Better Homes and Quarters

Posted on Mon Nov 23rd, 2015 @ 6:54pm by Captain Charybdis MacGregor

0 words; about a 1 minute read

Mission: Taking Chances
Location: USS Bonne Chance, Deck Five, Lt. Charybdis' quarters
Timeline: 2265
Tags: bonnechance

Requisition: Lt. Charybdis, Deck 5, Port Stern 13

(4) pillows, large (Starfleet standard pillows 20 cm X 79 cm roll)
(1) additional bed linens, any color
(1 each, all 11 X 17) printout files 3437t10 38yrc0v74hthnd xygbeuhndtt0vwhhy4d landscaped, technicolor; t1y3g0174g2774hcy2y 40ch07191yd portrait, technicolor
(3) .5 liter can aerosol spray chrome
(10) Blank tape data cards
(1) tricorder recharger station
(1) spare tricorder battery
(2) blue female lieutenant uniform tops, size L
(3) pair blue uniform briefs, size 6
(3) pair black tights, size Q
(1) pair uniform boots, f size 7
(1) box feminine hygiene option T

The quartemaster of the USS Bonaventure stroked his chin throughtfully... some of this list was pretty standard from a Science officer coming aboard. But some of it... Senior Chief Petty Officer K'Liver had never known an incoming young officer to request printouts of files from the tape library. Spray chrome? That was usually a request from Engineering, not a personal requisition from an incoming officer... who was currently relieved of duty? The Senior Chief snorted... this list made a lot of sense, now. He tapped a stylus against his large and calloused knuckles, then ran a hand over his bald, dark brown head.

Best to go have a chat with this one in person and see just what wild project she had in mind that she thought she needed all this from the ship's stores. Besides, it would give him a chance to feel her out and see just what sort of officer she was...



The tiny screen was a nuisance, but it was what was available, so Charybdis was spending her time in front of it giving herself eyestrain. And when she got bored, she just switched over to a tape of an old Earth vid. She'd been confined to quarters plenty during her Academy days, so she was excellent at budgeting and utilizing the time, and part of what she spent it on was recreation. After so many hours of studying the mind simply refused to accept new information, because it got bored. So she would take a break and do something fun.

She had fully unpacked her belongings, and her quarters were beginning to look a bit more like a reflection of their occupant. On the shelf above her bed she had placed a modern hammered bronze statue of the two faces of Janus, which she had bought on a trip to Greece while in the Academy. It was mounted on a solid marble base, so it was sturdy and she liked having him watch over her while she slept.

A statue of Apollo, the god of beauty was a classic sculpture of ancient Earth that she had bought on the same trip... he was beautiful to her eye, and he stood reaching for a branch with a beautiful maiden doing the same. It was a reproduction of Lorenzo Bernini's famous 'Apollo and Daphne' statue, which was inspired by one of the stories included in Ovid's Metamorphoses. The original sculpture currently resided in the Galleria Borghese in Rome, which she found amusing. This reproduction was made of starship-grade aluminum that was cast in the color of the marble, so while it was not as heavy as stone, it was incredibly sturdy. Starships had a tendency to lurch this way and that from time to time, and it was hard to keep anything delicate in one piece when that happened. Thus many art dealers catered to those looking for classical interpretations made from incredibly sturdy materials.

Such was not the case with her Hula Girl, which she had picked up in a specialty joke shop in Seattle. The sly smile and simple comedy of the ukelele-paying figurine appealed to Charybdis, and she had set the small toy, around the same size as her hand from fingertip to palm, on her desk, where she occasionally tapped it to make her wobble, which never failed to make her smile.

In her bathroom she had unpacked her toiletries... her hairbrush, a plastic and rayon affair that she had purchased on Earth from an exclusive and ancient vendor known as Sak's of Fifth Avenue. It had served her well for a number of years now, and as she used it to care for her hair, so too did she care for the brush, grooming it almost like a pet. She had brought aboard her own face cloth and body scrubber... both were of a brand of which she was fond, and were hard to find out in the outer reaches of the galaxy, but she considered them integral to her mental health. Likewise, a cute zippered red velvet case that housed the manicure kit she had bought on the same shopping expedition was critical to her... she did not chew her nails much any more, save when very stressed, but she did occasionally need to trim them back or file them down a bit. Plus her boots fit far better with weekly toenail trimmings, she had found.

On the shelf next to her bed was just one object, a reproduction of an item known as a 'perfume atomizer'. It was a bulb of vulcanized rubber that acted as a bellows with a self-sealing one-way valve to a chamber that held perfume, and by virtue of squeezing the bulb, perfume would mist out of the nozzle. It was ingenious, and she was delighted to find it in Paris on one of her vacations around Earth. The decanter that formed the base was wide and bulbous, and while it appeared to be filigreed glass, it was, of course, transparent aluminum. Again... starships were no place for easily breakable keepsakes.

The scent inside was a cloying floral scent that she found particularly intoxicating, which always garnered her a great number of compliments when she wore it, so she would spray it over her bedding from time to time. The name of the product never failed to make her giggle, whether she was recalling it or explaining it to someone who had asked. "Pon farr... he won't be able to control himself when you come to him in... Pon farr! A signature scent from the Harry Mudd collection."

With her quarters now somewhat arranged, she had envisioned what else she would like to do with them and sent in her requisitions. And in the meanwhile, during a study break she was letting her mind unwind a bit.

In this case, she was watching Cid Charisse in The Band Wagon, a vid of a play from one of Earth's cultural centers in what looked like the nineteenth or twentieth centuries. When the club number started, she turned the monitor, got up from her chair and started emulating the dance moves onscreen. She couldn't replicate all of them, because they were intended to be performed with a partner, but she could still follow most of the steps and some of the choreography. As she danced around her quarters, her face slowly set in a mask of pure, logical concentration, even as her precision emulation of the dance moves onscreen became more and more perfect.

This was the activity that she was engaging in when her door chime sounded, and it snapped her out of her reverie quite suddenly. She stopped dancing quite suddenly, though her momentum carried her and she ended up sprawled across the floor in a curvaceously ungainly heap.

Suval. Just perfect... he had to show up while I was capering around like a fool, of course. "Just a moment!" she shouted, and scrambled into her bedroom to pull on a uniform top. She was already wearing a tied off workout top and her uniform briefs, and she started to the door when she remembered the boots. She grabbed them and dropped into her desk chair, wrestling into them as fast as she could manage. Without the tights she would still be out of uniform, but if she could stay seated then he might not notice. Either way she was relieved of duty, so she was excused from being in uniform. She arranged some of her effects on her desk, then just laced her fingers in front of her on the desk and sat up straight.

"Come in!" she called... and realized that the privacy locks had to be disengaged from this side of the door. She hung her head for a second... so much for him not noticing the tights... and as she moved to stand up, the door whooshed open anyway.

Standing in the doorway was a Tellarian male in perhaps his mid fifties or early sixties. His skin was dark brown, like burnished wood, and while there was sparse hair on his cranium, he peered out at her from under some rather prodigious and wiry bushy white eyebrows. His dark brown eyes appeared to be nearly black, and ever alert, they took in the entire room with a few quick darting glances. He opened his short burly arms, showing his rough and calloused palms, which were considerably lighter than the rest of his skin, and his face split in a smile.

"Leiutenant Charybdis, I believe?" he asked, angling his short but stout build a bit, as if to enter, then looking at her questioningly.

"Yes... yes, that's me. Please do come in Senior Chief... can I get you a chair?"

"That'd be nice of you. Thank you, Lieutenant." He ambled slowly inside as she went to stand and had to unstick herself from her chair. Once again, her unhosed thighs demonstrated the wisdom of the uniform and as she made her way back to her bedroom to fetch the spare chair, the Senior Chief chuckled. He'd seen that problem once or twice in his day...

When she returned with a chair she set it down opposite her desk and then strolled back to the other side of the desk. She paused and turned, eyes narrowing. "To what do I owe the pleasure, Senior Chief?"

Senior Chief K'liver answered simply, "Quartermaster."

Her face lit up almost immediately, and she smiled as she sat down on the edge of her desk. "Ahhhh, you got my requisitions and now... hmmm... " She watched his face, looking for clues as she hypothesized. "You want to know why I have asked for some of the items that I've requested... or I've exceeded my allotments... or I've lost my commission and I'm being sent to the enlisted ranks. Am I close?"

The sturdy man laughed, a deep throaty laugh, and shook his head. "No, no ma'am... as long as I know you aren't being sent to my tender mercies just yet, and you haven't exceeded any allotments so far. But there are some items I would like to ask just why you feel you need them...?"

Charybdis tapped the classic hula girl doll on her desk and watched it wobble for a second with a smile, then she looked at the Quartermaster with a gentle smile. "Absolutely, Senior Chief. I appreciate you taking an active interest, and making sure that I am not wasting Starfleet resources. And it means a lot to me that you came yourself... for the new Lieutenant in town that's quite an honor."

Just that fast he switched gears on her. "Flattery won't get you very far, Lieutenant. So, should we go over the list?"

"Absolutely, Senior Chief. Happy to. The first item..." she began, but he cut her off.

"The first item I wanna know about is three cans of spray chrome. What exactly do you plan to do with all of that?" His entire demeanor had changed- he was no longer leaning back, instead leaning forward and ready to bolt to his feet at any second. His 'friendly Grandpa' voice had become a no-nonsense demand for answers, and his expression left no doubt that there would be no arguing with him.

"There is a mirror hung on the wall over the chest of drawers in my bedroom, Senior Chief. I was going to take it down, send it back to Ships' Stores and cover the wall in that spot with spray chrome. This way it couldn't fall or be damaged should the gravity lurch."

Not a bad idea, actually, K'liver thought to himself. "That wouldn't take one can, forget about three cans. What were you gonna do with the rest, Lieutenant?"

She blushed a bit jade at that and looked down, and her voice was not quite so clear and concise. "I was actually going to use it to paint the ceiling in my bedroom, and above my desk... and maybe a few spots on the floor."

The old sailor looked at her blankly for a moment, then shook his head. "You like lookin' at yourself that much, Lieutenant...?"

"Well, it would make the space seem bigger, and... " She began as he looked around, taking in the spacious quarters. "Um, and I could do light reflection experiments in my quarters..." He raised an eyebrow at that, and she rolled her eyes and held up her hands. "Okay, yes, I admit it... I really am that vain, Senior Chief," she admitted with a sigh.

Rather than react to that, the Quartermaster pressed on. "Four pillows, Lieutenant? I see you have one already... some reason that you need four? Your bed just not comfortable enough for you?" From where he was sitting she looked like she didn't need much of a mattress either, but he was keeping that opinion to himself.

Nodding, she held out her hands. "Yes, Senior Chief... I mean, no Senior Chief. My bed is fine and amazingly comfortable... it's just that I tend to sleep holding onto a pillow as well..."

"I see that on that unmade rack behind you."

"Yes, Senior Chief. I made that with some spare linens... I just sleep better that way. And I've been memorizing engineering blueprints so I got a little lazy about cleanup today, so-"

He cut her off again. "And the other three?"

She sat down behind her desk in the chair and tucked one leg beneath her, then turned a bit side ways, then tucked her other leg beneath her indian-style. "When I sit in my chair in my quarters working, when there is no one else around and I do not have to insure that I am comporting myself like an officer and I am just on my own time, then I shift and sit a lot of ways. And honestly it is just a very uncomfortable chair for that. Plus if I am not wearing my full uniform, my thighs and back stick to it, and that's uncomfortable too. So I was going to pad it with a few spare pillows and wrap in in a linen... use it for a dropcloth for painting then turn it inside out and wrap it over the chair to upholster it."

May have been a Vulcan who smiled, but she was just as long winded as the rest of them. Not a bad process and use of resources, at least. "So if I give you a spare battery, why do you need a tricorder recharging station?"

"Oh! Well, that's actually just trying to be efficient, Senior Chief," she expressed with a smile. "I can see I am going to be spending a lot of time analyzing data at my desk here, as my workstation, and I'll probably be using my tricorder to do a lot of things here, so... I thought a recharging station would be efficient because I could be using it while it charges, and a spare battery was... well, that was me just being over-prepared, I guess."

"Uh huh. Ten data cards, Lieutenant? 10 trilobytes of information you might need?" Even as he asked the question he saw the colorful data cards scattered across her desk... while she might be a little sloppy about it, this one was obviously just as intent on knowing everything as every other ambitious junior officer... particularly the pointy-eared varieties who often managed it.

"Yes, Senior Chief. I am going to need those and more in time, but for now I thought ten would probably be about right to keep me going for a while." No rationalization, no arguments, just stating it simply and factually. Interesting, thought K'liver.

"Uniforms?"

"I got one when I came aboard with my proper rank, Senior Chief. I accidentally destroyed it working in the sensor bays down in Engineering, so I recycled it and now I need more. Three is well within the requisition allotment for Starfleet officers..." She wasn't confrontational in delivering her answer, but she did state it matter-of-factly.

"Boots?"

"Scuffed from climbing around in those bays and no longer up to uniform code."

"Prints?"

"Decor. Quarters, regs allowed, within allotment."

They were coming down to the wire. He paused and waited for the wisecrack about feminine hygiene products, but it hung unspoken in the air. He rose, all cheerful smiles and gentle demeanor once again.

"Thank you for taking the time to explain all of that to me, Lieutenant. I appreciate that you were willing, and that you were honest about it."

"No, thank you Senior Chief. In the future if you like I will bring any odd requisitions to you personally so that if an explanation should have accompanied it I can provide it on the spot."

"You don't have to do that Lieutenant, but I wouldn't say no to a visit."

"Absolutely, Senior Chief. You can count on an occasional visit," Charybdis said with a smile, as she stood to usher the stout fellow out of her quarters.

When the door whooshed closed, she put her back to the wall and slid down it a bit. Hard to say how that had gone... but the smile at the end may or may not have been a good sign. Time would tell. The one thing she had maintained was that when dealing with an NCO, particularly a senior NCO, respect was tantamount. Outranking him in theory and attempting to use that privilege was something to be used sparingly if ever at all... an old Chief at Starfleet Academy had taught her that, and she had never forgotten it. She hoped she had given this one the proper respect.



Senior Chief Petty Officer K'Liver returned to his Quartermaster's office, only to be greeted by a cup of sweet and creamy coffee from Chief Carver. "So?"

The tellurite chuckled as he eased into his seat. "Well, her temper ain't what they claim it to be... she didn't get pissy with me at all, and it ain't because she's scared 'a me. And she knows the difference between a chief and a senior chief... never slipped once. She's got a few screwy ideas, but she has a few good ones, too. She was respectful and she was honest and she passed up the wisecrack I expected. Gimme that list, let's decide what to send her..."


The message popped up on her screen as Charybdis was testing her checklist of the Engineering control panel reboot sequences a few hours later. Got to do something about these tiny screens, she mused even as she considered that a simple magnifier placed a few inches in front of it would solve the problem and make the screens appear relatively huge. The Quartermaster had a package for her in the ship's stores... which meant that it was time to go fetch it.

She pulled the stylus out from behind her ear, pulled on her full uniform and brushed her hair out, making herself presentable before going to see the Senior Chief.


At the Ship's Stores, the Senior Chief was not there... instead it was a different human chief who had a no-nonsense attitude and a brusque expression. He set the package on the counter, then insisted going over the manifest to check the items off. Her uniform requisitions had all been approved, as had her hygiene products. The tricorder recharge station had been approved, though there was no spare battery. 2 blank data cards were in the package, as well as two 11 X 17 prints- she was excited, because while she had not gotten all of what she asked, the Quartermaster had disbursed the Space 1999 "Eagle 1 in flight" print that she had asked for as well as a sunset over the Louisiana bayou that she found to be haunting and beautiful. One would go behind her desk, and one would go in her bedroom.

There was one spare set of linens... and one spare pillow. No aerosol spray chrome, unsurprisingly.

She scribbled a note of thanks to the Senior Chief, and double-time trotted back to her quarters with a broad grin on her face and a spring in her step.

 

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