Posted by Captain Dante Knight (Commanding Officer) in Saracen Holosuite: Knight and Dalton/SARAH

Posted by Lieutenant Corinne Dalton/SARAH (Ships AI/Avatar) in Saracen Holosuite: Knight and Dalton/SARAH

(snip)

“Similar climate,” she replied, still gazing outward. She of course had known the moment he entered the program, but there was no reason to rush anything or jump into a conversation until they were both ready. “This is about twenty kilometres from Tananda Bay on Ajilon Prime.”

“I’ve been past there, once or twice” he said, “but that was years ago. I never stopped by the planet.”

He noted that she looked very much exactly the same as her Starfleet profile picture, and immediately noticed the vivid hue of her eyes. She wasn’t an unattractive woman, or hadn’t been, he wasn’t sure how to phrase it in his mind. “Is this where you came from?” he asked her, then smiled in the direction of the horses. “they yours?”

Captain Knight, CO

Cori finally turned to gaze at him and she smiled. “Yep. Well, they belonged to my adoptive parents, but I was just a baby when they found me, so I grew up on this farm with them.” She gazed back and pointed at the horses. “See that dun, the tan one with with black mane and tail? That’s Cashew, or Cash, as we called him. Impertinent gelding he was. The grey mare beside him is Lacey. Sweet thing she always was. We had another, a chestnut stallion named Jack, but he died when I was eight. My parents were crop farmers, but they loved horses and couldn’t stand not having them.” She looked back at Dante and grinned. “I never minded.”

~Corinne Dalton

“I bet” Dante smirked slightly. “I guess you never needed to ask for a pony for your birthday.” The question was rhetorical, and he didn’t really expect an answer so he moved on past it. “My uncle in Italy had horses, he was a breeder. When I was younger I used to work for him and ride them in races, and on camping trips for some of the others when my father was back from his work, he captained a freighter. I spent a lot of time with my uncle, my mother was a tutor at the University. I haven’t ridden in years.”

“Never too late to try it again. Luckily for us there’s always the holodeck,” Cori said with a slight grin.

He grinned and watched the horses a while longer before looking back at her. “Are your parents still around? You mentioned they were crop farmers, not that they are.” His question was an honest one, although he felt slightly awkward asking it. While he knew the woman he was talking to had in fact once been a woman, the fact that she was now appearing to him as a hologram, albeit a seemingly sentient one, was a little unsettling. Still, he needed to get to know her and get used to her, for by all accounts, she wasn’t leaving the ship any time soon.

Captain Knight, CO

Her grin disappeared and she shook her head. “No. Kip and Janey adopted me when I was two, but they died when the Klingons attacked during the brief war.” Her eyes narrowed slightly before she shrugged. “It was a hard time for a lot of people.” Finally she looked at Dante. “I was twelve and the colonists who decided to stay after took me in. I stayed with some friend’s of my parents to finish my school and until I was old enough to go to the Academy.”

Gazing at him, her grin returned and she had an almost impish grin in her unnaturally vivid eyes. “Hey, since we’re on the holodeck, there’s no reason we can’t go riding right now, if you can handle a challenge.”

~Corinne Dalton