May I Borrow Your Lab?

Posted on Thu Jul 18th, 2019 @ 3:42am by Lieutenant Alexis Aenera & Lieutenant Aleksander Voroshilov

Mission: War and Peacekeeping
Location: Science labs

Aleksi was sitting in the over stuffed chair, closing his eyes briefly to take in the Jazz music playing through his quarters. There was something about how the artist was able to play in such a chaotic fashion, stringing together improvised notes, yet come out with something so pleasant. Raising the chilled glass, waving it slowly under his nose. It had all the right parts but something was...missing.

Opening his eyes he could see the Jean-Paul Riopelle, like most of his work it was untitled. Standing up he crossed the distance to the wall, his eyes scanning the chaos before him. Just like the music playing this was beauty, beauty out of splash and splatter. To most people this was nothing but insanity, uncoordinated and messy. Cocking his head to the side he grinned, most people couldn't see the meaning behind it: That life was chaos.

Sipping the liquid he let it sit on his tongue for a moment before swallowing it. The burn was there but something was still off, he wasn't sure what. All the components were there and it was better than some he had in the past, certainly more passable than rotgut. Looking at the painting again he smirked. I suppose chaos isn't the recipe for everything, "Computer, stop music."

Grabbing his uniform jacket and a vial of the liquid he made his way to the science labs. Perhaps what art could not perfect, science could help. Stepping out of his quarters he tried to recall as much as he could about the Chief of Science, whose office he was about to invade. She seemed to be concerned about what lie ahead of them, which was fair though overly cautious. What he remembered from the party, she did like to look her best.

Crossing the threshold of the labs he spotted her almost immediately. Aside from his intended purpose of being there he had a slightly less important, but more professional, question to ask. Approaching the woman he offered his hand, "Lieutenant Aenera, I don't think we've been formally introduced. I'm Aleksander Voroshilov, your neighborhood intelligence officer."

Alexis had noticed the officer enter the lab, but had kept her eyes on the image in front of her. A hologram of one of the relatively near star systems, a binary star pair, and she'd brought up the gravitational effects that the stars exhibited. Perhaps he, a rather tall man, was here just to see what was what, he certainly wasn't one of the enlisted that the Chief had basically promised her, but when he moved towards her, she swiped the hologram away and mentally made a checklist of how she looked as she moved to meet him partway, smile on her face. The moment he mentioned intelligence, the smile on her face froze in panic. It was an effort of will to make the smile move again in something she hoped was natural.

Reaching out, she accepted his hand, her inch and a half heels still leaving her a good four inches shorter than him so she had to look up, "A pleasure to meet you, Aleksander Voroshilov, my name is Alexis Aenera, and as you no doubt know, the head of the Science division aboard Astraea. Well, what personnel I have at least." She shrugged, "Small but hardy group, no doubt." She resisted the urge to brush down her uniform, standard uniform top, with the regulation skirt but here in the bounds of her own domain, she'd forgone the black leggings that just made her too hot, "What can I do for you?"

A welcoming smile was on her face, impressed at her give a care factor this late in the afternoon. He lifted the glass container of liquid to their eye level, "Can I borrow some of your lab equipment? I think I may have overdone this batch," The professional question could wait, this business was more serious.

She raised both of her eyebrows simultaneously, glancing skeptically at the liquid, "And what, pray tell, is that?" Alexis asked, resisting the urge to reach out for it.

Aleksi flashed a toothy grin, happy to see the curiosity on her face, "Can you keep a secret?"

"Hmm..." She pondered for a moment, a moue on her face before nodding solemnly, "Oh, I suppose I can, perhaps this one time?" She winked at him to let him know she was playing.

"I suppose that'll have to do," He winked back, opening the vial. Holding it out to let her get the scent, "Gin. My first batch just finished a few hours ago. It's okay, but I have certainly made better."

Alexis did sniff and nod, "I'm more of a whiskey girl myself, but a bit of gin here and there isn't off the table." She waved a magnanimous hand towards one of the parts of this particular lab, "I assume you're going to want to get a proper chemical breakdown of it to start with? I'm not an expert when it comes to alcohol except with consumption, but by all means let's check the ethanol levels and make sure you don't have any impurities, such as methanol or propanol."

"Whatever the doctor orders," Nodding he sat in front of the machine. While he knew the rough alcohol content, enough to know it wasn't navy strength, but it could have been the impurities giving him the off flavors. Carefully he put some in a test tube, setting on a scanning rack before looking at the Scientist, "How did you end up here if you don't mind me asking?"

"Well, after I finished my doctorate while teaching at the Academy, the higher-ups decided to send me back out on a starship. Apparently, they felt I should be pretty good at this, but truth be told, I've got almost no command experience at all. I didn't even get much time as an assistant chief of department. I've got the know-how in the fields, but none of the experience running things." Alexis shrugged, "I've been more of an academic, double doctorate and all."

"Leadership isn't so hard, just try not to get your team killed and make sure your boss doesn't want to kill you," Aleksi's smile had a bit of wickedness in it, implying a dark addendum to the last sentence. The machine chirped and drew his attention back to the monitor, the raw numbers meaning little to him. Scrolling through the options he brought up a standard ratio for Bombay Sapphire, "Ah, I see what happened. I didn't properly cut out the tails," He pointed to the monitor, "The propanol is a bit too high," A chuckled, "Seems I'm getting out of practice. Better that then leaving the heads at least."

The change of his attention made him miss the shudder that ran through Alexis without being able to be repressed and by the time he was able to see her face again, it had recovered from going bloodless white and she forced a smile, "It wouldn't be all that difficult to set up some equipment to easily rectify that problem. All this is happens to be is a bit of molecular chemistry and that's rather straight forward."

"While I'm not usually a fan of turning to science when my art is failing me I will concede the point for the sake of it being acceptable to drink," While out on the borderworlds he had picked up distilling as a hobby, partially out of entertainment and partially to offset their alcohol budget. Before the Norwich he had nearly perfected his BoP gin. He looked back at her with a grin, "Do you have any equipment in mind?"

"Well, for the sake of keeping it from being found out and either raided or confiscated, I do believe that Lab Fourteen would be the best choice. It's the furthest out of the way and least visited. We can replicate whatever equipment is needed that you'll require." She pondered for a moment, "How much space will it require?"

"No need, I have the still set up already. I'm not entirely ready to give up on my old ways," He didn't want to give up control of his still, not entirely anyways. Especially not to a relatively unknown factor. Now was the time for the real question, "Speaking of, how much do you know about poisons?"

To that, Alexis quickly shook her head, "Not much. I can, of course, synthesize several or their antidotes, but if you're looking into in-depth knowledge? I'm afraid I'd need to do a bunch of research myself. My personal specialties are astrophysics and temporal physics and the various things related to them."

"That may come in handy later," Aleksi nodded, thinking a moment. The use of poison was a remote possibility, but considering the types of people they were transporting it would be less remote than usual, "If I got you a list of what the Trion's used, both sides, could you have some antidotes on standby?"

"I'm sure I could..." Alexis mused and nodded, "But wouldn't that be more along the lines of what Medical is here for? Not saying I won't do it, but I just don't want to barge into their turf and get into a war with them on things."

"And I will be going to Calvin in a bit to be sure," He smiled, "But considering the concern you showed earlier I figured you'd want to participate in any potential solutions we need," Pouring two clean test tubes of the gin he handed one over, "Plus I really needed to test out my gin."

Alexis hesitated a moment before accepting the gin, "So you want to test out what you admit is inferior gin on a hapless and innocent subject like myself?"

"Innocent has yet to be seen doctor," He lifted the test tube up in a cheering motion and downed about half of it, "And as for the quality of my gin, it's still good enough for a good buzz. Tastes better with jazz."

"At least we agree on the hapless." Lexi laughed and took a drink of it, then grimaced at the partial burn of it. "Computer, 'In The Mood' by Glenn Miller please." The opening notes of the song began to play and she took another look at the gin and downed more of it and nodded, "Definitely better with jazz." She agreed with a smile.

=/\=

Lieutenant Alexis Aenera
Chief Science Officer
USS Astraea

Lieutenant Alexsander Voroshilov
Chief Intelligence Officer
USS Astraea