The Unready Room
Posted on Tue Oct 17th, 2017 @ 1:57pm by Lieutenant Commander Jordan Gunning & Lieutenant Commander Izize sh'Ekesariss
Mission:
The Band (Episode 1)
Location: Commanding Officer's Ready Room [Deck 1]
"A standing desk." Jordan Gunning said with his ghast entirely flabbered as a Petty Officer struggled with the packing crate which had been earmarked for the CO's ready room.
'Room' was a bit of a joke. The ready room on the Virgil was more like a big cupboard and Gunning wondered if he might be better storing towels in it rather than trying to do any meaningful work in it. Thankfully, due to the nature of the mission, the senior staff had been given their own quarters which gave him a bit more room than most Defiant captains. "Excuse me sir." The Petty Officer was struggling to get past him.
"Not enough room to swing a cat in here, eh?" Gunning smiled but his face straightened at the flummoxed expression on the Petty Officer.
"Excuse me, sir?"
Gunning found himself contorting around the desk to let the young man out and caught a glimpse of a pointed ear peeking out from under his hair. "Oh, nothing." He was greeted by a cocked eyebrow as the Petty Officer made himself scarce. Gunning opened the crate which looked as though it took up the entire office. He considered using it as a chair but decided to open it instead.
"Most of this will need to go back into storage." He laughed as his first officer, Ize sh'Ekesariss, appeared in the doorway. "Somehow I don't think it's all going to fit in here. Still - could be worse - apparently the original Defiant fitted a bed in here. Christ knows how."
Ize surveyed the room and her captain’s effects with a somewhat amused expression. She was never one to understand the obsession many species had with collecting things and insisting they accompany them wherever they went. It wasn’t just humans, either, and she knew more than a few Andorians who had the trait. But it wasn’t exactly conducive to the space-faring lifestyle, in her opinion.
“I think you might be right about that,” she replied, stepping into the ready room and peering curiously into the crate. “What is all that stuff?”
"An accumulation of crap acquired over a lifetime." He replied bluntly. "Some of it was my brother's. He used to have a lucky charm for every occasion. Even had a lucky soccer ball that he played with for years. Insisted that we use it in any game and it was completely trashed. Wouldn't give it up until I could convince him that's why we were losing the games." Gunning held up a ring with a relief of a figure getting into a tussle with a bull. "He kept this thing around for years. Never wore it though."
He tossed the ring on the little unit next to his desk. "How's everyone settling in?"
But the Andorian didn’t hear the question. She had caught a glimpse of the ring when Gunning held it up and her eyes had followed it as it slid across the surface of the unit and came to rest with the insignia facing her. Her antennae leaned forward, giving the impression that her whole focus was centred on the piece of jewellery. Ize slowly moved over to it and, without taking her eyes or antennae from it, asked, “Can I see that?”
Gunning looked up at her and lobbed it to her, missing her hand by a few inches. He'd never been much for throwing.
Carefully picking it up and placing it in the palm of her left hand, she studied the detail of the relief. The humanoid figure, the short sword it wielded, the bull poised and ready to strike. The detail was intricate, precise and all too familiar. She looked up at Gunning, her brow furrowed. “Do you know where he got this?”
"Not a clue." Gunning moved a pile of PADDs from one side of the desk to the other and back again. "He used to pick random crap up everywhere he went - probably spent half of his outgoings on tat in bazaars and stuff. How come?"
Ize breathed sharply through her nose and her antennae turned slowly toward Gunning, even as her eyes remained locked on the ring. "This insignia," she said ominously. "I've seen this before."
"Really?" Gunning couldn't have sounded less interested if he'd been asleep. "Where?"
"Two places," she replied, seeming to collect herself and taking her eyes from the ring for the first time. She focused back on Gunning. "The first was six years ago in the apartment of the shax that murdered my zh'yi." She paused a moment, a flash of pain stabbing at her heart as she remembered. "It, ah, it was etched onto the handle of a dagger I found in his safe. I didn't think anything of it at the time; just some trinket. But then ... then I saw it again two years ago. That time, it was like this; on a ring. That ring was worn by a target my unit was hunting, but he killed himself before I could get any intel out of him."
She held up the ring and showed it to Gunning. "Both of those men were part of the same organisation. And this insignia is linked to it."
"What do you think the organisation is?" Gunning was suddenly interested.
Jordan Gunning
Ize sh'Ekesariss
