JPL - Cmdr Rinehart & Lt sh'Thrass - "Four Score and Seven Waffles Ago"

Posted on 241503.31 @ 4:49am by Lieutenant Zhyalla sh'Thrass & Commander Tierney Rinehart

Mission: Holy Cow

Sprawled over the expanse of Zhyalla's carefully silk wrapped couch, Tierney felt even smaller than normal. Her fingers idly toyed with the soft lavender waves of her hair and her eyes, only half open, focused on the ceiling above. Nothing seemed to fit in life anymore. Things exploded. Old flames returned. Perspectives changed. Things hurt. It was an existence of mass confusion, and one the small being knew she simply couldn't pursue alone. "I..." She started, "I don't think I want to speak with the counselor. She slipped on like the damned Romulans did. I feel like I'm incapable of doing my job anymore..." She breathed, not bothering to look at her friend. She didn't have to.

"She's actually a fleet officer though," Zhyalla returned with a smirk. She paced in front of her coffee table, speaking a light year a minute, a piece of orange ribbon trailing through the air behind her. "She's interesting though. I put in for her file from HQ. Should be good pillow reading. Did you know she does that crazy ribbon dancing? Like, the sort you hang from the ceiling with nothing but two wide pieces of ribbon to hold you up. The noncoms have been talking nonstop about it." The Andorian woman stopped, laying a bare foot on her coffee table as she turned to look at Tierney, and the ribbon drifting into a pile on the tabletop. "So, you've met her too?"

"Good for her." Tierney sighed in response, closing her eyes and listening to the Andorian as she spoke and walked in an entirely way too excited fashion. "I don't find her interesting, I find her... Concerning." She breathed, "I made the same request, but doubt we'll find anything. Cardassians are crafty... I haven't met her, but I've seen her from afar and heard whispers."

"She claims to not be Obsidian Order," Zhyalla continued, turning to start pacing again. "Her story on how she got on the ship was changing each time she spoke. She switched race of the Captain of the transport she came on. I heard talk from engineering about her claiming to use a long range transporter to come aboard."

Tierney sighed again, this time far more softly. "I have no doubt that she's Obsidian Order, the same way I have no doubt that Vindicator's Engineer is not and as long as we're aware of what and who she is and isn't, then we're safe." The Starling spoke quietly, "I need to speak with Ops and Engineering about simply letting people aboard... We're not safe. If she and the Romulans can do it, we're... We're just not safe."

"To be fair, both she and that green blooded hob goblin had fleet orders to justify their presence. We verified his, and a request to verify hers went along with my request for her file," Zhyalla insisted with a dismissive wave of her hand. "I wouldn't be surprised if she's a sleeper agent or something. The cursory look at her official fleet record shows she's been in the fleet a little while now." As the word official left her lips, her antennae curled as if to pantomime quote marks. "She hasn't been caught doing anything for the Obsidian Order yet at least. I think she knows I'm watching her though. I'll have to be careful."

At first they were easy to conceal. A stray lift of a finger, the batting of lashes sufficed, but as the conversation wore on and talk of the Cardassian and the accursed Romulan continued, Tierney couldn't hide her tears any longer. They were hot and angry and seemed to burn the delicate pink rims of her eyes and seared paths of hateful wetness as they followed the contours of her cheeks and crossed her ears as the Enterprise's artificial gravity pulled them down towards the couch. "Right now she thinks everyone is watching her." She managed to reply with only the littlest wobble in her voice.

Zhyalla's attention snapped to the woman hiding in the pillows on her couch. She knew that wobble, that slight change in the air during the calm before a storm. Her roommate at the Academy — the one who got her hooked on waffles — had often done the ugly cry. She'd gone through boyfriends like tissue, and Zhyalla had been there for all the ice cream, all the waffles, and all the coffee that had been needed to mop it all up. She knew what was coming.

"What did he do?" It was always a he. She knew this part like the back of her hand. She was already considering what ice cream replicator patterns she knew were good.

A sensitive ear twitched towards the sudden change in subject and the softness that imparted itself into Zhyalla's voice. Tierney knew that the gig was up, that her stupid flux of emotions had betrayed her and left her bare for the world to see. It was just a lucky strike that the world consisted of the Andorian alone when it came time for her to break. "I lost the baby, Z..." Her voice was a rough and rocky whisper, straining over the influx of each word, "tr'Verelan... He had to have known somehow. I blame him for what happened on that Gods forsaken planet!" She finally choked, unable to contain the violent clawing sensation that settled deep in her chest. "I hate him, Z. I hate him more than anything in this universe."

Lost the baby, the words echoed in her blue head like a cloister bell. Words that normally would mean as much to her as if she'd set her combadge down in a bar and staggered home drunk without it. She knew that Tierney hadn't been in good shape when she'd found her and that pointed eared no good... She couldn't even find a word to describe him that wasn't insulting to anyone else it had ever been applied to. It hadn't even occurred to her that the little ball of cells inside Tierney had even been at risk.

"I'd offer to push him out an airlock, but it would cause too many inconvenient questions," Zhyalla finally muttered, setting herself on the couch next to her friend. "What can I do?"

The couch sank as the Andorian set alight near her head, and Tierney forced her massive eyes open to peer into hers. The Starling's jaw was set tight as she worked to box herself back in and steel herself against the pain and inconvenient residuals of such raw emotion. "I don't... know." She replied, shaking her head and drawing a deep, trembling breath, "Nothing's going to give back what was lost, nothing is going to make him pay for what he's done." The Starling's hands curled against her belly, "I don't want him near me or Kerenal or you or Karim... I don't want him near anyone who matters to me."

"That is going to pose an interesting challenge, since he is the chief of security," Zhyalla mused, leaning over to grab a fluffy knit blanket from the shelf at the bottom of the coffee table. Black with some sparkle, it reminded Zhyalla of the sky at home on an icy night. "Do you think a case of neglect, or malicious intent, could be made for a court martial? We may not be able to try him in the Federation courts, but it might be enough to get him sent home at least." With a flick of blue wrists, the blanket fluttered out in the air above Tierney and slowly drifted down over her. Physically not much, but the metaphoric comfort of a blanket's hug spoke across languages.

"We can't prove anything. We can't even prove whether or not he knew. Only you, Karim, and the medical staff knew." Tierney replied, unaware of how she instinctively snuggled into the warm blanket. If she'd stopped to reflect on the thing, she'd have remarked just how very Zhyalla it was. "He can argue extenuating circumstances. I..." Her head shook, "I don't want to drag this out or let anyone else know what's gone on than those who already are involved. I haven't confronted him. I can't even look at him." She strained, tucking her nose and mouth under the blanket.

"I'd offer to run interference between you and him, but even if we could come up with a excuse why a pilot might be meddling in intel's business, he's clearly already dismissed me as an unworthy speck. That spectacle in the shuttle bay before our flight down to the valley of the moo made that clear." Zhyalla bit at her lip, her hand finding Tierney's head to pet her softly. "You haven't found anything — beyond familial ties — that is suspect in his full intel file, have you? Nothing we can use against him?"

"Not a damn thing." Tierney muttered and snuffled in response, closing her eyes as the blue woman's hand stroked along her hair. It was an oddly comforting action. "He graduated the war college. Did his time, rose through the ranks accordingly. He's the cleanest thing to come out of Empire in a long while." The Starling bemoaned with no small whine of anguish.

"That inside itself is suspicious." Zhyalla chewed her lip as her hand continued to stroke her friend's hair in reassurance. "No one's that clean, especially not someone with such high political ties. Maybe we can reach him through his two minions? The cook isn't all there, he's likely to be the loose lids to sink the good ship Romu-pop."

Normally Tierney would have lifted an eyebrow, chuckled, something. Instead she simply lay there in her mopey heartache, trying her best to simply exist without bursting back into the palm of inner pain. "He's young." She offered, "His father is a nightmare, his mother was murdered when he was a kid. He's young yet and he's likely his father's son." The Starling sighed in addition, over him. Over his life, his file, everything that waltzed hand in hand with his path of devastation — and then there was Kerenal. Her silver lining. Being back aboard the ship had afforded her the chance to see him brought aboard, to catch him before someone else would have just churned him back out into the ink-like black as soon as he'd healed and his ship repaired. Or worse. She shivered deeply at the idea of worse, her flesh prickling in response.

"We'll figure something out," Zhyalla insisted in response to the shiver that ran through her friend. She hadn't wanted to believe the stereotypes about Romulans when he'd come aboard, but between the limited interaction she'd had, and now the news about Tierney's lost pregnancy, Zhyalla was hard pressed to think anything but ill of the man who was their chief of security. "No one is perfect, and we'll just have to be diligent in watching him. He'll slip eventually, especially if his father, his primary influence it would seem, isn't a good example."

The little star child nodded in agreement and allowed her eyes to reopen, "In the mean time..." She breathed, "We keep everyone we hold dear close to us and keep an extra wary eye on him. If he so much as sneezes in the wrong direction, I want it documented and him held accountable." He wouldn't succeed, whatever his game was, it would be ended.

"I'll have to follow up with his cook. I planted a waffle seed that may turn into a friendship and an in," Zhyalla explained, though she absentmindedly reached up to rub the base of her right antenna, being reminded of the unexpected grip the excitable little Romulan had subjected it and its partner to.

"A what seed?" Tierney asked, rolling over onto her belly and balancing on her arms to look at her friend, "Did you say a waffle seed? What the Hell is a waffle seed?"

"Not a literal seed," Zhyalla dismissed with an annoyed thrash of her antennae. "Metaphoric. I talked about waffles, it profoundly touched the odd little thing... to the point where I was worried I'd need a doll to ask him where the mean waffle touched him."

For a long moment there was silence between the two women, the smaller lavender haired one perched and blinking as she tried to absorb what the blue skinned one had just said. Her brows furrowed, her nose wrinkled, and her tear wet cheeks reddened as the amusement ran like hot bubbles through her. "You... You bonded with a Romulan over... Waffles?" She asked, incredulously, "Waffles? Like Belgian Waffles? With syrup?"

"They're better with fruit and whipped cream." Zhyalla crossed her arms and made a face as she insisted this. Tierney's skepticism and amusement surprised her. "Why are you surprised? Waffles are the great equalizer."

The Starling gave a quick pant of a laugh and shook her head, "Why am I surprised? Waffles. Of course." She flopped, burying her face into the pink, silk wrapped pillow she'd been using previously, "We can solve all of the Federation's troubles with the Romulans by feeding them waffles." Her voice was muffled, perched on the teetering edge between laughter and tears. "If it's a common ground, use it. Maybe he's more sensible than the monster he serves."

"He seems to suffer from the same ego his Frankenstein does, but otherwise he seems reasonable enough," Zhyalla insisted with a shrug. "However, if you think it shall help, I can recommend a diner in San Francisco that can cater the next Romulan-Federation talks. Best waffles shy of Reno."

"Goo—" The Starling was cut off by the sharp chirp of her combadge. "Rinehart here." She replied, letting her fingers hover over the delta insignia pinned to her shirt. The garbled voice of a near frantic security officer made her scowl and frown, her eyes quickly clouding with irritation and contempt. "I'm on my way." She sighed heavily and rose to a sitting position. "I think we have enough reason to keep him on a permanent radar now," Tierney grumbled sourly as she looked to her friend, "He's holding the Stenellis Princess and playing stupid about diplomatic immunity."

"That sounds like a pickle juggle you'll want to resolve quickly, before it causes an interstellar incident," Zhyalla muttered with a frown and an annoyed twitch to her antennae. "Good luck; it sounds like you'll need it."

At first the only response Tierney gave was the rushed sound of a sigh as she got to her feet and found her shoes. "Yeah... Well..." Her head shook as she pulled one boot on and fished for the other, "The Princess comes from my mother's homeworld and well... I think we know how I feel about the Romulans." She all but snorted, zipping up her footwear. "I'll let you know how it goes."

"Good luck, maybe if you offer the princess some waffles when you spring her from the clink?" Zhyalla suggested as Tierney made her way out of her quarters. Though even Zhyalla wasn't sure if waffles could fix this problem.

=/\= End Log =/\=

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

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