When Opportunity Knocks

Posted on Thu Jan 25th, 2018 @ 8:32am by Second Mate Quinton Beck & MERCHANT RANKS Fala Gaz (NPC)

886 words; about a 4 minute read

Mission: Meanwhile...
Location: PFV Scoprion
Timeline: May 20th 0915 2393

::ON::

"What's up, grease-monkey!" was the only thing Chris heard before he was accosted with the perpetually bubbly, smiling face of one of the ship's senior comms officers, Alana Torres, as she slid down into the seat across the table from him. With a deep sigh he took another puff off his cigar. "Not much, and yourself, Alana?" he asked in his deep voice, leaning forward, bracing himself on the table with his elbows, folding his arms in front of him. He was dressed in a pair of dirty trousers, with the ever present black suspenders, a white wife beater that was so badly stained with gunk you could hardly tell it was white, and his old, busted up engineers boots. His chunky black glasses were badly smudged, but the grease streaking his arms, his hands, his chest, and his shirt, made it pretty much pointless trying to clean them. In short, he was a mess, and even his dark skin, and multitude of tattoos couldn't hide the fact.

Wrinkling her nose she gave him a funny look. "No offense, but you stink, and you are dirty as all hell." she said. Shrugging he picked up his glass of scotch. "You try working in the engine room of a busted ass freighter for fourteen hours, trying to keep her flying, and see how you come out. Then we'll talk. What can I do for you?" Chris retorted. They had an uneasy alliance, some might call it a friendship, but Chris rarely made those, and he never did with someone as annoyingly cheerful as this woman. "Nothing, actually I had something I thought I might be able to do for you though." she said, handing over a padd. "Have you been watching the news lately? About the crew of that small ship that somehow got their hands on an old Starfleet vessel and are trying to get the legal rights to keep it?" she asked. "No, not really. What does that have to do with me though?" Chis asked, skimming disinterestedly over the news report.

"My god, you are so self-absorbed. Look, I've heard rumors about a certain member of that crew, a Ferengi no less, who has apparently been putting feelers out to hire some crew. One of the slots I heard might be open was in engineering, and not exactly a low slot either. Possibly a chief position." she said. At that Chris sat up a bit straighter, stubbing his cigar out in the ashtray in front of him and draining the last of his scotch. "You serious?" he asked, his voice rising a bit at the end in excitement. "Dead serious." Alan replied.

"Look, I know we haven't always gotten along, but I wouldn't lie to you just to get rid of you. Truth be told you are the only engineer on this ship that seems to give a damn if we make it to the next stop, and without you here I probably won't be sticking around either. When the chief engineer can't even keep himself out of the brig long enough to do some of the work, and the captain refuses to promote you to fill his obviously vacant slot, well, it doesn't say much for my ability to rise through the ranks..." she said, trailing off at the end. Chris just gave her a knowing nod, "You aren't wrong, that's for damn sure. Do you have anything concrete on this, any contact info, anything?" Chris asked. "Yeah, it's all in here." Alana replied, sliding an isolinear chip across to him. "I'd suggest you do what you can to keep it a bit of a secret though. That jackass we've got for a captain would probably toss you out the airlock if he found out you were planning on leaving." she said.

"Thanks, I'll keep that in mind." Chris said as he stood up. He tossed the glass he'd been drinking out of into the recycler and headed for his cabin, hoping like hell his roommate was either passed out for the night, or working a double. He was an Andorian, and to say he was annoying would be the biggest understatement of the century. Walking in he was pleasantly surprised to find himself alone, and took the chance to grab a shower before that changed. Finally clean, or at least as clean as he was likely to get, he put on a pair of old lounge pants, and grabbed a seat at the small desk, using his old school encryption routines to access the data on the isolinear chip so that it'd look like an old holonovel program about baseball. As he read over it his eyes grew wide, not only was she right, she was very right.

With a smile on his face, and a gleam in his eye he immediately began writing a message to the Ferengi woman, strange to think about it being a female, but it was what it was, offering his services as an engineer on the new project. Now he had to wait, something he'd never been good at, and keep his excitement level at a low enough level to not tip off the paranoid, overbearing, and incredibly lazy man they were forced to call the captain of this terrible little ship.

::OFF::

Christopher Callahan

 

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