Shadows of the Past

Posted on Sunday, 1 August 2021 - 11:00am by Lieutenant JG Hayashi Hamura & Lieutenant Alex Kingsley

Mission: Operation: Lazarus
Location: Science Lab | USS Standing Bear
Timeline: 2394 MD 07

ON:

Hayashi headed down to the science lab PaDD in hand. Hamura had been working on the problem that Soral had handed out and had finally figured it out. That and a meeting with the chief sci was due. Entering the lab Hamura called, "Hello?"

“Hi,” came the reply from directly behind them. Sipping from a hot chocolate as she tugged on her uniform jacket, Lieutenant Kingsley slipped by the ensign into her lab, “everything okay?”

"Yeah. I came by to discuss a few things the Trell D and...your um...probe children."

“Have you had any problems with the modifications?” Alex asked, frowning. She had only slipped away long enough to shower and grab breakfast and, last she checked, the engineers had made amazing progress.

"No but I did figure out how to ensure they come back safe and sound or at least give them a higher chance of coming back."

Alex frowned, “they are already programmed to return back to the ship if they malfunction… what else did you have in mind?”

"Just if they encounter adverse conditions. A shielding of sorts to give them a chance. Senpai mentioned how important they are and set me to task of figuring out how to make them come back even at a limp."

“That… doesn’t sound like him,” Alex admitted slowly as she ran her hand through her hair. “But we don’t have an unlimited supply so anything you can do. Just be sure any shielding doesn’t knock off the sensor calibration.”

"Actually that's where we'll need to work together. I can hook up the shielding but you'll have to help maintain calibration, if you're okay with that. I get the feeling you're not to fond of me so I can ask one of the other engineers to help if you want. As for Senpai...he'd surprise you. The man is full of surprises. Although sometimes...well he can be stubborn but it's cause of him I'm here I'll put up with a bit of stubbornness."

“If you make the modifications, I can recalibrate before they are launched,” Alex told the engineer. “It will give me something to do.”

She didn’t touch on the not fond of comment. When they first met the engineer had been interrupting a rare actual date night and whatever the whole flower in her hair thing had been about, Alex hadn’t liked it.

"Fair enough." Hamura shrugged. She was as stubborn as Senpai. Hamura set to work gently opening the probe and starting a prelim scan.

“Why do you call him Senpai?” Alex asked as she pulled herself up to sit on the edge of a workstation, watching her work. “He said you had saved his life. Several times.”

Hamura gave a nod. "Yeah well he first saved mine in more ways then one." Hamura smiled at Alex. "You up for a long story?"

"When it comes to Soral there are no other kind," Alex replied with a rueful smile, taking a long drink. "Go for it."

Hamura turned back to the probes. "Well I first met Senpai when I was a cadet. It was accidental. I was running out my frustrations and ran into him...literally. I had a chip on my shoulder so I picked a fight. I took a swing and he took a punch. He then just looked at me with that raised eyebrow and said. "Are you quite finished?" Hamura laughed. "I was so shocked. He then stared at me with these intense eyes and said no matter how far we run we can never outrun the inner self." It was like this Zen moment. I couldn't get the damn phrase out of my head. Next day I saw him meditating by the academy pond and I just sat down. Soral accepted it. We didn't talk. We came to the pond every bloody day for two weeks, his leave time, and never talked just sat there and stared at the pond and he'd fix my posture and so forth but no talking. I always felt calm after the meditation....then he left. I came back to the pond and there was no Soral but a bag of books by Shar of Vulcan...a philosopher of sorts. I ate the books up...little did I know that he was Shar of Vulcan." Hamura laughed. "Before that … I never meditated a day in my life, never thought I could."

By Shar of Vulcan... Alex stared at Hamura's back. She had one of those books herself, Soral had given it to her just yesterday. The Meditations of An Ancient. It was still on her desk... pushing that aside she managed to blurt out, "so the life saving part?"

"Right so it was a year later. I was in the final stretch we had a Cadet mission. Nobody could supervise. Of course I didn't know it then." Hamura grabbed the Sonic regulator. "Any who I wasn't doing so well. I had spiralled and was depressed as hell. I was also shocked to see Soral at the helm. He was again on leave and had agreed to take us out. He's a great engineer despite the fact that hates it. Anyway I was struck at how he'd changed, he looked bad." Hamura wiped the sweat off their brow. "That night I was passing by his office to take a report and I heard him talking with someone. It was a...curt convo but at the end he gasped and fell over. He went into full blown anxiety attack."

Alex's eyes widened. Yes, Soral was not a full bloodied Vulcan and showed his emotions more than most of his people ever did but even for him that was extreme. And given the engineer was much the same age as she was, this could not have been too long ago. "Then what happened?"

"Well I kind of came in. Just to see if all was okay but he was shaking like a leaf. There was this flood of emotions and for a Betazoid that had been numb for months it was overwhelming...then I started getting this pain in my chest..side really. I thought I was responding to his pain but...well I realized it was his pain I was feeling when I tried to haul him to a chair. I figured out quick that he was having a heart attack. There was no EMH, no doctor, the other cadets were asleep and he was the only officer on ship but for the Ensign on the bridge manning said bridge. I tried to get help but he wouldn't let me." Hamura sighed and sat back. "I was freaked out and the I sensed something weird something...that was close to home."

"I don't understand," Alex admitted. "What do you mean?"

Hamura sighed. "He wanted me to let him go. He knew his heart was failing and he wanted me to let him go. Stubborn son of a... Anyway I was shocked by a depressed Vulcan and I too had been having my dark moments so I did what any Engineer could do when faced with a medical problem."

"Which was what?" Alex prompted with a slight hint of impatience.

"I pulled out my tricorder and called up computer logs on how to diagnose a Vulcan...eventually I figured out the beat of his heart was off and used an electrical jolt pattern to get it back into rhythm. Did he say thank you? Nope he said you should have walked away. I punched him."

"You seem fond of punching him," Alex mused. "I approve."

Hamura laughed, "Only when he was being an idiot. Anyway we got to talking the next day and figured out we had a lot in common. We were both working our way through some personal demons and just feeling pretty alien in the universe. The ship outing lasted three weeks and in that time he seemed to make it his personal mission to pull me out of my funk with not a worry for himself. He became teacher guide, expert in Engineering. Hence why I call him Senpai it means 'senior' an honorific title for someone higher then you in work or experience. A guide of kinds." Hamura shrugged. "About five months after that we'd cross paths again and this time both our lives would change forever. We'd both half live and half die."

"How so?" she asked curiously. She could of course ask Soral, but would he tell her the entire story? And in their many meditations and two bondings, not once had the acting chief engineer featured. Which meant it was a part of himself he was protecting. Keeping from her like the codes for his holodeck program.

"Our first experience with Trell D. I was assigned to the ship he and Mac were serving on." Hamura looked around. "That's why this mission has him so spooked."

"What happened?"

Hamura set down the instrument in their hands and sat back. "Well the ship was under attack. I had an idea about using Trill D in a...rather interesting fashion. The CO would have none of it but Soral saw promise. He staked his reputation on it but he's Vulcan so exposure to him could be deadly. None of the other engineers would Volunteer so I did. I rigged up this holo device that turned Soral into an EMH like holo figure so we could both be in with the Trell D."

"While your ship was under attack?" Alex clarified.

"Yeah...it was not your average attack. The USS Henrich...they took our ship codes, they were controlling our ship shut down life support. We had no comms, no engines nothing."

"So what happened?"

"I managed to do something nobody could...I scanned the ship, these were no fleeters they were Vulcans. Soral was horrified but then logic kicked in. We worked for a day to get our Trell d device working. It would emit a level of radiation that would not affect our crew, but would feed back through their signals and beams and eventually it would drive them insane. There was a snag though neither of us knew that the Trell D we were working with was...a bad batch." Hamura sighed. "We were succeeding when the device turned in on us flooding the lab. I managed to lock the door so that I would be the only one affected and I figured out how to contain the … other part of unstable Trell to the room I was in. The Trell D literally shook the ship, destroyed the Henrich and knocked me out. I mean I was dying."

"And then?"

"Soral, the idiot, beamed in and lifted the beam that was on top of me, I would have died but … he linked his Katra to mine. He took a dying part of my Katra into himself and shaved years off his life. He kept me alive, breathing, and gave the medical team enough time where they saved us both."

"Sounds like Soral," Alex admitted after a long moment. "He has never uttered a word of it."

"It is not something that Vulcans talk about. In the History of Vulcan something like that has been performed only three times in their history." Hamura shrugged. "In the instant we were linking the Katras I finally understood what drew us together. Neither of us felt good enough, each saw their own birth as a mistake." Hamura blinked back tears and then shrugged. "Anyway we stayed friends, he my teacher, I the student. He was like a brother."

"He's always different around you," Alex noted. "His guard is down."

"Same for me. We have free range to read one another's mind and the bit of his Katra that I carry it allows us to communicate telepathically across vast distances." Hamura looked up at Alex. "Can I overstep here for a moment?"

Alex arched an eyebrow, "I have a feeling you will regardless."

"Soral made a vow long ago never to marry. He broke that vow because he loves you. A part of him feels not good enough to be loved by you so if he acts out a part of him is giving you a chance to do what others have done to him, leave. It is a lot to place on you." Hamura smiled. "He thinks that everyone should be loved and deserves love but him...hence his match making ways. Every time he's had love it's been turned against him and taken away so maybe...don't do that." Hamura stood. "Well! The shielding is done. Now you can calibrate."

"I don't doubt that he loves me," Alex assured Hamura as she set aside her drink. She just doubted if it was enough to withstand all the tests being thrown at them. Especially now as, the more she learned, the more she realised how much he had still kept to himself. "Thanks. I'll recalibrate this one, just let me know when the shielding is done on the rest and I'll make sure they are done ahead of the launch."

"Sounds good. Now I better go and shower and change...I must humour your husband after he's … tried so hard to match make."

"We need to launch today, so don't have too much fun," Alex reminded the engineer as she got to work. It was going to be such a long day.


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