The Blond and the Gray

Posted on Thu Dec 30th, 2010 @ 8:03pm by Lieutenant Commander Jonathan Mantell & Captain Nathan Cowell MD
Edited on on Tue Jan 4th, 2011 @ 4:55pm

Mission: Hippocratic Hijacking
Location: Bridge
Timeline: Immediately Following "Harrassing the Masses" and "Farewell's a Party, Welcoming's a Chore."

Jack tugged at the collar of his new red uniform shirt. The replicators on Deep Space Six must have added a little too much starch, the material was itching and pulling in places the boy couldn't even reach. His previous shirt had been worn so well that it was like a second skin, all too comfortable to pull on in the morning. That shirt was gold, though, and no longer applied to Jack. Gold was the color for Security, Operations and his own former department, Engineering. Jack was, as strange as he found it to think, now in Command.

Executive Officer. The position was only a single step away from the ultimate position on a starship. The position that most bright-eyed Ensigns looked to with longing and hope, Commanding Officer. Jack had certainly not been one of those Ensigns. He had barely even been on the bridge for all of his first year on a starship, and lately only to serve bridge officer shifts. He was far more comfortable with the underside of the ship, the lower decks as some might refer to them. Being the Commanding Officer was all about the Bridge, the Ready Room, the clean and sterile places that never really betrayed the difficulties of running a starship. The Commanding Officer was usually only fed reports of what happened elsewhere; very few times did they ever get involved. It had to be like a prison sentence. And to think, Jack was only one untimely death away from that existence.

The boy had been tempted to direct his first visit to Engineering. He could have devoted hours to familiarizing himself with the ship's systems and find areas that needed to be improved. He had never played with a brand new starship before, and for once, Jack bemoaned the fate of being assigned to the Executive Officer of a ship he'd never get to play with. His assignments as Chief Engineer had always followed the footsteps of another, and the time spent undoing some poorly designed tweaks and resetting systems back to their factory default took much of the time he would rather have devoted to tweaking the systems himself. This assignment was like going from a driver of an old junk-heap vehicle to a back-seat rider of a brand new car. Nevertheless, Jack had made a promise to his former Captain, something he intended to keep.

As the turbolift doors parted, the Miran boy stepped out onto the bridge. It was mostly deserted, not unusual for a ship at spacedock. Much less unusual, he guessed, for a brand new starship, but Jack had never been part of a ship's launch before. Near the front of the bridge, a gold-collar officer was sitting down in her chair, quietly laughing over a joke that Jack must have just missed out on. The only other occupant of the bridge was a grey-haired individual leaning back in the center chair of the bridge. There was little need to count the gold circles of metal on his shirt, the man's hair and his red collar told the boy all he needed to know. He had studied the ship's specifications, not its personnel, on his way, but the Miran had enough experience to pick out the Captain of the ship versus some regular bridge officer.

"Hey, uh, sir?" The blond-haired boy said timidly, not sure if the old codger was even breathing. An earlier thought about a single untimely death floated back into his mind before Jack caught sight of the man's chest rising and a blink of his eyes. A breath of relief flowed out of him, and the Miran's expression rose. Extending a PADD toward the captain, he introduced himself, "I'm Lieutenant Commander Jack Mantell, your new Executive Officer."

The center chair swiveled, the eyes of the 'old codger' going from the usual height that one expected a person to be down to the level at which Jack actually amounted to. A frown settled on the countenance of the Captain's face and his inward thoughts did not stay where they were.

"First Starfleet sends me a sniveling toad of a man for a Yeoman... now they send me toddlers..." Doc Cowell grumbled aloud.

"Shall I have Mister Sweeney add diapers to the list of things you need him to fetch?" the woman sitting behind the Operations console asked with a snicker.

Doc Cowell looked over toward the woman with a snappy retort on his tongue before his face evened out and took on a thoughtful expression before answering with, "Yeah... actually that sounds like a good idea."

Cowell turned to Jack with a measured stare, "What size diaper do you wear? Large perhaps?"

After five years among Vulcans, the grumblings of this Captain were almost pleasant to hear. Jack wasn't fazed, he was too thick-skinned to take offense at the man's snipes, almost laughing at the thought of wearing diapers. "Oh, I don't know," he answered, meeting the old doctor's gaze. "I think there was only one size when I was a baby. Then again, things change in four-hundred years."

Pressing his luck, the boy grinned, adding, "But you might want to save those large ones, sir. At your age, well, you're probably going to need them sooner than I will." Well, there went his promise. So much for first impressions.

Captain Cowell laughed, "Do you hear this kid, Lieutenant? Thinks just because he has a couple hundred years under his belt he can talk smack."

"I heard it sir," the woman responded.

"So, kid, looks to me like you got a mouth on you. Good... keeps me from having to get my belt out and spank yer sorry ass for crying without cause," the man leaned back in his chair, "So where'd you come from anyway? I'd love to know who gave you away so eagerly to come work under my tyrannical rule."

"You're hardly a tyrant, Captain," the woman remarked with a grin.

"Oh what do you know?" Cowell snapped in a huff, annoyed at having been seen through so deftly by someone who had only just met him.

The woman just laughed and returned to her work, leaving the question Captain Cowell had asked hanging in the air for Jack to answer.

"My last ship was the USS Seleya, Captain. You don't know how booooring Vulcans are, well, some of them are. The Captain was pretty nice, she's the one who encouraged me to apply for this position. I don't know if she knew who was commanding this ship, or if Starfleet just had its way usual way with mish-mashing assignments." The boy shrugged to emphasize his last statement.

"I was Chief Engineer there," he continued, "It's kind of weird coming to this ship from the Seleya, it was a science ship and this is a warship. Or Tactical Cruiser or whatever Starfleet calls it. Wa-ay more guns on it than a science ship does. I don't think the Seleya even went to Red Alert once in the past month alone!"

"Vulcans..." Cowell sneered, "Can't stand all that logic myself. Surprised you didn't just hang yourself from a power conduit or something. But, you're here now, much to my dismay, so you might as well make yourself dammit useful."

Cowell turned slightly toward the forward console, "Lieutenant..."

He began snapping at her to elicit her name, which he still hadn't bothered to learn.

"Marion, sir," the woman replied.

"Right..." Doc Cowell said as if he already knew it, "Since he looks like he still needs someone to wipe his ass after a good shit, you get to babysit him."

Lt. JG Marion turned to regard him with a pouting face, "But sir! I just put down a new rug I got at the station... He doesn't even look house broken! Can't we just put a tent in the arboretum and let him camp out? Little boys like nature..."

"Wouldn't want to get your carpet dirty..." Nathan said with a sigh, turning back to Jack, "Guess you get to rough it in the woods. I remember back in 1864, the woods was the last place I cared to be at. Too many damn Confederate bastards lurking around looking to put more lead in my already peppered ass... Good lord do I not miss those days..."

The Miran didn't have a clue what the Captain was referring to about Confederates or peppering lead. From the sound of it, the latter was anything but a delicacy. He did, however, understand the exchange between the Captain and the Ops officer. Jack tried his best to imitate the infamouse Vulcan eyebrow lift. He didn't do a good job of it, but the expression seemed pretty clear. "If I'm to sleep in the doghouse, sir, I'd just as soon return to the Seleya." Maybe I shouldn't have tried for this. Somewhat echoing his mental voice, the boy muttered, "I don't want to be a bother, sir."

"Oh see what you made him do, Elizabeth! Now he's pouting and looking all pathetic... It's all your fault, woman. We were having a nice conversation and you had to go and take it too far," the old man burst into a fury of activity. He stormed off in the direction of his ready room muttering things about hurt feelings and overly sensitive people.

"You have the bridge, Number One," was the last thing either of them heard.

Lt. Marion turned to Jack with an apologetic smile, "Don't take him too seriously. He just has a hard time opening up to people. You'll get used to his surly way of dealing with things. I think he took a shine to your snappy comebacks though... at least you didn't get sent on some wild goose chase like some people."

The boy watched the gray-haired man retreat into his office. Taking the initiative, he hopped up into the Captain's chair and wiggled a few times to get his placement right. "Surly," he echoed, thinking on the word for a moment. Leaning back, the blond-haired Miran folded his hands behind his head, his elbows spread wide. Shrugging, Jack exclaimed, "I can't see why. His chair's really pretty comfortable."

"You might not want to do that..." Lt. Marion began to say before a pillow came flying out of the doorway leading into Doc Cowell's office. The projectile smacked Jack square in the back of the head before flopping harmlessly to the deck.

"Get your ass prints out of my new chair!" the Captain yelled from inside his office.

"He's a little picky about who sits in his chair," the woman giggled softly.

The boy leapt up, swooping down to pick up the pillow. With the plush weapon in hand, he stood poised facing the door, his feet already positioned to give himself the best balance and stability and the pillow-wielding hand coiled back, ready to launch it when the figure of Cowell appeared. But the doors had already closed, leaving the Miran looking foolish in front of the bridge's only other occupant. Jack shrugged, standing down from his stance and slipping into the adjacent chair meant for him. To no one in particular he grumbled, "Crafty za'sasu. Well, you've got to sleep sometime, old man."