Parceling the Parcels and Preposterous Propositions

Posted on Thu Sep 3rd, 2020 @ 8:13am by Captain Luka Mahone & Lieutenant Commander Jott Brott

2,331 words; about a 12 minute read

Mission: Equivalent Exchange
Location: Officers' Mess Hall, USS TItania
Timeline: MD 02 : 1201 Hrs

For Luka, his short visit on the USS Titania had proven itself eventful. Talks with the Admiral seemed to go somewhat smoothly, though the young Captain was not sure what to make of the marine man who came along with him. Shawn Bradley, a name he would have to look into once he was back on Haumea, safe from any prying eyes that he was not already aware of.

But that would be something he could deal with in the morning. As he sat down with his plate full of replicated junk food, Luka's gaze went to a PaDD he had earlier set on the table. There were a number of messages flashing on the screen, each and every one taking precedence over the worries that lay in front of him for the next day.

Across from him, a trencher suddenly appeared on the table. It was filled with various meats and cheeses: thrice-spoiled Bolian beef strips; Lecciochoke swiss; Prokliku spread; Terran Roquefort; and several other varieties. The Bolian who'd set it down walked off without a word. When he returned, he had a second plate on which sat an unidentifiable gelatinous substance that looked like a blue-gray layered Jello mold. He plopped it down next to the trencher then plopped himself down on the seat. Despite being bolted very securely to the floor, the table wobbled a little when he pounded his fists on it.

"A meal fit for a... Well, for me," Jott said. He grinned across the table at Luka before leaning back in his chair to ask another table to borrow their yamok sauce. As he was shaking the sauce on everything (literally), he started talking like they'd known one another for twenty years. "Do you love the officers' mess? I do. I love it. Not because it's separated from the enlisted, of course. No. No, no, no. Sometimes I eat down there, too. Uh, mostly because... Well, it's just nice getting to know one another, isn't it? Wouldn't you say, captain?"

Luka jumped in surprise when the table shook with the fist pounding. He looked up, blinking rapidly at the scene in front of him. Then down at the food, covered in orange condiment. "... Oh, uh..." Then up again, at Jott, bewildered at the Bolian's mannerisms. But, in an effort to not be impolite, an answer came with the confusion. "I haven't had a chance to eat with anyone below a certain rank in quite awhile, let alone the enlisted crew. I think I'd be looked at if I had five heads if I did that on the colony, Commander.....?"

"Jott Brott," the Bolian offered. Without a shred of humility, he added, "You may remember me from my documentary on the Gamma Quadrant. The Stardust Journey? Or perhaps you know one of my books? Most people have read Don't Fear the Horga'hn at least. Or Lodestar Weeping? Case of the Prize Bulldog?"

"I... uh..." Luka shook his head, shrugging. "I have to admit, that all sounds like something a friend of mine would be into. Gamma Quadrant experiences, I feel like I've had enough of those first hand to last me a lifetime, unfortunately. Commander Brott..." He trailed off, his eyes snapping back to the PaDD, where a polite memo from his yeoman lay. "... Do you happen to be en route to Haumea?"

"Yes, I'm your new chief science officer," Jott said, then immediately launched into, "You mean to tell me you've never read The Sun of the Empire? Or The Colonial Front? It's required reading in the Academy's 'Introduction to Colonial Affairs' course. What about Garden of the Hurricane? Everyone's heard of the floating islands on Svati V. Everyone."

Luka's brow rose. One of those titles sounded vaguely familiar, but only because Brott mentioned it's relation to the Academy. "My new Chief Science Officer?" His eyes snapped back down to the memo, and the realization dawned upon him. "Oh." He blinked. This was unexpected. He decided to ask his next question slowly. "How did you.... Even hear.... About the colony?"

"I saw a report about the shuttle you discovered," Jott said matter-of-factly. He'd started to dig into the food but his eyes were intently locked on Luka, trying to read his response.

".... oh." Luka slouched in his seat with a small frown. "There's a lot of hubbub surrounding that. There wasn't all that much to find. Not even a record of logs or anything. And now it's..." His lips thinned as he thought of the two Intelligence agents still roaming around the colony. Not that Jott needed to know that, not for the moment. "All you'll find is a few spare reports and some hearsay, I'm afraid."

"Why do you say that?" Jott asked, tilting his head to the side slightly. "Have you conducted an extensive investigation under the direction of a qualified field archaeologist?"

"Actually, yes." Luka stated plainly. "Lieutenant Commander Bray was at the head of the operation. She and one of our various civilian scientists led the operation. The issue is is not that there wasn't an intensive investigation, but another team came in to look at it... and it was promptly melted due to some sort of accident. You'll likely get those files one way or another, so you can certainly take a look." He was not about to get into the nitty gritty of Starfleet Intelligence and their practices with Jott. Not yet, anyway. "Commander Bray will probably have more information on the subject than I will. I made a point of keeping out of it this time around."

"Bray..." As the word left his mouth, Jott's eyes narrowed. "That name sounds very familiar."

The Captain shrugged. "It might? I'm not as familiar with with the archaeological world as I am say, the medical one. Lieutenant Commander Bray was an old friend of an old friend, who agreed to help us set up the science department. But with you taking the role, she'll be able to focus her energy on other endeavors. I do know her family has donated a fair bit of resources to both Starfleet and the Colony itself, if that helps?"

"Bray Family Foundation! That - that's where I've heard it. I knew it sounded familiar, just one of those things that triggers something, you know?" he asked rhetorically. Then suddenly his demeanor shifted a little. "I don't care for them. I find them to be quite suspicious. They funded a project of mine one time. They were very demanding. Very demanding, indeed. Too demanding. And too nosey on top of it. I got the sense the funding wasn't all that charitable. It was the sort of thing that had..." He lifted up his large arms and waved them around a little, wiggling his fingers as he did so. "...many strings attached."

"Oh." Luka tilted his head to one side. None of this was what Payton had mentioned to him, but he could not say he was more than a little surprised by it. "Well, they've been nothing but charitable to the cause. And I believe they're trying to have a presence on the Colony. There's a memo somewhere in my pile that has to do with a meeting with someone or another about bringing more than just the typical resource drop this time around. So, if it is... undesirable to work with them, maybe we should-" There was a slow hesitance as he finished his statement. "Make... alternate arrangements to your... office space?"

"Alternate arrangements? Why? Are they in my office? Am I sharing an office?" Jott asked. He sounded a little incredulous, too, and looked around briefly as if some support would materialize from the other tables. "I don't... I don't, um. No. No, no. I don't share office space. I can't do that. It interferes with... the process."

Luka blinked rapidly at Brott. "... No?" he offered, head shaking. "No. You will have your own office space, and we can go over the exact structure of your department. I mean, you're going to be sharing a building, or at least next to a building, with Haumea's civilian scientist group, which include non-Starfleet members of Daystrom... such as the Bray Foundation. I did not anticipate any sort of hesitance in their existence, but I don't want any surprises either?"

"Me, either," Jott said, retracting his head back so far that it exposed a double chin. "Scientists hate surprises. I'm not opposed to their presence. I'm opposed to their interference. I believe that can best be cleared up - best rectified, I mean to say - by making the chain of command clear within the sciences. As in, specifically, I am in charge of science operations on the planet, hmm?"

"You'll be in charge of the Starfleet Branch of scientific operations on the planet," Luka clarified, "We try to make clear and hard lines between Starfleet's intentions and Federation's overall intentions. Or however the civilian citizens are phrasing it these days. So our current intention is to work together, which extends to the science department, so while you will not be in charge of full operations, you'll be able to make most calls involving most of the scientific discoveries as, we've swiftly discovered, we need to hold a little more discretion when it comes to what we've found."

"I don't know how comfortable I am with that," Jott said flatly and without hesitation. "Who's providing, uh, oversight to the... The other side? The civilians? We won't be working together on everything - jointly, I mean, with all projects. They'll have their own agenda and activities and experiments. Who's monitoring those, if not me? Some junior particle physicist from the so-called 'Academy' of Science might have the colony falling into a black hole if someone isn't looking after them."

"A one Mr. Jason Bray," Luka stated plainly. "And, likely the scientist who is in charge of all the civilian scientists. Who I assume is more than a junior particle physicist. No, you won't be working jointly on everything, but it was a Federation colony before it had Starfleet on it, and I'd like to at least attempt to maintain that integrity. So most of the big projects that aren't going to explode or provide any sort of political, social, economical, or any other -al damage to the Colony or the Federation as a whole are likely to be run jointly. So long as we can all agree one which projects are what."

"I'm an agreeable person," Jott said, though he sounded like he was trying to convince himself just as much as Luka.

Luka's brow quirked. "That's good to hear, Lieutenant Commander. I don't expect you to bend to everything, but compromise is probably going to be a good portion of what you'll have to deal with in terms of interacting with any endeavors involving the scientists on the other side. Within reason, of course." He didn't want to be suspicious of Brott, but there was a nagging feeling at the back of his mind. "Regardless, I'll have to figure out what the deployment of scientific resources is for the colony anyways. We can go over what you'll need out of me to equip your staff and make sure your facilities are as up to snuff as we can make them."

"Are you saying you have limited resources here?" Jott asked, sounding a little like he was unacquainted with the concept.

"We are... limited in what we're allowed to use and what we're allocated with right this second, yes." Luka confirmed slowly. "The Titania has most of the science lab roll out somewhere in all those modular build kits - and I'm sure you'll have to arrange how to find that out through the quartermaster and our chief engineer - but past that, it's sort of what we're roped off to use until the civilian scientists have cleared use of more of the planet's resources."

Jott cut his eyes to the side, like he was thinking, then brought them back sharply to Luka. "The civilians, you say? Allocating resources? Like...parceling out the land? I don't... That's a new concept. I'm not familiar with it. I mean, I am familiar with it. Just not...hmm...accustomed to it? It's unusual. I haven't submitted to civilian authorities since...well.... Since I was an archaeological consultant on Cardassia Prime, I guess. And that was an entirely different authority, as you can imagine."

"I don't think we're gonna go so far as to parcel out, so much." He hoped. "There's been surveys over the course of the past few months, but they were all started by the non-Starfleet scientists. Once they're done and they figure out what's not going to blow up the whole planet... I think we'll be able to figure out who can use what. But that's probably not going to be an issue for awhile..."

Luka paused a beat. "... I... should probably get back to my training, now that I think about it. Just in case the word 'parcel' comes up in meetings."

"And should parceling pop up, captain," Jott began, "please push for the primest parcel, as I pine for a prime parcel and a propitious parceling."

"I... will see what I can do," Luka blinked, making a final nod to Brott, before making his swift retreat. There was a fleeting wonder if he could find a lesson about more... interesting members of the senior staff involved in colony life, but he supposed he would have probably found that information in very specific texts.

Hopefully his next senior staff officer wouldn't turn out to be the author of one of them.

 

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