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Captain's ready room

Posted March 16, 2019, 3:31 p.m. by Fleet Captain Ghubari Koraia (Captain) (Lindsay B)

Posted by Lieutenant Julien Smith (Doctor) in Captain’s ready room

Posted by Fleet Captain Ghubari Koraia (Captain) in Captain’s ready room

Posted by Lieutenant Julien Smith (Doctor) in Captain’s ready room
Posted by… suppressed (2) by the Post Ghost! 👻

(snip)

“I understand,” Koraia said in a deeply thoughtful tone. “And for what it’s worth, I hope for however long it is, the Athena can be home for you as well. We’re our own family here, however large and sometimes dysfunctional it can be,” she added with a slight grin.

Fl. Captain Koraia, CO

Julien nodded his smile returning. “I hope so as well, although right now it can only be with you, Cmdr. Stark, Dr. S’Raal and Lt. Legen, the only ones who know who I really am. Oh and Lt. Rovan Moor. Funny story, he was my helmsman and ran into me in sickbay, and of course he immediately recognised me.” he rolled his eyes.

Ghubari drew in a breath and sighed slightly, though she nodded. “I knew it was going to be difficult to keep it fully under wraps under the best of circumstances.”

“But he will keep quiet, it seems he had his own covert mission between the Genesis and the Athena. But before we get down to business… what about you? I didn’t get a chance to congratulate you on your marriage and that leg of yours… it looks just like your own. Upgraded prothesis?” he asked.

  • Julien

“Not… quite,” she said quietly. Leaning forward Ghubari unzipped the side of her right boot and began to roll up the fabric past her knee. Even by appearances it looked real, but when she tapped lightly with her knuckles, it was unmistakably skin. Ghubari looked up at him intently. “It’s a long story, but for the record, it’s almost as hard to regain a limb as it is to lose one. It mentally messes you up for awhile.”

Fl. Captain Koraia, CO

Julien froze at the sight and his right eye zoomed in fully on the skin of her leg, the black iris momentarily expanding over the whole eye with a tiny red dot in the middle. He couldn’t believe what his human and android senses told him.

As if in trance, he reached out and touched her shin at one side where the primary shin muslce was visible below her skin.

Ghubari didn’t mind the touch. She understood the need to verify and also to remember.

“Is… is it possible ..” he managed to get out. But did he want to hear the answer? Did he want to return to being ‘just’ human, as impossible as the idea sounded?

  • Julien

“For anyone to have it done? No, unfortunately. It was a very specific set of circumstances that I’m not exactly sure are replicatable. Not that it’s impossible, but just not…” She sighed and shook her head, rolling down the pant-leg. Ghubari couldn’t help but feel sadness that she couldn’t just wave a magic wand and help a friend who also deserved to have that part of himself back. “If I could, I would,” she said adamantly.

Fl. Captain Koraia, CO

Julien nodded silenty. He knew he could find out, but he didn’t know if he was ready to. Besides, this was not about him, this was about Ghubari. He looked back into her beautiful eyes, his were full of empathy.

It was an awkward moment of silence, but as she looked back at him Ghubari relaxed and understood he was not holding it against her.

“It seems you went through a lot in the last few years. I made it a point to read your mission reports, but there was a fair number of them that were classified, even on Fleet Captain level. That’s never a good sign in my experience.” he said. It was an invitation to talk if she wanted to. He knew full well that there were many topics that a Captain didn’t want to talk about with his crew, because it was part of the job to carry the brunt of the burden and a good leader took that on and didn’t delegate it down.
But he also thought he knew her a little, so he didn’t force the topic.

  • Julien

The slight scratching of her thumb rubbing circles around the pads of her index and middle fingers was the only noise in the room for a moment as she looked out her expansive windows. “It’s not… been easy, for sure,” she said quietly before her eyes settled on him again. “I know you must have gone through a similarly difficult time when your own ship was destroyed. Losing the old Athena though, for us, was bittersweet. Done in the name of necessity and absurd orders to save things on a level of magnitude our daily lives can’t begin to comprehend. It was this changing point. Incredibly difficult things had happened before and since, but that day changed everything for me personally, not just as a captain. If I hadn’t gone through that, I very much doubt I would have ever come to marry Konral. And that’s just a small piece of it.”

How much could she say, really? He was cleared for this current mission, even as sort of underground as it was, but that didn’t mean he was able to know the intimate details of some of their most classified missions. And yet, he would understand, either way. That alone made her want to, because it was nice to have someone who would truly understand the predicaments she had been in over the years- without judgement.

Fl. Captain Koraia, CO


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