Dinner is Served
Posted on 31 Aug 2023 @ 7:46pm by Commander Calliope Zahn & Lieutenant Commander Maurice Rubens & Chief Deputy Marshal: Ridge Steiner - FMS & Brek - Timeless Treasures Art Gallery
Mission:
M4 - Falling Out
Location: Enroute to OC: USS Cassiopeia - Main Salon
Timeline: M4 D1 1930hrs
3593 words - 7.2 OF Standard Post Measure
Along with the other compact nature of the vessel the Cassiopeia's mess hall was referred to as the Main Salon, and along with the transporter foyer was one of the largest communal areas on the ship.
It served as lounge, library, bar, dinning room and observation deck, although with no external windows the primary thing to observe was a large screen which displayed the ship’s course and progress, along with current speed and distance traveled. The sheer speed of the slipstream drive, the numbers rapidly changing over and the illuminated line gliding along the projected course could be quite mesmerizing.
Roughly rectangular in shape, on the port side were several chairs, sofas and coffee tables, a built-in bookcase with a selection of fictional and scientific journal PaDD and three desks and terminals for passenger use. On the starboard side was a bar, with a row of stools, three high-top tables and chairs, along with a matching built-in cabinet containing a variety of board and card games for passenger use.
The center of the room was dominated by a long elegant table of white and chrome, which could seat twenty-four people, more than sufficient for this trip, although sometimes they had two or three sittings, and had been set for dinner. A recessed section if the ceiling ran the length of the dinner table, it was black and set within were dozens of tiny lights depicting various constellations, the largest of which was the recognisable W shape of the five brightest stars of Cassiopeia Alpha Cassiopeiae, or Schedar, was the brightest, nearly matched by the variable Gamma Cassiopeiae, the yellow hypergiants Rho Cassiopeiae and V509 Cassiopeiae and white hypergiant 6 Cassiopeiae. A luminous outline traced out the seated form of Cassiopeia, the queen of ancient Aethiopia, who was cursed to spend her time in the stars by Posiedeon.
Passengers entered from the forward end, at the stern end of the room was a bank of replicators over a buffet table with cutlery and condiments and the entrance to a small galley and large replicators. Breakfast and lunch were generally self-service, with passengers selecting their own choices from the replicators. But dinner was usually planned as a more formal affair with a menu and service by the three ops crew who doubled as bartender, waiter and chef for a couple of hours. Although rather than cook the food the chef merely plated the various replicated courses. Vegetables and side items were also replicated but served family-style in large dishes for guests to help themselves.
Azario hovered over the table checking the place settings and ensuring he got the correct seating protocols in order so as not to offend any of the senior personnel and officials aboard.
T’Sheng, lost in thoughts, was surprised to discover that her feet had led her to the main salon. It puzzled her because she was not hungry. More than that, she cared little for food, and often saw the necessity to eat as an inconvenience. Especially so during those extremely long banquets where decisions were supposed to take place, whilst little in actual fact was ever achieved, except for the great guzzling of food and alcohol. Now that she was here, though, she found no reason to walk away. This salon was a place of beauty, and for a few seconds it took all her attention. For there was, in this room, a lavish display of efficiency, with neutral colours and no clutter whatsoever. This was an environment that suited her personality, and, as she entered, she almost smiled.
There was, by the main table, ensign Azario, the diplomatic officer. He, along with Captain Fairfax, had proven their great patience when the passengers had boarded the ship. Azario was now preparing the final details for the evening meal. She walked to that table, and gave a cursory glance to the names placing that he was doing. It pleased her to see that the ‘undesirables’, those civilians with next to no manners, had been given plenty of space, away from the diplomats.
“Ensign Azario, this is a remarkable place,” T’Sheng said, her voice perhaps a tad imperious, but that had more to do with her recent family troubles, than anything she had seen in the salon. She checked tonight’s menu on one of the PaDDs that had been placed on the table and she nodded her approval. “I see that tonight’s menu is just as excellent. Vice Admiral Harshman will be pleased to see this level of attention.”
Azario beamed widely, “Thank you Commander. It was, I believe, a compartment originally used for housing data collection equipment for monitoring the slipstream drive when the vessel was a research project. Besides Engineering, it is actually one of the largest spaces on the ship”
“This is an interesting piece of information,” T’Sheng conceded with a slight nod. “I feel sure though, that by gathering most of us here, this room will retain its original purpose of data collection. For a lot is likely to transpire around this table, I suspect. At least for those who know how to listen.”
Those words said T’Sheng sat at the table, and focused on the menu, looking like she wasn’t sure what she would eat, whilst she would obviously choose the vegetarian menu.
Ernesh was not one to be late to any meals. He was a vegetarian in great quantities and was loath to miss a single course. As such, after his own horn covering was secured and shirt buttoned, he only knocked on Gordon’s door to let him know he was answering the call for dinner now, and did not wait around for the older gentleman to straighten his collar. Gordon had assured him through the cabin door that he would be along shortly.
Looking up and around, the Grazerite took in the ceiling and the display of the wall, and his faculties began a new poem, escaping on murmured lips as he composed the first line of which was something to the effect of “The distance of stars, half reduced and half again, until one be the neighbor of another, all heavenly bodies form a single point, bent as such by drive of united will— the only remaining constant…”
“Still trailing along in Gordon’s wake trying to bring peace to the stars, Ernesh?” a staccato voice interrupted. Pak Bong-Cha gave him a tight, sharp smile capable of slicing through metal as she approached. When she’d first caught sight of the pair before they beamed up, she immediately burrowed into the crowd. The last thing she needed was crossing paths with Dae-Jung’s old crowd of diplomats, but this ship was designed to throw them together at some point. “I assumed your bloviating would have ceased with age, but I can see it has only gotten worse.”
Ernesh squinted at the little terran women and a smile grew slowly over his broad mouth. “To that which is noble there is no end, the fruit of which can only be realized long after a man is manifest in body no longer, and the greater memory of the people denied ever having known him and letting him therefore rest from his labors, here and hereafter. I see you are well in wit and acute as a hawk, as ever you were. Age skips you over in portion. Does your husband fare so well? Is Dae-Jung aboard with you?”
Bong-Cha snorted mirthlessly. “Ex-husband. If he were aboard, I’m sure one of us would have jumped out lightyears ago. Better the vacuum of space. As it is, having your ilk aboard is nearly as bad, but I can ignore you if I so choose.”
“Then, you honor me by your address, dear lady.” Ernesh responded, choosing to interpret her disdain in the positive. She wasn’t ignoring him, after all. “This life is quite difficult upon relationships, of this I am well aware. I myself have married thrice. I believe you had met Nessandra, when last we journeyed.”
“I don’t believe so. You were on wife number two; a dainty little thing. Even if she did have horns. Ah,” she saw an elegant Betazoid enter the space, “I see someone else.” With that she flew quickly from Ernesh’s side; she had paid her respects and now was on to people more interesting: J’Lainie Xeri.
Of everyone attending so far, J’Lainie’s classic Betazoid dinner dress was the most complex and colorful, a shimmering riot of folds and tucks, it flounced with each one of her steps. “Pak Bong-Cha? I knew I sensed a kindred soul! Didn’t I say there was a friend here among all that ruckus, Irwin?”
Irwin said nothing in support, as he hadn’t recalled her saying anything about it. But he had learned some time ago that J’Lainie often believed she had proclaimed things that perhaps she had only thought to herself, if at all. He merely smiled.
“Everything has been so marvelously topsy turvy!” J’Lainie proclaimed, grasping Bong-cha’s elbows and miming a couple of world class greeting stage kisses. “You must have heard the wonderful news!”
“News?” Ever since she found out that her only daughter had run off with that Rubens, she’d been entirely focused on calling in favors and arranging to bring her back. Bong-Cha had missed more than a few social engagements because of it; the thought of it made her grind her teeth.
“Ibis is found!” J’Lainie cried.
“Found?” Bong-Cha clapped her hands to her face in genuine surprise. Everyone - her included - had thought J’Lainie was simply grieving when she refused to acknowledge that her missing daughter was dead. “Amazing! Where?”
“Oh, out passed some belt or another—”
“Aurellian, dear,” Irwin Xeri interjected.
“Yes, that’s the one, past the Aurellian Belt, on some goddess forsaken planet almost entirely made up of water. I said she should never have gone into Starfleet. Oh how I begged her! Didn’t I beg her?”
“Most emphatically.” Irwin did recall that being the case, and attested to it promptly.
“What can you do when they simply must have their own way? I failed Ibis. I couldn’t convince her! But you’ve done so well with dear Moon. She’s still working in stage? ”
Bong-Cha’s smile dipped ever so slightly at the question, “Mmm. She’s in-between jobs at the moment. But I’m helping her, as a mother should. Oh, young man!” She waved down Ensign Azario who was lingering near the door. “Are there assigned seats for dinner?”
“Ah, yes madam” He gestured towards the table and the small embossed name cards at each seat. As an unconnected civilian, without known links to the senior officers or the politicians, she had been placed towards the middle of the table.
Although only a Lieutenant, Fairfax was the vessel’s Captain and so took the head seat, to his right would be Harshman, to the left Stillwell, then alternating would be T’Sheng and Emesh-Ibrin, then Van Der Lear, and Dr Leandra-Deboer, opposite Mr and Mrs Xeri, then Lieutenant Nestor. Next were the civilians Pak Bong Cha, Honor Ncube, Ara and Kreca.
Azario and Haskell were last, partly so Azario could help with service and Haskell, if an officer was needed elsewhere.
The Ferengi had been among the last to make it to the Main Salon, not because they weren’t sure whether they should attend, but because it had taken Ara no less than 45 minutes to select a pair of shoes (bright yellow slip-on loafers) which she thought would be appropriate for this grand occasion: a meal shared with other species. A meal, also, where gender discrimination would not be shoved into their face. This, to Ara, meant the whole universe.
As the majority of passengers took their seats Azario and two of the Operations crewmen began circulating menus and taking orders.
As she took her place at the table, followed dutifully by Kreca, Ara reflected on the words she had grasped, here and there. Someone had, somehow, been found, and someone else was between jobs. This, to her, suggested idleness. A Hewmon concept. Although whenever women were concerned, work was never a simple thing, for Ferenginar wasn’t the only planet to undervalue their women. It irked her though, and because she had never been quiet in her life, Ara said what was on her mind.
“Ms Pak, you will say that I am intruding, and you would be right, but I simply need to ask: what does it mean, exactly, to be between jobs? It is a concept I’m not familiar with.”
Bong-Cha didn’t particularly like Ferengi. Crude in manners and with deplorable fashion sense (This one had on bright yellow slippers! At Dinner!), there wasn’t much to recommend. “She’s in the arts, when one job ends she usually is reviewing offers for the next,” she said with a sickly sweet tone. “But she did take a little time to go to Obsidian Command. Research, I’m sure.”
Ara stared at the Hewmon woman, whose ethnic group she couldn’t quite place. She wasn’t one of the boring whites, that was for sure. “I’d say, anything with the word ‘Command’ in it, is great ground for research. This is why my good friend, Kreca,” she indicated the young Ferengi woman in front of her, “who is also an artist, is going. On our side, the research is all done. We are picking up a husband. So I guess one could say we are going shopping!” Next she grabbed a menu, and moments later announced rather loudly: “I’ll have everything. From beef, to cheese!”
A crewman filling water glasses stopped to respond to a question.
“How big would you say, are the turnips the Tellerites have bred?” Ernesh asked of one of the crewmen. The crewman demonstrated forming a ring with both of his hands. “Very good, I should like the salad, pile it high, if you please, and three of the stuffed turnips, if it isn’t much trouble.” As he returned his menu, Ernesh was slightly concerned that Ambassador Stillwell was going to miss ordering his meal.
But just as Ernesh thought it, the Ambassador slipped into his assigned seat, had a glance at a menu and said simply, “The soup and the fish, my good man.”
“How is it you are always arriving just when we’re to be seated?” Ernesh asked, his voice low, but the rumble was hard to mask in a whisper.
Gordon chuckled and whispered back. “It’s a skill I’ve honed.”
Meanwhile, along the table another voice was raised towards the crewmen waiting on them. “I should like the soup and pork,” Irwin Xeri declared, but before he could hand over the menu, his wife slapped him in the arm.
“You can’t order that!”
“Is there something preventing me, my dear?”
“Don’t you recall? Ibis!” J’Lainie reminded him. “She’s a vegetarian!”
“We don’t know that she still practices that. Heavenly Sisters know what she’s had to consume to survive. Besides,” Irwin shook his head. “Ibis isn’t eating it.”
“We'll be staying with her, so you should get into the habit of eating vegetarian.”
Irwin pursed his lips in thought, considering how to placate his wife's odd demand. “A compromise then. I shall have the soup, and the fish, as it’s what I imagine my daughter, who is not present at this table but being a survivor castaway on an oceanic world, would deign to eat if she in fact were present. Seeing as that’s now a dictate of this meal.”
“Only the vegetable options for me!” J’Lainie sing-songed decisively.
Azario waited patiently while the couple settled their discussion, nodded and went off to fetch their first course,
Soon enough meals were flowing as the trio began delivering plates to the table. Although for Ara one of them brought a tray with both the consume and the salad.
Ara observed the dishes that had been brought to her. Here and there, she lifted the food with a fork, as if she had any idea what a cosomé, an Andorian Pollock, or a Tellarite turnip should be cooked. Everything looked rich and splendid though, and this satisfied her. Obviously she wouldn’t be able to eat all that she had ordered. She sampled a few items here and there. She would have complained, had she found that the slightest morsel was insipid or stale. But everything she tried was nice. Either sweet, spicy or tangy. In fact, the only thing she wanted to criticize was the fact that Kreca had only ordered a salad.
Back near the head of the table, Gordon surveyed his soup with a careful turn of the plate. He took in the waft of the flavorful broth on the air and touched a hand to the side of the bowl to gauge the temperature.
“Captain Fairfax,” Gordon said, “You have a fine ship here. It reminds me of my time traveling aboard the USS Yamamoto. She was the fastest ship in the fleet in her day. They served fine dinners for four weeks before we reached our destination on the far side of the border with the Cardassian Union. It was a nice chance to reflect and to prepare ourselves for the mediations on Pelat III. Back then, we had to prepare ourselves for the very real possibility that upon showing up, the conditions of the situation might be far removed from those we had set out to first address. But if there is something to regret about the advancement in propulsion technologies now, it’s that we have but this one meal over which to build an understanding.” Gordon was well aware that while he addressed Fairfax, his true audience was in the Admiral sitting across the table from him. She had seemed to arrive in much the same subtle manner as he had, circumventing the pre dinner conversation, and taking her seat with no preamble.
“It seems with technological advancement, that a lot of things come down to trade offs,” Seth agreed. “We multiply our reach and miss everything that we speed right past. Still, I wouldn’t want to be plugging along to Obsidian Command for two weeks on a warp ship just for the company. No offense, Ambassador.”
Gordon took his first sip of soup from his spoon and looked over it at Admiral Harshman. “I see they are still turning out wise young officers at the Academy,” he complimented, knowing that she had little appreciation for the greenhorn.
“Don’t over inflate his ego, Ambassador. He may command, but he’s little more than a glorified school bus driver,” Harshman flatly replied, tucking her napkin onto her lap and plunged her spoon into her soup without little thought to how it smelled. She’d never really been a ‘foody.’ “We’ll see what he’s made of if he ever takes command of a real Federation starship. My first command came during the Dominion War. If I could have had a ship that traveled as fast as this, lives would have been saved and whole worlds left untouched by war. As far as I’m concerned there are no tradeoffs to this technology.”
“That’s one possibility.”
“Enlighten me, please.”
“It’s possible, with such rapid response and enforceable embargos, Cardassia could have become an isolated power, the support for the military regime further legitimized in the eyes of her people by the swift cut off of her resources. The Cardassian Empire may then have become too calcified for the foment of its own change. It could have become a pressure cooker with far worse consequences when their own technology caught up.”
“Ambassador, I bow to your logic of what-ifs,” Harshman dabbed her mouth with her napkin.
“We each see through our own lenses, Admiral,” Gordon conceded equally, knowing that his career and Harshman’s had been under different directives, fulfilling different roles.
Fairfax made sure his mouth was too full to politely be available for comment on the exchange between the two influential giants of statecraft and militia, though his eyes tracked the conversation like a high stakes sports match.
“The past,” said Gordon, “is a game of armchair critique for the hindsight—”
Ernesh could only grunt in agreement as another line of poetry occurred to him while Gordon spoke. He was masticating on the salad, however, and was unavailable to endorse or embellish.
“ — As for the present,” Gordon continued, “It may be that what you say is true, in this instance anyway. This trip being so express may allow for an early mitigation before the trouble metastasizes.”
“On that note, I think we should talk a little…” Harshman leaned closer to Gordon to make some quieter points, her words lost in the general humdrum of the dining room.
T’Sheng had been cutting her turnips with surgical precision during the conversation between Harshman and Stillwell. She had not enjoyed the field reporter’s little lecture about the past. Still, what mattered was that the present and their imminent arrival at Obsidian Command. There, they would be able to dispel any illusions that the two Korinn refugees might have about the Fleet and its participation in Korinn’s affairs...
