't sure what would happen when the trooper showed up on base in just a jumpsuit, sans armor and quite a bit of latinum, but as he worked on grafting the electronics and armor onto a scrapped Romulan EV basesuit he didn't much care.
His free hand bobbed along to the music he had on in the background as he soldered the last of the pins, and the armor a control suite reinitialized. "Hah, got it!" He held the suit up, showing it off to the turret sitting in a half dozen pieces on a bench across the room. "Whatcha think, D'Pew? The armor's not going to make me look fat, is it?"
The turret clicked and chirped, and Davin just chuckled. "I knew you'd like it. And not just because I programmed you to." The suit hung limp in his hands, the dedicated combat gear promising that maybe, just maybe, he might be able to get through an away mission without destroying a jacket. "Yeah, I think I'm going to like this thing." He tossed the suit over his workbench, patted the matching helmet, newly fitted with Romulan electronics, and wandered out of his workroom.
The camera blinked to life, and focused not on the familiar SubCommander, but on a red headed Romulan woman that looked a bit unsure of what to do with the console on Davins desk. "Is it... Oh, that did it! Awesome!" She didn't step back so much as bounce, her brief smirk of triumph fading to a more somber expression.
"Okay... Acting Captains log, Centurion Lir Callahan reporting." Whether it's the stress of the situation or just the uncertainty of her new duties, Lir can't help but rub nervously at the back of her neck as she continues. "Davin's been barred from duty while he recovers, and he is not thrilled about that, but since Korren was injured too that leaves me as acting CO. Whiiiiich is weird."
Her eyes drift slowly to the floor, but before long she perks up, scrambling to pull something from her jacket. "Oh, right, damage reports!" What followed, while surely unfortunate for Lir, was an objectively impressive ballet of fumbling for her PADD, juggling the device briefly before finally gaining control of the unruly device, and reading aloud it's contents. "Okay! Uhm, so, the port weapons pod is... basically scrapped, that whole section of wing needs to be reinforced, the hangar was breached, we had breaches on decks two, four, five, and nine, and the revised... Oh..."
For a moment she says nothing, just staring on stunned silence at the screen in her hands. Slowly she retreats to Davins familiar couch, falling into it more than sitting down. It is a long while before she speaks, and she can't seem to bring her eyes to the camera.
"Revised casualty reports... Fourty-seven dead, one hundred ninety four injured..."
Davin was above all else a soldier. He fought, he repaired, he dealt with loss in stride knowing greater things were at stake. He lived a comfortable but spartan life, with no real meaningful delineation between personal time and the continuing duties required of an officer of the Republic. And all of that just made the Federation bed underneath him seem all the more opulent.
Soft in excess, cool without being frigid, supportive without being too plush or too firm, the mattress was some sort of minor miracle unto itself. Even laying atop the crimson Federation covers, his clothes still very much present, the unadulterated bliss that was the mattress below him threatened to drag him from the waking world.
And who was to say a little opulence wasn't called for? The long-suffering SubCommander had earned himself three fresh disruptor burns, pushing his all-time total into a range he preferred not to think about. Friends had been lost, Romulan lives already so few extinguished, names adding to a list that had been growing for as long as Davin could remember, and longer than he cared to consider. So perhaps a respite was called for. A trip to Risa, a stay on Mol'Rihan, or even just an expertly engineered mattress meant for a diplomat far beyond Davins scope.
The only real issue with his commandeered suite was the sonic shower. Federation standard though it was, a life spent on the colonies meant a life of cleansing in water, and while sound waves ensured a more meaningful clean it lacked the tangibility of the older ways. A small qualm perhaps, but one that Davin could not simply brush aside. Okhala had a 'proper' shower, sure, and it wouldn't be the first time Davin had lived out of the Kestrel class shuttle, but Ketra had been unsurprisingly insistent on Davins staying on the Starbase while D'Ishae was under repair.
'Your penchant for overexertion in matters relating to ship repair and maintenance would be most unconducive to your recovery', she had said in that too-close-to-Vulcan tone of hers, and he mouthed the words as they ran through his head. No doubt having to conduct her treatment on DS13, away from the familiarity of her sickbay aboard the Warbird, had just made matters worse for Davin.
Thus had he been exiled from his own ship, injured and alone, left to fend for himself against the ruthless wilds of Deep Space 13. And like a Romulan Robinson Crusoe he had carved out for himself an oasis, a sanctuary crafted with nothing but his bare hands, his wits, and his dubious but so far unchallenged diplomatic status.
Or at least that's how he imagined the situation as he drifted to sleep.
There was always a satisfaction that came with seeing ones handiwork completed, knowing that something had been improved by your exertion, the effort put forth. And as Davin looked over the sleeping pods of his shuttle that feeling was at the forefront of his mind. He had found the replicator patterns for the foam blend of the mattresses used in the diplomatic quarters, and after a few adjustments fitted them into his shuttle. The trip to Risa, he thought, would certainly be comfortable now.
Rather than use the transwarp gate, the temporarily off duty SubCommander had charted a fairly leisurely course from the edge of Eta Eridani to the Risa system, perhaps two days flight at warp 7. Doran, the excitable Trill engineer on DS13, had recommended a few spy thrillers after a lengthy discussion of the Terran films McCarthy had screened a few days prior, and Davin had promised to watch at least one on his trip.
"Symbiont 7, the ultimate spy!" Doran certainly wasn't out to undersell the series. "The quintessential adventure has got to be Latinumlobe. It's got our hero pitted against a ruthless Ferengi mastermind out to- well, I don't want to spoil it for you. There are other good ones though, too, if you don't mind the different actors playing his other hosts. You Only Join Twice, Die Another Stardate, Dilithium Is- on second thought maybe skip Dilithium Is Forever, the bad guys in that are Romulan and I don't know, err- anyway!"
He'd been almost as bouncy as Lir as he tried to convince Davin to watch these films, so his promise to give them a chance was, like most of his concessions to Lir, as much in the interest of Dorans health as it was genuine interest. That level of manic energy could simply not be sustainable in Davins mind.
And so with a chuckle the SubCommander locked in his course, retreated to his shuttles sleeping pod, sprawled out on the reverse engineered bliss that was his new mattress, and listened to the twanging string introduction of the apparently iconic Trill action/spy film.
"You've got to believe me, I wasn't a part of this!"
"Why? Why do I have to believe you? You've assaulted a superior officer, stolen, lied, sabotaged the ship-"
"You know that wasn't me!"
"As far as in concerned you're as guilty as she is." Finally someone steps into frame. It's Davin, holding an uncertain looking sehlat cub that's been dyed pink and groomed to look like a French poodle. "Look at what she did to Khellian!"
Lir runs across the room toward him, but the look in Davins eyes keeps her at bay. "Davin, c'mon, you know I-"
"I was gone, what, a week? Two? How long has he been like this?" The cat drops to the floor, rolling around as he struggles to murder the bow on his tail.
"Threeeee? days?"
"Fvadt!" Suddenly Davin drops to the floor alongside his betrayed comrade, shielding him from further torture. Khellian is far too busy with the now to notice. "This is why Sevius is my first officer, by the way. I can trust him not to paint the crew when I turn my back."
Lir grumbles, starts to speak, pauses, fumes, stamps her booted foot on the deck, and finally turns to leave. "It was Nethali!"
"Out!" was Davins reply, coupled with a finger raised with a flourish befitting a Romulan. At his feet, Khellian was busy shredding the slain bow that had so viciously attacked both his tail and his masculinity. "We'll get them for this," Davin said to the cat, which in his mind was ever so slightly less crazy than saying it to no one. "Oh yes, we'll get the-Khellian, no, not the couch!"
The camera opened not on the familiar, lived in ready room of D'Ishae's SubCommander but rather the room next door, the bridge with all stations manned. "Everyone ready?" Davin asked. Nods from the bridge officers, and a chirp from Zazris down in main engineering.
"I just don't understand why you needed to install another plasma infuser," Lir said from her post. "Or why we're infusing plasma into more plasma. Isn't that kinda redundant?"
Davin just pinched the bridge of his nose. "We went over this, a secondary envelope of raw plasma after it's gone through the primary collimator- look, I'll have Zaz run you through it later, ok?"
"I will not," came Zazris' indignant voice through the intercom, her tone gruff and inescapably Reman.
"Sorry Zaz, I-"
"Sir? I'm a little lost too," was Sevius' contribution to the commotion.
"Command deck recording," Davin shouted over the erupting din of conversation, "of D'Ishae weapons system test, configuration three, iteration two." That brought the crew back to their stations, at least for now. A small display in the corner of the screen shows the ships viewscreen image. A ratty looking Orion frigate drifts ahead of them, stripped of weapons and devoid of crew.
"Weapons locked," boomed Sevius.
"Infusers nominal," came Zazris a moment after.
"Confirm no life signs aboard, SubCommander," called Ketra from the rear of the bridge.
"Alright then. Scatter spread, full power, and you may fire when ready."
The effect was stunning and immediate. A flurry of plasma bolts slammed into the unshielded hull of the derelict, punching through the plating in bursts of radiant green flame. The ship began to list away from D'Ishae, rocked by the impacts rending the ship.
"Focus fire on the core," Davin called, and suddenly the random bolts of energy formed four streams, two from each wing mounted weapon pod, all converging near the center of the ship. Under that sort of withering firepower the vessel simply could not endure, decks giving way as the cannon fire shredded through to strike the warp core.
The breach was almost instantaneous.
Cheers rose up through the crew, on the bridge and those watching from the observation deck.
"And that is why I put in that extra infuser," said a wildly grinning Davin to a stunned Lir.
Davin looked like hell. His hair disheveled, eyes green and bloodshot, the mornings stubble left oddly unshaven. Even the room was dimmer than usual, hinting along with the fingers gingerly massaging his temple at the ache doing its best to split his skull.
The one constant was his tattoo.
"Aithaen," he said, and seemed to cringe at the volume of his own voice. The inevitable "faiihr" came much more softly.
"Moderation in the face of adversity," he said as if the phrase had been the mornings mantra. "The problem with being the slimiest cola in the galaxy is that it takes a lot of kali-fal to chase away the swamp taste." A lengthy string of Rihan follows, ending simply with "...never understand the Ferengi palate."
"Anyway. D'Ishae is at full combat capacity. Which is good, because the Borg may be on the verge of becoming an issue again." A hand went to the bridge of Davins nose, his brow furrowing. "Aithaen, mos'akhiy." The room further dimmed, much to the apparent relief of the SubCommander. "Nethali and Lir have put together some kind of fight club, or something... The bright side is it gives them less time to find new and creative things on the ship to dye."
Davin ran his fingers through his still faintly blue hair, as if proving a point. "What else... Centurion Aurelia failed to usurp Rellir as my go-to culinary advisor... though she still strikes me as being handy with a disruptor. Arilae and Corvan have announced their engagement, and they're working on setting a date. I'd be happier if it didn't mean finding a new torpedo tech and Uhlan SubLieutenant, but I won't hold it against them."
With that, he gladly threw himself across his ready room couch. "And that's it!" Even from this angle it was obvious that the moment of exuberance came with a price. "Nnh... Aithaen, sehhae faiihr."
"Aithaen." Davin sat at his console, elbows on the desk, hands covering his mouth. He looked more rigid than usual, tense, and his green eyes seemed to flicker in the dim light. At one edge of his desk was a PADD, at the other his disruptor. "Personal log. Level alpha encryption, progressive code key, sequence Davin Four Seven Delta. Faiihr."
"Aurelia T'Veras." The SubCommander idly tapped his index fingers together just in front of his nose. "Former imperial intelligence officer. Defector to the Republic. Skilled combatant. And now officially a liability. What to do..."
His eyes drifted to the disruptor in front of him. Davin stares at it for an unconfortably long time, his hands coming to rest atop his work desk, and rapping on the top of the deal. "Not really an option, is it... No. No, it shouldn't... I mean, she didn't seem to think I'm Tal Shiar or anything like that... I don't think I need to worry about her letting this out."
His eyes drift to something beyond the camera, something far against the wall or deep within the recesses of his mind. "Davin Mandukar..." Just saying the words was enough to leave a sour taste in Davins mouth, to make him cringe. "No... No. Never again. Aithaen, sehhae faiihr."
The Last Will And Testament Of Davin T'Varros, or SubCommander Davins' Sing-A-Long Log!
"Aithaen, faiihr." Davin sat across from the camera, his head down. He let a silence fall across his ready room. A small part of him worried about how he came across in his logs in moments like these, but he was reasonably confident that, one way or another, no one was ever going to review these things anyway. Perhaps that explained the guitar.
He counted off slowly, his voice barely a whisper, and then his fingers danced along the six or seven thin silver strings of his instrument. His voice was hushed, the soft-spoken Rihan words barely above a whisper, but it fit the somber mood of his chosen melody. For whatever reason, he kept his head down throughout.
On the couch beside him lay his flask, it's neck open and empty. It's contents, one might fairly surmise, had likely not gone wasted. About half-way through the second verse he stopped abruptly, setting down his instrument and moving to his desk. The screens soft glow lent a pale blue to his already faintly green pallor.
For a few moments he stood scrutinizing whatever was on that display, focusing on the header and signature by the up-and-down flutter of his eyes.
He pressed send, and returned to his guitar. All that was left now was to wait.
Unencrypted Transmission to Mol'Rihan Command, Admiral Kererek.
"What in the gleaming black Void were you thinking!?"
Davin, starship commander, Romulan with a deathwish, the man who had not long ago gone blade to Borg, recoiled from the shouts coming through his comm screen. "SubAdmiral, I wasn't-"
SubAdmiral Tekarian glared at him, across a desk and countless lightyears, neither of which did anything to shield Davin from his fury. "Do you know what I had to do to keep Nallis from dragging you in for treason?"
"That's not-"
"That is literally what you did. Joining the Republic under false pretenses. And a Mandukar?"
The two were silent for a long time, neither ready to meet the others gaze.
"Look," Tekarian sighed, "I understand why you did what you did... And I know Siras wouldn't raise a Tal Shiar." The SubAdmiral smiled faintly, and the SubCommander gave a hesitant smile in return. "Have you told the Terrans?"
"I... No... A few." Davin shrugged. "I haven't exactly made an announcement, or anything."
Terakian said, "You need to tell them."
Davin repeated, "I need to tell them."
"Soon," Terakian said with a nod. "I'll make your case with the High Council. You'll be fine as long as you can stay in the Federations good graces. Jolan'tru."
The channel blinked to black. Davin rocked back in his chair, stared up in the ceiling, and gripped twin fistfuls of his raven hair. "Uuuuugh! This is going to be unpleasaaaant!"
Davins voice came as more of a bark than his usual reserved intonation. "Aithaen faiihr." A chirp from D'Ishaes computer confirmed the recording. "Ashworth is a fvadt fool! Berating me for defending my ship? The Paragon? His fvadt station?"
A deep breath didn't seem to do anything to even his mood. "And if I'd known those mangy yikh beasts had attacked Rellir I wouldn't have stopped firing when their shields started to fail." Another deep breath as he throws himself back into his chair, looking up at the ceiling.
"Standard doctorine from the High Command is to return fire when engaged. I'm... I try to respect Federation authority, I really do, but I'm not going to endanger the lives of my crew, Romulan lives, to avoid hurting feelings." Davin shakes his head, an errant lock of hair falling across his forehead. "There are few enough of us as it is..." A sigh, and his eyes began to wander the room.
"I bet the other commodore would have understood... Fuzzy blue guy, I forget his name... Seems nice though. Pragmatic. Looks like he knows how to handle a disruptor." Davins fingers drummed across his desk top as he stared down just below the camera. "Well. We'll see how much deeper I can dig myself into this hole. If the council doesn't take me off duty for concealing my identity, maybe I can get myself barred from joint Federation service."
The blade swung in lazy circles, handle twirling around the SubCommanders wrist. "Again," he said, fingers gripping the hilt of the blade tightly, it's neutron-thick point angled at the deck plating. Unlike most alien weapons the sword was heavy in his hand.
A pair of figures materialized in front of Davin, Borg drones, pulled and simulated from the ships database. He had nearly worked it out after quite a bit of trial and error. There was a sweet spot, within about ten meters, in which the drones would stop using their weapons in favor of attempting assimilation. Close quarters, but only really a threat at arms reach. They moved slowly, not marching like soldiers but like a glacier, like the wind; inevitable and in their own time.
Where is Nethali?
The first drone reached out, and with the flash of his blade Davin sent it's grasping fingers and half of the attached forearm to the floor with the sound of rent metal, splintered bone, and the faint e flat note of his blade echoing the strike. The drone reacted not like an injured animal but as a computer experiencing a hardware failure. 'Error, device not found'.
What did Kat mean?
"Rrrrah!" Davin swung again, this time neatly severing the drones head. Disconnecting main processor from power source by way of the adapted spinal column. The second drone was closing then, it's nanite tubules already free of its knuckles. Davin stepped back slowly, matching the pace of the drone, twirling his sword as he starts to sidestep a wide circle around the impassive holographic machine.
What in the Void have I done?
His focus faltered, and the thing was on top of him. His blade swung, and embedded in the prosthetic weapon of the Borgs left forearm. It's right hand closed around his neck, lifting him into the air. Two bright pin-pricks of pain flared at his neck, not the drones assimilation tubes but feedback meant to represent them, completing the simulation. Davin grimaced, grabbed the things wrist, but its grip was too strong, like a vice around his throat. With an animal cry of fury he pulled his sword, not back but down, through the rest of the drones arm and free of obstruction, pulling it back to drive it through the simulated Borgs chest.
And like that he was back on the floor, clutching his neck and coughing, blade held loose at his side. As though someone had simply pressed its 'off' switch the drone fell backward, grasping at the air above it. Weakly. Futilely. It took a bit of effort but soon Davin was back on his feet, his sword whispering its monotone as it spun through the air.
"Aithaen, faiihr." Chirp. "Personal log, Lir Callahan, stardaaaate... Ihavenoidea." Lir's quarters were smaller than Davins, but considering the Ar'kif class was designed to be a Floatilla ship that still left her with plenty of space. Sitting on her desk rather than the chair behind it, the camera showed little of the space and more of the ceiling behind her.
"Nethali still won't tell me what happened. Not that I can find her most days anyway, Davin locked out her comm-net access so I can't ask the computer where she's hiding." Lir's gaze wanders to a point above and beyond the camera, the angle making it appear as though she's rolling her eyes. "I wish she'd just talk to me. I mean yeah, D's an insensitive jerk sometimes... or a lot of the time... Where was I going with this?"
"Oh well. Other D apparently bought the bar on station, which is cool I guess. Oh! And Dad finally caught the ensign that reprogrammed his replicator. I mean, yeah, the first time there's no cup around your coffee it's cute, but the twentieth?" Lir smirked, brushing her hair over a pointed ear.
"I told Dad that we'd space someone for that and I think for a second he really believed me." Her eyes jump back to the camera, mouth twisted in a slight grimace. "He still wants me to transfer to Starfleet. I mean it's been what, eight years? He even had a post picked out for me on Starbase two-thirty-four so I could learn from him." A chuckle, but there's a hint of something underneath it.
"Argo does have an officer exchange program, though, I think... I'd still get to see everyone, and..." She shrugs, and for a moment there is silence.
A startling amount of the administrative decisions for the warbird D'Ishae were made from the couch of the ships ready room, its' captain sprawled across the cushions, tapping at a PADD held above his head. And when that was done, the couch also made for a convenient position from which to record the ships logs.
"Stress." The single word so perfectly summarized the preceding week. "At this rate I'll be gray before I'm fourty... And as utopian as the Federation likes to tell everyone they are their day-to-day can still be incredibly stressful. No wonder they're so eager to get their hands on something stronger than synthahol." That seemed as good an excuse as any to indulge himself, letting gravity do the work of transporting his drink from the metal flask held aloft to his waiting mouth below.
"Mh... Though maybe I shouldn't be encouraging them. One of the fleet newbies got herself a trip to sickbay last night... Passed out in..." The vaguely guilty expression on his face quickly turns to one of mild horror. "Void, what do we even call that place? I've only ever thought of it as Rellirs, but... I mean, it's got to have a name, right? And I don't think it's the diplomatic lounge... Is it? Ugh, I need to get a better handle on the stations layout...
"Anyway!" A clap of his hands dispels the lingering uncertainty. "Moderation, that's the important lesson here. I guess. Though I should probably top off if I'm going to that simulation with Nethali..." That finally rousts him, the SubCommander throwing himself from a full sprawl to a sitting position at the edge of the couch with startling fluidity. " 'Sympathetic pregnancy'... Fvadt, Terrans are weird... Even the ones from Nimbus."
With that he rises, striding past the camera and out of frame.
"Especially the ones from Nimbus. Aithaen, sehhae faiihr."
"SubCommander." Ketra stood at the base of the engine assembly, and several meters above Davin clung to a railing, overseeing the last stage of the warp coil modifications. "Need I remind you the injuries you sustained the last time you directly participated in upgrading D'Ishae?" Her tone was flat, nearly Vulcan, but the ridge on her forehead gave her away.
"Two broken ribs," Davin called from his perch, "a bruised lung, and severe but ultimately superficial damage to my ego." The SubCommander flipped down his heavy work goggles, leveled his disruptor with a seam that seemed less than perfect, and set about correcting the weld. "But the zero point array stopped making that grinding noise at reverse impulse, so it was worth it!"
Ketra seemed unimpressed. "The ship needs a captain more than another engineer." None of the ships other engineers seemed to notice the exchange, and those that did seemed more expectant than surprised. As if this were just another fact of overhauling the ship.
"Right, but the ship also needs the best warp drive I can cram into it. So, there's that." Years working on the scaffolds in his home colony's shipyards gave Davin an odd sort of grace, and he descended from the warp coil assembly by essentially throwing himself this way and that, always catching himself just right. Well, almost always. Toward the bottom he slipped, one boot slipping out from under him, and he slammed his chest into a railing he meant to catch. That loosened his grip, and he tumbled the last meter or so to the deck plating.
Ketra, for all her adopted Vulcan demeanor, couldn't help but look just a little satisfied. "I will prepare the usual regenerators."
"Yeah," Davin croaked, flat on his back, "please do."
'Giddy' was probably the best word to describe Davin, though others came to mind. Manic, obsessive, loony, these words also weren't far off. The SubCommander paces the deck of his ready room, PADD in hard, alternating his attention between that and the bank of monitors covered with schematics and all sorts of technical information. It was enough to make him forget saying those two magic words that told the computer to record.
Davin regards the camera with the sort of startled surprise of someone who had sat down to read and only remembered a hundred pages in that they had been left something on the stove. "Oh! Okay, so, SubCommanders log, entryyyy... I dunno. These new standards from the Floatilla..." He runs a hand through his hair, sighing loudly, but he is sporting a smile, broad and unwavering. "This is just plain ambitious. The standard fleet specs are... I mean, D'Ishae is close, but she's gonna need some work.
"I would go back to the Floatilla, get the ship serviced there, but..." His pacing leads him to the far side of the room, his back to the camera. Both hands go to his hair, ruffling his messy obsidian locks, and he makes a noise somewhere between a chuckle and a nervous scream. "I think Argo can handle it? I've seen what they've done with other refits, like October, and... Ahh, what is Penni's ship? The little escort with the improvised plasma cannons... It'll come to me. But! My point is I think D'Ishae is in good hands here, and I'd hate to add an extra week to the refit just to travel to the Floatilla."
Rambling and wandering, pacing the floor and doing his best to present his jumbled, overlapping train of thought in some coherent order, Davin made his way back to his desk. Perhaps beginning to wear himself down he throws himself into his chair, the seat turning lazily with his momentum. "Plus, it's an excuse to familiarize the Feds with some Romulan tech. Some tech. I'm not gonna turn over schematics for the cloak, but I can wow them with the singularity harness, take them through the wings to the nacelles, the weapon pods..." He takes a deep breath, holds it a moment, and releases.
"It'll be fun," Davin says.
Just what his definition of 'fun' is may need some reexamination.
