| ==/\==Deck 8==/\== Aayla was up unusually early today to start her running. She started on deck 4 and made her way down through the jeffries tubes towards stellar cartography as a means of excercise. She was speeding down one of the jeffries tube's ladders and heard an "OW" as her boots hit a hard object.
Jade doubled over and smashed against the wall of the Jeffries tube juncture. He winced as he felt the area around his left shoulder. There would be a bruise, but nothing was cracked or broken. He shook the pain away and looked up to see who had collided with him.
"Hi. I'm Jade. And I'm solid."
Aayla smiled. She hadnt done so in a while. chef might have been Greilia'llia's cook if she could do this to a person Aayla thought. "I'm Cadet Aayla bree-Shore Bre'accoria, Head Stellar Cartographer and Head of Astrometrics." Aayla replied to the young human below her.
Jade blinked a moment before cracking his back. He didn't feel good now, but it helped later.
"Wow. That whole thing is your name, huh?" He shrugged. Names were curious things he thought, but shook the philosophical nonsense from his mind for the time being.
"So Stellar Cartography got downsized quite a bit a see," he said, motioning to the confined space of the Jeffries Tube junction. "What's with the flight?"
"Sir?" Aayla asked at his curious arangement of words.
Jade blinked a moment.
"You know...you're head of Stellar Cartography, but you're here in the Jeffries Tubes instead of Astrometrics...kind of a joke or something. So...what are you doing here?"
"I'm getting to Astrometrics, I'm not due till o'eight hundred." Aayla replied.
"Right...so you're just...exploring?" He laughed his question off as nothing. Strange people were on this ship, it seems, though he really had little room to talk.
"So you're a cadet? I imagine I am not that much newer to the ship than you are. How long have you been serving here?" He found this cadet curious but dreaded her job. What a headache.
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"Since the QF rendevous. And you?" Aayla asked.
"I've been gone a long, long time and only just returned. I'm probably the newest man on this ship. It's good to be home...if this really is home. Doesn't feel like it yet. Too many new faces." He thought back a moment to the Warrior. His home for so many years.
Aayla stopped to think a moment. "Your Jade Falcon arent you? Word on the ship is that you dispeared for three years." Aayla stated.
He grinned when she had managed to successfully come up with his name. "So once again my reputation precedes me. Story of my life, it would seem. Yes, I am him, and I was quite missing."
"Wasnt it for your child or something?" Aayla asked.
Nodding, "yeah it was. Kidnapped. Had to track her down. Took a few years and my being listed as dead, again, but I found her. Her name is Seraphim."
Aayla nodded. "Lovely name, sounds Risan or Betazoid, how did she get kidnapped anyway. I dont see any point in kidnapping a random starfleet officers daughter." Aayla said as she looked around and tried to find the correct jefferies tube.
Dodging the first half of the question, be chuckles as he speaks. "You might say I'm quite a character. Nothing random about me except, perhaps, for my behavior. Or at least that is what many a counselor has written about me. Needless to say there was an agenda behind it."
"May I ask what sort of agenda?" Aayla asked as she found the jeffries tube.
"It was personal," he said, lowering his voice. "It involved some rather disreputable characters who were not above terrorizing the innocent to settle wrongs they felt had been done to them."
It didnt take a telepath to know tha Jade didnt want to talk about it. "Well it's my expeirence that nothing ever comes from the mention of loves we've had." Aayla said in a normal yet criptic tone.
He nodded, wondering if he understood. "Nothing good ever comes from the crowd I used to roll with. Best I stay here in Starfleet. Keep myself out of trouble." His gloved fingers ran their way through his hair again - the way he fidgeted.
Aayla decided not to ask the follow up question and nodded her head. "May I ask what your doing in a jeffries tube, commander?"
He laughed when she asked what he was doing. It seemed to be something many of the crew did but not many talked about. It wasn't even scandalous. "Just trying to get away for a bit, and get a little exercise at the same time."
Aayla nodded. "I'd like to get away once in a while, but my present situation doesnt allow that." Aayla said as she ducked her head inside the jeffries tube.
A brow lofted as he listened, curious. "And what present situation would that be that doesn't allow you to get away? I can't imagine you love your work so much that you'd neglect your other desires."
Aayla choked up for a moment and turned around. "My people are at war Commander!" Aayla said in a choked up and emotional tone.
Well that certainly explained it, he thought to himself. "Are they now? I had no idea. Haven't been in the neighborhood recently and no one has told me anything about the current goings on of foreign affairs."
"Do you have specific loved ones fighting?" He was no stranger to war, having fought in both Romulan Wars as well as a few other minor border disputes. He had witnessed war largely through the Heads-up Display of a fighter, however. Though he'd done a fair amount of less than justifiable deeds it was his sister, Aria, who was the real expert on war on the battlefield.
"I'm the only one is Starfleet that knows and yet I have no reason to. My brother is on the other side of Romulan space, my father is a senator and I never knew my mother." Aayla said as she pushed up against the jeffries tube wall. "The classic story of an eye for an eye, the story of the Vree and the Kree."
Jade nodded, understanding the motivations all too well. "I see. I've never been able to understand what drives people to such actions based on those motivations. Perhaps because so many people have come after me under similar circumstance. An eye for an eye. What nonsense."
"I think the question is Commander, what drives a whole civilization to justify those motives." Aayla said as she brushed the bandage tails from her face even though she could see perfectly regardless.
Jade thought a moment. He was no sociologist but he had his own theories on why people did what they did. "They are too stupid to realize why they are even doing anything. They get their actions caught up with words like and "honor". Who has that ever saved? No one. It's a fools errand, I'd imagine. Most wars are. They are never planned right."
"Yes Commander but when the day is done and a victor is decided, you can only take small comfort in that." Aayla replied.
"Then I suppose there is nothing you can do but to hope for a swift conclusion." Jade wasn't sure what the politics behind this apparent rivalry were but it sounded like these conflicts were frequent but short.
Aayla shook her head. "No thats not how it works with blood fudes, one species can never be at rest as long as the other is still alive. And the Vree and the Kree are no different, and I fear that our war will never end."
Jade blinked at this. Blood feuds were something foreign to him. He had dealt with grudges, sure. People he had wronged in the past never forgot that and have periodically come back to try and hurt him in return, but this idea of a <i>blood</i> feud was new.
"Then it seems the solution is clear."
"Extinction." Aayla muttered.
"For at least one of the two parties involved," he replied. His lack of empathy towards the situation wasn't on purpose. He really had no way of relating. His friends, the few he had, had returned from war quite alive, and he had had no love for his sister until recently.
"Or both." Aayla stated.
"No reason to be pessimistic," he replied. "I'm told driving a race to extinction is hard to do. Two suffering the same fate is twice as unlikely. But I am no expert. That is left for bigger minds than mine, I suppose. Take comfort then in the fact that you are here, and not on some plane of battle fighting a pointless war."
"No we started down this path long ago and only now does it reach it's climax." Aayla informed.
"Such a shame. Wars of this nature make both sides weak and open to outside invasion. I'm sorry who have to sit and watch.
"Thats the thing about their war, last time they went at it the Cardassian's tried to conquer the Vree and were utterly defeated in two weeks." Aayla stated as a matter of fact.
"Ah the Cardassians. What an interesting group. They haven't had an impressive showing of martial prowess for some time." An odd figure indeed, Jade found these wars rediculous, yet he clearly judged people in large part by their martial skill.
"The Vree are part of why the Cardassian's didnt attack the Federation in the 23rd century." Aayla stated.
"I suppose they did. Not that the Cardassian's could have defeated the Federation at that point long before those devastating Romulan Wars. Nevertheless it bought eventual peace along the respective border. You sound as though you take great pride in this. Kinship ties to warriors of that era?"
Aayla smiled. "No, no, the Bre'accoria's have never belonged to the warrior caste directly. You could say that we prefer the art of diplomacy over strategic values. My brother and I were basicly the odd ones out." Aayla laughed.
"Oh good. Diplomats." Jade preferred warriors to rhetoricians. Warrior's were so much more honest and direct with how they felt. "What is a member of a family of diplomats doing serving in the science department of a Starfleet ship?"
Aayla smiled, it was too long a story but she could tell him anyway. "Well being blind." Aayla gestured to the pink bandages over her empty eye sockets. "You learn to see things for what they are, you, your family the world arround you. It all changes." Aayla said as she rested her head on the wall. "And one day you look in a mirror and you discover that the reflection in a piece of glass isnt you, its what people want you to be." Aayla muttered. "They want you to hold up the family legacy, be a proper girl of society, sit there look pretty. That wasnt me, no I was to intelligent to fit into that world. So I joined the expiditionary force as a shaper."
Jade thought back to his childhood on Epsilon Colony. Those rich patricians like his parents and all the other corporate goons that filled the colonies high society. They had wanted him to follow their legacy. To be a corporate man. No, he had left that, and his family fortune, for other things.
"You know, I know exactly what you're talking about. Right down to the part where I said 'forget this' and left. But I have just one question. What the hell is a shaper?"
Aayla laughed at shook her head. "A shaper is someone who forms a symbionic relationship with an organic terraforming creature and can use that creature to create whole planets to their liking, its a complicated process and takes years of training." Aayla explained.
"Uh huh...that still doesn't explain why you are now here...as a stellarcartographer"
"Well the expidintionary force wasnt my keep either so I decided that I needed to look else where. Now few Vree have ever been outside the transitory mists and once they go they cant come back until they've found what they want. And I wanted to be accepted, be part of an accepting and noble organization. I thought I could help people, I was a scientist and Starfleet looked the best place for me. It expanded my knowledge and immagination of what lies beyond the mist." Aayla said in a dazzed tone.
The "dazzed tone" wasn't missed by Jade, ever an observer of people and their actions. It was why he was good at security. He wondered what it meant. Was she prone to trances or was her tone indicative of regret?
"Well that's very noble of you and I hope you find what you're looking for in here. I know I did."
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