Valiant: Footsteps

[Dale Goetz]

"Tastes like conduit scrub, but the apple smooths that all real good."

The waitress passed by upon seeing the bottle, wordlessly depositing a pair of small, pre-cleaned mason jam jars, just the right size for this sort of off-menu offering. Bear went to work filling them about halfway.

"Been a Goetz tradition back to the old American rocket days. You don't blast off without the schnaps. I don't believe in luck, but I figure you give shit like that the benefit of the doubt."

Glasses filled, he slid one Érin's way, and held his own up for emphasis.

"Prost, mein Capitan!"

[Érinthe Hetetlen]

"Prost," the Captain agreed, raising his own glass.

"To the Valiant," he added. "God bless her, and all who sail in her."

* * *

Apartment Complex 221B
Alameda, California

When most people thought of Starfleet, they thought of starships and space explorers. Occasionally they might think of the Academy as one of Earth's premiere seats of higher learning, or they might think of the role that Starfleet Medical played in providing free and cutting edge healthcare to everyone and anyone who needed it.

People seldom thought of Starfleet in terms of real estate; and yet the organisation has one of Earth's largest property owners. Business and commercial properties were littered in areas around Starfleet's major facilities: ancillary office buildings; conference centres; libraries; records offices; training spaces to cater for new personnel. They owned bars, restaurants, and grocery stores that catered predominantly to Starfleet officers. They owned comfortable apartment buildings for officers temporarily ashore, letting them live like people instead of boxing them up at the local barracks.

It was one of those latter buildings that Érin stared up at now, the antigrav engine of his hovercruiser descending into a gently deepening hum as it powered down. A hand ran through the slightly sweat-dampened hair that his helmet had inflicted; he spared half a thought to squinting into a wing mirror to neaten himself up, but decided against it.

From what he'd read in her medical file, the Lieutenant probably looked considerably worse.

He exchanged a quick nod with the security guard in the building's lobby as he entered, swiping his Starfleet ID at the sensor pad to unlock the transparent aluminium doors. The screen flashed up his name and rank; Still getting used to that, he mused.

After the speed his 'cruiser had achieved along Alameda's streets, the elevator felt painfully slow. He shuffled uncomfortably inside the general service jacket that the Starfleet Stores had issued along with the rest of his freshly machine-knit uniform. It was certainly nice that Starfleet had seen fit to replace his entire uniform wardrobe with new items to reflect his new rank, but he questioned the logic of replacing the parts that didn't carry any indication of rank. He'd just worn the old jacket down to the point where it was comfortable; the unsoftened collar of this new one constricted gently around his neck despite his efforts to slacken it off.

The elevator came to a silent halt, the doors parting with a faint hiss as they opened up onto the floor he'd selected. He halted for a moment at the small console screen a few paces into the corridor; pulled up the list of current residents, and scrolled for the name he was searching for. A quick tap on the touchpad later, and three doors down on the left a small display lit up with the occupant's name.

He approached; settled his finger on the door chime, and waited for signs of life from within. The door slid aside, and Érinthe had to fight back a smile.

"Ari McKenna," he said, as formally as he could muster. "You look like crap."

[Ari McKenna]

It wasn't much of a view, she mused, but at least she could see some greenery amidst the buildings of the apartment complex. Not the sterile blank walls of her tiny isolation room in Starfleet Medical.

Fingers absently tucked a loose lock of raven hair behind an ear, before picking up the nearby mug of tea. A sigh followed the sip, leaving a bit of condensation on the window as she turned and shuffled away from it. Tired though she was, her mind was clicking along at several kilometers a minute.

With her post on the Enterprise ceded to another at the onset of her bout with lungworm, there was nothing else she was allowed to do but think. About finally feeling human again. About when and if she'd receive another posting.

Shaking her head, her mussed hair fluttered around her shoulders and down her back. There was a hairbrush sitting forgotten on the tiny table near the couch, alongside a pile of pins that normally kept her hair in a tidy bun. Pajamas and tribble slippers, however, didn't demand neatly brushed hair.

The soft chime of her door sounded. Ari blinked at it, standing perfectly still for several moments until she set her tea down and shuffled forward to answer it. With any luck, she mused, it was security delivering the package she'd been waiting for.

"Ari McKenna...you look like crap."

"I assure you, Érinthe, this is an improvement." Ari crooked a smile as she shuffled aside to let him in. At least her tiny apartment was in perfect order, save for her cup of tea beside a sprawling pile of magazines and tech manuals.

"Cup of tea?"

[Érinthe Hetetlen]

"Earl grey, if you've got it," Érinthe replied, stepping forward far enough to clear the proximity sensors and let the door slide closed behind him.

It was a little odd to see McKenna like this, truth be told. They'd served together on the Isis for years, and Érinthe had seen her in some pretty compromising situations, but there was a big difference between pass-out drunk and this. On duty or not, they'd always been Starfleet Officers; no amount of alcohol was enough to take down anyone's shields and get them acting the way they would if they were at "home".

As McKenna disappeared towards the apartment's kitchenette, Érinthe cast his gaze around the living space that Starfleet had allocated. His eyes settled on one of the scattered tech manuals in particular: specifications for the Constitution-class starship. Something clenched in his gut.

"I'm sorry you missed out on Enterprise," he offered; it was a hollow sentiment, he knew, but it was the best he had. After the mission to Vulcan, newly-appointed Captain James Kirk had begun to confirm his various crew appointments and selections for when the Enterprise would relaunch. Not surprisingly, he'd chosen to retain the Helmsman who'd served with distinction during that mission rather than McKenna who, who should have been aboard but for the intervention of a particularly virulent and unpleasant parasitic infection to the lungs.

"Admiral Pike asked me to give you his regards as well," he added, as an afterthought.

[Ari McKenna]

"Of course." she replied, offering him a seat by inclining her head as she turned, slippers making tiny sounds against the floor.

It took only a few moments to prepare the tea, given the amenities the tiny kitchenette managed to pack into its miniscule footprint. Ari added a bit of sugar and cream, hoping she'd remembered the proper proportions that Érinthe preferred to take his tea with.

Fingers paused as he spoke up once more, leaving the cup on the counter as she absently smoothed her hair back from her face. She was sorry too, she mused bitterly, trying not distract herself with melancholy thoughts again. There had been quite enough of that already the last two weeks, and Ari would allow herself no more.

"So am I." she added simply, handing over the cup of tea before reclaiming her own for a sip of the potent brew. A small, polite smile hovered around her lips, blossoming only as he continued.

"Admiral Pike? Well, that's a lovely bit of happy news to come out of the last few weeks then. Ari lofted a brow, her expression slowly melting toward neutral as a thought tried germinating at the back of her mind. "Is it too much to assume you didn't come all this way just to bring me tidings of the good Admiral?"

[Érinthe Hetetlen]

"Maybe I'm just here to make fun of an old friend," Érin quipped as he chose his chair carefully.

Ever since he'd set foot in the room, he'd been paying careful attention to his surroundings. It was a subconscious, neurotic compulsion that kept him constantly aware of all the ways into and out of the room he was in, and urged him to sit or sleep with his back to a defensible wall whenever possible. Ordinarily it was only a minor inconvenience, motivating him to sit towards the backs of classrooms and in the corners of restaurants. However, it had become something of an obstacle during his early days in Starfleet: a bridge officer who was constantly worried about what was going on behind him wasn't doing his job as well as it could be. It had been something difficult to overcome, but with a little effort and some Vulcan coaching he'd managed to get a handle on it while he was on duty. The rest of the time? Not so much.

The compulsion urged him to choose a perch on the sofa, but a crumpled and discarded blanket - a blanket with sleeves, from the look of it - and the slightly askew cushions beneath it suggested that maybe sitting on the plague couch wasn't such a good idea. Instead he picked the armchair with it's back to the window; not as defensible as he'd like, but the odds of someone getting hold of an armed jumpship and shooting at him through a twenty-something story window were pretty slim, so he was probably safe.

The chair proved to be a little deeper than he'd expected, and his attempts to sit in it like a normal person quickly devolved into a more slumping and casual posture than he'd intended. Not that it mattered: it wasn't like he stood a chance of fooling McKenna into thinking he was a responsible and respectable officer anyway.

A sombre frown settled into place on his brow.

"My Captain -" He cut himself off, gaze alternating between McKenna and the coffee table, "- Captain Mahipo, the woman who was supposed to be commanding my ship, she, uh -"

A breathy note of laughter escaped his lungs. "She was supposed to transfer off the Farragut a couple of weeks from now, in time for the fit and shakedown stages of constructing the 1702. Unfortunately, she was still commanding the Farragut when they sent the fleet to Vulcan."

Further explanation wasn't needed: even in a sick bed at Starfleet Medical, every Federation citizen from here to Berengaria knew the hope-destroying details of what one lone ship had done to Starfleet, and to the Vulcan homeworld. Even so, there was more that Érinthe needed to say, and all of his orbiting around the point hadn't built up as much slingshot momentum as he'd been hoping.

His fingers hitched up the grey sleeve of his coveralls, just enough to flash the triple-striped cuff of the gold uniform underneath. "They gave her to me," he explained. "Dead man's boots, and all that. Dead woman's boots."

[Ari McKenna]

The ghost of a smile flitted across her lips for a brief moment, before fleeing in favor of the neutrality she'd imposed.

It really would be too much to hope that he was just here on a social visit, to lambaste her in all of his good-natured glory. She wondered how many different ways he could allude to her illness and make it sound as if she were a wolfhound with a case of heartworm. Knowing Érinthe as well as she did, Ari had no doubt he'd be quite creative.

She curled up in her still-warm spot on the couch, snuggling back into her fluffy robe but leaving herself free to rise if needed. As informal as this was, he did still outrank her...and if he rose, so would she in turn.

Pale eyes closed briefly as she savored a sip of hot honeyed tea. They opened a moment later, in time to catch his gaze before it slid down to the coffee table, remaining silent as he spoke. She stared, remaining perfectly still, as if hiding behind the whorls of steam rising from the mug. It had been the only thing talked about at Starfleet Medical while she was in isolation; the bitterest news to receive in the midst of her treatments.

So many people lost...so many innocent people lost. Ari breathed deeply and blinked slowly to regain her composure, Érinthe's voice continuing after a brief pause.

"In ainm Dé..." she murmured, surprise registering on her features as she reflexively got to her feet. A Captain. Érinthe. A. Captain...repetition at least helped the idea sink in as much as the visual of his striped cuffs.

"...she was a hell of a woman. You have some impressive boots to fill." Ari said after a moment, a smile finally brightening her features.

[Érinthe Hetetlen]

"With all this talk of boots, it feels like there should be a joke in here somewhere," he muttered with a nervous laugh, gaze lingering on the rank stripes for a moment longer before he tugged his sleeves back into a more comfortable arrangement.

There was still more, and the long and lingering pause before he spoke again forbade of that. His vision brushed across his untouched tea; it was rare that he remembered to actually consume the beverage while it was still at it's intended temperature, and right now didn't feel like the sort of time to be making an exception. Besides, Bear had been forcing him to consume sweet tea at every opportunity and, though he would never admit it openly, he'd actually begun to acquire a taste for the stuff in spite of his raised-in-England mentalities about the sovereignty of hot tea.

A frown furrowed his brow again. "Captain Mahipo wasn't the only person aboard the Farragut." That was a painfully obvious statement; a couple of hundred people had died aboard the Farragut, and just as many on the other ships at what the press was generously starting to call the Battle of Vulcan. He winced a little at the accidentally insensitive turn of phrase, and flicked his gaze to McKenna directly. "The officer who was supposed to be helmsman on the 1702 was aboard as well. And with me sitting in the back seat instead of riding shotgun -"

He exaggerated out a laboured sigh, reaching into his jacket to pull out a tablet display device. A few quick touchscreen inputs, and the display converted to a very important and boring looking document, branded with the Federation and Office of the Admiralty seals.

"Ari McKenna," he announced, flipping the PADD deftly in his fingers to pass it towards her, and injecting the kind of formal tone that he presumed was befitting of a Captain, "By order of Starfleet Command, I, Captain Érinthe Hetetlen, am hereby authorised and required to promote Ari McKenna to the rank of Lieutenant Commander."

A faint flicker of an involuntary smile tugged at the corner of Érin's mouth. "Commander, you are instructed to report to the USS Valiant NCC-1702 at your earliest convenience to begin your duties as helmsman."

He wrinkled his nose. "And put some damn clothes on. There's something we need to go and do."

[Ari McKenna]

She kept her silence as he paused, waiting for him to continue. Her mind wandered off on her as the pause lengthened between them, flitting between missing out on the Enterprise and her hope for another assignment as plum as the one plucked away by her illness.

Ari took a long lingering sip of her tea and sighed faintly as it warmed her, absently wondering if she should sit down again.

But Érinthe spoke up once more before she could form any more of a thought, her pale gaze catching his. She blinked, her gaze gaining a bit of intensity as he pulled a PADD out of his jacket, the slender gray tablet catching the light and glittering brightly.

Ari belatedly realized that she looked like a landed fish gasping for air the way her mouth hung open and produced no sound. Shaking her head in an attempt to find some measure of clarity, her tea settled on the coffee table with a thud while her fingers reached for the outstretched tablet.

Good thing she'd not sat down...she wasn't sure she'd be able to stand again right at that moment. Ari closed her mouth and eventually, mercifully, her brain decided it wanted to play along again. A smile found its way to her lips as her eyes scanned the document on the screen, fingers flicking over it to enter her formal acceptance and signature in the appropriate spaces.

"Just what is wrong with tribble slippers and pajamas, Captain? Where on earth are we going?" Ari said with an amused glance, handing the PADD back to him. She picked up her hairbrush and hairpins and sauntered off into her bedroom to comply in spite of her retort, the last several moments still settling into solid awareness.

[Érinthe Hetetlen]

"What isn't wrong with tribble slippers?" Érin called back, giving up on his attempts at a passably smart posture now that Ari was out of sight, and allowing himself to sink a little further in the absorbent seat.

"First thing we're doing," he answered, head slumping back on the cushion and his eyes closing for a brief minute or two of rest. "Is going to Requisitions so we can get you sorted out with a uniform that has the right number of stripes on."

The vertebrae between his shoulder blades let out a satisfying crunch as he flexed, settling in for what would probably be a long wait, knowing how long it usually took Kenna to get anything done.

"After that, we're going shopping."

A shuffle of tribbled feet forced Érin's eyes open; his gaze snapped to the expectant head peeking back through the bedroom doorway with a hint of a scowl.

"Not that kind of shopping," he grunted. Érin wasn't sure if the look she responded with before disappearing back into the bedroom was angry or just disappointed. He shook his head and sighed.

"I don't have long enough arms to reach the Nav controls from the Captain's chair, which means we need to go shopping for a new Navigator. And, well..."

A grimace flashed across his features.

"Lets just say that since most of the Nav Cadets from this year's graduating class were assigned to ships they sent to Vulcan, our remaining options are all from pretty deep down in the barrel."

[Jorann Lokar]

The Rigel Lounge
Downtown San Francisco

The Alien Quarter was one of San Francisco’s dirty little secrets, a sociological quirk that baffled city planners and politicians alike. Every city on earth with a major spaceport had at least one: Houston, London, Johannesburg, Rio, Beijing. But an alien ghetto just miles from Starfleet Headquarters, the capital of earth’s interplanetary friendship brigade, somehow seemed like a slap in the face for the Federation’s principles of inclusivity and tolerance. After a while, you lost count of how many bleeding-heart social activists you’d heard pounding podiums on the newsfeeds insisting that the very existence of these places was proof that humanity had not done enough to eliminate prejudice and species segregation on the little paradise planet they called earth.

People like that didn’t get it. Didn’t get that most of the species who washed up into the old, cheap parts of town had been living off the margins of the galaxy for centuries before humans took the galactic stage. That those same races occupied similar enclaves on a hundred worlds, including each other’s. Tellarite, Rigelian, Nausicaan, Miradorn, Orion. In less civilized parts of the quadrant, they holed up together for mutual protection. Here they did it out of habit, out of suspicion and stubborn pride, like a lump of dross that refused to dissolve into the melting pot.

The Rigel Lounge represented the lowest common denominator of all the extraterrestrials that called San Francisco home away from home. The bar and the mezzanine were cloyingly dark under the strategically placed neon lights, and the floor curled with brown smoke that wasn’t tobacco but certainly was addictive to somebody. Waitresses delivered drinks brewed in bathroom laboratories elsewhere in the building; one man’s nightcap was another man’s gastric volcano, and generally it was up to the customer to know the difference. The air overhead throbbed with something primal and chromatic that wasn’t quite music in an earthly sense, while on the stage against the far wall a lithe Caitian female twisted and pranced sensuously to the sternum-shaking rhythm, her spotted skin turned a kaleidoscope of shades under the sweeping lights.

It was the perfect place to be if you needed a momentary escape from the human race. Not that humans were unwelcome – they were scattered in the crowd, some of them townies looking for a thrill, some of them old space pilots who had seen dozens of dives like this one on the fringes of Federation space and missed the heady atmosphere. It was lewd, it was rowdy, and in many ways it was borderline illegal, but for Jorann Lokar, it was a much needed breath of not-so-fresh air.

The Orion lounged in one of the low-backed chairs arranged along the edge of the stage, nursing a thin flute of something that fizzed and fumed like a secondary school science project. With his charcoal eyes fixed on the feline spectacle before him, he raised the flute to his mouth, tapped the side of the glass with his finger, and inhaled deeply as a half-inch of fluid boiled into vapor. Jorann closed his eyes and sighed in rhapsody.

He wasn’t in uniform, of course. That would be like coming to a wedding dressed for a funeral. And considering he was still on probation pending a hearing for striking a superior officer, it would also attract the wrong sort of attention.

The Orion cadet opened his eyes and set about attracting the right sort. The next time the Caitian dancer spun his way, he made sure she saw the flexible slip of latinum glittering between his thumb and forefinger. Without breaking rhythm, the felinoid woman came stalking toward his seat for a mutually better view.

[Érinthe Hetetlen]

Perhaps visiting Requisitions first was a mistake. They probably should have swung by the Armoury instead.

Érin glanced briefly at his attire. The reinforced grey fabric of the jumpsuit did a lot to disguise the poster paint primary colours of the duty shirts beneath, but as the garish décor attested, it wasn't the colours that were the problem: it was what they represented. Public perception of Starfleet was precarious: while Starfleet Operations strove to hold true to the ideals of peaceful exploration and discovery that the Federation Starfleet had been founded upon, it's increasing involvement in matters like law enforcement and foreign affairs led many to believe that the Federation had betrayed it's utopian ideals and was cultivating an interspecies interstellar military, in violation of everything it supposedly stood for.

A long and low belch from a Nausicaan filtered through the ambience, much to the amusements of the brethren who shared his table.

On the other hand, Érin mused, Some people just don't like customs patrols.

In his experience, Two Starfleet Officer's walk into a bar could only end one of two ways: either as a terrible joke, or a tragic news story. Érin had no desire to become either, but the odds were stacked against them.

For a moment, he spared a thought for Kenna, and wondered what the smoke-choked atmosphere in here must be doing to her worm-addled lungs. To her credit she didn't even flinch; instead she looked far more formidable and determined than Érin felt. He considered saying something, offering her an embarrassment free out; but he knew she'd just punt it back at him, or remind him of all the times in the past where she'd saved his ass - or so she alleged - like the perfectly innocent misunderstanding between him and a shipmate's Tellarite mother that he may or may not have accidentally insulted and been nearly beaten senseless by.

"Stay close," was all he said, focussing his attention on searching the mosaic of races for the particular non-human they had come seeking. They'd been sent here on a hunch, pointed in this direction by the last potential candidate they'd met with. Under other circumstances, Érinthe might have guessed that they'd become the victim of some cruel campus prank, but the young Cadet had practically tripped over himself with nerves as soon as Érin had introduced himself as a Captain and mentioned the Valiant; he doubted that Ensign Renard could have pulled off a convincing deception even if he'd wanted to.

No, this was the best lead they had: that Cadet Lokar had switched off his comms and wandered off campus to hang out in a seedy xeno bar. It occurred to Érin that not answering a Starfleet comm device was in direct violation of regulations; but when you considered the fact that Lokar was already on academic suspension for violating a different set of regulations, it became something of a moot point.

If quizzed, Érin would insist that his eyes succeeded in finding Jorann after following a comprehensive grid search pattern, but in truth his proximity to the half-naked Caitian probably had more to do with it.

"Over there," he told McKenna, with a nod in the right direction. "By the stripper."

An eyebrow quirked over Ari's ice blue eyes as they tossed a scathing sidelong glance in his direction. Érin's expression twisted as his mind and mouth prepared some sort of defensive comeback, but Ari said nothing: just maintained her unrelenting gaze.

Érin scrunched his features into a scowl. "Less judgement, more respect," he grunted, shoulders slumping as he set off on a weaving course through the scattered chairs and tables. "I'm the Captain, damn it."

His expression morphed into regret a second later when a bulky green hand attached to a bulky green forearm clapped down on his shoulder and clamped on hard.

"Captain, eh?"

With his captor providing a little too much physical encouragement, Érinthe turned to face the towering viridian brute who'd restrained him: a muscle-bound Orion whose abundance of snarls and scars suggested smuggler, or worse. A sneer curled his lips as he peered down on at the Captain. "Well, ain't you fancy, Mr Starfleet?"

Érin held the smuggler's gaze without flinching. "I like to think so," his mouth replied before his brain could do anything about it; he scrabbled around for a follow-up, and mused over the unfortunate fact that he seemed far better at getting into fights than getting out of them. "I don't want any trouble," he added, "And I'm sure you don't either, so I suggest you get back to your drinking and let me get on with my business."

"Trouble?" A deep chuckle escaped from the Orion. "Ain't that cute: the Captain thinks he's trouble." A motley assortment of races that Érin presumed was the Orion's crew chuckled along with him, though with a little less enthusiasm and a little more Shut the hell up so we can stab him. The mirth faded from the Orion's face. "How you gonna be trouble, Captain? You ain't even armed."

Érin's expression didn't falter. "No," he admitted. His eyes flickered momentarily in McKenna's direction, gesturing towards the phaser pistol that his wingman was casually aiming square at the Orion's groin. "But she is."

The smuggler's intense gaze held for a few moments longer before it fractured, a resonant belly laugh erupting from him. An amused grin consumed his face; his hand clapped against the side of Érin's head in what was probably supposed to be a friendly gesture, but that ran a real risk of separating it from the rest of his body. "I guess it's not just us Orions were the women are the ones with the power, eh?" he chuckled.

The Orion stepped back enough to restore Érin's personal space, and threw McKenna a sly wink before stomping off in the direction of the bar as if absolutely nothing had happened. Érin and McKenna exchanged glances and shrugs, but the Captain had no desire to stand around and talk about it. Besides, McKenna was bound to bring up the fact that she'd saved him 'yet again' later on, repeatedly, until the end of time. Érin's shoulders slumped further as he trudged off towards the stage.

It wasn't easy to make out much in the dive's dim light, but Jorann Lokar wasn't exactly making himself hard to see: there he was, centre stage, reclining back in his chair and coaxing the Caitian dancer towards him with the promise of latinum as if he were luring the felinoid in with a dangled piece of string. She was too fixated on her payment, and he on depositing said payment between the stripper's ample cleavage.

Érin mustered a sigh, tossing a few strips of his own latinum onto the stage before dumping himself into the next chair over from the Cadet. "Use it to by pockets," he suggested, having successfully caught the dancer's attention. He gestured towards his chest, expression twisting into one of disapproval. "They're not a great place to be storing your cash."

He wasn't entirely sure if the Caitian's response constituted a hiss, but his cat-biased imagination chose to consider it as such as he watched her slink away across the stage towards other potential sources of payment. With a look of mild satisfaction he turned his attention to the Cadet beside him, waiting for a moment as Ari settled herself in a flanking position on the Orion's far side.

"Cadet Jorann Lokar, I presume."

[Jorann Lokar]

His bawdy surroundings had resurrected a lot of old habits and thought patterns, so much so that, even after four years of academy drilling, his first instinct was to say something like, "Depends on who's asking." Fortunately his higher brain functions kicked in and reminded him that mouthing off to the uniformed goons didn't work so well when you were one of the uniformed goons.

Jorann jerked upright in his seat, noting with some dismay that the agitation caused another fingers-breadth of his drink to boil off. With all the care that decorum allowed, he set his glass on the edge of the stage and sized up his new company. With silver stripes to the left and right of him, he couldn't help but feel hemmed in, as if he was about to be ushered out the back door ans into an unmarked shuttlecraft. He was out of uniform, but he wasn't exactly decked in Orion silks, either - with muted brown slacks, black V-neck shirt, and a weathered jacket, he was dressed primarily to blend in.

"Yes, sir," he replied in a guarded tone, and his eyes ticked over to include the raven-haired human female. "To what do I owe the pleasure?"

[Érinthe Hetetlen]

Érinthe slackened the zip on his jumpsuit again, and delved into the inside pocket to retrieve his tablet. Whoever had designed the uniform deserved bonus points for the genius idea of ensuring it's inside pockets were exactly the right dimensions to comfortably fit a PADD.

"Captain Hetetlen," he lazily introduced, attention focused on scrolling through his documents folder. He hesitated for a moment to gesture vaguely in Ari's direction. "My friend here is Commander McKenna."

A glimmer of recognition flickered across his features as he found the file he was looking for. A few clicks and drags later, and Jorann's personnel file expanded to fill his screen. The file photo looked to be a few years out of date: Jorann seemed younger, his hair a little longer and scruffier, and the plume of rusty facial fluff was missing from his chin. There was an air about him though, an attitude of disrespect and delinquency, that Érin had seen on the faces of enough young men and women to know that the youthful rebellion it represented transcended the trivialities of race and species. From the look of things, that side of Lieutenant Lokar hadn't changed much.

"According to your record," Érinthe began, paraphrasing the document as he skimmed and absorbed information, "Before Starfleet you worked on trade ships for the family business. I'm not an expert on Orion society, but I was under the impression that families and loyalty were fairly important concepts to your species: and yet here you are a few years later, one of the first male Orions to ever serve in Starfleet, about as far away from all that as you can get." He hesitated for a moment, eyes glancing at his surroundings. "Present location excepted, of course."

Érin set the tablet aside, and focused his attention directly on the young Orion. "You don't strike me as the type of person who is trying to usher in a new era of interspecies cooperation; particularly when that cooperation involves respecting your superiors." His eyes narrowed. "So tell me, Mr Lokar: why exactly are you here?"

[Jorann Lokar]

Jorann stiffened somewhat in his seat while he tried to decide what exactly was going on here. Was this part of the probation process? He didn't put it past Starfleet to send him for some sort of mandatory counseling, but he always figured it would be in a quiet office with a couch and a desktop water feature, not front row at a strip joint.

"You want to know why I joined Starfleet?" he said, just to make sure they were all in the same star system. The leggy Caitian strutted for the backstage doors with a parting wave to her disappointed admirers. Now Jorann didn't have much excuse for being distracted.

"You want the long story or the short one?"

[Érinthe Hetetlen]

"I want the honest one," Érin threw back.

His eyes scanned Jorann's features, trying to get a read on the Cadet's mindset. He was on the spot, and that's exactly what Érin wanted. No matter how honest a man was, if you gave him long enough to think about his answer it would change it, taint it with subjectivity, careful word choices, tweaks to tailor it towards what they thought you wanted to hear, rather than what they deep down wanted to say.

"What I want to know," he continued with a hint of a sigh, "Is whether you're worth another chance, or if Starfleet is better off without you."

[Jorann Lokar]

Ah. So that was it. He'd always suspected this conversation would come at some point, that some paper-pusher would see his name on the cadet rolls, pull up his discipline report, and say, Do we really need another Orion in Starfleet? If they were going to can him for a little fistfight, he'd have preferred that they did it sooner rather than letting him march to their fife for four years before showing him the door. This captain was clever, though. If Jorann had been ordered to report to the Dean's office, he'd have had the whole walk to the Quad to drum up some bullshit starry-eyed remorse and plead for his commission. Here, immersed in his natural element, having inhaled half of a Tzartak apertif, he felt stoic and disillusioned. To hells with pretense.

"Well, sir, to be honest? Coming to the Academy wasn't my idea in the first place. My dad thought having a son in Starfleet would boost his position among the clans back home. Being the loyal son that I am, I obeyed."

He reached for his glass and took another sniff of the vapors. "Don't get me wrong. The whole exploration of deep space thing, new life and new civilizations? That's all I've ever wanted to do. I just always saw myself doing it on my own terms. Small ship, a crew like a family, adventure and profit all around. But then, Starfleet's kind of putting the Orion privateer out of business these days."

[Érinthe Hetetlen]

Érinthe let out a grunt of mild disbelief. While of course, any race that had spread out across the stars the way the Orions had was bound to have some sort of cultural motivation towards exploration, the idea that exploration for curiosity was an Orion trait struck him as somewhat jarring from every Orion he had ever known. Usually, an Orion's interest in new life and cultures was what resources they might be able to steal from them.

"And so what happens to you when you're drummed out of Starfleet, and return to your father in disgrace?" His nose wrinkled. "I can't imagine that would go over particularly well."

[Jorann Lokar]

Jorann laughed. "Thousand gods! Captain, you just made the understatement of the century. Family loyalty has its limits. If I screw this up, I don't have a home to go back to."

His aperitif was just wisps in the bottom of the glass now. Silently, he watched as they simply steamed away into the lounge's thick, smoky atmosphere.

"I don't often ask this, but in the interest of protocol: permission to speak freely, sir?"

The captain didn't miss a beat. "That's what we're here for, cadet."

Interesting. Apparently there was one CO in Starfleet who didn't want him pulling his punches. Jorann looked Érin dead in the eye and said, "Starfleet needs people like me."

The Orion set his glass on the edge of the stage and settled back, reveling in the audacity of it all.

"You want to connect with other cultures. You want to prove to them that, unlike the Klingons and the Romulans, you offer more than you take. You have your diplomats, you have xenolinguists, but what you don't have is... us."

He waved a hand to encompass the whole dingy, smoky cacophony that surrounded them. "This is our Federation of Planets, Captain. It's not pretty, and it's not always civilized, but it's been around long before Zephram Cochrane broke the warp barrier. If you want in, you need insiders. I won't pretend to be Grade-A Starfleet officer material, but there isn't a cadet in the Academy who knows his way around like I do."

[Érinthe Hetetlen]

"You are labouring," Érinthe countered, "Under a misconception of what the Federation stands for."

His frown deepened as he scratched at an eyebrow, sweat from the think and cloying air beginning to pepper his brow. "You compare us to the Klingons and Romulans, but the Federation is not a 'star empire'. The Federation is a coalition born out of mutual respect and common purpose. Travel to the homeworld of any of it's members, and you will find it's culture sovereign and intact. They may have embraced new concepts and new technologies from their friends and allies, but that was a choice that those societies freely made of their own accord."

You say we need insiders," he continued, shaking his head, "But we do not. We have no desire to conquer or subsume the stars: just to coexist with them peacefully. We do not need insiders because we have no insidious desire: we extend our overtures of peace, but if Orions, Yridians, Nausicaans, Kreetassans, or anyone else wants to tell us to take our overtures and shove them somewhere anatomically uncomfortable?"

The Captain shrugged.

"We don't need someone to help Starfleet find it's way around regions where we are inherently unwelcome. If we did, I imagine there'd be an agent from Starfleet Intelligence sitting here talking to you, rather than the Captain of a starship."