Posted by Captain Zachariah Cobb (Commanding Officer) in Check-Ins | Step 1: Bug the Captain

Posted by Lieutenant Tal Abara (Senior Researcher (Cognitive Science)) in Check-Ins | Step 1: Bug the Captain
Tal Abara – accomplished nurse practitioner, ceramic frog collector, and champion of wrong turns.

Directionally challenged and without the internal compass to point her ‘North’, Tal found herself bewildered and staring awkwardly at a PADD nestled between her fingers. ‘Lost’ hardly fit what she was experiencing. Eyebrows knit together, Tal shifted her gaze from the Leviathan’s layout to the corridors, searching for something familiar. Slowly, a frown tugged at the corners of her lips and pulled her features into a grimace.

“Hmm,” she tapped the display then waved her finger hopefully at a nearby door. “You’re..” she leaned forward, tilting her head enough to catch the plaque perched at its side, “yes! Okay. Then the turbolift must be..” She whipped around and hesitantly gestured down the hallway. “..that way.”

Feigned confidence infecting her gait, Tal found her way through a sea of metal doors and the occasional tight-lipped officer. It felt like an aeon before she happened upon the destination of her (purely professional) dreams. A grin quickly replacing her frown, Tal hurried her pace and waved to the Ensign just about the step before her. “Wait!” She called out, earning a confused glance which happened to last just long enough for her to slip into the turbolift. “Thanks. Where are you headed?”

“Deck 24,” he tersely informed. “You?”

“Uhm,” Tal regarded the PaDD once more. “23 – that works out great.” Respective requests made, Tal settled against the far wall and submitted to the patience of a short, silent ride.

By the time the doors peeled open, and she bade farewell to her companion, Tal had regained her composure. She trusted – as long as she didn’t meet the same difficulty finding Cobb’s ready room – composure would grant the gift of persistence. Seconds passed like minutes before Tal wandered up to the Captain’s ready room doors. Promptly, as not to encourage the strange concoction of curiosity and ambivalence bubbling in her belly, Tal raised a hand to chime and palmed it.

– Tal Abara, Cognitive Researcher

Zachariah Cobb was not a patient man. Nor had there ever been occasion to describe him as gentle or delicate, or even stable a great deal of the time. Which is why his latest obsession had been met by raised eyebrows and disbelieving glances from almost every soul he dared impart the details to.
Tal Abara, being newly arrived on the Leviathan, would not yet have been confided in on the nature of this obsession. Although while she waited for a response to her hail, she might consider the CIC to be unusually quiet. As if every officer at their station was listening intently for sounds from the captain’s ready room…

Tal’s stormy gaze flickered between the CIC and Cobb’s ready room. There was an odd silence consuming the cacophony of idle chatter that Tal had come to associate with duty officers. She pursed her lips in thought and followed the wayward glances occasionally cast her way. Curiously, she meandered a step closer and tilted her chin…

At the exact moment that her chime rang out, the sounds finally came.
“Bloody ridiculous, irritating, meaningless, waste of time contraption! Damn you!”

Tal thrust her head back, her eyelids lifted in innate shock, but the subtle familiarity in his curse afforded her a flicker of nostalgic amusement.

Seconds later and the doors would slide open, to reveal a silver-haired and red-faced man slumped at the desk, surrounded, for at least four feet in all directions, by what appeared to be small, thin pieces of silver metal. And on his desk, a crystalline base, now broken (or possibly snapped) into two.

Sensing he had company, the man at the desk looked up and, with a desperate sigh gestured to the scattered debris and roared, “Who the bloody hell was it that invented kal-toh? Because I would like to ring his bloody neck!”

• Captain Zachariah Cobb

“I’m sure 90% of the galaxy would join you,” Tal meandered forward, knelt and reached out to snag a stray t’an. Patience was a virtue Kal-toh exploited. Though she suspected everyone aboard Leviathan had found some semblance of ‘order’ among the profound disarray of their work, it wasn’t quite comparable to a game of sticks and crystalline bases.

“Frankly,” she set the rod by his snapped base and gestured to the debris, “the t’an are much better as decor than game pieces.”

Mirth danced in the echoes of her gaze, but it soon faded into a sense of schooled professionalism. She thought to offer him a glass of water or something to ease the red plaguing his cheeks, but she thought better of it, choosing to advance her status from ‘stranger-in-my-ready-room’ to ‘maybe-a-familiar-name?’

“I’m Tal Abara,” she stepped back and leaned against her cane, managing a slight smile. “If you’re.. preoccupied, I can return later, Captain.”

– Tal Abara, Cognitive Researcher