snip

Sounded rather like normal engineering work to her, El thought. Granted with such a wonderful warp drive on the Sojo, well, what more could a girl ask for? Well, besides a useful design. Valid spare parts for critical systems. Air filtration systems that didn’t, when starting up, smell like a dentist’s office. Small things like that. The sign above the transporter room door that someone had put up saying ‘Abandon hope all you who enter here ’ was starting to seem more applicable. Still, she was away from earth. Safe. Or not. Time would tell. But as Uncle Mar would say, ‘Trust no one’. Yet as Master Ko had often said before that, ‘It is only through trusting that we can form a harmonious society.’ El had often battled with both viewpoints; the one had to make way for the other at different points and with different people.

“What is the Journeyman?” El asked. Was it another Starfleet ship she wondered? Starfleet was still a fairly loose organization. In her classes she had learned that Earth was trying to pull things together and loose it from the general Earth organizations that preceded it but was principally something half civilian and half government and pretty much all exploration. It itself had been a child trying to give birth for some 15 years now but who knew when it would be chartered and complete? Were the cargo ships part of the Earth Cargo Service, she wondered, that which was more notable prior to Starfleet gaining greater ground with its technological developments in faster Cochranes. Oh if Zeffie could see what he started!! “A plant that responded to music. Glowed? How?”
- El, Eng

“A Star Fleet ship with some Andorian civillian officers as well as having Andorian Honor Guard in stead of Macos trying to see how a mixed crew will work together was the main mission description. The plant is really neat. I will show you the pictures later when we have down time.” The Journeyman was older than the Sojourner in every sense of the word but in decent enough condition for what they were trying to do which was finding out what was out there like they all were.

Ltjg Marshell
Chief Engineering officer

“I’ve only ever met a Vulcan,” El admitted. It had not been a very positive meeting, being at the orbital station on Earth. She had seen them occasionally at a distance but never in person. They made her uncomfortable. Would all aliens cause her to feel that way? It was culture shock to travel to England for schooling. And that was among other humans! But seemingly since she left her home much was straightforward compared to home. Well, once she left the monastery; life there was very straightforward. Perhaps it was only chaotic when she was among her family. Which brought out a lot of other thoughts that she pushed down for now. “I’ve never met an Andorian.” She had read things but information was slim about this species. “What are they like?” And, the next question that came to her was, “Did it work? Working together that is?”
- El, Eng

“So far so good, they’ve not had too many duels over honor. I think they’re interesting people. They have a very strong sense of honor and most have decent sense of humor as well once you get used to their rather blunt way of speaking but once they consider you a friend they are not as harsh.” she paused and gave a light shrug, “At least from my point of view. Thomas was working with them more closely than I was, There was only one Andorian and one Aenar on the engineering teams, but he seems to be enjoying having a mixed team of humans and Andorians. I can’t wait to read his next letter truth told.”

Ltjg Marshell
Chief Engineering officer

El felt her pulse kick up a tad at the mention of duels. She had always enjoyed sparring growing up, perhaps too much as Master Ko had often chastised her for and to which she applied considerable focus to tamp down her spirit of competitiveness. That all of her opponents were male didn’t hurt her ego either as she slowly got better at various techniques. “Duels? Really?” She leaned in, interested. That did sound so romantic too. “Over what? What happened?” She was less interested in the sense of making friends with them. Really, she did not expect to ever meet an Andorian. “What is an Aenar?” Then .. “What did they think of our technology?” By that she implied engines but the question could be broader. El knew she was peppering Odina with questions and that could be more being a pest but she was curious and that was a bit of a failing. She recalled something from the Military Academy; their xeno class was essentially one class of noting different species that had been known - principally once class introducing the Vulcans - she still recalled odds and ends being thrown at the large screen by classmates to the chagrin of Professor Potts, though she didn’t do a lot to discourage that display. There was lesser reaction to images of the Andorians and Tellarites but what was given for information was little more than a overview with more opinion than fact. The most that she caught from that was that neither of them particularly liked one another but tiptoed about space with a mutual mix of respect and loathing, though El knew that the Vulcans would say that that was an emotion and so they did not possess it. But El knew better there. She could see it in their eyes in the few glimpses she had. Vulcans barely tolerated humanity and loathe seethed underneath. That the Lt served with an actual group of aliens must have been quite a feat.
- El, Eng