"Peculiarly Strange"
[Previous post: 'Operational Resources']
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Stardate: 60298.2042
Setting: Unknown Planet: Shuttle Bay, inside unknown ship
Linguistics had always been one of Lea's strongest points mainly because her mother had spent the greater part of her life dealing with strange alien languages. That the subject had peeked the curiosity of the SFI Agent had helped a great deal in Lea developing her skills in that domain. Despite years of field training at the hands of her parents, and of additional training at Starfleet Academy, the inscriptions on the consoles found in the shuttle still remained a mystery to Lea.
If the inscriptions were based on some foreign language there had been nothing to hint to the root tongue used leaving Lea completely lost. Without being able to understand the writing the SFI Agent had been left with trying to guess as to the purpose of each set of controls by their shape, size and location on the board. This method would work to some extent but would not help Lea tell the difference between the controls for propulsion and those for the weapons. Had the ship been floating in space away from anything breakable the SFI Agent might have been temped to try a hands-on approach, but inside this shuttle bay Lea could not take any chances.
While waiting for Luke to come and join her, never thinking about the fact that he had no idea where exactly she was, Lea sat at that pilot's station and carefully studied the controls laid out before her. Some of the writing she tried to decipher seemed to have some Bajoran characters interlaced with what appeared to be Cardassian symbols. As if that mixture had not been strange enough, the outer controls seemed to have a combination of Borg and Talaxian writing. The more Lea tried to understand what she had been looking at the more the SFI Agent became confused, the mixture of symbols making little to no sense whatsoever. Had she been looking at a completely new language Lea might have been able to figure some of the controls through sheer logic, but the inexplicable combinations of so many languages just made it impossible for her to even start the process of figuring it out.
Lea had become so consumed by the desire to understand what she had been looking at that she had completely forgotten about Luke and their quest to escape from this prison. The mental block would be short lived, but for the time being the deciphering of this mismatched language was all that the SFI Agent could focus on. Luke would have to find his way to her on his own for the time being.
Not wanting to touch something that might cause the shuttle to do something undesirable, like firing its weapons, Lea turned her attention to one of the side consoles. Like the primary controls, these were also covered with an undecipherable dialect made up of countless other languages placed together in a way that made no sense. If the shuttle's designers had followed the general standard for the construction of such a ship, Lea should have been looking at either a communications console or some sort of sensor control station. The layout of the small screens and the text inscribed all around them unfortunately gave no clues as to their purpose, leaving Lea with only one last course of action.
Slowly, Lea's hand moved over the controls inching ever closer to one particular blinking icon that had caught the FI Agent's eye. For all that Lea knew the flashing indicator could have been a self-destruct switch yet her curiosity still pulled her fingers closer and closer until only a single width of her digits stood between her and the controls.
In a moment of reason Lea stopped her own hand, but soon the curiosity that had brought her this far reaccepted itself and made her fingers resume their slow and careful approach. Lea could barely feel the coolness of the smooth surface against her fingertips when her heart was made to stop.
"WHAT ARE YOU DOING?!" Luke screamed in a whispered voice causing Lea's hand to be retracted in the heartbeat that her heart had missed.
"I was just trying to read these strange markings," Lea replied also in a whispered voice, not entirely sure that her heart had started beating once again.
"Reading is done using your eyes," Luke said, sliding into the pilot's seat of the shuttle. "What you were trying to do was something entirely different."
Caught redheaded, Lea could not say anything to defend herself or the action that she had almost taken. Instead Lea just watched as Luke scanned the console before him giving out the impression that he recognised if not outright understood what all of the strange writings and symbols meant.
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Tiffany Rose {lady_tiffany_rose@mail.com}
Ensign Lea Summers
Currently:
Undercover SFI Agent
Once assigned as:
Assistant Chief Medical Officer
USS ANUBIS
