Excitement Abounds

Posted on 19 Mar 2016 @ 8:33am by Ensign Quinn Mackie & Ensign Kelly Khan

1,780 words; about a 9 minute read

Mission: Outbreak
Location: Cargo Bay 2
Timeline: MD 4

As they arrived at New Risa, Kelly finished packing a black two piece, a neon yellow and blue two piece and a red two piece bikini on top of the other outfits that she wanted to wear while staying on the Gamma Quadrant equivalent version of Risa. She put a pair of sunglasses, a hat with a wide brim and a bottle of sun tan lotion in last and smiled.

"We may be light years from home, Toto, but Mama is going to have some fun on this trip," she said to no one. "Now to get my Vectorboard from the cargo bay and meet up at the flight deck to wait my turn to paradise." Grabbing an extra PADD, she stuffed that in her carrying case and headed for the cargo bay.

When she arrived, she looked for the cargo bay manager as she made her way between stacks of containers and other things in search of her Vectorboard or the manager, whichever came first.

"No," Quinn sighed, looking at a label on what had to have been the thousandth crate in the last thirty minutes. He looked at another. "No. No... No! Come on... How unorganized can that quartermaster be?"

Kelly came around a corner of crates and nearly bumped into a young man and stopped. She recognized as Quinn and smiled. "Let me guess...you can't find what you're looking for either?" she said with a smile at the handsome young cadet.

Quinn was surprised to hear someone else speak, and he whipped around to see Kelly standing there. As surprised as he was, he smiled at the pleasure of seeing her. "I'm looking for a silver crate..." He estimated a size with his hands about a meter in length and half a meter tall. "About this size. Have you seen it?" Never mind the fact that he was standing between stacks of crates matching that exact description.

She looked left and right and couldn't help but giggle when she saw all the crates matched the description he gave her. "If we're playing scavenger hunt, I would search these crates by us," she said.

"I have," Quinn replied with a sigh. "Twice. The only place I haven't checked yet is in the back corner near these surf board things."

"Oh!" Kelly exclaimed. "So that's where my Bolian vectorboard is! I was hoping I didn't have to tear the place apart to find it." She paused when she saw a tricorder sitting on a crate and picked it up to activate it. After a minute of fiddling with it, she smiled. "Look, this has the complete inventory in it and where everything is. We'll find your stuff in a minute!"

"Vector board!" Quinn practically slapped his forehead with his left palm. "That's what that was."

She scrolled through the items on the tricorder until she found his name. "Okay. Aisle three, section four...whereever that is." She touched the item and a map appeared on the small screen with a green icon indicating the location of it. "Well, this is handy. Yup, I absolutely love vectorboarding. It's an amazing feeling moving at high speed with nothing but a thin board under you."

"Aisle three?" Quinn looked around. "Where's aisle three? Nothing's marked." He sighed as he glanced over Kelly's shoulder and then over to where aisle three is. "Vectorboarding, eh? It sounds like a lot of fun."

"They are," Kelly said as she followed the indicator on the tricorder. "They can do three hundred and twenty-one kilometers per hour. The feel of the wind whipping through your hair and the knowledge that you're only secured via magnetic boots is amazing." She came to a stop by a crate that was right where the indicator matched his package with the inventory.

"This should be yours, Quinn," she said as she looked up at him and had to admit that he was a handsome young man, even if he was a bit quiet.

"Hmm?" he said, surprised, before moving to check the label. "Yep, that's it!" Quinn opened the box to verify that the internal contents hadn't been tampered with. Inside were a variety of items, including books, knick-knacks, photos, and even a pair of swim-shorts.

Kelly looked and smiled when she saw the swim shorts. "Ohhh...do I get to see you in those?" she asked in a teasing voice.

"Depends on if you're heading for Rivers of Catalîn," Quinn replied, finding the article he was looking for, a velvet pouch that held a couple strips of latinum. "I hear there's a few places there perfect for a kayak."

"I've never been kayaking, but I love to swim," she told him. "Maybe you could teach me? I brought a couple bikinis for the trip, so I wouldn't mind getting wet." She looked at him again and imagined what he'd look like in just the swim trunks and smiled at the images that formed in her mind.

"Only if you teach me how that vectorboard works," Quinn countered with a smile. The thought of seeing Conga in swimwear was pleasing to him, and he did like the idea of testing unknown waters with someone he knew.

"I'd be happy to," Kelly said. "They aren't normally for two people, but I did some modifications to it that I learned in Engineering at the Academy and increased the repulsor lift to accommodate up to four hundred pounds before gravity starts to take over." She stopped as she realized she was talking shop and looked up at him. "I have a feeling that you'd pick it up quickly, though. They say Engineers are very easy to catch on to a lot of things."

"We do indeed," Quinn said, closing up the crate and placing it back where it belongs. "I think I saw the vectorboard over in this corner," he said, leading her to the other side of the bay.

Kelly followed him and soon spotted the fluorescent yellow and black vectorboard that had an electronic spider design in the center of it. She pulled it away from the straps holding it to the wall and began to inspect it. "Good," she said at last. "I had hoped that no one would tamper with it. I would have hated for the entire ship to blow up if they had."

"C'mon," Quinn said, mockingly. "There's not enough power in that thing to even take out the entire section. Decompress the cargo bay, sure. But not the ship itself."

Kelly laughed. "Nah, there's no explosives in it, but you'd be surprised how quickly people will think twice if they think there might be. Of course, I'd never say something like that to a superior officer."

Quinn paused for a moment. "Oh," he said blankly. "That... That was a joke. I get it." His mind had all too quickly jumped to the engineering behind the vectorboard and had completely glazed over her real meaning.

"Are you going to be staying at the recommended hotel?" Kelly asked him as she lifted the vectorboard and put it under her left arm while she carried her clothes carrying case in her right hand.

"Oh, no," Quinn replied, leading her out of the cargo bay. "Since I'm finally going to be getting a couple days off, I was hoping to go wherever the river takes me. It's been a while since I slept under the stars."

"Ohhhh..." Kelly said with a twinkle in her eyes. "You like roughing it, do you?" she asked as she followed him.

"I grew up in the middle of nowhere, which is hard to find in America these days," he explained he entered the corridor. "I was always camping, exploring. It's one of the reasons why I signed up for Starfleet, to see what the universe had to offer."

Kelly gave a low chuckle. "Well, I'm sure there'll be plenty to explore," she said. "And I, for one, am looking forward to it. Just laying under the stars with nothing on and letting a warm breeze blow over my body. There's nothing like it."

Quinn did a double take, suddenly realizing that Kelly had invited herself with him on his trip. Smiling, he added, "Yeah. What about you? Do you like roughing it?"

"Mmhmm," Kelly said. "The rougher, the better, too. I mean, if you were going to teach me to kayak, that is. I couldn't teach you vectorboarding if we were on different parts of the planet, could i?"

"Good plan," Quinn answered. "So, what's first? Vectorboarding or kayaking?"

"We can do both at the same location, Quinn," Kelly said. "After all, all we need for vectorboarding is open air."

"Cool." Quinn stopped at a turbolift and pressed the call button. "I need to drop by my quarters, grab my pack and a couple extra rations, and then we can beam down, get the kayaks and off we go."

"Beam down?" Kelly asked. "I was hoping to jump out of a shuttle on the way down and ride the currents to the surface. I need to get some camping stuff, too."

"Jump out of a shuttle?" Quinn asked, actually intrigued. "How high up?"

"I figured ten thousand kilometers would be good enough," Kelly said. "Although the winds can get pretty turbulent at times that high and you need oxygen and warm clothes, so maybe five thousand would be better."

"Then it's a good thing we're not jumping with kayaks on our backs," Quinn jested as the turbolift arrived. "Pack light," he advised. "I've only got two days' leave. Rykov's got a lot for me when I get back."

"Maybe I'll stay in the shuttle in that case," Kelly said. "I have two days, too. I'm the Gamma Shift Helmsman and I don't want to ruin my chances to do more."

Quinn only smiled as he stepped into the lift. "What time is your shuttle leaving?"

"In an hour," she said as she got in the lift with him. "I think Elisha is coming, too. I set her up on a dinner date with Ensign Hernandez, then she went to the holdeck with him. We might have a plus one in the shuttle if they both come, but there's plenty of room for you to join us."

"Ensign Hernandez..." Quinn's voice trailed off, unable to place the name. He shrugged it off. "One hour it is," he told Kelly. "I hope you're ready for two days of water, sunshine and roughing it." He smiled.

"Oh yes," Kelly said with a smile. "I hope you are, too." She gave him a wink and a low chuckle. "It'll be something to remember."

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