Posted by Ensign Kovan ch’Sirhc (Engineering & Communications Officer) in When Paparazzi Hide in the Bushes

Posted by Ensign Rand Farquharson (Yeoman First Class) in When Paparazzi Hide in the Bushes
Things had finally returned to normal on the Sentinel. People were healing, damaged sections of the ship were repaired, and despite all of that, with the Rand’s return to near full duty, even the chaos seemed to find some order. At least no one was willing to allow chaos into her perfectly ordered day. It was after Rand had made her morning stop on the bridge when the large daily packet of correspondence, orders, and news came through. Most was routine, simply needing to be forwarded to the correct person. However, before Kovan forwarded the news packet to the recreation room, the headline caught his eye.

WEST END STARLET TOOK TO THE STARS
West End Darling, Miranda Farquharson Spotted Amongst the Stars

Paparazzi

The only good part about working comms during the long stretches of space travel was the daily info dump. News from around the Federation and within Starfleet packaged together with fleet orders and personal correspondence. All necessary things to keep lonely star ship troopers entertained and connected to life back home when gliding through the blackest reaches of space. With the plus of Kovan being the first to know all the latest news and gossip. As the senior comms officer it was a simple matter to ensure he worked when the package arrived. There weren’t many privileges aboard the ship so Kovan will horde this one for as long as he wished.

Never did he ever expect his selfish narcissism to work in his favor than when he saw that particular headline while flipping through the news headlines. By accident he learned of Rand’s secret history as an actress. Which is also how he knew she would die of embarrassment if the rest of the ship ever found out. He blanked his screen before subtly glancing around the bridge. No one seemed interested in reading over his shoulder (something the crew would never attempt twice) and no one was close enough to accidentally read the screen.

Once ensured of privacy is opened the news story and got to reading. The brilliant and impassioned darling actress of West End. . . Who vanished from the spotlight at the height of her career. . . winner of the Globe Theater award. . . (Get to the point already). Many have speculated Miranda’s fate . . .(what, did they think she died mysteriously or something?) . . . while theorizing over her next career move. . . was spotted dancing under the stars with a Mr. Tall, Dark and Handsome (Roman? He was alright looks wise. Far too leggy for Kovan’s tastes. And too serious. And that hair. Also too in love with Rand.) After some seriously intense investigation. . . . We’ve uncovered the man’s secret identity! (Was it really that secret?) Sir Roman Alden, Heir to the Alden Estates, Duke of Salisbury and the current commanding officer of the USS Sentinel (Kovan did not have the time to go into how wrong most of that was)

The article continued. . . Just how did these two steamy lovers meet? And what sort of juicy secrets does their illicit romance entail? (Kovan gagged internally while also vowing to never let Randy read this.) It was the last part, however, that captured Kovan’s full attention. Stay tuned, dear readers for the full expose in the next issue. Kovan mentally swore through his swear list and quietly quarantined the article to his personal PaDD and skimmed through the remaining news articles for anything related to Rand or Alden. When nothing came up he sent the package on and quietly paged a second comms officer to take over for him.

Kovan left the bridge and ultimately decided to bring the PaDD and it’s awful article to Rand.

Kovan

Roman was headed up from the lab, needing to check the bridge science sensors himself for something. He met Kovan in the lift and peeked at what Kovan was holding, catching something that looked oddly like himself. “What’s that?”

~ Roman