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Dead or not dead... how do you know?

Posted Sept. 13, 2020, 8:16 a.m. by Lieutenant Toveka Brine (Chief Science Officer) (Melissa Aragon)

Posted by Lieutenant Commander Charles Tenkiller (Chief of Security) in Dead or not dead… how do you know?

Posted by Lieutenant Toveka Brine (Chief Science Officer) in Dead or not dead… how do you know?

Posted by Lieutenant Commander Charles Tenkiller (Chief of Security) in Dead or not dead… how do you know?
Posted by… suppressed (2) by the Post Ghost! 👻

((Takes place the night after Toveka talks to Tenkiller’s brother’s ghost about her own father… https://www.star-fleet.com/core/stf3/outpost42/posts/94441/ (last post) ))

Toveka was awake a couple hours before Tenkiller was due to arrive for breakfast. She had been up and down all night thinking of what his brother had said. Her father wasn’t in the place of the dead. It made no sense to her, since the entire planet had blown up. She was confident enough to bet her life that no one on the planet had survived. The question then became, where had her father been when Romulus has been destroyed.

When he arrived, she would be in her uniform, except for her boots as usual. She was curled up in her chair, PaDD in hand, looking disheveled, for her, and walking a tight rope of anxiety. Two things she was certainly not known for, or used to.

Lt Toveka Brine
CSO

The chime rang and the door slid open. Tenkiller stepped in the room in a pair of blue jeans and a black t-shirt under a worn denim jacket. He smiled at her and then cocked his head to the side and the smile was replaced by a slight look of concern.

“You okay there, doll?” he asked.

Tenkiller, CoS

Toveka looked up. “My father may not be dead. Your brother told me last night.” She looked back down at the padd in her hand and shook her head with a look of complete loss on her face. “I don’t even know where to look…” her words faded off as she tossed the padd onto a nearby chair, at least conscious enough to not throw it across the room in frustration.

She’d become a scientist to find facts. To confirm facts. This made no sense to her because it went against all the facts she had known till now. She was completely out of her depth and didn’t even know why?

Toveka
CSO

Tenkiller scoweled. “Well… I have to say you are taking visons of the dead in stride. But… so if your father wasn’t on Romulus when it was destroyed… where else could he have gone?”

Tenkiller, CoS

She shook her head. “Do I have a choice? Either I am crazy, in which case the fact you aren’t hauling me to the counselor makes me question your own sanity even more. Or I’m being told by.... something… that my father is alive and I’m not alone in the universe anymore.” She glanced at him and shrugged as she stood up. “Personally, I prefer the latter. As to where he would have gone, I have absolutely no idea. He was a diplomat. I only knew him to do those things that Councilmen do. That means he visited local towns and tried to keep the peace between them.” She started to pace, her bare feet making no noise on the carpet. “The furthest he ever traveled was the High Council Chambers in the Capital. It was only a few days trip, but he made it a few times a year. Even so, with an entire planet blowing up, it’s not like being 1000 kilometers from home would have saved him.” She threw her hands in the air and turned to him. “I don’t even know where to start.”

She paused and looked at him. “I need permission to take the runabout to the center of the debris field. It’ll need to have some shield modifications to modulate at a higher rate than normal in case there is still residual energy from the blast. I know it’s been years, but no one’s traveled to the center in almost 2 years. We have no solid evidence, yet, that the radiation and energy levels have dissipated.” She stepped up to him and waited for his reaction. She had only been into the field a couple times since they set the new rules in place. And even then, she hadn’t even come close to the barrier beacons that had been set on the perimeter of the last known concentrations of energy and radiation. She had actually been behaving herself in the field and even filed detailed reports on her return. That’s what made this sudden rash choice so out of character for her.

Toveka
CSO

Tenkiller cocked his head to the side. Her words stung him more than a bit. Im not alone in the universe anymore. Well, if thats how she felt, he wasn’t one to push the point. He shifted towards a more professional demeanor, but was still himself.

“Well, I think its a fool’s errand, but clear it with the Skipper. But ya won’t find anything to help you there. This long, and that much energy expended is gonna have wiped out any physical trace. My recommendation? From an investigative perspective? Start combing through refugee manifests from the evacuation fleet. Look for names that are familiar. Track ‘em down, ask questions of them. If a Councilman of the level that I think your dad was evacuated or was even around, someone was bound to have seen something. Start there. Use the debris field as a last resort.”

He looked at his chronomiter and said “I got a meeting to get to. But let me know if I can help, okay T? I’ll see you later.” and he turned and walked out the door, letting it close behind him.

Tenkiller, CoS

It didn’t take a Betazoid to see something had upset him. She called out as he headed to the door and when it closed, she opened it and went to intercept him. “WAIT!” She said and touched his arm. “What’s wrong? What did I do or say? I thought you would be happy I still had family alive, since you are so close to yours. You’ve become the only family I’ve had in years, Charles.” The use of his first name wasn’t something she used much unless caught in intimate moments. She liked how it sounded on her tongue. “Please… I thought we were going to have breakfast. I want you to be part of this with me. I couldn’t have gotten this far without you and it would mean the world to me if you were still beside me when I did this.”

She was hurt and confused. They had plans for breakfast, but suddenly he had a meeting? And the look in his eyes when she mentioned her father might be alive was confusing. Wasn’t he happy she would actually get to introduce him to her own ‘real’ family like he had introduced her to his? She let go of his arm and stepped back. Barefoot in the hall wasn’t like her, either and the fact she didn’t notice would let him know she was really troubled by all that had happened last night.

Toveka
CSO

Tenkiller patted her hand where it touched his arm and he said “T… I have a meeting, and you are in it. I know you well enough to know rhat when you get spun up like this you get tunnel vision. So… take some time. Figure out your next steps. I’ll help ya however I can. But… you need to take a breath and think. You got a lot going on, but you don’t think before you speak. And sometimes… you are downright hurtful. And I don’t know which us worse: the fact that you do it or the fact that you don’t know you do it. I’ll see ya later.” and he turned and walked down the hall.

Tenkiller, CoS

Devastated and unsure what she had done wrong, tears welled up in Toveka’s eyes as she swiftly turned and hastily retreated back to her quarters. As the door shut behind her, she moved to her desk and almost collapsed in the chair. What had gone so terribly wrong? She had expected him to rejoice in the fact she had family, blood that was still alive in the universe. Someone she could put before Ten and introduce as family like he had done for her. And someone she could place him before and declare her love of.

“What happened?” She half whispered to herself. “How is he upset I’m not…” the words trickled off as she closed her eyes and shook her head. “I said I was alone… oh, Charles!” She put her head down on the desk on crossed arms and rocked her head back and forth. How could she have been so stupid. He was right. She got into a rut when she was excited about something and didn’t think. “It wasn’t what I meant.”

After several minutes, she got up and went to clean up. Washing her face and doing a bit of her meditation and work out program, she felt ready to go back to work. It was an off day for her, but staying in her quarters, alone now, wasn’t something she thought she could handle. Leaving off the inquiries and quest letters, she finished dressing in her uniform and headed for the science labs. She’d gone this long without family, and she was more than happy with Tenkiller. She let her scientific mind go thru the process of relaying that info to her brain. “If I’m happy with Ten and my life, then there’s no reason to change things… right?

Once in her lab, she decided that she would study the ghost anomaly instead. Her father had known she wasn’t on Romulus when it blew. So if he hadn’t reached out to her, then obviously he didn’t want to. Who was she to force a reunion.

Once in her office, Toveka pulled up the ship scans for her section of the ship and then narrowed it down over and over till she was scanning just her own room for the last 24 hours. She also sent a request to security for the door logs to her own quarters and those nearby for the last 24 hours as well. Her own room she could get herself, but it was the nearby rooms she was curious about. If any of the readings there were anomalous and in line with the time of the ‘ghost’ sighting, perhaps there was a correlation.

* And NE down in security received the request for the room readings and called to the Chief in his office. “Chief Tenkiller, the CSO is requesting the door and sensor logs for her quarters and the adjoining ones. Claims she doesn’t need to know ‘who’, merely ‘when’. Should I send them?” It seemed a harmless enough request to him, but always better to ask Ten, he had learned. Asking forgiveness instead of permission, he had learned coming on board, was not the way to go with this supervisor.

Toveka
CSO


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