Posted by Fleet Captain Kelly Bordeaux (Commanding Officer) in Academy Flashback - Soup for Two

Posted by Lieutenant Commander Ethan Nash (Chief Engineer) in Academy Flashback - Soup for Two

Posted by Fleet Captain Kelly Bordeaux (Commanding Officer) in Academy Flashback - Soup for Two
Posted by… suppressed (1) by the Post Ghost! 👻
------ Original post here: https://www.star-fleet.com/core/stf3/atlantis/posts/44703/ ------------------------------------

“San Francisco fifteen years ago, tell me about your wife,” Lauren took the glass. “How did you meet her and more importantly how did she ever make you smile long enough for your charm to seep out.” Lauren liked Nash immensely She understood his broodiness was just a front. Somewhere under there was a man that did stupid things for a girl just to make her smile. Plans for her mission could wait. She was far more interested in learning about what made Mr. Ethan Nash tick and he was just drunk enough that maybe he would tell her.

Lauren Shan

Nash paused a moment, not because he needed to consider an answer but because the memory was something that brought him joy whenever he thought of it. It was like that sometimes, the past made you smile far more than the present, but now Nash was just drunk enough to tell someone he considered a friend the story.

“Well, it started with a soup kitchen,” he began, then paused and filled both their drinks.

Nash

Pushing Laurens glass towards her, Nash picked up his and sat back. “2374, first year of the Academy,” he began slowly, then smiled as he remembered and the story began to take shape.

--------------------------2374, Starfleet Academy Educational Operation on Arakis III ------------------------------

Ethan looked out the window of the shuttle as it landed on the rocky, desert world. His first year in the Academy and the tutors had decided that this years operational away mission would be to support the Federations efforts to provide food, shelter and other necessities for this fledgling colony world that had run into hard times. That meant that instead of learning how to fly shuttles, fight Klingons or otherwise show the undoubted promise that Cadet Nash had, he was going to be building shelters or working on solar energy collectors. Learning Starfleet’s method of compassion, was how Hornsby had put it although his words had been more, eloquent, than that.

It clearly didn’t help Ethans mood that this operation had apparently been suggested by a number of Cadets themselves, something that had made Nash grind his teeth enough to give him a headache. Looking out the windows of the transports, he watched the rocky desert and low hills disappear beneath the shuttle as it headed to what looked like a lump of dark coloured, squarish buildings in the far distance.

Leaving the shuttles the moment they landed on the sandy tarmac and being ushered into waiting transports, he was part of the second wave of Cadets and hadn’t yet been told exactly where he was going to be sent. Hopefully, it was to work security on their supplies or something else equally important, he could only hope of somewhere quiet with a shower and secluded place to pull sand out of places it shouldn’t be.

Minutes later and Ethan once again stepped out of a transport in front of a building that looked like it had been recently repurposed for something, glaring lights shining in the front street as the sun began to set and a door where a few people, clearly not in Starfleet uniform could be seen milling about. Ethan looked at the building with a sinking heart.

“Why the hell are we at a soup kitchen?” He asked the cadet next to him, who only shrugged back in answer.

“Alright you lot!” The voice of Hornsby rang out even before the tutor had left the shuttle he had ridden in. “We didn’t bring you here to sight see, you, Nash!” Hornsby singled out Ethan without even seeming to have to look for him. “You look quite lovely today, you’re our lunch lady, congratulations Star! The rest of you with me!” Turning, the mere presence of the old Starfleet lecturer seemed to pull the rest of the Cadets with him, all except Nash.

“Well, plow me,” Nash muttered, stepping forwards and narrowly missing some kind of long thin creature that picked itself up off the sand where it had lay hidden and rushed away down the street, startling the fresh Cadet. “Lovely, I’m stuck on the lost planet with a lecturer who will probably eat the first cadet that drops if we run out of food ourselves. If these things don’t eat us first” Ethan had no idea what the critter was, but he was sure in the split second he had seen it, that it had big teeth.

Walking through the doors, Nash paused, pulled on his tunic in an effort to make sure he looked different from the blandly dressed people that were native to this desert world, and looked around. Long electric lights had been slung from the ceiling in what looked to have been, until recently, a very deserted building. A long table had been set up almost the length of the far wall but not against it and small round tables were spread among the rest of the room, bare, sterile and clean for the most part. Behind the long table were more tables against the wall, these ones holding a variety of pots, pans and cookers that seemed to be running from a small generator placed to the side while a number of Cadets in uniforms worked behind the table, stirring pots and laughing at jokes he couldn’t hear.

To one side, someone had strung up a colorful banner of little pointy flags that spelled out the words “Welcome to Chow Town” on it, and boxes of what looked like more decorations could be seen half opened stashed in a corner. “Oh my god, really?” Speaking to himself, Ethan bit his lip and put his hands on his hips.

Cadet Nash

“I know a little color and cheer is such a bad thing,” a decidedly female voice said to Nash’s left. The voice was clearly being sarcastic and matched Nash’s pose from her hands on her hips to her teeth on her lips. Emily Fox did not know the man next to her. She had never seen or spoke to him before now but she knew his type. He was young, handsome, intelligent, and ready to change the world; however, sometimes changing the world just required hard work and the right attitude. “I mean who in their right mind would think some whimsy and fun could change someone’s outlook. Certainly not anyone sane or maybe it’s just me being an idiot .” A smile crept onto Emily’s face even though she struggled to maintain the slightly dour expression of the cadet beside her. Over the past month, cadets had been in and out of the soup kitchen like clockwork. Everyone needed community service hours to graduate and Emily’s chosen field of study saw them pour in three times a year.

“Oh, is that what we are doing here?” Ethan slapped his hand to his forehead like it was a major revelation, “I thought our whole reason for being was to do things like, feed people and build houses?” He didn’t try to have to keep the dark and brooding look on his face, the whole situation made that an easy task but the slight twinge of a smile at the corners of the young woman’s lips had almost, almost cracked the shell and had him smiling stupidly in return. She did manage to evoke a spark of good natured sarcasm in his eyes, but aside from Ethan tilting his head slightly to look at her, that was all. Fun didn’t get a job done, they weren’t going to feed people or build a house with fun. It was going to take hard work and the right attitude.

Moving from his side, she made her way to the half-opened box across the room. It was clear she was also a cadet but only on a backwater world could she pull off the look she was sporting. Instead of the dark trousers worn by Nash, Emily was wearing a pair of leggings that stopped just below her knees which were far more suited to laps around the track than a cadet on duty. They also clearly defined her assets which proved those leggings spent a lot of time running around the academy track. She and Nash both wore black shoes yet instead of the boots polished to such a shine they could magnify the sun and catch something on fire like a magnifying glass, Emily wore flip flops. Around her waist was the same tunic Nash wore only in blue. As she walked across the room towards the box, her long dark hair, drawn into a pony tail kept pace with her stride like a metronome.

Staying in place Ethan watched her walk towards the boxes, his gaze fixed not on the swaying, metronome like motion of her pony tail but something else that was swaying. She’s a runner flew through Ethan’s thoughts at about the same moment that the slight bite of his lip in thought and hands returned to his hips in consideration, and she’s out of uniform was added a moment later, but he only noticed when he had looked at her feet. He couldn’t fault the woman, even though the sun had begun to set on Arakis III it was a desert world and the heat was almost inhuman while it was up. He knew that she was far more comfortable than him but stripping his tunic down to his waist didn’t enter his mind. Finally, he managed to tear his eyes away long enough to glance towards the long table and the people working there before looking back to her.

Picking up the box she walked to a barren wall and motioned him over with her head. “Hold this and put your foot here,” she said setting the box down before moving a chair against the and stepping up on it and tapping a spot with other. She didn’t wait for him to agree or disagree but proceeded with a blind faith he would do as she asked. Sticking her foot into one of the slats that served as the back of the chair, she used it like a ladder until she was balanced precariously on the top of it like some deranged circus performer. Waving her hand behind her as she bobbled once before catching her balance and letting out a laugh. “Hand me something from that box so we can throw it away. The sooner we get up all this happy fun stuff, the less time we have to see it just taunting us from the box.”

Emily Fox. Cadet counselor.

“Yeah, so it can taunt us from the wall instead,” he replied but he was already moving towards her. Her laugh was pretty and in the back of his mind he wanted to hear it again. “You know we make steps and stools for that, you don’t have to use a chair and risk Academy H n S from taking a shot at you, there should be one in the back right?”

“Probably but this is just as easy and not as heavy to move around,” Emily blew off his suggestion like it was going to add hours to her time schedule. “And if there isn’t one I just wasted thirty minutes of my life I ain’t getting back. Just stand by the chair and grab my arse if I start to fall.”

Ethan had already made it to the chair right behind her, and there was a momentary pause as he picked something random out of the box while his eyes double checked something else. She runs a LOT his mind added, and then ran through the people he had seen at the track back at the Academy when he was on the field, realizing that he had never seen her before. “Are you good?” His question was followed by his eyes indicating the chair she was perched on.

“Of course why wouldn’t I be,” she raised an eyebrow at him. “It’s just I got about an hour to do this and I am making it visually pleasing with what little I have. I mean Chow Town is great. It adds that little bit o’ something special to a bland beige wall. Why don’t you like it? You prefer beige to some other color,” she let out a laugh. “There is the option of us ripping it all down and pretending we are being inducted to Starfleet,” she joked. “We are here to help the people not draft them to the greater glory of the Federation.” It was hard to tell if her snarkiness was playful or genuine as she referred to the large governmental group. “If you think a banner saying we serve mystery meat three times daily sounds more appealing we can start over,” she posed a question and bobbled again this time trying to adjust her footing again but this time reached down to grab the top of his head before straightening knocking off his cap.

Well, it’s certainly visually pleasing with what little you have, but that little is kinda ample “Careful, you trying to give yourself an injury or something? You aren’t really balanced right on that.” Nash’s words were at odds with his thoughts, but some things you just didn’t say when you were in a charity soup kitchen rather than a bar. He made a grab for his cap and missed, but left it laying where it fell. It wasn’t going anywhere, unless one of the people they are trying to feed decided to take it as a souvenir.

“So lucky for us you are a tall one right,” she laughed and wiggled her hand again to signal she was ready for more decorations.

“The beige is terrible, by the way. Worst colour ever invented. You want to get people less depressed yuou should have started by wiping out the beige walls, get a good grey paint on them and really make em feel like this is a Starfleet institution.”

Standing up again with his foot in the spot she had told him and holding the chair, he placed some kind of curly ribbon in her hand, but let his fingers brush hers for a moment. It was a garish blue and yellow with a metallic speckle running through it, like the type that adorned participation awards. Ethan cringed slightly as he realized the box was full of similar looking ribbons. Turning away from the box he looked back to her. “Okay, so, how many of these do we gotta do? Can you reach or do you wanna swap places?” Now a smile did play on his lips as he noticed that even on the chair, she wasn’t endowed with what one would call respectable height.

Ethan Nash, Cadet

“You are about six foot right,” she said looking down at him. ” Why would I need a ladder when you can give me a boost? Besides, it would make the process a lot faster and you don’t send the message. You would just slap them up and not care that there is a rhythm of order to all this,” she looked at his shoulders and wondered how by the book this guy was. Sure having someone balanced on your shoulders as you walked a room was not the most officer-like thing to do but if it got the job done,” she shrugged.

Emily Fox

Nash paused and looked at her, and then looked at the wall. “The ceiling is too short to stand on my shoulders, so you’re going to have to sit. You wanna ride me like Master Blaster and decorate the walls.” Nash put his hands on his hips and looked at her, then at the wall and then the long table serving soup, then outside and noted the sun was getting lower, closer to the time people started rolling in.

“All right, mount up,” he picked up the box and put it on the seat of the chair under her feet, and then turned so his back was facing her. “You, want me to crouch a little or can you throw your leg over ok?” Turning his head so he could see her in his peripherals, he smiled. “Lets do this, if you gotta get it done, lets get it done.”

Nash