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Chief Engineer's Office - Ensign Kesh reporting for duty

Posted March 22, 2021, 12:21 p.m. by Lieutenant Commander Dagen Thor (CE) (Gene Gibbs)

Posted by Ensign Kesh (Engineer) in Chief Engineer’s Office - Ensign Kesh reporting for duty

Posted by Lieutenant Commander Dagen Thor (CE) in Chief Engineer’s Office - Ensign Kesh reporting for duty

Posted by Ensign Kesh (Engineer) in Chief Engineer’s Office - Ensign Kesh reporting for duty
Posted by… suppressed (2) by the Post Ghost! 👻
Was time cyclical? In the case of Ensign Kesh reporting to duty for the first time, no. No, it was not.

Though it has been 33 years since last time aboard the USS Mentha Spicata, Kesh remembered the experience in vivid detail. The carousel of emotions, the smell in the air, the shape and color of the office door.

First of all, the Mentha Spicata was an Oberth-class vessel, and the Genesis is a Manhattan. Totally different, from the far-more effective air filtration to the location and shape and color of the Chief Engineer’s door.

Secondly, she had been brimming with a mix of guarded optimism for the potential of proving herself in this new lifestyle and terror at the potential of the skeletons in her closet, and her own perceived ineptitude, spilling out and ruining everything. Now she… basically.. felt the same way.

Okay, fine, maybe some aspects of time of cyclical. But, then again, her reasons for feeling this way were dramatically different than the time before.

Still, experience meant she could fall back on handling the experience the same way she had before: with all the twitchy professional stoicness of a freshly minted Ensign. Thus, the golden spotted Caitian, with her mohawk-styled mane neatly sculpted just this morning jutting up between fuzzy golden ears, strode through the doorway to her new CO’s office doors and began this trek toward doing it all better this time.

“Loo-hee-.. Ensign Kesh reporting for duty, sir. Mmnnf.”

See? Totally different than last time. This time she immediately offered the PADD containing her personnel data (https://bit.ly/3vttydu) right after stumbling over her own tongue, rather than having to be prompted.

OOC: Welcome! Impressive bio Daniel!
IC:

Dagen had been looking at the stack of isolinear chips that Deeg had put onto his desk. Between he and Bat they they had swapped them out over the last week. Biogel packs were more prevalent but one couldn’t simply change it all at once. He wasn’t quite sure what to think of them. They’d make for a nice ‘house of cards’, and some had used them as a makeshift domino set. He’d even seen some put up a kind of ‘mobile’ windchime. Some things simply couldn’t be recycled. But, more interestingly, there had been a fluctuation in their processing units, many around the same time suggesting a manufacturing fault.

Fortunately he was saved from thinking too much farther on this beyond ‘great ancestors, there are a lot of them!’ At that moment Ensign Kesh had come in; she was as quiet as Reia was at times. That could be disconcerting, though not at this time as her shadow alerted him before the sound. He knew to expect her at some point. The Caitian had been around for some time knocking about the hallowed halls of Starfleet. That was about all he knew, at least for now. He stood, greeting her with a smile. “Welcome aboard,” he said, trying to think of whether Thor’s past host, Lin, had studied Caitians and their society. Did they shake, er, paws?

His expression did not flinch at the faltering introduction on her part. It happened. Taking the offered PaDD he glanced at it, seeking out the things most notable to him, as in her engineering specs. “Have a seat,” he said, offering the only other one in the small room. “Have you had a chance to settle in yet?” By the scattered bits about the small office it was not too far off to see Dagen as a bit of a messy, though with certain hints that there was method to the madness. “Have you met anyone else on the team?”
- Dagen, CE

The desk is different, the air temperature slightly cooler, and the chief is a trill and not a vulcan and stopthisnowyoudumny.

“Ah! Uh… thank you, sir. Rrrnth.” All the way down into the offered seat the felinoid’s tail makes the process difficult by whapping about with unnecessary aggitation, smacking into the chair, the floor, and anything else that might be in range, until she pointedly grabs ahold of it and pins it to her thigh, while the other arm tries to make this action seem normal by holding the other leg, too.

That’s gotta get in the way, Dagen thought to himself as his gaze followed the rather active tail, then wondered whether that was something that was .. polite. So many races and so little known. But she was trying and that was worth points.

“I.. eh.. no, sir. Well, I mean.. ehrr… I have received my quarters assignment and did unpack some of my… my things, but I have only seen the major areas of the ship, the rest are known only in the technical maps, rrrnth. I did make sure to get to know the.. ah… the standard layout of this ship class.” One thing that can always be relied upon is that no two ships are the same, even if they were when built.

“Can’t get lost on one of these ships,” he said with a reassuring smile, or at least trying to. He wondered if reading expressions was hard for Caitians where body language was likely more important than facial expression.

That somewhat uncomfortable-looking position Kesh held at first subsides then, as her hands slide up and fold over each other instead, letting her back straighten as her tail slides down and wraps nervously around the legs of the chair.

“As for meeting.. ah… I believe I am familiar with a couple already, ah, rrth… either from.. well, from the Academy or from my prior commission.”

“People do get about. Small galaxy, but that’s good. We don’t feel quite so displaced.” He glanced at the PaDD again.

Though the felid’s vocal tone is quite even and flat compared to most humanoids, slurred with stutters and cat-like vocal ticks, it is not hard to surmise that she is uneasy about the matter of this being her second time joining Starfleet, if just from the way those big, golden eyes of hers shift down and around and back up amid those later statements. They are then immediately centered onto the pile of isolinear chips, with the tiniest of headtilts that conveys her wonderment of what the deal is with them.

“Bad chips,” he said with a slight shrug. His fingers spun through the highlights of her record which were, in a brief, quite brief. He set it down on the desk and gave it a slight push toward her. “Tell me about yourself. These things give clinical highlights that are appropriate cures for insomnia. What do you like to do? On and off the job.”
- Dagen, Ce

At each interjection of the trill, Kesh made visible effort to center all focus onto what was said, with body posture straightening slightly, ears twisting forward a few degrees, and eyes widening just a bit. All of which loosens once she continues her response to his prior remarks. However, at each junction, a slight edge of distress grows in the felinoid’s vocal tone, as maintaining focus on multiple threads of conversation becomes tenuous, but her vocal slur and stammer at least do not seem to worsen.

“Bad chips. Ah.. uh?” Eyes shift back toward Dagen, then at the chips again, with one ear twisting outward in a fashion of express doubt. Perhaps she thought that might not be the case, but decides not to press the matter.

Dagen shrugged. “That was the assessment on a sampling on units that were giving too high a variable of errors, so we pulled them all. Something for the manufacturer to confirm. Unless you think it may be something else?” By his tone it wasn’t a skeptical reply, but more curious.

“Ah.. uh… about myself.” Uniform-adorned shoulders roll back, spotted neck cranes to one side in a distracting stretch, while three-fingered hands spend a moment tugging on uniform pants to adjust them, with everything lifting slightly, shifting, then settling back down. “Well, ahrrm. I am…” ah, the eternal struggle to think of things that are appropriate to mention at first encounter without being too personal. There is also the matter of trill society and what is considered appropriate there, since it differs from human or vulcan society. A human would want to hear about hobbies, a vulcan would want to hear about academic pursuits, and a trill would want to hear about… legacy? “…ah… I like to dip myself into the greater…” One arm raises to gesture in a manner that’s trying to prompt something to come out, but it isn’t quite coming, leading to a moment of outward twisted ears and lowered eyes.

By her body language it almost looked like a classic stall. Had he asked too much?

“Mnnf. Apologies, Commander. I think I worked myself up for something else than such a question.” A long breath is sucked in and she tries again, anyway, “As my record shows, I started out as a botanist and I still have a great love of all things botanical. Rrrnth. Once my plants revive from cryostasis my quarters will be much like a jungle. I think this gives me a unique, organic, perspective in Engineering, as well, as.. like my profile shows.. I took part in many of the great advancements in Slipstream and Slipway technologies back in the late 70s and early 80s. Rrrrnth. Though they are certainly outmoded with current scientific knowledge, I remain proud of the things I helped discover and refine.”

“Plants. I envy you. I can’t keep a plant alive if I tried. I always seem to do something wrong in the care of them even with help.” His smile was, hopefully, encouraging. Thor’s first host dabbled in botany. He found it quite .. therapeutic.” He replied to this as she looked to relax more.

Like a train derailed off a cliff landing gracefully onto a different track, that initial stumbling awkwardness slips away as soon as Kesh finds the right things to say. The smell of frightened cat in the air dissipates, along with much of the visible fraying on the caitian’s fur.

“I will add, though, that this class’ layout is much more intuitive than a Sovereign.” A small, sage nod adds to her belated response to an earlier quip.

“And much more compact,” he added. “My career has been interrupted as well. I started in Engineering then took a long sabbatical for family reasons. I ended up taking courses to catch up with the developments in that time and landed a spot on the engineering team constructing the Genesis. I liked the building process and didn’t intend to be a part of the crew but only an observer for a time during the shake out cruise. I ended up staying on. The engineering group here is small and we’re fairly tight and informal for the most part. We each have our strengths. I believe it is important to work off one’s strengths and what gives you joy. When it comes to engineering specifically, what work gives you joy? What are you good at?”
- Dagen, CE


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