<USS Lovisa> "Repair Man"
- From: Mara Ryell <mara.ryell@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: usslovisa@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Thu, 30 Mar 2006 01:21:14 -0600
*"Repair Man"*
starring Oridian Starfire and Mara Ryell
/"Let my people go..." /Oridian hummed quietly to himself as he worked,
his body half inside a wall panel in Mara's quarters. The place looked
like someone who had been taking too many extra shifts on herself, and
the old man knew it. /Still though, she's a good worker though some down
time wouldn't hurt a soul, except maybe me. Some down time could very
well put me into retirement./ He chuckled to himself silently as he
continued to hum.
Mara walked into her quarters ... and stopped short. What was that
sound? She looked around, her eyes resting on the man who seemed to be
gutting part of the wall. "Can I help you with something?" /Please say
no/, she thought to herself. She had actually been looking forward to a
little solitude.
"Go down... Hmm?" A groan emanated from the wall as Oridian moved out of
it and looked up at Mara. "Oh no no lassy, nothing at all. Just fixing
your temperature system in here. Shouldn't take too much longer now." He
smiled as he moved back into the wall again and tinkered away.
"Oh, I didn't realize it was you, Chief." She stood awkwardly in the
center of the room. "Isn't that something that one of your staff should
be doing? Or ..." She felt totally absurd speaking to his back. "Am I
in the way? I can get out of here for an hour or so," she offered,
backing towards the door.
Another groan came out of the panel as the old man made his way out
again. "No no no lassy, your quarters are your own, I'm finished up
here. And usually somebody else does it, but I was walking by and
noticed something was up so I decided to take care of it, though you
should calm down a bit lassy, your a bit wired up if ya pardon me
saying." He chuckled quietly to himself as he started fixing in the panels.
She halted in her steps. "Wired up?"
"Has the heat in here not been bothering ya?" He asked casually, not
answering Mara's question right away. "I'm surprised you didn't send in
a maintenance report for it, unless it's a recent thing o' course."
The heat?" Actually, it had been pretty horrible. But she had been
more than content to silently grumble about it, rather than taking the
effort to file a report. "Well I guess it's been a little warm in
here. I've been kind of busy and there hasn't been a whole lot of time
..." It sounded like a lame excuse even to her own ears.
Oridian smiled and moved over to a chair where he planted himself into
it and motioned for her to sit. "Well now, fortunately this one wasn't
anything bad. Sometimes though, if those heater things get out of
control they can really burn up a room or even start a fire. Gots to be
careful lassy." He added, sounding almost like a grandpa would to a
young child. "But see now, the whole thing with being wired up, you just
need some down time. You seem to working awful hard and while it's
paying off, your speech is starting to sound like Geoff's whenever he
talks that science babble he speaks." He waved his arms for added effect.
Mara looked at the man who had made himself so comfortable in her
quarters. "I'm not that bad!" she protested, remembering Geoff on the
bridge. Sitting down where he had motioned, she looked over to him. "I
get plenty of down time. There's the gym, and I even spend some time in
the lounge ... I just want to make sure I'm getting the job done first.
That's why I'm out here."
"All work and no play makes Mara an overworked lass." Oridian remarked
sagely as he looked at the wrench in his hands for a moment. "Sure ya
get your moments of free time, but when have you had the chance to just,
be free?"
"Free to do what, exactly?" She shifted uncomfortably in her chair. No
one ever checked up on her. At the Academy, it was always her roommates
that were getting communiqués from their parents. Mara would listen to
them exasperatingly tell their mothers that yes, they were eating, and
not to worry. Why was the Chief bothering with her now? "I had the
chance to visit the planet, and even take a hike," she offered.
"And what exactly were ya thinking about while you were on that hike
hmm?" He leaned against the table, as if waiting for some amazing and
exciting story to come out.
"I was thinking about home." The admission surprised her slightly.
"And that Commander Bennigan can be a little cocky," she said, lowering
her voice and grinning at him.
The final comment gave Oridian a good little laugh. "Cocky eh? Well now
there's something I've learned about commander's it's that they all have
their own ways of being cocky. Maybe it's that whole 'I'm almost Captain
but not quite' thing, or maybe I'm just getting senile in my old age,
but as a rule of thumb you can bet that most commander's are probably
cocky, so long as they are commanders."
"You seem to know quite a bit about just everything," Mara observed,
still smiling. "I don't think any of this was covered back at the Academy."
Oridian smiled as he rose with yet another groan. "There's a lot still
for you young'uns to learn that they don't teach ya in the Academy. They
even thought about having me teach there once, but that's just too much
planet time for these old bones." He mumbled away the last as he made
his way to the door. "Well lassy, t'was a pleasure chattin' with ya and
don't work too hard. The room's feeling cooler already." And with that
the old man was gone.
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