Fragments

The Trill stepped aside to let the El-Aurian, Fai Lune, leave the room before her. She dipped her head slightly and tugged at an ear, something she tended to do when there were heavy items weighing on her mind. Doctor Damson Rhee, Chief Science Officer of the USS Taurus, left the conference lounge of the vessel a bit more confused than she had been when she entered the room. Vorta, Jem'Hadar, treason. These were certainly not things to be taken lightly, nor were they things that Rhee had planned on having to handle or deal with when she had been initially assigned to this ship.

She straightened and turned, tugging the sleeves of her loose fitting duty jacket taut against her elbows as she folded her hands up to opposite shoulders. The briefing room door slipped shut with a pneumatic hiss as she exited, having allowed herself to be the last of the senior staff to leave, apart from Lieutenant J'ross. The XO had been asked to remain by the new Captain, a fellow Trill. She headed toward a turbolift and held out a hand, rushing a bit, her feet shuffling softly in the passageway as she went.

"Hold on a minute." She called to the man as the door to the turbolift was shutting.

The tall, broad Ensign, told her. "Anything for the Doctor." He smiled at her as the doors popped back open with an inconspicuous push of air. His piercing blue eyes seemed to look right into her, as she entered the lift. This unnerved her slightly and Rhee stepped around the Ensign, leaning subconsciously away from him as she did so.

She made her way with another step to the aft wall of the lift and leaned against it, sighing heavily. The Science Officer closed her eyes, thinking of the permutative neutron stellar core fragment samples that the science staff had waiting for her to analyse in the Lab one.

"Deck six." She murmured. Her left arm, still holding onto her shoulder, worked it slightly, pressing out some of the tightness there. Her right hand, having dropped to her side, reflexively reached upward toward the lab jacket pocket that was not there.

"You all right ?" A voice asked her. The Doctor's eyes slid open to regard the man that stood before her, the angular cast of his face accentuated and underscored from time to time by the slow, upward throbbing of the level indicators in the lift.

She smiled at him, cocking her head to one side in wonder. "You know what's funny Ensign…" She addressed him. "….no one's asked me that since I came aboard." She told him. She smiled, the warm and inviting sight of his face belying his congenial nature. It seemed she could not help but smile. The whites of her teeth just barely touching the skin of her lower lip, she closed her eyes for half a moment, then opened them, asking him.

"You know it's funny…." She told him, "I feel like I --- do I know you from somewhere ?"

"Fresh from the Academy." The man told her. "I didn't know Starfleet would immediately be quite this fun."

She dropped both arms to her sides, standing up straight now, having pushed off the wall with a shoulder blade. "No really. " She said. "You look so familiar to me."

The man smiled widely. "I get that a lot." He told her. He shrugged then, admitting, "Guess I just have one of those faces." He said as the turbolift came to a stop.

The doors slid apart and Rhee looked out, then to the Ensign, "Guess so."

She quietly stepped past him once more and made her way down the corridor, toward Science Lab one. The Ensign flipped off a haphazard half salute. "See you around then, Doctor." He told her.

Rhee, already halfway down the hall turned part of the way around as she walked in order to return his courtesy, but the doors had already shut, sending the nameless Ensign on his way. As she turned back around, she stopped short, narrowly escaping a run-in with one of her people carrying a stack of isolinear chips. The crewman held the hand that had not been supporting the chips, saying. "Whoa, Lieutenant."

"Sorry about that." Damson told her, shuffling first one way, then the next, the two briefly engaging in what appeared to be some bizarre alien mating ritual. They both chuckled and each continued on her way. Rhee turned and entered her pass code for the lab, entering the command for the doors to open, then lock behind her after she entered.

The air in the lab as she strode into the room was tinny, metallic, as if there were electricity on fire somewhere. She breathed the scent deeply, comforted by the familiarity of her lab. Her eyes flitted briefly around the room as she moved toward an angioplasmic stimulator and found the object of their search, her cerulean lab coat. She reached over and grabbed the lab coat off of the chair where she had left it, removing her commbadge and depositing it in the pocket of the coat. She had always found the badges uncomfortable to wear in a lab coat - the coat either caught on the badge if worn on the uniform, or the badge, if worn on the coat, tended to fall off.

Damson Rhee manipulated the power button of the nearest console, the one she had been working on when called to the staff meeting and unzipped her duty jacket, taking the dark, heavy coat off, and replacing it a moment later with her laboratory jacket.

"Computer." She called, her discomfort egging her on. "Increase temperature by - five degrees….." She said, adding lowly "…..to start with."

The Trill snatched a pair of goggles off of the table nearest the console she had powered up and pulled them over her head. The goggles threw Damson into an odd, pale purple twilight world, one in which she could see the ambient radiation given off by the ore fragment in the container she was currently studying. She was certain that the fragment could aid her in unlocking some of the secrets behind what was holding back the slipstream implementation process. She and one of her teams had clipped the piece from within a stream, fairly netting it while the Taurus was in flight, like the rigid teeth of a whale gathering plankton.

Still peering into the machine, it occurred to her that she could use some assistance in the analysis, since the goggles made it impossible for her to simultaneously see the operating panel before her, only the fragment, its magnetic constriction units, and the radiation emitted. She sighed once more, less heavily this time, glad to be engaged in her work once more and raised the goggles.

Tapping her commbadge, She called, "Rhee to Kahfre." She called.

Chief Medical Officer Rahel Kahfre's voice filtered out over the comm system hidden over head, "Something I can help you with, Doctor Rhee ?"

Rhee hung her head in mock shame, a gust of air fleeing her lungs. "God I am tired." She murmured to herself, leaning on the table before her as she placed her goggles onto it.

"Beg pardon,. The Medical Officer asked.

"Nothing." Rhee told her. "It's just - wrong one, Doctor." She laughed lightly.

The Chief Medical Officer took a moment to reply, apparently puzzling it out. "Oh…" Came her voice once more. "You need Ashraf." She concluded.

Rhee told the woman, "Sure do." As she sat in a chair at the table.

"Call him now." The Doctor's disembodied voice intoned. "You should get right to him," She said, the sound of an operating panel being accessed filtering through with her communication.

"Rhee to Kahfre." Damson stated again, tapping her commbadge.

<Please state again.> The computer's voice announced.

"Rhee to Kahfre, A." Damson repeated.

A much deeper, certainly male voice responded almost immediately. "Knew you were gonna call me, Doctor." The part Betazoid's voice returned.

"Right, right…" The Trill told him. "….did you know I wanted your help in Science Lab one." She called questioningly, the hint of a smile playing around her lips.

"On my way." The man told her. "Kahfre, A out." He finished.

"Oh…." Rhee said to herself. "Now you tell me." She whispered, realising the manner in which she could have directly contacted the correct Lieutenant Kahfre.