Young & Dumb

Posted on Sun Nov 6th, 2022 @ 8:23pm by Sublieutenant Seira t'Reiza & Centurion Nancy Gable & Lieutenant Hatham tr'Krotash

2,438 words; about a 12 minute read

Mission: Chapter VI: Racing the Storm
Location: Ourainavassa, Gym

Seira eyed the weights speculatively, then her right hand - or what passed for it these days, pearly-white synthetic skin covered now with hints of the beginnings of the markings she was getting from a Drozana tattoo shop. She had to admit the ability to switch off the sensation in something was really pretty convenient for such a process; but a lot of the rest of it was continuing to frustrate her, forcing her to re-learn and re-perfect everything from flight maneuvers to combat moves she'd been proficient in by the time she was 16, and feeling...well, the sensation when she didn't have it turned off was continuing to improve along with everything else as the software and the nerves learned to work together just like had been explained to her, but she still couldn't say it felt natural. Honestly, better Federation medical tech or not, she didn't expect that it ever would; but Gable's mention of having known some people who became not simply as fast as before but faster than with the arm they'd been born with gave her hope it might have other advantages to balance the downsides, at least.

At the moment after a stretch of more-frustrating-than-average days trying to beat the scores on a flight sim she used to have down perfectly, she felt the need to prove to herself it might actually be true, though, which had led her here: She was far from tiny but always she'd been on the smaller end of most of her classmates or shipmates, and knew she could never have hoped to lift the sort of levels that some of the more impressive of them had. At least, she couldn't have hoped to, until now, and she reached out and plucked up one of the heaviest weights off the rack.

It was less than a second later that Seira regretted this in the extreme, though: What was hefted easily on the structure of her new wrist and elbow suddenly announced the level of strain on her shoulder and back, and a variety of curse words shot instantly through her mind (and some of them also from her mouth) as she struggled to maintain the lift enough to even try to set it back down onto the rack, grip wobbling dangerously.

"Elements!" Hatham exclaimed, dropping his own weights and rushing over as he heard the cussing and saw the source. Grabbing the weight, he relieved her of it and reseated it on the rack. "Are you hurt?"

"...I don't know, sir." Seira looked up - significantly up given the size difference - at the lieutenant, and rolled her shoulder, wincing slightly in spite of herself, but it was hard to tell sometimes what was an actual injury and what would just heal on its own in the usual fashion of 'having overdone it at the gym' that most people discovered in their adolescent years. Either way, she flushed a darker olive, embarrassed that anyone, let alone anyone who outranked her, had seen that.

Kids! "Then let me tell you. Based on that wince, yes, you are hurt." The big Romulan puffed a breath. "Come on. I'm taking you to the doc. And afterward we'll have a discussion about proper lifts and not going heavy without a spotter."

“Yes sir.” Seira would have stopped there with her answer- it was the safest and most proper way to answer a more senior officer, usually, unless they’d asked an additional question - but lieutenants were rather more approachable- to a measured degree of course - to sublieutenants than, say, centurions or subcommanders were, so she risked saying a bit more as she nonetheless fell in to follow him to the medical section. “I…had thought it wouldn’t be that heavy, now.” As if in explanation, she flexed her artificial fingers as they exited the gym and then entered the turbolift that the ships’ designers had placed nearby, probably to ensure anyone in the gym at the time of an alert could get to stations quickly.

An eyebrow angled upward at the unexpected attempt at excuse. "I thought they taught physics in pilot school."

"They do. I just expected that it would help compensate for the weight somehow..." The dusky olive flush along Seira's cheekbones perhaps deepened slightly, since clearly the thing turned out to not have any sort of anti-gravity modules or other such things built into it, and she wished she'd never opened her mouth in the first place. But there wasn't really much choice now but to play it out and finish what she was saying; hadn't been any from the moment she started speaking earlier: Trying to avoid making her next statement here would just look like she lacked the sense to avoid the problem, but also lacked both the courage to admit her error and face the consequences (or alternatively, the cleverness to come up with a better stated reason for it) and the sense to be willing to learn from it. "I didn't think it through, sir."

"No, you did not." It was simple agreement, if somewhat exasperated. Had he done stupid things at her age? Yes, particularly if you counted charging a line of Gorn. But that wasn't quite the same (okay, his stupid there had come a lot closer to getting him killed, but it had been in the line of duty, not 'oh this would be cool'. Though it had come across as cool to several female comrades. After he'd been released from medbay anyway). "So, as a lesson in learning to think, you get to explain it to the Doctor," he said, stepping off the turbolift and pointing her toward the medbay doors.

"Yes sir." This time Seira didn't bother appending anything else to her response before making for the medbay doors and stepping through them. As little as she was looking forward to explaining this incident to Gable, mostly she was hoping she wasn't about to run into Kaol. He was...creepy...and she had very little grasp on how he might react here, either.

Gable on the other hand acted for the most part exactly how she would have expected a decent doctor to (or a human who'd managed to impress General Dorvaela enough to get a real commission): She seemed dedicated, efficient, with little tolerance for fools, and more than capable of and willing to defend the patients in her care. Seira had only fragmented memories of the attack on the flotilla and the Sianna's escape from it; half of them from before most of the damage control team she'd been commanding had died in the collapse of the section they'd been working in that had nearly claimed her own life as well; but she could nearly have sworn she had a choppy memory of the centurion chucking something at some pirates, then igniting it to blow the boarding party trying to get in the medbay sky-high. If it was an accurate memory, it certainly made her feel better about ever being wounded and unarmed there again herself.

As the pair entered medbay, Gable looked up, immediately assessing both - not that it took much; Seira's arm and shoulder were clearly injured. "What did you do to yourself?" she demanded, snapping her medscanner open and she strode over.

"I misjudged how much I'd be able to lift now. And went for the heaviest end of the free weights." The virdian flush was back on Seira's cheeks; though if she had to explain this particular boneheaded move, at least she probably could continue to stick with the 'reckless show off' vibe people tended to expect from pilots anyway, and thereby avoid having to also get into the various frustrations and issues with things that had led to test herself in the gym in the first place. Going over those would have been even worse; she'd rather look reckless than weak.

A storm of angry frustration crossed the Nancy's face, but it broke toward Hatham. "And you let her?" she snapped.

The big Romulans hands shot up defensively. "I wasn't involved until I heard her cry out."

Gable's jaw set, eyes snapping back to Seira. "So, you decided to test your limits without a spotter." The hand not holding the medscanner, flew up and outward in a gesture of frustration. Honestly, some days she wondered how this species survived when most of them didn't seem to get a brain until they were well past 30. "Well, you have torn muscles and a dislocated shoulder as payment for that bit of hubris. You're just lucky Hatham was there, or might have done enough damage to need further amputation and new prosthetic."

Seira's complexion did an abrupt and extreme about-face at this; going from a dusky flush to drained of all color and unnaturally pale against her dark gym clothes. That hadn't occurred to her as a possibility, and considering how long it was taking to adapt, the idea of starting over was horrifying. Not that the current state of affairs was that great, either; depending on how long this would take to heal, she'd have more explaining to do to others after this: Combat wounds, or minor accidents sparring and the like were one thing, but most commanders took a fairly dim view of anyone taking themselves out of the duty rotations for a few days through their own stupidity; whether it involved an avoidable injury, an avoidable hangover, or a stint in an alien lockup.

"Yes ma'am."" Seira finally choked out. "How long should I avoid the gym for after this?"

"3 weeks, though honestly I should ban you from it for at least 10 years," Gable answered flatly, applying a dermaplaser to the torn muscles. "But I'll allow 3 weeks providing you have a minder present to keep you from doing anything even dumber than this."

Three weeks seemed like an eternity at 23, and was lot longer than Seira had expected to hear; but she'd been sidelined a lot longer than that in the earlier stages of her recovery, so it wasn't as damning to hear as it otherwise might have been. And at least, unlike a ship underway and under cloak, there were other things to do available, with the station in play. "Am I cleared to return to duty tomorrow, ma'am?" That was a much more loaded question than the earlier one, though she managed to keep her voice level for it; if the answer was 'no', she'd probably end up having to explain herself to the command crew, which would make explaining herself to the doctor look pleasant.

As if reading the thought, Gable paused, lips pursed, holding the kid in a purgatory of waiting as she weighed the question. A glance was exchanged with Hatham; a silent consultation on appropriate recompense for a young Subleiutenent being recklessly dumb.

"Limited duty," she pronounced finally. "No flying for 5 days to be sure the tendons in this shoulder are fully healed."

“Are we…slated to be docked at the station for 5 days, sir?” Seira glanced over at Hatham for answer and hoped her voice didn’t give away her trepidation in the follow on; because ‘limited duty’ was basically just paperwork; and if they weren’t staying put, there was basically no way to avoid explaining the situation, because a Mogai class was a fairly small warbird, with a fairly limited number of anything relative to a larger class like a D’deridex, but worse, there were even fewer qualified pilots (or again much of anything else) on board this ship than was normal even for a Mogai.

Hatham gave her a knowing, and far from approving look. One that said in effect 'You made this bed. You have to lie in it'. "How long have you been with this crew, Sublieutenant? What's slated has little to do with when we may have move. Knowledge of your condition is necessary to the CO's situational awareness."

Seira avoided pointing out that the answer to his first question of how long she’d been with the crew was ‘maybe six months, tops, most of it confined to the medical bay’. Rhetorical question or not, answering it wouldn’t have done her any favors. Unfortunately, this was another area where the more limited size of the crew was working against her, because on a typical ship, she probably would have just had to explain a five day absence to her department chief - still not great - and they would cover the hole in the duty roster and handle any information further up the line. The various gaps in things here though…She’d heard one of the humans use the phrase ‘breathing air above your paygrade’ recently and after a bit of confusion as to how air had a rank, gotten him to explain it; and had to admit it was an apt descriptor for the current state of affairs.

“Yes sir.” This time, Seira returned to not adding anything else to her response; falling back on the safest option as impressed on her years ago by her older sister Miana, the first (and so far only other) officer in the family line: When in doubt, say what’s required and nothing more.

"Good." Gable nodded. "Best to tell them yourself before they see it in the medical report anyway. Now, brace yourself. I'm going to pop that shoulder back into place. Don't expect a painkiller - those are for people who get injured for reasons other than just 'young and stupid'."

It was so much exactly what she would have expected to hear a doctor say that Seira practically felt the need to check Gable's ears for a pair of hidden, cloaked points; as she instead picked a point across the room and fixed her eyes on it, managing to avoid crying out when the doctor put the joint back, but not an age-appropriate loud hiss of air like an angry cat. At least now she'd be able to change out of the gym clothes back into uniform before she went to make the report though, because she doubted showing up in her current attire - and looking sloppy in protocol - would help things.

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