Consequences & Considerations

[Rhan K'hal 0]

Consequences & Considerations

A Rhan & Hakran K’hal Log

The K’hal brothers were together in their guest quarters on the Mont Blanc. Rhan reclined, stretched to felinoid maximum, on a lounger; a fruit smoothie clutched in one hand and a look of concern on his young leonine face. Hakran sat hunched, his head down, on one of the armchairs.

“You need to stop taking this so hard,” Rhan admonished his brother. “You had a hard choice to make, and even though it turned out FUBAR you were still making the decision that was best for the crew and the timeline. In case you forgot, the Captain is as much scientist as you are and agreed to the plan.”

“I nearly got us all killed,” Hakran grumbled miserably. “I may have killed an Irene from a completely different timeline, I nearly destroyed a planet, and the Excalibur is so damaged it may end up used for scrap.”

“S**t happens,” Rhan snapped back. “In the end, it’s only a ship. If you didn’t notice, we didn’t lose a single crew member, or guest, in that whole escapade, and that’s what really matters, that’s what makes a ship.” Sucking down a good muzzle-full of his smoothie, he set it down with a thud on the table before swinging his legs off so that he could sit up and face his brother directly. “As for the misplaced Irene, we don’t know what happened to her. No she didn’t ask to get yanked into this timeline, but you know that quantum particles aren’t the only things that can get entangled in the multiverse. Starfleet wouldn’t have a division explicitly assigned to these incidents if there weren’t temporal, multiphasic and multiversal entanglements popping up all the time.”

“Wha…” Hakran looked up in surprised.

“You think I daydreamed through dad’s mini-lectures at dinner for all those years?” Rhan asked, referring to their enthusiastic scientist father, a professor of astrophysics at Starfleet Academy.

“I guess I thought you did,” Hakran replied. “I should have known better.”

“Yes, you should have. You should know better now that being a department head isn’t all power trips and paperwork,” Rhan scolded. “If you’re having second thoughts about being a Chief, you need to make up your mind about it soon. We may get leave when we get back, we may not, so Captain Swain and Starfleet deserve to know while they have time to find a replacement, if that’s what’s needed.” Rhan stared boldly at his older brother with that challenge hanging in the air.

“I don’t know,” Hakran said miserably. “I don’t know. I sure as hell didn’t plan on getting a Mother-style tongue lashing from you about it.” He sighed, shook his head slowly. “I suppose I should have known better about that too. You’ve really grown up on me,” declared the elder K’hal.

“This ship…” Rhan started, then jerked a thumb toward the aft part of the ship “well, that ship really forces you to ‘shape up or ship out’ as the saying goes.” He snorted. “All those stories Mreh told us in the communiques, I always thought it was bulls**t. My first Excalibur mission made me change my mind fast enough.”

“Yeah, and then my first mission was arranged by you, and almost got us all killed” Hakran needlessly reminded him.

“As I said at the time, they needed you more than they needed me with that intellectual harpy in command.” He rolled his eyes in remembrance. “Anyway, I was right. I usually am,” Rhan said with a roguish grin.

“Gods,” Hakran said, rolling his eyes. “You’ve never been short of confidence.”

“No, I haven’t. Looks like I need to share some with you.” Rhan left the lounger to squat in front of Hakran, his hands on his brother’s shoulders. “If I thought a different scientist would’ve been what the Excalibur had needed, I would’ve arranged it that way. I chose you because I knew what you were capable of even if you didn’t. Captain Swain did the same when he kept you on as cee-sci.” Rhan gave Hakran’s shoulders a squeeze before rising, and then cufed his older brother upside the head. “Now you find out what you’re capable of, and do it fast.”

“Ouch!” Hakran exclaimed. “You really have turned into Mom,” he grumbled with the tone of it not being a compliment.

“Why, thank you!” Rhan replied, very much in the tone of it being a compliment. “Now I’ll leave you to think. I’m going to hunt up Maryse, see what sort of trouble we can get into.”

Hakran seemed to remember here that he was the elder of the two and gave Rhan a sharp look.

“Not that kind of trouble,” Rhan said in exasperation. “Geez. Even if it was, it’s none of your business.” With his tail haughtily raised, he swept out of the room.

Hakran sat back in the chair, expelling air in one long, steady whoosh. Besides having an existential crisis about his role in the Excalibur’s predicament and his role as a Starfleet officer, he now had to mentally process that his little brother wasn’t so little anymore, and clearly owed as much to his personality from their mother as their father. With a little shudder, he swapped position into the lounger and began a good, hard think.

Edited September 18, 2019 by Rhan K'hal