Snip

Posted by Lieutenant Ta’lahali Akera Beveres (Counsellor) in Mess Hall - Nakuto Looks for a Friendly Face

Posted by Civilian Kara Nakuto (Civilian, Former CO) in Mess Hall - Nakuto Looks for a Friendly Face

Posted by Civilian Kara Nakuto (Civilian, Former CO) in Mess Hall - Nakuto Looks for a Friendly Face
Posted by… suppressed (1) by the Post Ghost! 👻

“Me? Oh.. the usual. Mass delusions, computers wil relatively malicious minds, crew members being tormented by.. clowns- I think it was. A myriad of things that have only added to the sinister character of this lovely ship.” There was sarcasm within her tone, her hands reaching up to present the ship, as if playing some kind of Vanna White, and the Viking was the prize for the Wheel of Hell.

Another laugh from Nakuto at the animated performance of the Counselor.
“Clowns? Now that is one thing I have yet to…”
She stopped abruptly, smothering her remaining words with an intake of air. No point in tempting fate, as her father would have said.
“It sounds as hellish as always!” she declared instead.

“There hasn’t been anything too defining, really. It has just been a mixture of stresses upon stresses with crewmmbers coming in and out like soldiers in warfare. I swear, my time has been divided between taking in new psychological evaluations and then counseling those people about a single event, before they determine themselves unfit and completely drop from the face of existence. I can only hope they were in place at some starbase, or on a shuttle.” She pinched her nose.

Loss. Of friends. Of family. Of brothers and sisters and lovers and companions. Every man and woman onboard this ship had seen someone torn from them in the murky still of night, left isolated and alone as their friends made an escape, be it physically on a passing shuttle or…by other, more permanent means…

There had been a time, back when Kara still held command, that she had stubbornly refused to view the morning and evening roll calls, could not bear to see yet another name scrubbed from the ever-diminishing list.

Sighing, Tal rubbed her hands against her face to alleviate the drowsiness that had seeped into her low-lidded eyes. Only coming up on the eve of her twenty-seventh birthday, Tal seemed almost as if she had aged several years. Her smile was painted with the same genuine kindness, but her eyes were tinged with exhaustion and the stress of the world around them. Being a counselor on a ship like this.. it was hell. She had been warned by Kara herself, that fateful year or even two years prior, when she had chosen to take a place on the Viking. Warned of what she was capable of, warned of what might come of this.

But she still took the job.

Tal would not give up her position for all the credits she could have been offered. She would not give it up for a higher rank or for another assignment, no matter how luxurious it might be. By now, she had devoted herself to the Viking, even if she was going to slowly kill her, like she did to every other officer that thought they had a home here. Vaguely recalling a conversation Kara and her experienced, when she had once been the Captain of this ship, she remembered the pressing question: ‘But who counsels the counselor?’ Even now, she didn’t have an answer to that.

Ta’lahali looked exhausted. No small wonder when one considered her unique position on this ship. She was the one all others ran to when scared. She was the one expected always to hand out empathy and reassurance and sage advice with as much ease as she might dispense a cup of coffee. What toll must that have taken on her over time? To be the rock this entire vessel was moored upon and yet feel the waves lapping with ever-increasing ferocity at her own feet?

“You know,” Nakuto began to talk, moving once again to the replicator and returning this time with two mugs of the steaming, heavily-caffeinated drink of her people. Placing one infront of the Kenyan, she sipped slowly at hers as she continued to speak. “There was a time when I had given up on securing a Counselor for the Viking. The second one actually made it a week before fleeing. The first? He didn’t even see out our initial meeting.”

“Really?” Tal seemed almost like a child in this query, as if seeking the assurance of an older friend, or event a guardian. This had not been her intentions, but her appearance did give her the air of being somewhat small and fragile, when she was almost anything but, or so she had thought. “What had happened to them? Were they scared off by events to them or simply the rebellion of this ship against her crew?”

Kara considered the question, her mind retreating to those initial weeks onboard the Viking. The alarm as she took stock of the lot she had been given, the confusion at how a Starship could be allowed to deteriorate to such a level. And the fear, of everyone and everything around her.

Ultimately she was able to offer the Counselor little more than a shrug in response.
“I am…not sure. About a month after I came onboard there was a…” her hands grasped at the empty space around her, as if from it she could pluck words adequate to describe the event, “…mass exodus of crew. No official report was ever made but I suspect someone had bartered with a nearby merchant ship for safe passage. Then when it arrived it felt like half of my entire crew spied their chance and fled.”

Had it been the ship they were running from or…its Captain? Kara would never know the truth so had decided not to question it too thoroughly, lest she be unsettled even further by what she found out.

“But then there was Denny,” she continued, an almost imperceptible shudder rippling through her body at the mention of his name. “He had been from the Terran continent of Africa, like yourself.”
She smiled as she studied the woman at her side. The similarities between Beveres and the Viking’s first counselor under Nakuto’s watch began and ended with that shared place of birth. In all other aspects they were lightyears apart.

“He…” the half-Klingon attempted to explain, “…there was…something. A shadow. To this day I don’t know if it found him on the ship or if he had brought it with him. But it…pursued him, hunted him down. The last I ever saw of him, which had also been the first I ever saw of him,” she laughed at the irony of it all, “he was chasing the thing around the lower decks. And then…” Another shrug, her energy to search for a resolution depleted, “…he was gone.”

Once more she joined hands with her friend. “But you…I knew the moment you came onboard that there was something…special about you. Oh, I could see that you were scared…just like the rest of us. But still, the calm and tranquility and the hope that you managed to project was…unlike anything I had ever felt before. And right then and there I knew that you would stay. And that, as long as you did, my crew would be okay.”

“It takes a village to keep a crew like this together, to make sure they are ‘okay.’ Unfortunately, that village boils down to a fell officers who have the insane hope they can make a difference of at least assist in the lives of those around them.” She spoke of the command and counseling team, which topped at, generally, three officers- not including the DHs, should they step up to that heinous podium. “For right now, it might be safe to say, we’re okay.”

“Well that I am very glad to hear,” Nakuto stated emphatically. “You…all of you, are invaluable to this crew for the service you provide.”

She smiled then, her brown eyes shining with deep admiration, boundless respect and…sadness, that this hellhole was where fate had decided to throw them together.

“Ta’lahali Beveres,” she declared, “You are the bravest and most noble warrior that I know. Do not ever change. And don’t ever be afraid to seek out your own support, should you ever need it.”

“You certainly have a way with words- perhaps peculiar, but nevertheless effectual.” Tal gripped the hand enveloping her own, a sense of reality in this endless storm of supernatural hell.

Consideration crossed the eyes that almost mirrored the colour of her old friend’s. Kara had been amongst those who had kept her sane, in those beginning days. She was a guiding force, strong, but not in a way that would force Tal to cower to her knees, begging for remorse from the Klingon warrior, not that such dreams had not crossed her mind, humorously, in the dead of the night. Yet, beyond those dreams, Kara was perhaps one of the most human people she knew. No, not by her appearance nor her DNA, but by her mannerisms and mind.

She had that Klingon tenacity, but that human humility. An even balance between two species of great anthesis. Tal couldn’t say she knew how Nakuto managed it, these two competing sides. She did not envy whatever struggles she faced, but she did not wish any damnation upon her, for whatever she had done to escape them. She found weakness in Kara, but she also found strength.. a strength in every flaw she held. And in some odd way, that simple observation screamed: “human.”

“At least, in all of this, they chose a competent woman to continue your legacy, on Viking.”

Tal

Impossible not to bristle at the Counselor’s final words. In her primal core there grew a sense of gratitude for the woman who had taken command in her absence, had steered the ship and tended to the crew when their former CO was no longer present to perform the task. And if the latest engineering reports were any measure then indeed it seemed that Captain Ravenfall had done an outstanding job.

But still, to see another in her seat on the bridge, to defer to another when discussing matters on the ship, to be preparing to beg another for a position, any position on a crew she used to lead…it was simply too much for Kara to face directly just yet.

“Good,” she murmured in reply, staring sullenly into her coffee. “I am glad.”

Kara Nakuto

Bump for Trinity :)

OOC: Thank you! Sorry about the wait. School can be tedious. :)

OOC: Your posts are always worth waiting for :D

IC: Tal muled over her response to the simple indication of content towards the placement of the new captain, finding a sense of a sympathy for Kara, and everything she had lost in these damning months at sea. A sea of tumultuous waves, composed of frigid lies and inescapable truths. For a moment, she grew silent, debating any remark to Kara, regarding her sullen response.

“She didn’t replace you, you know.” Tal offered to her, a faint smile breaching her solemn features. “Nobody could ever replace you,” She added, thinking for a moment. “This ship, the day you left, was never the same. We struggled, for awhile, trying to find our feet again. We stumbled. We fell. But you, and everyone on your team can agree, you taught us how to stand back up, even when the most gruesome of events forced us down to our knees, when we thought our legs had been broken.

“You, even after your departure, were always a guiding principle in our lives, even if we did not recognize it. Yes, we changed, we grew, we became different people, but I don’t think any of us ever forgot the abrasive albet fascinating Captain Kara Nakuto.” A slight chuckled escaped her lips, “I cannot imagine what you’re going through, now that you have come home.. nor what you have been through, all of those months. However, if it means anything, you always have a home of the Viking. After all, she is still, in a sense, your ship- just as she is Captain Ravenfall’s.”

Lt. Beveres
CNS

Impossible to restrain fully the waves of emotion that washed over her. For an entire year, while trapped in that dark place, Nakuto had replayed and examined and questioned every single decision she had made as the head of this crew; every action and statement scrutinised and torn apart in an attempt to answer that most vital and fundamental of questions. Had she been good enough?
But to hear now, and from the lips of one she valued so highly, was a gift far greater than she had earned. But the Klingon in her rejoiced at it all the same.

“Thank you, Tal,” she whispered. “You have no idea how much that means to me.”

Reclining into her seat, Nakuto looked down at her worn and threadbare uniform, still bearing the colours of a captain but with the insignia to signify the rank now gone.
“Honestly, I have no idea what I shall do now that I am back,” she admitted. “I am currently…unemployed. I have no position on this ship. No remit to work towards, no assigned duties to perform.”

She drained the remainder of her raktajino in an attempt to ward off the probing tendrils of sleep.
“I…have not contacted Starfleet since my return.”
A sheepish grin teased across her lips, the unspoken confession of one who knew they were disobeying the rules but had no intentions of correcting it.
“I am not sure I wish to learn of their future plans for me. Not yet. For if they take me away from this vessel then…I don’t know what I would do. You are right, Tal, this ship and I, we are…destined to be together. And I would rather be a janitor on this ship than a captain on any other.”

Nakuto removed the helmet from her head and ran fingers through her long, midnight hair.
“But I do need a job. I must speak with Captain Ravenfall and find out where she could use me. Surely a beat-up, battle-worn former captain can still have uses around here?”

Kara Nakuto