James peered over the console he was playing with, magnaspanner in hand, and watched as his favourite little hybrid trudged in.  Now if he weren't her superior officer and she wasn't so deeply in love with JD, he'd be working on her without a second thought.  "Must be the combination of the sage green eyes and that long cinnamon hair," he mused.

"Excuse me, sir?" an Ensign stood to his left said with a confused frown.

James let out a bellowing laugh.  "No worries, boy," he chuckled as Vidya wound her way over to him.  "Hey there beautiful, how'd the XO lady take our little ray of sunshine?"

"Marvellous," she muttered.  "She was okay, sir.  Better than most.  They all expect us to just snap our fingers and get them home."

"I know, sweets, but we're doing our best."  Nodding his head toward the industrious JD, James said, "Go help the boy genius, he got himself a new theory and if he doesn't take a break soon, he's going to be heading toward his very first nervous breakdown.  Maybe if he'll explain it to you, he'll let you take over for a while."

"Um..."  Vidya started to go from her normal pale flesh to rose then heading fast toward scarlet.  "Okay, sir."  Turning on her heals, she wandered over to the tall, deeply gorgeous, brown-eyed, dark-haired engineer.  "Hey, sir, the Chief told me to help you," she said nervously.

"Okay..." JD looked at her nearly desperately. "I'm trying to retranslate these sections of my father's PADDs from just before he went to shut down the temporal anomoly on their side...this side...see...I'm pretty sure this whole section was originally translated wrong...and this one...and ...see...this one too, but only because his ciphers are always so damned small and the language is so old and so hard it's almost impossible to really learn it well and nobody but the slavers and the miners used it anyway and we only got into the mines and freed the slaves and got to where we could even begin to learn it just after I was born when Uncle Mac, Pappa John, Grandpa Darius and Fleet Admiral Ketchum went in and ...." he paused, blushing , "...nevermind...you don't want to hear all of that...," With a deep sigh, he turned his attention back to the PADDs, muttering, "God, I hate Taurii..." Remembering then that he was supposed to be explaining to her how she could help, he turned the PADD to her. "Anyway...we need to retranslate his script...look back over the research he did before entering the wormhole. I'm almost positive the wormhole was manmade, and I have a few theories, but nothing concrete. Still, since we know he researched it before going in, it's possible we could find the key in his notes somewhere ... a theory ... something." He looked at her earnestly, he finally took a breath before concluding. "We just have to find it." Offerering her one of the PADDs he was studiously retranslating, he asked, "Ready?"

Vidya just nodded, her eyes wide with a little terror as she took the PADD and gazed at it.  "And people tell me that I'm confusing when I try to explain stuff," she muttered as she sat next to him.  "Do you have the beginnings of an algorithm worked out, sir?"

Frowning slightly, his hearing as abnormally keen as his father's had been, he reached to take the PADD back. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to confuse you. It's okay. I'll figure it out."

"You don't want my help, sir?" she asked in a tiny voice, standing back up and taking a step away from him.

 

"No...I mean..yes, I do..it's just...you said I'd confused you when I tried to explain it and I thought that maybe you'd rather not." He looked at her apologetically. "Of course I'd like the help. And yes...here...these are the algorithms I have so far...if you want to just...try..here.." he reached across her to plug some info into the console next to him. "Work here. Okay. So we can share what we find. Alright?"

As he reached across, he'd brushed her a little and it made her blush furiously.  "Yes, sir, fine, sir.  Not a problem, sir."  Sitting at the console, she stared at it for a few moments, wondering if their Chief had done this on purpose.  I feel like a silly school girl.  As she looked over the convoluted algorithm he'd cooked up, she groaned a little.  "Um... just give me a few minutes to catch up, okay, sir?"

"Yeah...sure..." JD agreed. Noting her lost and confused _expression_, he added. "It's really not as bad as it looks. Honest. Just apply these," He reached over and indicated a series of cyphers on her panel, "and these," He indicated another set, "first. Then the rest. It'll come together a lot faster that way." After a moments pause, he added quietly, his brow furrowing, "I think."

"You think?" Vidya blinked at him, then started to giggle.  "Great start."  Following his instructions, she watched as the program started to run.  "Complicated but elegant," she observed.

"Yeah?" JD smiled brightly at that, pleased someone besides him had finally noticed the beauty of it. "You think so?"

She offered him a shy, sweet smile.  "At the risk of sounding corny for a moment: it's a piece of art.  Like, at first it's mind-boggling, but now I can see where the lines of thought lead and it draws me in.  I like working with coding like this, it makes my job interesting.  Plus it helps to be working with a truly talented engineer," she blushed furiously, bit her lips and stared back at her console.

This time it was JD's turn to blush, smilng all the while. "Maybe we could...you know...have coffee or something when we're done? I could show you some other things I've been working on? We could share ideas?"

"I'd like that," she chimed.  Bouncing a little now, she went back to her work, grinning very broadly.  "I'm trying to recreate some of my brother's work," she said idly as she fiddled.  "But it's hard to figure out where to start."

"I do that all the time with my dad's work," JD admitted. "If you think mine looks complicated, wait until you see more of his." Blushing more brightly, he suggested nervously, "Maybe we could help each other figure them out?"

"I'd really like that, thank you, sir," Vidya grinned at him, her sage eyes dancing.  "My problem is that I'm having to do it all from memory, I don't have anything concrete to work with."  As her eyes drifted down to the screen, she frowned.  "Though... that I recognise."  As the information filed onto the screen she could see some of her brother's work in it, but this looked so much more advanced.

"You recognize that? Really?" JD looked surprised as he admitted. "I kind of stole it from my dad's stuff. He's got it farther out, but I didn't want to take more than I understood. You know?"

"Oh, I know.  But it looks like some of the early stuff my brother did.  If we extrapolated from that point, we might be able to recreate the entire project... except..."  Vidya sighed heavily.  "Except the original project took years and I really don't want to be stuck here that long."

JD considered a moment before suggesting, "Maybe if we finish translating my dad's stuff, he's got it out farther. Maybe we're closer than we think."

"Good point," Vidya agreed.  They both settled into a companionable silence as they worked.  Every now and then, she would peek at him from the corner of her eye and grinned to herself again.  Slowly, though, the figures started to merge together and she felt as if she'd be dreaming about it too.  "How do you look at all of this for so long in one go, sir?"

JD shrugged, smiling pleasantly. "Used to it, I guess. My mom was an engineer...doted on my dad. Once we got a chance to learn to translate his stuff, mom jumped at it. We spent hours....days sometimes...pouring over this stuff. The fleet took some of them over to help with the translation, well, in their case usually mistranslation, but not all of it. Some of it mom hid. Wouldn't turn over. We translated those ourselves."Realizing he was going on again, he blushed a little and shrugged again. "You just get used to it."

"You don't have to stop, you know," she said shyly, a light rose tinting her cheeks.  "You're interesting, it's all... interesting."  Then with even more self-consciousness, she appended, "Sir."

"That's not really my name, you know," JD told her, fighting embarrassment that he'd said it. "It's Joshua...or JD, if you want...most people call me JD...friends, anyway. You can call me that if you want. Instead of sir, I mean. If you want to."

"Joshua, yes, I can live with calling you that, s..."  She bit her bottom lip and giggled a little.  "It's going to take me a while to get out of it though.  Long standing habit: calling superior officers sir."  Smiling at him, her eyes glittered as she said, "My name's Vidya, rather than beautiful as the Chief insists."  She rolled her eyes, feeling her cheeks burn.

 

"I know, but..." he paused, blushing even more brightly as he pushed forward, "His name for you suits you better."

She stared at him silently for a moment, feeling her own cheeks head toward the purple end of the spectrum since red was no longer deep enough for the level of embarrassment and shock she was experiencing.  "It... it does?  I don't... I don't see that.  I've only ever been pretty to my Ammi and Père until I came here.  But you think... I am?"

 

"Beautiful," he answered, his voice almost an awe-filled sigh as he looked at her. Realizing abruptly that he was staring, he went completely crimson and quickly turned his attention back to the codes before them.

Her tongue stuck to the roof of her mouth as she continued to look at him.  "Thank you, s... Joshua.  I think you're... I mean, you are kind of..."  Taking a deep breath, she huffed at herself.  "You're very handsome yourself," she said in a rush.

 

"Really?" he asked, too stunned to stop himself. Before she could answer, he shook his head, dark curls falling in a mass of ringlets around his face. "Never mind." he laughed. "Don't answer that. You don't have to say it again, but...maybe we could..." he gulped, then hurried through, "dinner? Maybe? I mean...if you eat dinner...because not everyone does, and that's okay.. but...if you do...and want to ...you know...maybe?"

"I eat dinner," she suppressed another giggle but her smile was very sweet and all for him.  "And I'd love to eat with you... that would be ..." pleasant, charming, glorious, wonderful, amazing, stunning, "like a dream come true."  A hand flew to her mouth and she cringed.  "I didn't... mean to... I meant to say... nice... not... um..."

"Yeah...it would be...exactly like a..." he stopped, amending to her preferred word. "..nice....it would be very ...very nice."