JPL - CIntel & CHelm - LtCmdr Rinehart & Lt sh'Thrass - "Chicken Chicken Chicken Chicken"

Posted on 241501.02 @ 4:42am by Commander Tierney Rinehart & Lieutenant Zhyalla sh'Thrass

Mission: Holy Cow

"I feel I owe you an apology." Tierney's voice carried shortly after the whooshing noise of the Helm's officer's doors. The Andorian had been quick to invite her in after the chime rung and the who's whos were figured out in short order. Sickbay was an unpleasant memory and Karim had done what he could to bolster her spirits given the circumstances, but Tierney knew that Hark's blue pet deserved an explanation of her own and the Starling's mind whirled with the proper one to give her.

"I was expecting to have to apologize to you," Zhyalla insisted, standing from her couch and dropping the PADD she was holding on the coffee table. She had Tierney's PADD sitting on the table next to the door, and she'd copied the data over to read at her leisure.

The Starling's head shook, "Not your fault that I'm a total lightweight when it comes to the drink." She shrugged, "Looks like we'll have to find a different past time better suited to both of us?"

"Or you can just be my designated diver," Zhyalla teased with a bob of her antennae. "You dropped your PADD, it's on the table next to the door."

The Starling rolled her eyes and nodded, stooping gently to collect the PADD. "Cute." She retorted and flipped the PADD on for good measure. Far be it from her to correct the woman's linguistic faux pas. It was only then, as the PADD flipped on half a page a way from where she'd been working last, that she felt suspicion crawl high in her throat and began tuning her senses back onto the blue woman. Nothing that was in her writings would have hurt anyone -- they were a simple outline of the events leading to Mark's death and a list of people who had messed with the runabout. She'd only been in the preamble of the investigation when she'd been felled by a stupid drink. It served its purpose. At least now she knew more about the twisted, tangled web she and Mark had created. Nothing was over. If anything, it was only the beginning.

"Something wrong?" Zhyalla noted Tierney's inspection of the PADD. She'd been careful to try and put it back at the same point in the text she'd found it... but with everything that'd happened, it was always possible she'd gotten it wrong.

Looking up, Tierney shook her head, "Not at all." She lied with a small grin and set the PADD back down. "I hope I'm not intruding on something?" the little Starling asked, tilting her head. Curiosity was hardly a sin, but something was different and lurking in the darkness surrounding the two. The ghost could feel the hair on the back of her neck begin to stand on end, but worked carefully to soothe her fraying nerves. Nothing indicated that the Andorian was a danger. Not yet. Not coming directly from Hark.

"Just some reading, nothing that can't be put off," Zhyalla answered, a single antenna raising in curiosity. "What happened, anyways? I've never seen anyone go down that quick from a drink that wasn't spiked with something." She settled back on the couch, and waved her hand in invite for Tierney to join her.

"Apparently my constitution isn't one that agrees with alcohol." The ghost shrugged gently and took up the Andorian's offered seat and carefully crossed her legs. The decision to share didn't come without it's own risks, but that risk would rapidly be eaten up when her newest little secret unveiled itself. "Turns out Captain Rhodes left a parting gift that doesn't quite agree with the stuff as well." She chuckled lightly, watching the blue woman.

Zhyalla considered Tierney's statement, and then suddenly made a face as it occurred to her what that meant. A child. Well, no need to be rude just because it's not something I want, Zhyalla mused, and smiled politely. "Congratulations?"

"To be honest... I'm not sure how this happened." The young Commander replied, "I mean... I understand how, but usually Starfleet Medical is able to circumvent this sort of situation..." She fumbled and smiled almost sheepishly. Even as a ghost, her awkward youth shone through exuberantly. "Everything happens for a reason, though, or so I hear so often. A blessing in disguise... A chance for Captain Rhodes to achieve immortality. I suppose that's what children are, even if we never stop to consider them before they're thrust upon us."

"Whatever is wrong with your constitution may have caused your birth control to fail?" Zhyalla suggested. "You humans are fairly prolific, life finds a way. Didn't an old earth mathematician say that?"

"Life always finds a way, it's true.. But I'm afraid it was a fictitious Chaotician from some old movie about Dinosaurs." Tierney rumbled with a nod. "I'm still in shock, I think. It doesn't quite seem real."

"...Because you just found out about Rhodes?" Zhyalla dared guess. Tierney seemed glad of the child, even though it was unexpected, so that seemed the only logical conclusion to jump to.

"Maybe." The redhead's brow knit together, "maybe more to the point that it just wasn't something I'd ever geared myself towards. It's not exactly brilliant to be expecting and playing spook at the same time. It muddies the lines. Makes things more difficult." She explained and studied the Andorian's face.

"I can see how some might think it would divide your loyalties," Zhyalla allowed, her antennae turning towards Tierney, an unconscious mirror of the red-head's studious gaze. "Though one could argue that it would make you a better asset. You have more of a stake in making Federation space safe for your offspring."

"I'm not concerned with my value being depleted, I'm more concerned with what I have to lose by being caught and how much less effective I'll be at my job given the stakes." The Starling countered and gestured towards her abdomen, "It's common nature to want to protect our children, whether we're aware of it or not. and that alone may take away the edge or, worse, make me more jumpy. What I do requires a great deal of precision. It's a lot like what you do. One wrong move and..." She brought her hands together in a loud clap, "It all goes up in smoke."

"True enough." A shrug rocked her shoulders, and her antennae mimicked the gesture in their small way. "Does that mean you'll look at retiring? Or perhaps a desk job?"

Desk job. Retirement. The words, like pregnancy and motherhood, seemed so alien to the diminutive Starling. "No." She replied, "I don't have that luxury and even if I did, I'd go stir crazy."

"Then you'll find a way to balance," Zhyalla insisted. Even lacking a mothering instinct of her own, it was a fact. It was how all species survived -- they figured it out, they balanced what they had, and they did the best they could for their offspring. One thing no one could deny, any person currently living, no matter the species, had come from a long line of people who'd been raised well enough to produce a new generation. That spoke of something.

"I'll have to." There wasn't a choice as far as Tierney was concerned. She'd succeed or she'd fail, and failure simply wasn't an option no matter how bleak the situation may have seemed. New life meant new hope. It wasn't a curse or a burden, but it was an obligation to succeed and see to it that the next generation had a decent shot at a decent life. Being conceived and born during the aftershocks of a civil war to a mother and a dead Captain would only make it that much more difficult. Add to it the fact Tierney wasn't human, and more so that her non-human half was barely registered as a race, and life seemed like an impossibility. The blue woman would need to be figured out, and quickly. Friend or foe would need to be decided and foe would need to be dealt with an quickly. In the current political state of things, however, Tierney hoped she'd be proven friendly.

Zhyalla considered the little red head in silence, then figured it might be best to just try to reach out. Chances were good the intel officer was going to be an asset, and she wasn't going to find the lay of the land by sitting on her hands. With Rhodes' death, and now the news of his unborn child, time might not be there.

"Did you see that report from Ensigns Peters and Jones?" she asked. The engineers had included Zhyalla in the list of people the report was sent to because it technically had been her that had found the problem to start with. She'd noticed with interest that they'd sent it out to more people than typically was needed. Not just the chief engineer, but security, Intel, and the commanding officer himself. One of them was clearly suspicious, and she couldn't blame them after pouring over it herself. Thankfully Peters had provided a lot of translation from engineer speak, she was rustier than she liked.

The silence was once more broken by the sound of the Andorian's voice, this time more about work than the philosophy of family and work. Tierney's head tilted as she considered the question and the answer inherent. "I did." She nodded. The report indicated that there was foul play afoot, that whoever had gone for Rhodes' throat and been hard pressed for hers and perhaps even a few others. Someone was trying to sway the Enterprise in a certain direction by using death and 'accidents' as their M.O. "I find it peculiar, but trust Security will figure out if it was intentional or just a weird short circuiting. Crap happens. This is the Enterprise after all." What she didn't say was that the Romulan Security chief would be her next stop.

"I just find it odd, the glitch was hard coded for the serial number of your combadge," Zhyalla said. Her tone was neutral, but she was very curious about how Tierney would react.

The Starling shrugged gently, "Things happen on this ship that are hard to explain. If it was intentional... Then maybe I should be thanking you instead of apologizing to you for taking me drinking." She brushed the blue woman's thoughts off. Things were becoming more and more peculiar surrounding the Admiral's pet. She was curious about things she likely shouldn't have given a spare thought to -- but she did. Friend... Or Foe? The jury was still out and scrambling for a verdict. Could Hark himself have decided she was more of a risk than an asset? Had Tierney been burned?

"You mean problems like that are common on this ship?" Of course, Zhyalla knew about things that had been happening here, she'd had plenty of time to read on the trip out, but her antennae perked up, and her eyes grew wide. "What else has happened? Other than the tragedy with Rhodes, that is..."

Tierney chuckled and shook her head, "I think you'd best go to the holodeck and have it recall some of the incidents that have plagued this ship and others that have carried the name Enterprise. She's a bit of a legend in that right." She sighed.

"Enterprise has always been a hunted... or is it haunted name? I didn't realize it was still such these days," Zhyalla mused. She didn't need to talk to the holodeck. She wanted to trust Tierney, but she needed something that could make her sure that she wasn't involved in what was going on.

"They're one in the same at this point." The tiny ghost quipped with a wry sort of smile. "Sometimes I wish it wasn't such an honor to be part of her crew." She mused out loud and shifted her weight where she sat, studying her hands. "My grandfather seemed to be able to get along with her just fine, then again he got along with a lot of things just fine. Sometimes too well." Tierney sighed and shook her head.

Zhyalla laughed, catching the innuendo that lie under the statement. "Would you answer if I asked who your grandfather is?" She tilted her head as she asked, mouth twisted into an amused grin.

"William T. Riker, playboy of the stars. Dashing, handsome, and entirely way too suave." Tierney grinned sheepishly in response, her cheeks catching fire as she admitted the truth of the matter.

"Also a brilliant tactician," Zhyalla couldn't help defending the man, not that she felt he needed defending. "Though I am not one to fault a person who is suave and handsome. So you're truly his granddaughter?" Zhyalla grinned at this.

"One of his finer attributes." The little one sniffed and nodded. Riker was a lot of things, a womanizer being one of them but it seemed highly forgiven in light of his other great accomplishments and his painstaking loyalty to Picard and Enterprise as a whole. "I am. Unfortunately it's not a glorious claim to fame, my grandmother was one of his many side trips on Risa and I swear my father jumped through flaming hoops to try and be noticed and acknowledged. It never happened, now I'm his last hope. I can only imagine that he'll flip a lid when he finds out that he's going to be a grandfather himself." She snorted softly, "My father was a lot of things... He cares about titles and ranks and names more than anything. I guarantee you the biggest issue he'll have is the fact that this child doesn't belong to someone more illustrious like Hark or Malone." She scoffed, finally allowing a protective hand to rest on the still flat plain of her belly.

"Your father truly has no taste if he'd take Malone to be a better bloodline than Rhodes. Malone makes Riker's dalliances look like chaste human affairs, and even puts Andorian sensibilities to shame at time," Zhyalla insisted with a giggle. "Hark seems to be made of good stuff, for what little I know of the man though."

"I have to agree with you about Malone. Rhodes was a good man, a sensible guy and he cared deeply for his crew and this ship." The Starling nodded, her smile fading only slightly as she spoke of Mark for one of the first times since his death. "I should mourn him deeper, I know this... But I think being a spook has kind of dulled those emotions." She added, pursing her lips with a shake of her head and reached to tuck a lock of hair back behind an ear, "Hark? I don't know enough about to pass judgment. He left you here. Surely you know a bit." She jabbed a bit, blinking slowly as if to emphasize the point and drive it home.

"He signed paperwork to ship me out here," Zhyalla insisted. "I'd doubt he'd know me from Talas. He's not bad looking for a pink skin though, I'll tell you what." She giggled, and her antennae curled in thought. She looked at Tierney for a long moment, and let out a soft breath. "I'm going to go out on a line here, because I believe that you have nothing malicious to do with why I'm really here..."

"I hadn't noticed." Hark's looks had been lost on the young spook, namely because Admirals were off limits and mostly because she simply didn't care. It was the Andorian's next parse error that caught her attention best, nearly sent her into giggles and a gentle correction until the seriousness of the sentence burst over the horizon line and caused Tierney's eyebrow to quirk, "Why you're really here?" Ding ding. Not really a Helm Officer. She knew it.

"HQ was concerned about Enterprise, given the circumstances over Carpenter's disappearance, the command staff choosing to go rabid, err, I mean rabbit I think? Choosing to go into deep space during the civil war. Then the loss of the former XO become assistant chief engineer and the chief medical officer. I think Vokar was mentioned involved there? They hadn't known about Rhodes before they sent me, but the circumstances of his death certainly follow up with this ominous pattern. I'm already starting to look into it, but whoever rigged the overload tried to cover their tracks and they're not bad at it." Zhyalla kind of let all that come tumbling out, knowing that if she didn't she might clam up and change her mind. Stopping now would only make things worse, it was clear Tierney had been suspecting something, and making any hint that her instincts are right without clarifying how would only harm things.

There was silence for a long while. Tierney had suspected that the Andorian was a ghost, one sent in to do God only knows what. The fear of being burned had been there, but Hark's pet wasn't there to hand her a burn notice or to mysteriously end her life. No. Tierney, was safe... For now. The one who'd sabotaged Mark and now was seemingly gunning for her was still at large -- and Zhyalla wasn't the culprit. "Rabbit." She finally acknowledged, helping the Andorian along with her English in more of a whisper than anything else. "I knew you weren't what you tried to appear to be." She added, gesturing back to the PADD she'd left on the side table near the door. "I knew it when the PADD turned up in your hands instead of being left down in sickbay and just confirmed it when the PADD had been gone through."

"I blame being concerned about your well being for getting that sloppy," Zhyalla returned, her antennae pointing at Tierney in an accusatory manner. She silently repeated the clarification of 'rabbit', Terran metaphor was so odd and took such work to learn.

"Yeah yeah yeah. Some excuse." Tierney waved the blue and her antennae off dismissively, "That part just proves that you don't want my blood spilled."

"Occupational hazard of having a conscious, despite Intel's best efforts to drum it out of me, giving a fuck about people," Zhyalla insisted, antennae pinned in annoyance. "Have you had any luck with the maintenance records for the Darwin?"

"Lucky for you. I'm afraid I've started going numb." Tierney sighed and leaned deep into the cushion of the couch, dragging a lone throw pillow into her lap. Zhyalla may have been Andorian, but she was still female and squishy things were inherently available. The Starling was thankful for that fact. "Nothing concrete. Whoever did this managed to erase themselves out of everything when the shuttle was destroyed." She almost spat, irritation burning along the tips of her ears, "They're on this ship. They're likely smiling and waving at us, someone we trust... Someone we wouldn't think twice about being near the shuttles and the computers. That drives me nuts, Blue, absolutely nuts."

"Do you know anyone any good with forensics? There are ways to recover deleted information," Zhyalla suggested, her antennae twitching at being called Blue. She'd let it slide for now, Tierney was clearly going through a lot. Gentle, but firm, correction could come later. "You know how hard it is to trust people, it just means we need to be extra careful. As it is, we should probably keep my little secret between us. Not even my handler needs to know I've decided to trust you yet." Her eyes fell on the pillow on Tierney's lap, and she wrinkled her nose. "I need to put a slip cover on that thing, the fleet issue furniture is horrible, isn't it? I'm thinking orange, yellow, and pink raw silks?"

"The only person I know half decent at recovering information like that is a Ferengi on a ship far far away from here." Tierney replied with Zola on her mind, "I've heard chatter about them being on leave at present time, maybe we'll get lucky and she'll have half a second to spare?" She offered. "As far as your little secret? Consider it kept as long as mine is kept as well. You, the Trill in medical and the Commander are the only ones who know. I need to keep it under wraps for as long as possible." Which, she thought, may not be for very much longer at all given the nature of the secret and their propensity to grow and distort a woman's figure. Her attention was quickly drawn to the throw and she considered the Andorian's color choices, "I think I approve." It wasn't as if she'd settled into her own quarters enough to even consider decorating and the idea seemed both intriguing and completely alien. She'd need to and soon.

"Do you trust this... Ferengi? Or at least know what price is high enough to know she'll keep her sharp little mouth shut?" Zhyalla shifted, tucking her legs up under herself, and leaning kneeling towards Tierney with an arm braced on the back of the couch. "I always hate having to trust money and contracts to keep silence." Zhyalla slumped back into the far corner of the couch with a sigh and a momentary slump of her antennae as her eyes fell to the pillow, and by proximity Tierney's belly behind it. "What is the human gestation period anyways?"

"This Ferengi is a Starfleet officer and a good friend. I trust her." The Starling surmised with a small nod and smile as punctuation. Zola, and her chicken heels, would always come through. Of that Tierney was certain. What she wasn't certain of was the current political air surrounding the Vindicator or how sharp eyed the command team was being now that the Trill had risen from the dead. It wasn't until Zhyalla's eyes fell onto the pillow, and of course the vulnerability that was her abdomen, that Tierney spoke again, "Longer than Bajorans, unfortunately." She said, "Usually nine or ten months give or take a few days."

"Ferengi and friend do not usually go together without a negative between them," Zhyalla muttered with a skeptical cant to her antennae, then shook her head. "But if you trust her, then I will follow your lead. As for hiding your hitchhiker, you may consider a more traditional intelligence attire of civilian garb."

"You'll like Zola. Promise." Tierney offered without hesitation, though she could understand the Andorian's hesitation. "Same way I'll find a way to like the idea of running around in civvies."

"If I could get away with them myself, I wouldn't be in this monkey suit," Zhyalla insisted with a grin. "We can go shopping through the replicator patterns. You'd probably look great in my favorite wrap dress pattern? Perhaps in blue?"

"I'll have to take you up on that. I don't do style." The little one shook her head and groaned.

"Now I know why you stay in your uniform," the Andorian teased, standing from the couch. "You look like you're about my height, you can try on my grey one and see if you like it."

With a smile, Tierney got up and followed the Andorian back towards her bedroom, "Alright." she answered and nodded. For the first time since Scarlet, she'd made a new friend and someone who seemed far more adept and comfortable with flaunting their femininity than she.

=/\= End Log =/\=

Lt Commander Tierney Rinehart
Chief Intelligence Officer
USS ENTERPRISE, NCC 1701-F

Lieutenant Zhyalla sh'Thrass
Chief Helm Officer
USS Enterprise, NCC-1701-F