<USS Cervantes> "Babying the Mother"

"Babying the Mother"
Ashne'e Al Kiara
Darius Machia
 
            Darius sat back, listening to NeoKlingonOperaticTechno,
which had once been described by one of his superiors on the Dragon as
"the most painful audio experience I've ever had."  Darius loved the
mix, and had picked up a few great words in Klingon.  He found the music
relaxing, which he needed after battling the increasingly unruly
computer system in Engineering.
Sammie had taken off, again, announcing her desire to stealthily track
Ashne'e down and follow her, thus ensuring nothing harmed her.  To
Sammie, a biological child of Darius was a younger sister for her, and
she wanted to ensure everything went okay at all times.  Darius wasn't
sure who had told her about the pregnancy - Zeez was the most likely
culprit, as the two had become rather close, although Zeez tended to act
a bit aloof and superior to Sammie, as she was, in her mind, older and
thus more respectable.  Darius didn't share her opinion. He'd had to
make Zeez get rid of the recordings she'd made of the conception - after
she made a point of discussing how *hilarious* they would be if she
hacked the computer system (which had taken a liking to her, much to
Darius's distress) and played them at the next staff meeting.
 
*           *           *
 
            The faint musical twang of the summons key had become a
repetitive susurration, the underground drum beat that accentuated the
moments on the bridge. Kennedy was not responding. Silence was creeping
in above that repetitive tattoo. Silence and words that followed
silence, echoes, whispers of voices that Ashne'e could only acknowledge
as belonging to her unconscious, to her dreams and desires, much as they
manifested like the voice of an infant, hopeful and wistful, and
yearning for life. She was a telepath, by touch, and some women claimed
they could communicate with their pre-verbal infants, but this was long
after birth, not in this nestling process of gestation. No, it was her
imagination that concocted these preformed wishes.
            Her eyes flicked down. A letter waited for her. A light
bleated, in time with the summons key. Leaving aside her vigil, she
called up the message. It was from her father. Her eyes froze before
reading the first line. A strange sense of trepidation overwhelmed her
and balked her actions. She paused, unsure what to do next, her lips
half open, her lids caught mid-blink with the lashes splayed wide.
            "Mrrrow, yowwwwl?"
            "Narcissus?" Ashne'e queried, expecting her black and white
tom to be by her feet. Once, on the Pallas Athene, he had learned how to
circumvent the door mechanisms, and shown up in the mess hall tormenting
the chefs for tuna.
            Instead, the animal in question was small, silver, and had
somehow wrestled a large, fluffy pillow to the bridge. It was shoved
onto Ashne'e's lap.
 
*           *           *
 
            Darius blinked.
"She reports what?"
<<Sammie wants me to tell you that the mission was successful.>>
"What mission?"
<<I don't know.>>
"So this isn't something you two cooked up?"
A deliberate electronic sigh punctuated Zeez's false ennui with Sammie's
antics.  <<Of course not.  She's so immature, going off on her
'missions.'>>
Darius sighed.  If mission successful meant he had to fix something,
he'd hear about it soon enough.
 
*           *           *
 
Watching the silver feline disappear into a crevice that, presumably,
connected to one of the ship's numerous jeffries tubes, Ashne'e felt
disbelief start to settle. "Al Kiara to Machia. Your . Sammie, was it?
Was just up here."
"In advance, I don't know what she did, but I'm sorry for the
inconvenience.  She's apparently your keeper, now."  He paused the comm
and yawned, still tired from the work, turned off the music, and then,
changing his mind, started it up again.  "I went back and turned the
passive detection modifications off; they drain the efficency of the
system by quite a bit."
            "Oh. Yes, that's fine. They're not necessary anymore, now
that we don't have to turn our sensors off at night." Ashne'e tapped the
nape of her neck with her fingertip, her brow tilted downward. "My
keeper?"
            Darius tried to think of a way to describe the way Sammie
thought of Ashne'e.  As far as Darius could tell, to Sammie Ashne'e was
partly an adopted mother, partly the one who was building her new
sibling, and partly a young daughter.  Darius attempted to convey the
idea to Ashne'e, knowing that even he wasn't completely sure it was
right.
            "Ah." said Ashne'e intelligently.
            "So, umm, how are you?"  It seemed like a better
conversation choice than going into the details of the problems with the
system, various minor power quirks, and other mundanities of his duties.
He'd long ago learned that no matter how interesting a fluctuation in a
backup power converter was to him, most commanding officers just needed
to know that it was fixed.
            "Mrowwrr, mrrewrrr, mew."
            <<Clllick, click, click, cliiiick>>
            "Just a moment, Lieutenant."
            As Ashne'e had suspected, the feline was back, and this time
with her spidery counterpart, the indomitable Zeez. They had a cup of
tea, a stuffed toy, another pillow, a small blanket and somehow,
miraculously, a heating pad. 
            "Thank you," she said to them, hoping they could understand
her. "I'm fine."
            The tea was waved in her general direction.
            She gingerly took it. "Thank you."
            The heating pad landed on her feet. The blanket, after a
slight delay, unfolded slightly in flight and settled over her knees.
Fearing to be hit in the head by a catapulted pillow, she stood, folded
the blanket, and set it on her chair atop the first cushion.
            "I'm all right," she told the solicitous pair. "I assure
you."
            <<CLICK! Cliiiick.>>
            "Lieutenant," Ashne'e said into her comm. badge, "I'm
retiring to my quarters. I may be in touch again. Al Kiara out."
            Wordlessly, she left the bridge for her quarters and the
privacy she had been fearing. The letter from her father, unread, still
loomed in her mind.
 
*           *           *
 
<<...so, I think I could convince the computer to turn the lock off,
with a little o' the ol' Zeez charm.>>
<<Great!  I'm worried she'll get sick or something by herself and need
us to help her!  Poor thing, she must've locked the door by mistake.>>
<<Umm, possibly.>>
 
            Oddly, Ashne'e didn't seem to respond to the pair's
communication requests. The poor thing had probably "fallen asleep."

Other related posts: