Stages of Embarrassment: Jaenke

[Erich Jaenke 0]

Stages of Embarrassment: Jaenke

Keb and Erich, A joint effort

 

The conference had accomplished much in establishing the crew’s next priorities, but it had also dissolved into semi-chaos in small pockets. Fresh grief and stress were causing the crew to act more rashly than they might ordinarily. When they were dismissed, Keb saw how quickly Erich bolted for the door; still clutching the remnant of black ribbon in her hand, she rushed after him. She needed to thank him, as well as coordinate with him on the engineering project of converting Manticore to a weather control station; she also needed to get away from Kansas before one or both of them wound up in the brig.

 

“Erich, wait!” she called as she pushed through a few people to catch his upper arm just as he boarded the turbolift.

 

“I need to go Keb, please,” Erich replied as he stepped into the lift. He looked dejected. The door closed without another word. The door reopened and the sad engineer with pursed lips regretted letting it close and waved her in. He realized they shared the same destination and shutting her out would not help. She stepped cautiously into the lift as though it could shut her out again, standing directly in front of him.

 

“Stellar cartography,” he commanded the lift. It pulsed to life. They both locked eyes until Erich broke the hold and looked to the lift floor. “I..um,” he hesitated. The conference had shaken him. “I am very sorry for my outburst at the meeting. Everything was so intense, but it’s no excuse, nor was reaching out to cover your mouth. I felt what you were going to go on and say. Please...”

 

Keb shook her head. Without the ribbon, her curls fell loosely around her face. “Erich--you don’t need to apologize. In fact, I--I wanted to thank you for it. You...probably saved me from going to the brig just now.”

 

He shook his head. “Well, I needed your talent in engineering for this plan to work, so I couldn’t exactly let you get locked up. By the rings I can’t believe what I did in there,” he said as his back crashed against the wall of the lift. He pressed both hands together against his face in an attempt to hide. The voices would still sound in his head of course and oddly enough hiding a bit of his shame from Keb seemed valid.

 

“I can’t believe what she did,” Keb said, holding up the ragged ribbon. “She attacked me with her knife in the middle of a meeting while she was suggesting shooting crew members!” She realized that her emotions were probably bombarding him again, and put a hand gently on his shoulder. “But you kept me from fighting back...which would have been a really bad idea. We still have to save the people on Earth.”

 

Erich looked up and managed a smile. “You have a very strong emotional...drive.” He looked both at her and past her, then to the ribbon. “What’s with the ribbon?”

 

“We’ve been having a longstanding argument about what the regulations say on hair ornamentation,” Keb said. “I love Starfleet, but sometimes looking the same every day is dull...so I’ve been perhaps dancing on the line a bit to express myself.” She blushed lightly.

 

Erich felt the blush in a different way. It reminded him of a first kiss, but not quite. It made him bite his lower lip.

 

“I can’t really be so much more emotional than other humans, can I?” she asked. She was thinking back to some of the things Jami had said to her back when they were on the ship together. Sometimes Jami had answered her thoughts when she was sure she hadn’t said anything out loud.

 

“Just those on the Manticore.. damn it. Computer, halt lift.” The pulsing lights froze in place. Time for confession. “The entire ship has been so emotional since evidence of the Admiral’s death surfaced. When I entered the room every emotion from the ship compressed itself into a singularity. Since the storms on Earth, I have been thinking about what I need to do to fix this. I made my position known... to T’Prise, to Shelton... to Sovak.” Lt. Jaenke sat on the floor. “I’m the new guy... Anyhow, the thoughts started to flare up, the fighting, then you and Kansas.” He started to get upset. “Then I yelled out, to both of you. No one else knew what was going on...but I could feel it.” Erich pounded his chest. “Here.”

 

Keb suddenly hugged him tightly. “I’m so, so sorry,” she said. “I tried counting in Klingon...but...it’s hard to control my emotions. I never realized how much I might be hurting those around me.”

 

He hugged back. “Don’t worry about me. This is merely something I have to work out. I was taking something to suppress my ability, but since I can’t get it any longer it’s turned up much louder than it should.” Her embrace seemed to silence the relative background noise the other crew members poured out. The ribbon, or what was left of it, laid against his back as she held it in her hand. Her tie to it remained strong, like a precious toy animal would be to a child. He’d not ever tell it to her in that way. For a time he did not speak nor let her go. The silence of the crew proved too tantalizing to abandon. “I don’t understand what’s going on,” he spoke aloud, though it was more for himself.

 

“What do you mean?” Keb asked, stepping back, though her hand lingered slightly on his shoulder. She glanced over at the turbolift console for a second, realizing that they were wasting time when they really should be setting up the new control structure. But if she was going to work with Erich--and she realized now that she really wanted to--they did have to find a way to keep her emotions from disturbing him.

 

“Right,” he said as the voices and emotions returned. “Time.” Erich manually unfroze the lift. “I’ll have to describe what happened exactly. In short, the voices subsided, but I don’t understand why.” The work to be done started to mount up in his thoughts, the hours it would take setting up. Luckily he felt much better now. He looked at her and smiled, wondering what exactly the ribbon did for her and why it’s an odd soft spot. “Thank you...for the now and the later.” The lift stopped.

 

Keb didn’t quite understand still, but she knew lives were depending on the work they needed to do. “We can talk more about it once we get the controls linked up to Manticore’s,” she said softly. She slid the ribbon into her pocket...black for mourning. “Where do you want to start?”

 

“Well, we need to get the specifications of the control center computer system and replicate them on the Manticore. What one would call a virtual machine. It will be like moving a large couch into a tiny room. We are going to have to move the furniture to the walls, so to speak.” They walked into the stellar cartography room. The largest screen on the ship including the main viewer. He stopped just at the threshold of the door. “I hope you like it here as this will be our new home for a while.”

 

Keb smiled at Erich softly. “I do like it here. I’ll get to work getting the specs if you start the heavy lifting.”

 

He nodded.

Edited April 17, 2014 by Erich Jaenke