snip

She chose a mixed salad, a vegetable soup and a bun. There was a rather robust chicken dish that admittedly smelled amazing. She could enjoy the smell, right? A vegetarian, smelling the delicious aromas of meats was a guilty pleasure. The presentation was much more than the base cafeteria style from the Bonaventure and rich compared to her humble beginnings. Was this going to be the fare on board? Settling at a small table out of the way, El tasted the salad. It was … good, not with the tang of something metallic that ‘flavored’ some of the foods on the Bonnie. Her parents did not fully like her choice of eating vegetarian. Her mother had cooked in solidarity with her; her dad – really, adoptive parents – still happily sawed his way through different varieties of meat that they could get in Manticore. It was there that she had acquiesced to adding fish to her diet out of necessity. Living on an flotilla of old ships held limited fare.

One of the junior pilots was Manning the bridge at the moment while Helena was grabbing a meal and a mandated break. She’d be at the helm for awhile once they left space dock. They weren’t going anywhere at the moment, but she remembered how exciting those waits were when she was a junior pilot. There would be plenty of opportunities over the next month for all of them to get actual fly time. Right now fresh fare and a light meal was on her agenda.

The soup had a pleasant tang to it. She had grown up with foods that were only lightly spiced. Manticore had opened up a whole new world of tastes to her. As she ate she thought of Lt Green. He had been ‘nice’ to her today. Sure, she was going on report. Sure, she was on ServSup for a month. Was it the new Chief and he wanted to look good in front of him? Lt Green was excitable, at least to El, more worried about how things reflected on him and so cited regulations as a shield. Her upbringing honored rules but rules were to serve people rather than people serving the rules. They were not to be cast aside. They were not to be worshipped. To El, regulations were Lt Green’s religion. Indeed, she thought that many in Starfleet felt that way. Service was the mantra. Still, a day without work is a day without food. But it must flow from the being, naturally, not from a book. It may start from learning but is only complete with living. Time would tell on how life would be here on the Sojourner. But for now if she didn’t move she would fall asleep where she was and wouldn’t ‘that’ thrill Lt Green!

Eyeing others she saw where the trays were placed and El followed suit. It was time to find her new home – the Machine Shop.
El, Eng

Helena took her tray and fell into the line with the small crowd clearing out. The young engineer in front of her … smelled like she got stuck in a worker bee for too long. Probably one that Stinky Paul had been using and hadn’t been cleaned out after. Poor woman, that wasn’t something Helena would wish on Lucy much less someone she liked. Setting her tray in the return window she held out her hand. Helena fully believed in getting to know as many of the rest of the crew as possible. “Hi. I’m Helena, pilot.”

Lt Laursen, pilot

El had grown up with a certain amount of decorum. Nothing at all was fancy, not by a long shot, however decorum, tidiness, and order were prized. And she was a girl, and carried with that a seeming inherent vanity, who would have not wished how she now looked (and smelled) upon her worst enemy. In El’s mind she was not much better than a rumpled, smelly pile of rags. In reality it was not that bad. She was rumpled, dusty, and her hair out of sorts but was not the wicked witch that El now imagined herself to appear. She realized that this was a small village in space, a closed system, and that everyone was soon to know everyone else’s business. Still, her first impression to the others that El had hoped to convey was hardly that of that rumpled, smelly girl she imagined herself to be, and had quietly hoped to have escaped anonymous, even if she had left a vapor trail behind her wherever she went.

With that, she blushed and looked up. Helena was tall and golden with piercing green eyes, put together, fresh, alert, and was everything El was, at the moment, not. And she was a full Lieutenant. The pilot! Her eyes widened even as she wilted inside. Another black mark impression, this time with a senior officer looking like an unprofessional horror, the thorn amongst the pristine clean garden of this new ship. As though ‘this’ won’t get to the Captain or other seniors. And no hole to shrink into now. “I’m El. The, uh, musty engineer, lieutenant,” she replied, a meekness to her tone. “Some ship, eh?” She wondered what the pilot actually did, quietly likening piloting a space ship to being like playing golf – a long drive from the tee to the green and then the delicate putt at the end – here, a lot of nothing until they get to the destination where the pilot would actually drive. Helena looked older, more mature, her touch confident, at least to El, and her appearance like some fantasy goddess that would come down in a ray of light.

El, Eng