From: Live Long and Prosper 
Date: Wed, 23 Apr 1997 16:23:15 -0500 (EST)
Subject: USS CHesapeake: Brandy Glues the Pieces Together

SD 90423.2015
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USS CHESAPEAKE Corridor
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MD 5.2155
    
Galia strode out of the barracks, trying not to feel guilty
for going. There was nothing for her to do there anyway.
T'sharet had her own troops under control and would not
thank Galia for interfering, and David was dealing with The
Intruder himself. For which HaShem be praised. Galia
wasn't sure if she wanted to run screaming away from him
and never stop even if it meant going right out an airlock,
or stab him to a bloody pulp and keep on stabbing till there
was nothing left -- especially nothing that could even remotely
be identified as male.
   
Neither was a good idea.
   
Turning a corner tightly, she collided head on with a woman
she didn't know. Well, of course she didn't; she'd barely been
off Marine deck since she arrived. On Marine deck, there was
only one person she didn't know, one she didn't trust; and so
far she had to admit, however reluctantly, that David had been
remarkably decent.
   
"I'm -- I'm sorry..." she gasped, trying to breathe through her
nose while she spoke and realizing she couldn't; it was bleeding.
Damn, what must she have done to the other woman? She tilted
her head back and pinched her nose tight, adding in short bursts
between breaths, "I'b sorry. It's all by fault. I wasd't watchig. Where
I was goig. I'b sorry. Are you all right?"
   
And then she realized she'd said the entire damned thing in
Hebrew and she wasn't wearing a translator, and broke down
in tears.
   
Anne Murray stepped back, her head still ringing from the impact.  She 
felt rather foolish; she should have been looking where she was going
instead of studying the floor.  It took her a couple of seconds to see 
that the woman had stopped speaking in the oddly familiar, yet oddly 
foreign, tongue; had, in fact, burst into tears.
 
Anne looked at the woman with a concerned glance.  Something must have
happened; either she must have seriously injured her nose in the
collision, or she had been upset in the first place.  Come to think of
it... the manner of their collision *had* been rather abrupt.  But that
nosebleed looked pretty nasty.  Anne produced a handkerchief from somewhere,
a habit she had acquired during her years with Myron, and motioned for the
Marine to sit down.
   
Galia sat, mortified. What must this officer think of her? A
hardened marine lieutenant, an *officer* now, breaking down
like that in the middle of the hallway, over a stupid collision.
But... but it wasn't over the collision, and she could never,
ever say that.
   
She hoped David could convince the executive officer to.. to
do something awful beyond belief to that horrible blubbering
peeping tom. To do to him everything Lt. Andersen had done
to her, and to her men, over eight terible months. But that was
wrong; she knew it was. Nobody, ever, should have to go through
that.
   
"Here," Anne said, hoping that she could be understood.  She supplemented
her words by using the sign language she had developed to help her mentally
retarded cousin understand some of her longer words.  It was crude, but
effective; she hoped that it would work as well for an adult female of
at least normal intelligence.
   
"Thadk you..." Galia managed, in Standard this time. "I'b so
sorry; I wasd't lookig...."
   
Anne nodded in acknowledgement.  She was relieved that the woman spoke
Standard; her studies had not included foreign languages.  Even her
Vulcan, which she had picked up from trying to emulate them so much,
sounded rather like dissonant chords.
   
"Take this handkerchief... you may keep it," Anne continued.  She wasn't
sure of the other woman's age; all she knew was that here was someone who
seemmed like she was on the verge of a breakdown... and Anne, of all
people, ought to know.  "Shhh... can you stop crying?  It's hard enough
to breathe with a bloody nose." She tried to make her voice sound
friendly, hoping that her words weren't too harsh.  She was very tempted to
give her a comforting hug... but, quite aside from her own aversions, she
wasn't sure if that would be contrued in the right manner.  She *was*
behaving rather like a mother hen as it was.
   
Anne kneeled down, sitting just far enough away from the Marine to be
comfortable, just close enough to let her know that she had no intention
of leaving her just yet.  She quietly waited until the bleeding had
stopped; she waved aside the handkerchief that the woman attempted to
return to her.
   
Galia breathed carefully, on an eight-count, even if she had
to do it through her mouth. The tears dried up and vanished.
She could feel the blood flow stop; started to hand the bloody
handkerchief back to its owner, then stopped, blushing scarlet
as it was waved back. She guessed it was a pretty unpleasant
object to have someone try to hand you. She stuffed it in her
pocket instead. It would hardly be the first time her uniform had
seen blood.
   
"It's yours," Anne said with a little smile.  "You may keep it.  I have
others." She stood up slowly, hoping that the recovered woman would
follow suit.  "Can you tell me what's wrong?" she asked on impulse,
noting that the tears had stopped, but that the woman still looked rather
upset.  "Are you hurt?"
   
Galia sighed. "Not really. I'm sorry, I'm being such a crybaby."
*Stop apologizing, damn you, Halivni. You sound even worse.*
"It's just -- one thing piled on top of another. There's been a bit
of a crisis -- it's under control now -- it shouldn't have thrown me
that much, damn it..." She took another slow breath; she was
starting to lose control again. "It's over. I'm on leave. I was on
my way to go get stinking drunk and get the whole thing out of
my system, but I'm afraid you caught me before I'd done it. I'm
not usually like this."
   
Anne nodded understandingly.  She had been caught off-guard in the past as
well, and not by a blue-clad science officer, either.  As she thought of
that, her mind began to work furiously behind the scenes, analyzing the
Marine's words.  Her explanation of a "crisis," while plausible, seemed a
bit... restrained.  The woman had wanted -- needed? -- to say more and
had decided against it.  Anne shook her head slightly to herself.
   
Far be it from her to jump to conclusions.  The fact that *she* had used
similar excuses, of one thing piling up on another, to explain away her
agitation over the last five years gave no immediate proof concerning this
woman's demeanor.
   
She also reserved judgement regarding getting stinking drunk; it was not
a prospect that she particularly welcomed; on the other hand, to each her
own methods of escape.  Anne had always withdrawn into herself, emulating
the Vulcans as much as she could.  Failing that, she had used other, less
commendable, methods of self-injury.  Yes; she supposed that slashing her
arm with a knife -- even if only superficially -- was, in some respects,
more socially objectionable than getting drunk.
   
"Well... do you mind if I accompany you?" asked Anne.  She wanted to keep
an eye on her.  "And what is your name?  May I ask?  Mine is Anne Sanders
Murray.  And... please call me Anne, if you like."
   
Galia smiled a little and began to relax. It was beginning to dawn
on her that, while she wanted this woman to like her, she did not
have to keep command-presence for her the way she did for her
own troops. There was nobody except T'sharet she could afford to
let that guard down with -- not on this ship, anyway -- and she'd
gotten so far out of the habit of it she'd forgotten how much it helped.
   
"I'm Galia," she answered, a little more together. "Galia Halivni. I
command the second platoon Marines. I... sure you can come, if
you want. I've heard all kinds of warnings about people who drink
alone anyway." She even managed a grin.
   
"Thank you, Galia," said Anne, smiling back at her.  "Pleased to
make your acquaintance.  Perhaps we can go to Ten-Forward?"
   
		*****		*****		*****
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Ten-Forward Lounge
------------------
   
The two seated themselves at a table.  Halivni had, predictably, ordered
an alcoholic beverage of some kind; Anne contented herself with a glass
of half-frozen lime soda.
   
"How do you like the CHESAPEAKE so far, Galia?" asked Anne, trying to
start a conversation.  She hoped that the question wouldn't be considered
too nosy.
  
Galia sighed. "It's all right, I guess. I haven't seen much of it; this is
the first time I've gotten off Marine Deck since I arrived." She shakes 
her head disspiritedly. "We've been drilling most of the last few days. 
My platoon is a complete mess, all of it. And I'm probably the worst of 
the lot."
"Really?" Anne sipped her drink and looked speculatively at her 
companion.  "I don't know your people, but I find it hard to believe that 
a platoon that is, as you say, 'a complete mess' would be assigned to a 
newly commissioned ship... and I find it even more unlikely that they'd 
keep a platoon leader who was 'the worst of the lot.'" She watched Galia 
carefully, trying to figure out what was going through her mind.
  
"What do you mean, exactly, by 'a complete mess'?  May I ask?" Anne 
asked, rather nervously.  She had already invaded the CMO's privacy; she 
wasn't sure that she should be asking the Marine such questions.
 
Galia sighed, and gulped the rest of her drink. "Well... you saw me. I
get stupid over little things; I cry for nothing... I'm an officer now. I
haven't been for very long; they just brevetted me before we..." Anne 
could hear the checked phrase as Galia reconsidered how much to say: 
"before we were sent on leave for a while. I guess I don't know how to 
handle it. We really messed up a drill not that long ago. It's a good 
platoon, we just need to remember how to work again..."
 
Anne nodded sympathetically.  Quite new to being in charge herself, she 
could understand the other woman's troubles to a certain extent.  Perhaps 
she would benefit from hearing about her own clueless department. 
 
"Well..." Anne stirred her soda with a spoon.  "I don't know if you'd 
feel better if I told you this, but... my department's been pretty 
strange, too.  First of all, I have forty students on board, all of whom 
seem intent on destroying equipment and blowing up things.  It's calmed 
down some today, since I ordered them banished from sciences for a while.
  
"As if that weren't bad enough... my Resource Manager haa decided to dye 
her hair *blue*!  I nearly had a heart attack when I first met her... I 
don't know yet if it's permanent.  And the things she puts on her 
food...!  Well, I suppose that doesn't really matter from an occupational 
point of view... but she *was* the one who approved the aforementioned 
students for shipboard experience in the first place.
  
"As for my second-in-command... Derek Fielding is a very nice man, but 
he's a bit *odd*... he keeps playing tricks on me with the Bridge Station 
computers!  I'm just lucky he didn't decide to do something silly while 
we were launching today." Anne sighed, taking a gulp from her soda.  
"Anyway... that's my department, such as it is." She smiled weakly, 
hoping that her revelations would help Galia deal with her platoon.
 
Galia was laughing by the time she finished, and programmed for her
next drink with a smile. She was still determined to get drunk, but at
least she was enjoying herself while she was doing it. The science
officer was *nice*. She'd forgotten Starfleet people could be nice. No;
that wasn't fair -- there were a lot of them who had been nice to her
since the court-martial, including the new CO, but they had all been
professionally required to try and help her. This woman owed her 
nothing, and she didn't owe Anne any reciprocal effort to be under
proper professional control. It was tremendously freeing.
 
"L'chaim," Galia said, lifting her glass. "And to competent depart-
ments!" She took a sip. "Like I said, mine's... damn, they're *good*;
they're just -- *we're* just -- all so much in shock still... nobody has
any idea what to do without instructions, even me, and I'm supposed
to be taking care of them. There's a Chasidic saying that the true
slavery is when we learn to endure it..." And then her voice cracked
and she was crying again without quite knowing how or why.
 
Anne nodded sympathetically, very tempted to offer the Marine a hug.  
Feeling lost was something she had become used to in the last several days; 
feeling lost and knowing that she had to regain control was also 
something with which she was familiar.  Such a nice woman... and in so 
much pain, it seemed.  As for shock... Suddenly, the meaning behind Galia's 
words began to nag at her, driving spikes of uncertainty and suspicion into 
her mind.
 
"True slavery?" Anne asked, looking at Galia with concern.  What in the 
world had happened to her and her platoon?  In shock?  From what?  Anne
took a deep breath, leaning a bit closer to Galia.  "Would you like to go 
someplace private to talk, Galia?" she asked quietly, sensing that Galia 
might be speaking of rather personal matters.  "I'm pretty sure we can take 
some drinks with us."
Galia smiled a little. "Sure, if you don't mind. I'm afraid
I'm babbling idiotically and generally being a mess." She
turned to the replicator for a moment and, after two false
starts, persuaded it to produce a fairly large quantity of
brandy in a lidded cup like some used to carry coffee.
Then she followed Anne.
Respectfully submitted,
Naomi Rivkis
1LT David Shachor          &  2LT Galia Halivni
MCO                           Commander of Second Platoon
USS CHESAPEAKE NCC-31813      USS CHESAPEAKE NCC-31813
Masako Goto
LT Anne Murray, Ph.D.
CSciO
USS CHESAPEAKE NCC-31813

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