Posted by Lieutenant Helena Laursen (Helm/Nagivation Officer) in Engineering - El Finally is Aboard

Posted by Ensign Elemirre Serinde (Engineering Officer) in Engineering - El Finally is Aboard
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She chose a mixed salad, a vegetable soup and a bun. There was a rather robust chicken dish that admittedly smelled amazing. She could enjoy the smell, right? A vegetarian, smelling the delicious aromas of meats was a guilty pleasure. The presentation was much more than the base cafeteria style from the Bonaventure and rich compared to her humble beginnings. Was this going to be the fare on board? Settling at a small table out of the way, El tasted the salad. It was … good, not with the tang of something metallic that ‘flavored’ some of the foods on the Bonnie. Her parents did not fully like her choice of eating vegetarian. Her mother had cooked in solidarity with her; her dad – really, adoptive parents – still happily sawed his way through different varieties of meat that they could get in Manticore. It was there that she had acquiesced to adding fish to her diet out of necessity. Living on an flotilla of old ships held limited fare.

One of the junior pilots was Manning the bridge at the moment while Helena was grabbing a meal and a mandated break. She’d be at the helm for awhile once they left space dock. They weren’t going anywhere at the moment, but she remembered how exciting those waits were when she was a junior pilot. There would be plenty of opportunities over the next month for all of them to get actual fly time. Right now fresh fare and a light meal was on her agenda.

The soup had a pleasant tang to it. She had grown up with foods that were only lightly spiced. Manticore had opened up a whole new world of tastes to her. As she ate she thought of Lt Green. He had been ‘nice’ to her today. Sure, she was going on report. Sure, she was on ServSup for a month. Was it the new Chief and he wanted to look good in front of him? Lt Green was excitable, at least to El, more worried about how things reflected on him and so cited regulations as a shield. Her upbringing honored rules but rules were to serve people rather than people serving the rules. They were not to be cast aside. They were not to be worshipped. To El, regulations were Lt Green’s religion. Indeed, she thought that many in Starfleet felt that way. Service was the mantra. Still, a day without work is a day without food. But it must flow from the being, naturally, not from a book. It may start from learning but is only complete with living. Time would tell on how life would be here on the Sojourner. But for now if she didn’t move she would fall asleep where she was and wouldn’t ‘that’ thrill Lt Green!

Eyeing others she saw where the trays were placed and El followed suit. It was time to find her new home – the Machine Shop.
El, Eng

Helena took her tray and fell into the line with the small crowd clearing out. The young engineer in front of her … smelled like she got stuck in a worker bee for too long. Probably one that Stinky Paul had been using and hadn’t been cleaned out after. Poor woman, that wasn’t something Helena would wish on Lucy much less someone she liked. Setting her tray in the return window she held out her hand. Helena fully believed in getting to know as many of the rest of the crew as possible. “Hi. I’m Helena, pilot.”

Lt Laursen, pilot

El had grown up with a certain amount of decorum. Nothing at all was fancy, not by a long shot, however decorum, tidiness, and order were prized. And she was a girl, and carried with that a seeming inherent vanity, who would have not wished how she now looked (and smelled) upon her worst enemy. In El’s mind she was not much better than a rumpled, smelly pile of rags. In reality it was not that bad. She was rumpled, dusty, and her hair out of sorts but was not the wicked witch that El now imagined herself to appear. She realized that this was a small village in space, a closed system, and that everyone was soon to know everyone else’s business. Still, her first impression to the others that El had hoped to convey was hardly that of that rumpled, smelly girl she imagined herself to be, and had quietly hoped to have escaped anonymous, even if she had left a vapor trail behind her wherever she went.

Other than the tell-tale scent of Stinky Paul’s worker Bee El seemed as put together as any other engineer on board. Helena had learned a long time ago, engineers that were crisp and clean were a liability. Oh they cleaned up well, but on the day to day, the messier they were, the more reliable. From brief quick chats they were all just able to squeeze in, Helena knew the engineering crew had either been on board all night prepping Sojo to take off, OR were part of the Bonnie crew and shutting down their old ship. No rest for the weary. Helena had boarded just barely at Midnight with Renault. She’d spent most of the night running around getting familiar and then testing the shuttle pods systems and the morning checking the nav system on the bridge. Helena was filling a coffee mug on her way out. It would be a long while before she or anyone else caught a nap.

With that, she blushed and looked up. Helena was tall and golden with piercing green eyes, put together, fresh, alert, and was everything El was, at the moment, not. And she was a full Lieutenant. The pilot! Her eyes widened even as she wilted inside. Another black mark impression, this time with a senior officer looking like an unprofessional horror, the thorn amongst the pristine clean garden of this new ship. As though ‘this’ won’t get to the Captain or other seniors. And no hole to shrink into now. “I’m El. The, uh, musty engineer, lieutenant,” she replied, a meekness to her tone. “Some ship, eh?” She wondered what the pilot actually did, quietly likening piloting a space ship to being like playing golf – a long drive from the tee to the green and then the delicate putt at the end – here, a lot of nothing until they get to the destination where the pilot would actually drive. Helena looked older, more mature, her touch confident, at least to El, and her appearance like some fantasy goddess that would come down in a ray of light.

El, Eng

If Helena knew what El was thinking about comparing their appearances, she would laugh. Her own uniform was wrinkled and rumbled where the top of her jumpsuit had been tied around her waist, the back of her pants were dusty and had grease stains. Not to mention her undershirt would make someone think she’d been sleeping outside in the dirt. As Lt Kelleher pointed out earlier her face had smudges of dirt across the nose and her forehead, and her blonde hair was falling out off it’s braid in wisps around her face. “Nice to meet you, El. Call me Helena.” El wasn’t wrong about the job of a pilot. Helena didn’t like to be lazy though, so she spent time helping engineering when she could. She knew enough to be helpful if told what to do, or doing ServSup. It was a duty all junior officers took on, and despite her age, Helena was still technically a junior officer. She didn’t mind ServSup either. Always somewhere new to help and something to learn. Plus it relieved the boredom on long space flights.

El tipped her head in a silent admission to Helena’s kind offer of informality. Often in a small group, such as engineering, they would dispense of the rank. Lt Green didn’t like it but it was what it was. Everyone soon came to know the rank, what they were like, what they were good at and who to go to for help. The truth was that many of the non-comms knew more than the junior officers, having had more years of experience. The hubris of many junior officers that they were ‘grand’ simply did not hold up, though their hubris often did not abate. It seemed to be a kind of ‘officer delusion’ she had learned.

“She is at that. She’s a little too pristine though. Probably won’t last past two days.”

“Laursen bite your tongue girl! My galley will remain pristine. We eat here,” the cook yelled at her as she skidded away with her coffee. “Of course, Chef. I won’t jinx it. Promise.” She grinned at El. “So you Brandon new or coming over with the Bonnie crew?”

Lt Laursen, pilot

A flash of a small smile crossed her features. “It is so clean. So new. I hardly wanted to eat on the table thinking I might scratch it. It is nothing I have known. The Vigilance was past her age and so battered up that it needed constant work to keep it going. I came across from the Bonaventure,” she admitted. “It was older too.” She looked around, her eyes following the cook. She knew the cook already? El felt so behind the curve. “Between the two ships I have maybe a year in space,” she said, still looking at the kitchen staff. “I wonder if the Titanic looked like this too,” she murmured, then winced. “Sorry, I don’t mean to jink anything. It was just a thought, a comment from one of my favorite videos that came to mind.” Then she remembered that Helena was the pilot, and quickly added, “No offense intended, Lieu .. uh, Helena.” Apart from her sister and Liz, her bunkmate on the Bonnie, she fell apart when talking to other women. “Have you flown much?” she asked. “Maybe on the trials of the Sojourner?” Her face wrinkled up. She did not like that name. But to be the first to actually fly this new ship would be so dreamy.
El, Eng Ens