Mission 3: "Pilgrims"

Enter Jita Kejal
Captain's office, USS Portland
MD1, Shortly after departure from DS9
Authors: Cmdr. Alenis Meru and Ensign Jita Kejal

Know-it-all executive officer be damned, Jita Kejal almost wished she’d stayed aboard the Boone even after setting meeting her new commanding officer well into motion with a press of her office chime.

It wouldn’t have spared her a trip to DS9 — more or less the welcome center of the developed Bajor-B'hava'el system – since it was the closest command and control waypoint to the finale of a chaotic mission that marked the abrupt end of Captain Delwen Giffard’s 20-year Starfleet career. That she nominated the same know-it-all executive officer as her successor prior to tendering her resignation didn’t bother Jita as much as it might’ve in the not-so-distant past. Strife had a way of heightening cognizance and character, and the young Bajoran’s former caught elements of her ascending executive officer’s latter personal prejudice blinded her to before. Like most sentients, she reviled being in the wrong. More than that however, she felt like a heel for rationalizing her advancement on the back of a partisanship stirred by her ego, no matter how justified it seemed then.

Jita requested a transfer in large part to take her mind off that indiscretion. If she wasn’t the same recruit able to hold a solid qualitative discussion on sensor mechanics only to need an extra attempt or three at a simple alignment algorithm, she knew herself well enough to suspect that a burdened conscience could foster a much-undesired visit to those not-so-good old days, the last thing she needed to kick-off her new commission. Receiving movement orders for the Portland didn’t quite satisfy in that regard, albeit not for the reason one might expect. Whereas academy culture conditioned young officers to view assignment to a Miranda class starship as anticlimactic to say the least, Jita, more familiar with enlisted circles dubbing it ‘the cockroach’ in reference to an enduring Earth joke its century-long streak of perseverance over conflicts and more vaunted contemporaries paralleled, opted against decrying her career as DOA over it. It had survived her after all, conditional as it she felt the circumstances.

No, her reservation lie beyond the door. . .

Alenis was feeding Ko-ko when she heard the door chime. "Come in!" she shouted as she stroked the feathers of the brightly coloured bird.

The ensign gathered her courage with a sharp inhale and did just that, stopping just past the interior threshold.

Keeping with what she’d seen of the ship thus far, the cozy room's ambience was current, if not totally belying of the class’ bygone origins. Portland’s older superstructure methods exuded more influence on her layout, though Jita felt the overall atmosphere similar to the Boone’s in that the much older vessel forewent trying to masquerade as a cruise ship. Fine by her. She wasn't in any kind of denial dolling Portland up to ape one would help.

Its occupant, at least the larger, less flamboyant, yet still attractive one, was her specific concern.

Jita didn’t need to open a single extra file in her transfer packet to know Commander Alenis Meru was a Bajoran; a good ear for names was one thing she gained from searching for extended family some years ago. That said, the neophyte ensign harbored a long-standing trepidation for the company of her own people. As evinced by whom she considered her best friend, it wasn’t an absolute trait. Despite having grown up on Bajor, Petty Officer Second Class Erne Sisqua had beliefs that deemphasized Jita’s displacement enough to feel comfortable around her. She couldn’t say whether it’d also be the case for Captain Alenis, who was older, and if the presence of the emblematic earring was any indication, more in touch with their people. So whereas Jita might’ve acknowledged her curiosity about the bird with all but the 4 billion or so Bajorans on the home world, she cut to the chase this time around, hoping to make this brief.

“Captain Alenis. Crewman Apprentice Ji-”

Whoops.

She shut her eyes and took another breath.

“Ensign Jita Kejal reporting for duty as ordered,” she exhaled, annoyance with herself hardening her tone. Apparently she wasn't as finished with unconsciously trying to bin her career as she'd thought.

"Welcome aboard, Ensign." Detecting the presence of a stranger, possibly a threat, Ko-ko flapped her wings and began cawing at Jita.

"Easy there, Ko-ko!" said Alenis, grabbing Ko-ko by the body and trying to calm the bird down. "Come on, Ko-ko, relax. You like sitting on my shoulder, don't you, Ko-ko?" Having gotten the bird to calm down enough to perch on her forearm, she carefully raised him up to her shoulder and with a twist of the wrist, gently encouraged Ko-ko to take up a defensive position nuzzled up against her head.

"I'm sorry, Ensign. This is Ko-ko, she's..." Alenis paused. It was a long story and definitely not one which should be shared with junior officers. "Let's just say she's Chief Morale Officer. She's usually friendly, but we just found out that Ko-ko is going to be a mother and, well, you know how pregnant animals can get a little testy around strangers." With Ko-ko finally relaxed enough to remain still on her shoulder, Alenis stepped forward and offered a handshake. "Commander Alenis Meru, USS Portland."

“With all due respect, Captain,” Jita nervously laughed as she set a foot back, hands risen in indication of Ko-ko, and head incisively angled even as the rest of her reclined away, “are you sure it. . .she. . .isn’t going to flip out if a stranger touches you? Because I know that's also something animals tend to do. And I just had a bite from Tordal’s Hasperat Stand, so embarrassed as I’ll be to scream bloody murder in your office, it'll put you downwind of their special seasoning brine. It's good, but the aftermath is about as subtle as an EPS conduit rupture to the face."

So much for not talking about the bird.

"That... might be a good idea," replied Alenis, letting out a hint of a smile at the joke as she slowly withdrew her hand. With Ko-ko perched upon her shoulder, she quickly examined the new recruit from the ground up. Though some new recruits to her command found this moment to be incredibly nerve-wracking, Alenis had learned that one can tell a lot about a Starfleet officer by the state of their uniform -- and how they react to being stared down by their captain. With recently polished boots and not a spot of lint or errant wrinkle on her uniform; Jita was off to a good start. Her gaze paused for a moment on Jita's right ear; as she did so her eyebrows twitched involuntarily, betraying her curiosity at the lack of an earring.

"Take a seat," said Alenis, interrupting the silence. "Would you care for something to drink; tea perhaps?"

The all-too familiar hang of Alenis' gaze in the vicinity of her right ear yanked Jita's thoughts back to dreading the possibilities of this encounter, already in breach of her whim for brevity from her CO's imploration to sit and offering her a drink. Not that there was a feasible alternative to rebuffing a captain's prerogative to interview her crew.

"Peppermint tea would be great, Captain," Jita replied as she took a chair out of positional deference, also choosing to take advantage of the tea mention because of its effectiveness against her little aura issue among other things. One nugget of wisdom she was trying to take away from the Boone was that it was pointless to further discomfort oneself over something beyond their control.

"Computer, one mug of peppermint tea." Alenis found it curious that Jita ordered an earth drink rather than a Bajoran tea. And unfortunate; the collection of teas in her office didn't include peppermint, so her guest would have to make do with replicated swill.

With Ko-ko having calmed down, Alenis guided her onto one of his favorite places to perch -- on top of her monitor -- and went to retrieve the tea which had materialized in her replicator. "So, did you get a chance to visit Bajor on your layover between assignments?" she asked; the question carefully calculated to hopefully elicit a response that piqued her curiosity while looking like nothing more than simple small talk.

On top of the monitor, Ko-ko stared down the stranger, cocking her head as she tried to carefully analyze if this newcomer was a potential threat.

There it was.

Careful as Alenis might've been forging it, the probe's proximity to her double-take was as telling to the hyper-aware Jita as a novice poker player's all-in wager in a dying round. Fortunately, introspection on past instances taught her it could work both ways. Jita had a hunch on what her new CO was really after. Letting her know so, albeit tactfully, would not only put the younger woman in a position to temper any disclosure, she could also gauge Alenis, who she was a little less apprehensive about. This was her ship. She didn't have to tread as lightly as Jita thought she was trying to, advisable as discretion might be in the realm of personal matters.

"I didn't," she said simply, lips arcing into a rueful smirk after winding up as if to expound. Jita momentarily abutted the resulting silence with a shake of her head, then bade through the release of another bracing breath, "Go ahead and ask, Captain."

"Ask what, ensign?"

"Why I'm not wearing an earring. You fixated on where it would be a few seconds ago. Now you're asking me about Bajor. My program required only basic psychology, but I'd like to think I'm smart enough to recognize it isn't a coincidence."

"I'm sorry, it's just a curious choice." For Alenis, even though she had left Bajor as a child, it was never really an option. And she joined Starfleet before there were many Bajorans, and had to deal with many objections from her superior officers who insisted on following Starfleet uniform regulations to the letter. That earring was responsible for many reprimands on her file. She never removed it, though the repeating grillings by one of her department heads encouraged her to wear her hair down and keep it a little more discreet. She took a deep breath. "All right, Ensign, why aren't you wearing an earring?"

"Well I'm not sure you could really call it a choice." Jita's phrasing may've read sharply on paper, yet she spoke with some mind for how potentially different life circumstances could affect their perspectives. "My family was on a transport that was attempting to run the DMZ when a Union patrol ship got wise and blew it out of the stars. My father was killed during the attack. . .my mother was one of the survivors a nearby Starfleet vessel managed to beam out, but she died giving birth to me. So I didn't grow up on Bajor, with my family, or any other Bajorans for that matter." A very abridged account of her life, she intended to offer only as much as Alenis asked, and to a point. Most backed off at the mention of losing of her parents however, admittedly her preferred outcome.

"I'm sorry to hear that." Having handed off the mug of tea to the Ensign, Alenis sat down at her desk, a deliberate move to lower herself down to the eye level of the Ensign, now that she had told her something very personal. Hearing Jita's story, Alenis was compelled to tell hers to even the score. "My mother and I were smuggled away on a Kobheerian freighter to escape the occupation when I was nine. But my father was left behind; we didn't know what happened to him until after the occupation ended when we found out that he had been killed not long after."

Hearing her story, Alenis felt sad for Jita. Though she was always the only Bajoran in class, at least Alenis had her mother to teach her about Bajoran culture and introduce her to the teachings of the Prophets; Jita had nothing and grew up without knowledge of her own culture. Orphaning children was just one more way that the Cardassians tried to destroy the Bajoran culture, which in Alenis' case only encouraged her to study the Bajoran culture and religion as a small act of defiance against the occupation.

"I only visited Bajor for the first time in almost thirty years last week. It's really a beautiful planet, a far cry from the occupation," she added, in an effort to segue the conversation into something a little more pleasant.

Nodding in the midst of a sip of her newly tendered tea, Jita once able conceded, "I'll give it that. I visited a while back when I was looking into finding extended family." She offered a small smile. "If there's a bad view, I didn't find it."

The faintly similar, yet poignant state of their early lives opened her up just enough to take an interest in the other woman. Quiet for a moment, Jita retook to her passable beverage, pondering on whether to ask a question apt to be redirected to her because frankly, she wasn't eager to reciprocate. Then again, there didn't seem to be any dodging it. Could she get away with opining favorably of Bajor without explaining why it'd been years since she'd last gone herself?

"Why so long before going back, Captain? If I may ask."

Guess she was about to find out.

Alenis stared into her tea for a moment before answering. "Starfleet has been keeping me pretty busy, but truth be told, I had a lot of bad memories from the occupation that I wanted to leave behind. The only thing I cared about that was left behind was my father, and the Cardassians got him." Taking a deep breath, Alenis continued. "Even after the occupation had ended and the Dominion War was over, I kept making excuses not to return. Maybe I was afraid to go home. But now..." she trailed off. "There's something special about home, especially when you're a Bajoran. You can't run away from it forever." Realizing that her comments could be interpreted as preachy, Alenis changed the subject. "Just think, this lost tribe on Gamia III has reached out to Bajor after hundreds of years on their own."

It was a decent save.

Jita's frustration was more for her general situation than Alenis. Once apparent that she wanted some one-on-one time, Jita resigned to ensuring her captain-cum-fellow Bajoran wouldn't hound her over her lack of spirituality. Twice nudging the conversation off its previously descrying course despite the lucidity of her views all but vanquished the concern of judgment by Alenis, which went a long way toward selling her on digging her heels in here. In fact Jita suspected her someone she could talk to more at length, though today wasn't going to be the day she tested that theory.

"But it's not as if their culture or beliefs are light years apart. Or at least I don't think they are," Jita countered. Gamia III's outreach was a hot topic on DS9 given their ancestral roots, so her efforts to minimize her presence on the station didn't keep its developments from her ears. "Their founders came from Bajor, so even though there's bound to be some divergence from facing different challenges, odds are that there's still a lot of common fundamental ground."

"True," replied Alenis. "I'm sure everything will go smoothly; with any luck these negotiations will be simply a formality and Gamia III will be reunited with Bajor." Alenis' eyes wandered up to Ko-ko, who was filling the room with relaxing coos, before they fell back onto Jita. "Now, about your assignment, you'll be reporting to Lieutenant R'vahis in Operations. Did you have any questions about the Portland or about your assignment?"

These negotiations? Jita's brow furrowed.

"Did I hear you right, Captain? Have we been assigned the Gamia III envoy?"

"Yes, our role is to escort the delegation from Bajor, and represent the interests of the Federation at this conference. Minister Tora is getting comfortable in her quarters as we speak." Alenis' eyes narrowed. "That's not an issue, is it?"

Jita was certain that the non-corporeal wormhole residents who'd assumed the mantle of her people's Prophets were presently holding court just to laugh at the swell of her dismay. She'd hoped DS9 would be the last aggregation of her people she'd have to cope with for a while, that her next post would put take her out of this region. Instead it looked as if a second helping was en-route, which she wanted about as badly as Romulus' remnants wanted to join the Federation.

"No. . .no, Captain," Jita laughed for the sake of keeping her inward wince such. "It just seems fate shares your opinion that I should do some catching up on this side of space." More revealing than she liked, the remark was also the least disingenuous thing she could readily conjure.

"Very well then. I'll send you some reading material. Unless there's anything else, you're dismissed."