JL | Cmdr Valeese, Ballyn Ram, Lt Evan Merlin | "Bad Morning"

Posted on Fri Oct 27th, 2017 @ 7:02pm by Commander Valeese Stacker & Commander Evan Merlin

Early morning jogs along the station's promenade were another one of those luxuries enjoyed by Valeese. It was a daily occurrence, two hours before start of her shift, and lasted a good forty-five minutes or so. Most of the time the area was relatively quiet, save for a handful of merchants that sold early breakfast to the late crew getting off shift and the opportunists hoping to catch those departing on one of the vessels headed off on various supply and trade runs. She'd long since begun to ignore it all, allowing it to fade into the backdrop as she pittered and pattered along the contours of one deck, then the other, until it was time to move down to the first where, upon completion, she'd indulge in a piece of Terran fudge as a reward for her obedience to the physical regiment.

There'd be not fudge today, little did she know.

Ballyn Ram was one of those contractors who had been brought to work on Cold Station Theta due to his long experience working on stations. He and his team had worked in more places and on more stations than he could count. Refits such as these ones were becoming more and more common these days, but he had learned his job by repairing battle damage.

His shift had ended half an hour ago. Just long enough to have ordered food (which hadn't arrived yet) and to down two glasses of Aldebaran whiskey. Not that synthale stuff, but the genuine thing. He was being paid a healthy commission for this job and he could afford it. So now he was pleasantly buzzed, tired after a long day and eager for the food to arrive. Too bad it was morning and the rest of the station was still half asleep: the real bars were closed.

The pleasant buzz caused by the whiskey abruptly changed into a far more unpleasant one as he caught sight of a person jogging by on the promenade. He blinked and looked again, briefly wondering if it had been his imagination. Not that he had much of an imagination, but still, never hurt to be sure.

And sure enough, it hadn't been. That person jogging by was a Vorta. In a Starfleet uniform, no less. Just where in the Prophet's name had she managed to get that uniform? And what gave her the right to walk freely on this station, as if she had as much right to be here as anyone else?

He drained the last bit of whiskey from his glass and slammed it on the table. "I'll be right back," he called to the nearest waiter. "Just make sure you'll have a fresh one waiting for me when I do."

Something beeped, catching Valeese's attention as she jogged in place, waiting for a turbolift to appear. The elegant stairway leading down to the base level of the promenade was closed, a cleaning crew polishing each stair and the rails with careful precision. In man ways the experience reminded her of an old movie set in a shopping mall sometime during the late 1900s on Earth. The beep sounded again, and this time she gave it more than a passing flick of of one of her shell-like ears. This time she turned to look towards it, one of her bright violaceous eyes cast over her shoulder - and then her blood froze. He was a big man, an Engineer no doubt, and the scent of alcohol wafted lasciviously towards her sensitive nose. His eyes, though, they screamed of something far worse than brash, drunken behavior. There was anger there, hate, and it drove her to pivot and face him head on with the smallest, most polite of smiles she could muster when she knew she was trapped in the funnel-like end of the lift's almost concealed funnel-like corridor and running wasn't an option. "Good morning," she tried, "It's amazing the amount of work that's been done to the station. I almost don't recognize it." Like a songbird she trilled her greeting, hoping beyond hope that her jovial demeanor would disarm him, "You must be proud of your contribution, no doubt."

"You monster!" The man did not slow down in his forward motion. He grabbed her by the shoulder and upper arm and shoved her into the nearest bulkhead. "You dirty, evil, little creep! How dare you show your ugly face here!" He stuttered in his anger. "Come to finish the work you people have started? Do you have a changeling here, too? Is that the boss of your station?!" He grabbed her by her arm again and shook her like a rag doll. "TELL ME! What the fuck are you doing here? Sabotaging the station? I'll fucking dismember you limb for limb if you don't fucking talk!"

Just another day in paradise. She'd remember that phrase flashing through her mind sometime between him denouncing her as a monster and her body hitting the bulkhead. Something popped. Valeese could hear the distinctive 'snick' of a thin piece of bone fracturing within the confines of her flesh. Sure enough, the wailing siren of pain searing through her chest, shoulder, and neck made itself known about the same time as the fog cleared from having the back of her head bounced off the unyielding wall, but he wasn't done. "I..." The Vorta's voice went from a possible answer to an inhuman wail of pain as he shook her by the injured limb, it feeling as though he were making good on his promise. The entire ordeal just about took her knees out from under her, "I'm a doctor!" She yelled, looking up at him, "I work for Starfleet, for the Federation!" As if that would suffice, she could only hope it would, she held it out there for him to take and absorb and metabolize. With a little luck she'd be left to lick her wounds, for the moment it didn't seem that way and while a crowd was growing, none were coming to her rescue. Proof that she was as isolated as she felt.

"An infiltrator, thats what you are!" the man yelled. "There's no way Starfleet would accept someone like you in their ranks! You Dominion scum!" He lifted her higher still, not quite off the ground, but that could easily be the next step. He slowly turned around to face the growing crowd, still holding her tight. "How many of you lost somebody in the Dominion Wars?" he bellowed, his voice carried easily across the promenade. "Someone you loved? Mom and dad, maybe, when they ship they served on was reduced to stardust? Maybe a sister or a brother? A lover, maybe?" he asked a sad-looking older woman amongst the crowd. "Well, here's one of those filthy Vorta, people! Take a good look at it. Not much now, would you think? So fragile, so easy to kill..." He gave her another shake. "But make no mistake, if sh-"

Hidden amongst the murmuring of the crowd, the "'scuse me, coming through, move aside please, 'scuse me," had gone largely unnoticed. But at this point, a man wearing a Starfleet uniform and under wild curls of hair broke through the final ranks and tapped the large man on his shoulder. "Sorry for interrupting what you no doubt find a very entertaining start of a good mob," he said amicably. "But I think you should stop now."

Dominion scum, reverberated in her head. Informing them that she'd been born years after the Dominion fell apart would prove fruitless, to them it would all be lies and callous half truths made by a creature belonging to a race with notoriously silver tongues. Valeese was up on tip toe. her arm jutting up at an unnatural angle with the way her collarbone had undoubtedly fractured, and she was lost looking back and forth between his grip on her and the crowd of onlookers so ready to see her murdered before their very eyes... Starfleet uniform or not. That next shake left her head drooping, the screech unwilling to materialize from her lips anymore - and then...

Merlin.

Shivering, she looked up from beneath mussed hair to find him breaking through the crown and coming to rest close at hand. So close to the engineer that was bent on ripping her arm off. "Lieutenant Merlin, don't..." Don't what? Save her? Implicate himself? Get hurt? She didn't know what to say next, and so... Her voice fell from the air.

The man who held her let go abruptly, and she fell into a waiting arm which guided her gently to the ground. "What do you want?" Ballyn snarled, seizing him up. He was smaller than Valeese's rescuer, but at least twice as big. "Ahh, Starfleet, of course." He began to grin. "You're her slime lord, then?"

"Nope, just the man who has come to arrest you," the Lieutenant said cheerfully, keeping himself in between Valeese and the crowd.

"Make me," Ballyn growled and began to crouch.

Now it was the Lieutenant who addressed the crowd, – the people around them were either too fascinated by this unexpected entertainment or too dumbfounded to react. There was something manic in his grin. "Sounds like he's asking for it. Don't you think he's ask-" and then the Bajoran contractor attacked. The Lieutenant reacted, swiftly, almost faster than the eye could follow, and a moment later it was Ballyn's turn to be pressed against a bulkhead, his arm twisted across his back. "They keep on telling me I'm good at this but I seriously don't know how," he complained, half to himself. "But I do admit it comes in handy, from time to time."

And there was the cavalry, at last: three others in a Starfleet uniform, of which two from Security. The third was a Medical officer, who cried out softly as he recognised his CMO and bent over her.

Rolling to cradle her injured arm to her chest, Valeese missed the scuffle between the Bajoran and the... Whatever the Lieutenant was. She could hear foot falls, the scrape of boot treads shuffling against the deck, and the thud of a skull hitting the bulkhead. Somewhere in there sighed the hiss of fabrics resenting friction, but more off she could hear anger and calm playing off one another as if in a dream. Lieutenant Merlin was steady and easy, unfussed by the fight at hand - if it could even be called that. By the time her subordinate arrived, she'd managed to sit up, shaking as she fought shock and the onslaught of emotions and the desire to be rid of the eyes on her. "Is site to site up and running?" She asked, hopeful.

"No... No ma'am. Can you walk?" The young Lieutenant shook her head, running a tricorder over her to check and assess her injuries. It was sad to say the least; a broken collar bone, dislocated shoulder, and something funk with her wrist that seemed to promise torn ligament somewhere between it and her elbow. All of it, plus the knot on the back of her head and resulting minor concussion, could all be fixed and quickly. The emotional damage, though, that was something they knew would be the most painful of all. For anyone. Let alone the lone little Vorta living in a world full of people that would have her torn apart and call it a sport.

"I'll walk. Call the lift." Just such a Vorta nodded and finally looked up to find both Merlin and her attacker, "Such sadness in your life there must be," She sighed, trying to settle a trembling and wrinkling chin. She wouldn't cry, at least not in front of the Bajoran bastard, "I wish you peace."

"And I wish you'd-" Though it wasn't hard to guess what the Bajoran wished, he didn't get the chance to finish his sentence, for the Lieutenant pressed the man's face harder against the bulkhead. "We know, we know," he soothed. "You've told everyone what you wished, at length. Unfortunately, I've already used my three wishes for today." He handed Ballyn over to the security detail. "He's all yours. I'm sure all these fine people here-" he raised his voice in order to stop some of the crowd, who had begun to shuffle away now that the show was apparently over, "are more than willing to testify what has happened here, won't you?" He grinned that manic grin again and looked around, locking eyes with as many people as he could. "Of course you will!"

And with that, he turned and followed Valeese and her collegue into the lift. Just before the door shut, he heard a shout from somewhere behind him on the promenade, where the Bajoran was guided away: "Hey! He still owes me for that drink!"

---

Commander Valeese
Chief Medical Officer
Cold Station Theta, SB-1170

Lieutenant Evan Merlin
Chief Strategic Operations Officer
Cold Station Theta, SB-1170

Ballyn Ram
Contracted Civilian Engineer
APB Sha'mer