Post 231: Let's Get Kraken

Stardate:70618.2015
Title: Let's Get Kraken
Author: Lair Kellyn
Scene: Main Engineering
Time: Following "To the Depths"
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"Died?" Xhian exclaimed, in a manner more animated than Kellyn had seen him before. "That was not in the report that I read."

"The story gets complicated past that point, Xhian. You don't mind if I call you Xhian, do you? Ensign gets old right quick."

"As you wish. You are my superior, you may call me what you like."

"I'm your crewmate, Xhian. I'm not anybody's superior anything."

"But in rank, you,"

"Junior," Kellyn groaned. "This is gonna be a long climb if you take everything I say so literally. I'm making a friendly gesture. Please let me. You're Xhian, and I'm Kellyn. Okay?"

"It would not be appropriate for me to address a superior officer by their first name." Xhian insisted as they reached their destination and Kellyn began to forcibly yank wires out of a wall panel that was blackened from the heat of the earlier overload.

"Maybe not when we're in front of the whole crew. But we're working in a Jeffries tube. It's gonna get smaller and smaller as the hours go on. Hydrospanner."

Xhian handed her the requested tool without speaking. He was already two steps ahead in his mind of the next logical actions she would take and had removed the tools that he anticipated she would next ask for from the kit.

"You may call me Xhian, if it pleases you. I was more accustomed to answering to my designation, two of eight. The individual name, it is still growing on me even years after it was given me." Xhian remarked.

Kellyn opened her mouth to ask for another tool, but shook her head instead as she saw he was already handing the needed item to her.

"Well, Xhian. You're good, I'll tell you that. Here, hand me my whole tool kit, and then you get started running the new wires from this terminal to the one at junction 87 alpha over there."

"Yes, Sir." Xhian began to replace the wiring with stunning speed.

Kellyn stopped a moment to take the first round of reports from the other teams- so far so good. Everything was proceeding apace.

With five minutes until the next call was due she got back to work.

"Can I ask you a question?"

"If you like."

"How old were you? When you were taken by the Borg?"

A hundred memories flashed through Xhian's mind in the instant after she asked him the question, yet he was unable to focus on and isolate any one of them to give a precise answer.

"Young." He replied. If she'd asked him about anything else he could give her an exact answer down to the most intricate detail. But when it came to his assimilation, his memories were clouded.

"Must be hard. To come back, to make friends. To rebuild your life on your own. Someone very close to me was once assimilated by the Borg and lived to tell. Yet even with my help and that of all his friends, it took everything he had inside to make it back. I admire your courage."

She wired up yet another energy bypass relay to the panel before her and then started on the next.

"There is nothing to do," Xhian replied softly, "but rebuild."

"Well, if it makes you feel any better at all, I believe that you're going to have a great career, and a great life ahead of you. Just take it a day at a time, and build a circle of support you can count on. If you need to talk to someone who has been through a similar experience, I could arrange it."

"You're still close with the person you speak of?" Xhian asked. "The one who was assimilated?"

"You might say that." Kellyn replied, turning her wrench three times to the right before looking back at Xhian over her shoulder and flashing him a smile. "I married him."

She finished and surveyed the work they'd done. "Well, it might look like the Technicolor squid from Hell in here, but that's one junction down, twenty seven to go."

"Technicolor?"

"C'mon, Mr. X." Kellyn said, gathering up her tools. "Let's keep moving."

"Lt. Commander Lair," Xhian spoke again as they settled in at the next junction and began to rip out another set of fried wires. "How did your husband escape the Borg? Did Starfleet come to his rescue?"

He asked because if true, this would be in stark contrast to the way he'd been saved, having been found by a child at the sight of a crashed ship.

"Nope." Kellyn replied, yanking out another handful of dead wire. "I did."

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Lt. Commander Lair Kellyn
Acting Chief Engineer
USS Independence NCC-90791