Star Trek Sim/ Star Trek RPG
USS Eagle, NCC 2185
CPT Kematsopoulos & LTjg Richards
JOINT LOGS
Joint Logs by Myth, Stoffe and Nouri
Title: O, What a Tangled Web We Weave, Part Nine
Location: The USS Eagle
Setting: Captain's Quarters
His dropping the name of her hometown out of the blue was a bit shocking.
~How does he-?!~ "How'd you know that?"
"Captains know all kinds of things," he said mysteriously with a wry smile.
~Thats kinda freaky...~ "But why that?" Leah asked. "You don't know anyone
from there, do you?" She would be very surprised if he did. The town was
very small.
"I wanted to let you know that I may understand your situation better than
you think. Someone there has told me a lot about your hometown, more than
in the official reports and records. It's easy to see how you got into the
situation and pattern you are in now," he said.
The Captain didn't recall any of this, of course, because it happened before
the cargo bay accident. He had spent a lot of time while waiting for the
CMO to clear him for duty this last time reading everything he could on Ensign
Hanson and LT Richards, as well as some others. He needed to know as much
as he could since they were involved with the unusual intruders.
Leah was confused. "...Who would do that?"
"You'd probably be surprised to hear, your mother," he said, knowing they
did not get along well.
Leah's jaw dropped. "My... Mom?" ~ What the heck was she thinking?~ "I don't
understand. Why would she contact you?"
"I don't know your whole story or if she was a good mother to you or not.
She does, however, care about what happens to you," he said. This was based
on some odd communications that the Captain had gotten shortly after Leah
had been assigned to the Eagle. Xiao-Xing Richards contacted Captain Kematsopoulos
to ask him to look out for her daughter. She sent rather long winded, pleading
communications playing upon their shared cultural/ethnic background and most
anything else she could think of trying to get him to look out for her and
help her daughter. She described Leah's town and childhood with a lot of
detail.
Leah couldn't help but laugh. "Right." Whatever her mother's motives 'caring'
wasn't likely to be one of them. "What did she say?"
"That she cares and worries about you and..um," he started to feel awkward.
There were too many personal details that he knew and more than plenty he
should not have known.
"No news then," Leah sighed. "I was hopin' she'd heard from my Dad..." The
last time she'd spoken to her mother, Leah had specifically asked to be left
alone unless he did show up.
"I am sorry. I don't have any news on him. How long has it been?" he asked.
"Seventeen years. I was eight." Leah shrugged it off like it was no big deal.
The Captain caught the change in her sound of voice and the forced nonchalance
to it. "I am so sorry. I . . . have some small idea of how that feels," he
said. His parents had left him off so long with sitters when he was young
he had been unsure if they were ever coming back on several occasions. Then
there was the time his sitter took him for longer than his parents had wanted.
Leah glanced up. "You do?" she asked cautiously.
He didn't tell her that part of his life, but something she would be likely
to hear one day. "My parents disappeared my junior year at the Academy. At
first I was told they were killed. Much older than you, so not the same.
I just have some idea," he said not sounding very much like a Captain at
all.
Leah was surprised by how young he sounded. "They aren't - I mean, they're
still alive?"
"I .. I am not sure. I haven't had any reports in a while. Last one claims
they are alive. I don't know where," he said as if it had just recently happened.
"I'm sorry. That's ... terrible." Leah felt a bit silly - in comparison her
family problems were nothing.
"It's easy to get angry when you have a loss like that and make mistakes.
Your mother wanted me to watch out for you," he said
Leah shrugged. "It's no excuse, I know."
"You can't let it help you make bad choices. You have to find another way.
Prayer, meditation, music, gardening ... lots of things can help. And you
aren't really alone out here," he said, knowing how that felt also.
"Gardening," Leah repeated, rather doubtful.
"Find something. Be open to possibilities and to change," he said.
"I'll ... try, sir."
"That's good. That's all we can do," he replied.
"Yes," Leah agreed. Now it was her turn to be uncomfortable.
"I can show you something later if you like that can help. I am sure your
mother would love it if you picked up the pipa or dizi ..." he said pausing.
He wasn't sure how Leah handled her mixed heritage. It had been a struggle
for him when he was younger, but he had two parents and both of their families
to contend with heavily pushing each side upon him.
"She'd be ecstatic," Leah answered without expression. ~I'd rather
be dead.~
"I am sure she would be. It had to have been hard for her to move to America
then be stuck there raising a child alone. I am not making excuses for her,
just saying how hard it was culturally for her and to be a single, divorced
mother.
Some Chinese and Vulcan mediations can be very helpful as well as some other
ancient practices," he offered.
"I'll come up with something." Leah wasn't about to reject his suggestion
to his face, knowing that his Vulcan wife had passed. He'd had more than
his share of losses.
"Good. Let me know what works and if you need help finding different things,"
he said.
Leah nodded, though she had no intention of doing that. "Yes, sir."
"As part of your chance, you need to do that - learn to ask for help. As
part of the offer, I have the obligation to assist where possible," he explained.
"Right..." Leah cleared her throat and then plunged ahead. "Before, when
you were talking about second chances - you were talking about someone specific,
weren't you?" She was curious, plus it moved the conversation off her.
"Yes," he said without explaining. He jumped to the next part quickly and
said, "Now you need to make another promise."
She wished he'd offered more information. "What kind of promise?" Leah asked.
"If you get out of this, you need to do the same for at least five more people,
but they have to be good risks," he said.
"Good risks?" Now she was confused.
"People you think can really make the change, want to make the change if
only they had the chance. You can't take a risk on someone such that others
could die or be harmed by having another chance. And if you don't get out
with this chance or make the best of it, you can't hold anyone back who wants
out when you meet someone in the future," he finished, hoping she was a good
risk.
"And you figure I'm a 'good risk'?" Leah wasn't sure how to feel about that.
"Yes, I am hoping my faith in you is not misplaced. It won't be easy, but
I believe you can do it," he said encouragingly.
~Hoping?~ "I won't let you down on purpose, sir." That was the most she wanted
to promise to since she knew she had a tendency to screw things up. Leah
wondered who his other four 'good risks' might be and where he'd come up
with this whole idea in the first place.
"Good," he smiled.
She shrugged. "If... I'll do the same for five others. I promise." Leah almost
doubted this would work, but if not she wouldn't have to worry about this
second promise anyway.
The Captain smiled again. "Good, thank you," he replied. "Now, we need to
find that phaser and Hanson's tools if they are still here," he said worried
that maybe somehow they had left his stateroom. That would make the deception
they were creating very hard if suddenly they found out Hanson had a special
phaser and it was easily identifiable to others and it just showed up somewhere
else.
"OK." Leah was glad to have something to do again. All the talking and confessions
were making her feel very awkward. Doing was better than talking any day.
The Captain sighed, "Everything I can think of, says that its going to be
very dangerous to create this 'malfunctioning' phaser."
"Dangerous or impossible?" The first would be fine - the second would be
a big problem.
"I'll know better if it's really plausible or not to make the phaser as you
described with the tools he had when I have everything in front of me. If
not, I can just make one. Regardless, let's hope that LCDR Unstoffe
doesn't show it to CENG..." he said.
Leah winced. That would not be good. "Right ... sorry to complicate everything,
just the best I could think of at the time." It hadn't been a pleasant debriefing.
"I understand. You are security not an engineer. You did your best. That's
what's important. But I can't think of anyway to do this with the safety
on and at a safe setting," he said.
"I could tell him it's not here ... but he'd be pretty upset about that."
~...To say the least~
"No, its best to just bring it. Less suspicion in the reports by any who
might read them in the future.
This needs to look like an accident and not related to our guests from the
future, or wherever they are from," he explained.
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