New Friends

Posted on 09 Jan 2021 @ 5:20pm by Ensign K’riss & Ensign Kelly Khan

2,276 words; about a 11 minute read

Mission: Interlude
Location: Recreation
Timeline: MD 2 || 1200 Hours

Ensign Kelly Khan, a petite human brunette with a mischievous look in her hazel eyes sat in the recreation center on the ship, a chocolate cake shake in her hands. She scanned the room looking to see who else was present that hadn't gone over to the station while she sipped her drink through a thick red straw. Sipped isn't the right word, she mused as her cheeks collapsed inwards. More like trying to suck neutronium through the straw.

As all the personnel were on a rotating shore leave and work schedule, she wore a pair of denim shorts and a black t-shirt with white lettering in Standard which read "My Other Ship is Classified" on it, and a pair of flip flops which showed off her tie dye painted toenails. She had her wavy hair loose and flipped over her shoulders and a PADD was on the table in front of her with an article about Engineering on the screen.

K'Riss sat in a corner of the recreation center. In contrast to the appearance of the woman, K'riss wore a crisp white shirt and black pants, lacking any sort of creativity or charm. The Caitian's features made up for all the uniqueness that their clothing lacked; with black fur covering his face, blue eyes and cat-like ears. He was deeply engrossed in a book, but every now and then he would glance awkwardly up and look around. He thought he had made plans to meet with one of the crewman here, but they had been loose, tentative plans at best and it came as to no surprise to K'Riss that the crewman whose name they barely caught hadn't shown. That didn't mean he wouldn't wait for them though.

Only when the Caitian stood up to look around the recreation center, wondering if perhaps missed the crewman, did he notice the woman. He gave a polite, albeit shy, smile and continued scanning the room.

Kelly stopped looking when she sat the Caitian and couldn't help but stare. She had never seen one with markings like his before and it intrigued the inquisitive young woman. She got up and headed over to where he was. "Hi," she said. "I"m Kelly. What's your name?"

"Hi," the Caitian gave a shy smile, that failed in its meager attempt hide his enthusiasm about somebody talking to him. "I'm K'Riss." He didn't recognize this human - then again, he didn't recognize most of them. "It's good to meet you, Kelly," he said, repeating the name out loud so he'd remember it.

""My pleasure, K'riss," she said without mangling it. "I'm in Flight. How about you?" She was just a tiny bit pleased that she seemed to be a few inches taller than he was. Finally she thought.

K'Riss hesitated for a moment, not sure what she was asking. What did she mean she was in flight? She didn't look like she was flying. Oh! K'Riss purred a small chuckle of amusement. Flight control. Haha. To be fair, this wasn't his first language. "I'm in Engineering. I'm new." He shrugged, almost apologetic about the fact.

"Really?" Now the brunette looked excited. "I have a secondary in Engineering and my boyfriend is an Engineer. It's such a fascinating subject, but my first love is flying."

"Oh!" K'Riss said, his already excited looking expression visibly perking up at the idea that somebody else here liked Engineering. Was it possible for the Caitian to look more enthused? Who knows. "I like flying," he said, trying his best to continue the conversation without revealing the fact that although he liked engineering, he wasn't confident in his knowledge of it. He felt like a fraud compared to the others, probably compared to her and her boyfriend as well. So he was content just knowing that others shared his interest, rather than actively discussing it. "I guess you could say my first love is math though."

"Well, without math,, we couldn't do a lot of things," Kelly said as if it were obvious. "What got you into Engineering?"

K'Riss thought for a good moment. What did get him into Engineering? He shrugged. "I don't know. It sounded cool. I couldn't do math, since my sister was already doing it," not that that was a hard and fast rule, but K'Riss would rather not always live in her shadow, "and Engineering seemed like a good second pick."

"Yeah, but math isn't a field," the brunette pointed out. "Well, it is, but not one you'll find on a starship. Ever been on one before the Black Hawk-A?" she asked.

"Yeah," K'Riss responded with a nervous smile. "I served on the Sunbeam before this ship. And, I mean, I've been on other ships. For trips and such. But this is only the second ship I served on. What about you?"

"This is technically my first and second," Kelly said. "I served on the original Black Hawk before it went down on New Bajor, then came to this one."

"Ah," K'Riss said, not sure how to respond. He liked seeing people cheerful, and talking to people when they were cheerful. A ship going down wasn't exactly a cheerful thing to talk about, so K'Riss tried to change the subject, pivoting to the first thing that came to his mind: "What got you into flying?" It wasn't creative, but it was similar enough to what she had asked K'Riss; so he figured it was probably a good thing to ask.

"I want to be a test pilot one day," she said. "I want to fly the newest, fastest, sleekest ships in Starfleet. I want to be the first one at the helm and the one to say yay or nay to their performance. I've done simulations for Federation ,Klingon, Romulan, Cardassian and Bajoran ships, but nothing beats actually flying one." She was practically glowing with her desire to do what she set out to do as she talked about it.

K'Riss smiled. He genuinely liked hearing about other people's passions. He wished he shared in some of that himself. Sure, he liked math; but he wasn't about to try and spend his life in math equations. Engineering was lazily chosen at best. K'Riss himself didn't really have passions or enthusiasm for work, other than his writing, and he had nothing but respect for those folk who had their life planned out better than he did. "I didn't even know they had simulations for all those different kinds of ships!" He exclaimed, sharing in her excitement.

"Why wouldn't they?" Kelly asked, curious. "We have them in our databanks to identify if we encounter them, their strengths and weaknesses and how much firepower they carry. Why not simulations of them as well?"

"I didn't know they had enough information about those ships to run simulations on them. Some species can be pretty picky about who gets their ship schematics. It's amazing, huh?" The Caitian asked with genuine amazement, "What modern simulations can do?"

"It is, but I'm not sure if they're a hundred percent right," she said. "But we do have enough information from scans made during encounters to make some educated guesses. I only focused on the flying part of it."

"Oh," K'Riss said with a chuckle. "I'm more used to engineering simulations, I guess. Where everything has to be accurate. Or else they don't work."

"Oh, I know," the petite brunette said with a sly grin. "I took Engineering as a secondary so I'll know when you guys are sandbagging to look like miracle workers."

K'Riss paused a moment in thought. He wasn't quite familiar with a lot of idioms - that wasn't exactly something they taught in English class back on Cait - but just pretended like he understood anyway. "I bet you see a lot of exciting things as a pilot," K'Riss ventured. He was a bit jealous of that. He knew he didn't have the brave temperament to be in Flight though.

"Buffer time," she offered as an alternative. "Everyone on the lower decks uses it so they have down time by finishing tasks earlier than they said they would. Captain Scott explained sandbagging in his book and it's basically the same thing. Captain wants something done yesterday? Tell him it'll be done in four hours when it really only takes you two."

"People really do that?" K'Riss asked, full of innocent surprise. He never even considered that people would be telling anything but the truth about how long things would take to do.

"Are you serious?" Kelly asked with a look of surprise on her face. Was he born in a barn on some back water planet on the far end of civilized space? she wondered. No one can be this innocent and have made it through the Academy. Unless She stared at him and stared hard, her hazel eyes travelling over his features and leaned in a little close to sniff.

"Serious about what?" K'Riss didn't realize that anyone might have considered him joking about that last statement, so he just looked at the woman, slightly confused. The Caitian glanced away as she stared at him, slightly unsettled by the behavior. Humans are strange, he thought to himself.

"Are you for real?" She asked suspiciously. "Lke, not a hologram that decided to go on its own?"

"I wish," K'Riss said, still uncertain what exactly it was that she doubted. "That would be so cool. I'd probably have some interesting perspectives on life if I were a hologram." And a lot of good material to write a book on. More people would probably want to read a book written by a hologram than by a random Caitian. "Though," he added, thinking back on recent events. "Preferably not an evil hologram."

"That's it," Kelly said. "I think I need a trip to medical or you need a trip to medical, but one of us clearly needs it."

"Are you okay?" K'Riss said, only now wondering if he'd said something wrong. "Sorry," he apologized. He wasn't quite sure what he was apologizing for, but he figured he must've messed up somehow.

"Nevermind," the brunette human said with a shake of her head. "I need more chocolate. That's the problem."

K'Riss gave a weak smile. He just wanted everybody to like him, and he wasn't sure what he had said to put this woman off. You dumb Caitian, he thought to himself. "I can go get you some chocolate!" He offered. "I was just about to head over to get myself a snack as well," he lied. K'Riss didn't like lying, but well, lies like that he could make true. He would happily eat an unwanted snack to try and make this favor less awkward for the woman.

"Sure," Kelly agreed. "Although the replicated stuff usually doesn't taste the same. Then again, Tiger got me some artisan chocolates before on Deep Space Fifteen before we went into the Convergence Zone. That's all gone now, though." She looked a bit sad at that, but shrugged. "See if it can make a Ktarian chocolate puff, maybe?"

"Will do," K'Riss said, committing that to memory. Ktarian chocolate puff, he repeated to himself in silence, placing the utmost importance on getting her request right. With a smile, the Caitian slipped off towards the replicators.

After a moment, K'Riss returned with two plates of chocolate, one balanced in each hand with a surprising show of balance that one might not expect from such a bumbling engineer. The Caitian approached the spot where he'd been sitting. One of the plates did, indeed, have chocolate puffs on it. The other had just the narrowest slice of chocolate creme pie on it. K'Riss didn't particularly like chocolate creme pie, but he wasn't sure the chocolate puffs were the right ones and he wanted something he offer to trade her if they turned out to be wrong.

The petite brunette smiled when he came back with the puff. "Perfect!" She said happily. She felt bad for the rookie, but he'd learn. They all learned on the Black Hawk sooner or later. "Didn't get much for yourself, did ya?"

"No. Caitians can't digest chocolate too well." He shrugged. "I can only indulge myself so much." He gave an amused, slightly-self-deprecating smile as he sat down and grabbed a fork to eat the chocolate pie. While that was true, the real reason he hadn't gotten much was because he plain didn't like it.

She watched his expression for a moment, then gave a shrug. It was on him if he wanted to eat it or not or like it or not. She had hers and she wanted it, so she dug in with a delighted sound. "Soooo good," she managed.

K'Riss smiled, glad she liked it. He ate a small bite of his pie. To the pie's defense, it was better than he remembered. He looked at the plate with new appreciation. He was also glad that she wasn't talking about medbay or whatever any more. That bit confused him; and he didn't much anybody to feel bad enough to go to medbay.

A tone went off on her PADD and she picked it up to look at it. "Well, I have to go. One of my experiments is ready. Nice meeting you, K'Riss. See you around." She offered a smile as she came to her feet.

"Nice to meet you too," K'Riss smiled.

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