Sick #1

Posted on Mon Feb 27th, 2023 @ 8:42am by Lieutenant Thraxina & Ensign Syaffia

1,263 words; about a 6 minute read

Mission: Mission 3: The Peace Ship
Location: Lower Ranks Quarters, USS Midway
Timeline: En Route to Nimbus III

Thraxina had looked at her file. Mental trauma, Yes. Continued psychiatric monitoring and counselling recommended, yes. But she was physically fit and Doctor T'Mora's recommendation was that the best possible thing for Cadet Syaffia was for her to get back in the proverbial saddle and carry on with her Helm training.

So where the Hell was she?

It blipped up on her clipboard even as she was waiting impatiently by the shuttle.

Syaffia, Senior Cadet, Pilot Training 14 Hundred Hours w/ Lt Thraxina: Cancelled: Self Reported, Unfit for Duty.

She was swearing as she reached the girl's quarters.

"Unfit for duty my arse! Wasting my bloody time!" The door swished open and Thraxina's boots clicked into the 'invalid's' quarters.

She entered to see that the girl had clearly made a last minute decision not to come.

Syaffia had dressed in uniform and somehow made it look great - even if the expression on her face was utterly devoid of its normal cheer. What was left was a sort of expressionlessness as she stood at attention before the seething officer. Knowing the lieutenant she was prepared to lose what remained of her prospective career if the older woman saw fit. Not that at this point she would have much cared.

"All right Cadet, what the bloody hell is this all about?" Thraxina had learned Federation Standard, English by any other name, via some old tapes in the Stratos City library which had given her the accent of an haughty upper-class British woman. It meant that when she lost her temper, it sounded like a Queen barking orders at her peasants.

"I'm sorry, ma'am." Even her voice was devoid of its usual energy. The soul seemed to have drained right out of the cadet somehow. "But..."

"Never mind 'sorry', what the Hell's wrong with you girl?!" the officer snapped.

"... in my current mental state I feel that it would be unfit for me to take the controls of any craft. I have scheduled a session with doctor T'Mora and her assistant to discuss my condition, and I am perfectly willing to tell you more about it if you'll give me the chance. If not." She held out her sleeve. Her senior grade cadet's stripes seemed a lot more dull somehow. "I will accept any consequence you see fit, including the termination of my time here aboard the Midway. Starfleet does not need a pilot who cannot fly."

Thraxina looked down at the proffered rank stripes and then back up, her hard crystal blue eyes locking with Syaffia's softer green. She pulled a ludicrously sad face, pushing out her bottom lip in an exaggerated pout and spoke in a mocking baby voice.

"Aw, does the Cadet want to talk about how sad she is? Does she want the nice officer to listen to her bleating on about her 'mental issues' instead of getting on with her scheduled training? Does the cadet want to have a little cry?"

Her face hardened again. "Is that what you want Cadet? Do you want to cry like a baby? Is that how you want me to treat you, like a child? Do you want me to change your diaper for you and put you across my knee and spank you when you're naughty and don't come to your training sessions? Is that what you want? Answer me girl!" she was was so close to Syaffia now their noses were almost touching.

"No, ma'am. I am an adult and I am perfectly capable of looking after myself. I just want to tell you why I think for me to take the controls of any shuttlecraft at the moment would be dangerous not only for me, but for you as well." Syaffia met the lieutenant's gaze. There was considerably less steel in her gaze now, not that Thraxina had ever had the pleasure of finding out just how determined she could be. She needed to offer her that explanation now - nothing about the lieutenant's tone suggested that she was particularly inclined to listen.

Well, whether she wanted to listen or not, it didn't matter. Syaffia would say her piece and that was that.

Thraxina gave a bored and obviously feigned yawn. "Oh go on then, if you must Cadet"

"Respectfully, ma'am. You remember our mission to that planetoid and the Guardian of Never, or whatever it called itself. I had to watch my father greet me, give me a hug with all the warmth it had when he was alive, and then die in my arms from a shuttle crash before that same shuttle rammed straight into me. And all I could do was hold him and scream and feel the most excruciating pain possible when the shuttle finally hit. Every bone in my body breaking from the impact. Flying through the air, hitting the ground hard and having the wind knocked out of my lungs, and the entire world going dark around me as I died."

"We..." Thraxina strted to speak, but it seemed that Syaffia wasn't done whinging and whining about the experience on Object B55677t.

"Now imagine having to live through that. Over. And over. And over. And over. Again." Syaffia closed the distance between them. Her hands had balled up over the course of her speech somehow, so tightly that her knuckles turned white. They shook with emotion, a mixture of fear and anger and sadness and regret that rocked her body in waves. "I can't even look at a shuttle without that scene playing in my head and imagining that it's flying straight toward me. Sometimes I walk by the shuttlebay doors and imagine that every single shuttle in there is going to burst through and come at me like a swarm of bees."

Thraxina looked like, if she had been wearing an old fashioned Earth wrist watch, she would have been consulting it about now.

"I don't know what you saw there, ma'am. I won't pretend to know how you're feeling after that mission. You're welcome to call me crazy or irrational and order me back to training if you like. I'll go like the good cadet without feelings and thoughts like I need to be. My duties to the ship and my education supersede my feelings, don't they?" Syaffia's entire body shook with emotion.

"Yes they bloody well do." Thraxina replied tersely. Had she been listening? Yes. Did she feel pity for the girl? In a way. She felt pity that her race and upbringing had made her susceptible to both what she had gone through, compared to her own which, harsh though it was, made not just the illusion, but the actual physical pain of having her face stomped in by her own sister seem not just bearable but an inevitability to be accepted and shrugged off.

Was taking the girl in her arms and comforting her in an embrace an option? No.

Why had she even thought that?

As far as she was concerned her career was over; she could go back to Argelius II and be with her mother, and maybe find a far less dangerous job that didn't involve flying. "Fourteen hundred hours. I'm late for training already. I'll take whatever punishment you deem necessary, and then we'll head out for my training flight."

"Well thanks for giving the orders, Cadet, but that is my job. We will head out for what little time remains for your training flight and THEN you will report to me for punishment in your own time!" Thraxina commanded.

 

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