Unity – A Ship, A Ship, My Kingdom For A Ship
by Commander Richard Dunham & Alderman Yolanthe Ibalin
Post Details
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Dunham sat at the bar of the Box of Delights, he stared into the remains of his No-alcoholic beer, and pontificated on recent events that had transpired onboard Deep Space Five. In all the commotion he had neglected a few future plans for himself. He frowned at little as he continued to stare into his drink. He didn’t know how really how to go about one of his personal plans; it was not something he had done before. Starfleet had always provided for him. But now he wanted something for himself.
"I did warn you," Yolanthe, the owner of the bar appeared in front of him, her skin its usual violent blue hue. "Non-alcoholic beer is awful even when it isn't synthesized. I'm impressed you made it that far." She gave him a careful look. "Or are you making that face for other reasons?"
Dunham smiled up at the bartender from his perch on the bar stool. “Oh, just contemplating life the universe, and everything” He swirled the remains of the drink around in the bottom of the glass in reflective contemplation. “Were do I get ship?”
It was an odd question coming from a pilot, she thought, but she may be able to help. "What sort of ship are you after?
Dunham shrugged “dunno, some sort of light freighter or small independent cargo ship,” he shrugged, “a fixer upper maybe? I honestly don’t know how these things work, I never bought ship before, Starfleet has always provided for my flying needs, but I kinda fancied having a ship of my own, even saved all my pennies for it” he said with a flash of a smile.
"Then I guess it all comes down to how many pennies to the strip." She rearranged some of the bar tools whilst she thought about it. "Cabron down on level 4 has a dealership that covers used transports. But out here, they're not cheap." She sucked her lip for a moment. "How serious are you about a fixer upper? What do you think you can take on?"
Dunham breathed out through pursed lips, making a funny noise. “Well every Starfleet pilot has to be versed in basic starship maintenance, plus I took a module in engineering at the academy, but I’m no Bruce Freeman. However I reckon I can pull my weight when it comes to fixing up some old bit of space chunk” said Dunham with a smile.
She drummed her fingers on the bar top. "You know, Cabron will stiff you thoroughly if you go to him. He's no Ferengi, but he follows the rules of acquisition as if he was the Grand Nagus himself. If you're not afraid of a challenge, I think I can help you out myself. I've been meaning to trade in the ship Klia and I used to get here. A Bedford-class freighter. Enough space for two people to handle, but not much more. Its space worthy, but it could do with some loving care."
Dunham mulled it over in thought. He took out a stick of gum from his back pocket, unwrapped it and started chewing on it. Then he scratched the stubble on his chin; basically he didn’t have a clue about ship prices or what a Bedford-class Light freighter was. Dunham's remit on ships included Starfleet vessels, and the vessels of both their enemies and allies. “hmmmm” he said pretending to know what he was talking about. “I’d have to take a look at it.”
Yolanthe nodded. "Fair enough." She looked down the bar to where a young bajoran man was also serving. "Pelin? Can you cope for half an hour so?"
He never looked up from the drinks he was mixing. "Sure boss."
Yolanthe turned back to Dunham. "Now a good time?"
Dunham smiled "Its date", he gestured for her to continue, and he would follow.
------
Deck 1125 was mostly shuttle storage, and therefore only dimly lit. It took Yolanthe a good five minutes to find her way to the shuttle bay where they'd mothballed the elderly freighter they'd arrived on the station in. She keyed the door, and it slid open.
Inside was a squat, stubby little freighter, maybe only two or three times the size of a Danube-class runabout. Its nacelles were boxy, the hull pitted, and the deflector array was very definitely taken from an early Valkyrie fighter. On the nose a name plate was fixed in both federation and Orion script. The Federation plate said "Green Machine."
Dunham put his hands on his hips and smiled, “What a piece of junk” he said fondly; Dunham suspected it might be love at first sight with this ship. “What kind of speed does she do?”
"It varies between frustrating and bloody terrifying." Yolanthe ran a hand through her hair. "Up to warp 4 I think. But the impulse engines make you want to get out and push."
“Can we take a look inside?” he asked politely.
"Sure." She crossed to the main crew door and squatted down in front of it. She threw the manual release, settled her weight evenly, and then heaved. Her muscles flexed hard, and then with a final screech of protesting hydraulics and a greedy sucking noise the seal broke and the door came up. "It's been powered off." She brushed her hands off on the back of her trousers, "Not that it would have made a difference. Its deaf." She stepped inside and felt her way along to the cock pit for the main ignition. A moment later, and there was the gentle hum of a engine core idling. The lights come came on. "Come on in."
Dunham glanced the women up and down as he crossed the threshold onto the ship. She was a lot stronger than she looked. “It’s pretty much what’s meant by the term fixer upper isn’t it? I mean how did you get anywhere in this thing?”
"With my eyes closed." She laughed. "Klia's a terrible pilot." She sat down in the helm seat. "But she's pretty good with the technology. It wasn't in good condition when we got it, so she had to do some basic repairs, patch a few holes. She scavenged ever junk yard from Betazed to here to get spares, so there's plenty out back. She said she never knew what would fall off next. I have the pattern books if you need to replicate anything."
Dunham nodded an affirmative as he sat down in the co-pilots seat, his fingers stroked lightly over the ships helm controls, and they resembled something like the old NX-Class control systems rather than anything of modern standard. Dunham leaned backward and forward in his seat. “Chairs a bit squeaky” he said to himself. It was a swivel seat and he turned it around on it axis to face down the ship. He sat there a moment taking it all in. “Can we take a look at the engine please?”
"No problem." She got up and led him down the internal corridor. "Crew compartments. Takes four." She pointed to the two doors they passed almost immediately on leaving the bridge. "Cramped, unless you're a midget like Klia. Basic, but they do." She didn't stop for him to look. The door ahead slid open and she led him onto a gantry around the main cargo bay. Several large crates were up against the wall, filled with twists of metal. Other than that it was empty. Underneath the gantry at the opposite side was the main cargo doors. Above them were two more sliding doors leading onto the gantry. "Access to the sensor array, deflector shields and other stuff." She pointed to the door on the right. Then she moved up to the door on the left, "This one is Engineering."
The door only opened half way. "Breath in!" She squeezed around it and moved into the cramped space beyond.
Dunham breathed in as he slipped passed the door into the engineering section.
The deep breath wasn't just for the narrow entrance. The engine room smelt of something. Something sweet and stale, like rotting meat. Yolanthe wrinkled her nose and tried not to choke. She moved over to the warp core. The main chamber was patched, the cooling system taken from two or three different craft and the whole thing was covered in a sheer layer of oil that gave the assembly a sickened gleam.
She kicked a hatch and it fell off. Inside he could see the anti-matter containment unit. It was pristine. "We had to dispose of the anti-matter before we could store the ship. Someone in Engineering took it away. Who knows, they might still have it. " She moved to the dilithium loading chamber, examined the panel for a moment before finding the one that released the unit. "I'm afraid you're probably going to need more dilithium." She pulled out the fuel. There were only a handful of finger sized crystals left, "They're a bit tired."
Dunham scratched the stubble on his chin in thought. “I could reconfigure the flow of gravitons from the isolinear processors, to manipulate a graviton wave to the anti-matter injectors; this in turn would harmonise and re-power the dilithium matrix, at least in the short term. What is that funky smell?” He said changing the topic.
Her skin down shifted to a shade of aqua for a moment. "I don't understand a word you just said." she grinned. "As for the smell? I'm not sure. It’s entirely possible something died in here. I tried to leave this place to Klia. She never found out what it was." She waved at all the mismatched panelling and jury rigged pipes and ducts. "We never had it offline to take a proper look."
Dunham smiled, shrugged, and thrust his hands in his pockets. “So you could be selling me anything right?” He said with a lop sided smile. “How about we take a look in that engine now?”
"I said it would be a challenge. All I can guarantee is that the environmental seals and the antimatter containment system are 110%. After that, what you see is what you get." She pointed to another loose panel. "I think it's in there. You're on your own. It would be a very tight squeeze for the two of us." Her skin moved to a dark magenta for a moment and then back to dusky violet.
Dunham frowned for a moment “One day I’m gonna find out what those colour changes mean” He then went about moving the panel; or door, to gain access to the warp core room. He shifted the panel aside and squeezed through. Mumbling could be heard from inside the dark shadowed room, highlighted by the occasional spark, yelp of pain, and flash of torch light “Power flow to the plasma coils, have to be to re-aligned to start the quantum filament alignment in the fabric of phase transition circuits.” Their came another series of bangs and crashes, and an indignant “I have no idea what that is?” followed by a piece of small charred metal flying out of the room as Dunham chucked it over his shoulder. “You know if you had flown in this thing much longer you would of got a inverse energy degradation of the a structural integrity field, resulting critical cascade failure. I think?” There came more mumbling from the room, then Dunham emerged with black smudge marks on his face, and a smile. “How much?”
She tucked a strand of aqua hair behind an ear. His commentary meant nothing. She wasn't sure she understood half the words he used, even though she was sure he spoke federation standard. She thought about the price. "Ten strips?" The only things worth anything were the remains of the dilithium and the anti-matter system. The rest was a couple of hundred tons of scrap.
“I’ve only nine.” He said honestly, rubbing black smudges off his face with the back of his sleeve. He was a Starfleet officer. He had no actual need for money, what he had gathered thus far was only from this and that over the years of his service. “How about nine and I you owe you a favour?” he said with a smile.
She looked him over. He was a grubby and smudged, but the little boy grin was very endearing. "I'll take that deal." She had a few ideas how he could work that debt off. "Shall we go toast the new owner?"
“Why not,” he said with another smile. Soon they were back in the Box of Delights, Dunham perched himself back onto the bar stool. “What are we drinking?”
She looked along the rainbow of bottles that lined the bar. "Scotch." she pulled the bottle from its place, and poured two servings over ice into a cocktail shaker and topped it up with soda. She gave gave it a flick, sending it spinning into the air, caught it and poured. "Diluted, for you abstemious fleet types. Here's to the new master of DS5's most dilapidated cargo runner."
Dunham chuckled at the truth of the comment. Then proffered his glass for a toast, he smiled as their glasses clinked together. “Here’s to you also Ma’am” he said with another smile and a raising of his glass. He then took a sip of the scotch.
"May owning the damn thing give you as much pleasure as I have in seeing the back of it." She put her glass down. "And before I forget. Nine strips of latinum, please."
Dunham took out bag from his pocket and poured the contents on to the Bar. What came out was in fact nine bars of gold pressed latinum, not strips, bars, each carrying a different maker’s mark. To Dunham they were strips. The man had no concept of money or the value system. “All yours” he said with a smile.
She looked at the nine bars for a long moment, her skin fading through shades of powder blue, pale pink, and misty grey. "Oh, sweetie," she sighed. The nine bars gleamed dully on the bar, begging her to sweep them into her cash box. The federation would arm its men, teach them to fight and hunt and kill, and then leave them babies in other matters. Well, she wasn't a Ferengi. She wouldn't take advantage of those adorable dimples. He couldn't help being innocent.
Eventually she said, "I think you can afford a better ship. Those are bars not strips." She went a burnt orange for a moment, then a blue-grey. "Its twenty times what I asked."
Dunham looked from the pile of gold bars on the bar, then up at Ibalin, then back down to the bars, then back up at Ibalin. “Is that a lot?” he asked in honest curiosity?
Yolanthe shook her head in near disbelief. Two and half years out in the galaxy and she still couldn't get her head around the Federation's lack of economics. She opened the cash box. "I swear, I should make fleeters pay in cash and not let you sign it off against your allowance. Currency 101." She took out two slips, and chinked the tiny tokens together. "Slips. Two will buy you a root beer. There are a hundred slips in a Strip." She found one in the cash box and placed it next to the slips so he could see the size difference. "So, fifty bottles of root beer, a so-so bottle of Romulan Ale, or 20 tokens on the high stakes dabo table. Dinner for two at Anatole's on a not particularly special occasion. With me so far?"
“Yep,” said Dunham affirmatively, and nodding in enthusiastic agreement.
She lifted out eight more strips and piled them on top of the first. "One spectacularly crappy cargo ship" Then she rooted in the box and scraped out every last one. She put a dozen next to the eight. "20 strips is one bar." she pulled one of his bars next to the pile of strips for comparison. "That little haul," she waved a hand at Dunham's nine bars, "is about what one of my dabo boys can expect to take home in a year, given average tips and no work on the side."
Dunham pushed the bar of latinum that was sitting next to the stack of its sister strips, across the bar towards Ibalin. “For your ship Miss Ibalin, and a thank you for not ripping me off.” He said with a soft smile. “Thank you, I mean it.” He gingerly put the other bars of latinum away in there bag. “I wonder what gonna do with the rest of these.” He said with a small sigh.
She gave him a warm smile that lifted her skin to the colour of a tropical ocean. She pointed into the far corner of the Box, "That’s Jessica," She indicated a pretty young human woman dealing cards at a table, "and that’s Ahjess," she indicated the equally pretty trill male spinning one of the dabo wheels. "They'll help you with that."
Dunham smiled and shook his head lightly, “Alas not my cup of tea. Bad Karma” He finished his drink, winked at the bar tender, and got up to go and sit in the corner for a little bit of quiet. As he was turning to go, he turned back to owner of the establishment. “Oh and I don’t owe any favours now either,“ he said with another smile and a thumbs up.
------
Klia came down from the holosuites as Dunham moved away and found her friend scooping cash off the bar. She looked her up and down, and then glanced at the pilot's retreating back. "You're a funny colour." she waved a hand at the smoky rose skin and salmon hair.
Yolanthe dropped four strips of latinum into her hand. "I've managed to get rid of the rust bucket. There's your share."
Klia whistled. "You did good." She stuffed the money in her pocket. "Did you tell him what I did to the computer? I never got round to putting it back to normal."
"Nope." She thought about calling the young man back. But he’d dodged his favour, and the issue wasn't deadly. "He'll find out."
Off
Lt Richard Dunham
Squadron Leader
&
Yolanthe Ibalin
Owner & bartender The Box of Delights
by Commander Richard Dunham & Alderman Yolanthe Ibalin
Post Details
| Title | A Ship, A Ship, My Kingdom For A Ship | |
| Mission | Unity | |
| Author(s) | Commander Richard Dunham & Alderman Yolanthe Ibalin | |
| Posted | Fri Mar 12, 2010 @ 10:14am | |
| Location | The Box Of Delights | |
| Timeline | SD17 12.00 |
Dunham sat at the bar of the Box of Delights, he stared into the remains of his No-alcoholic beer, and pontificated on recent events that had transpired onboard Deep Space Five. In all the commotion he had neglected a few future plans for himself. He frowned at little as he continued to stare into his drink. He didn’t know how really how to go about one of his personal plans; it was not something he had done before. Starfleet had always provided for him. But now he wanted something for himself.
"I did warn you," Yolanthe, the owner of the bar appeared in front of him, her skin its usual violent blue hue. "Non-alcoholic beer is awful even when it isn't synthesized. I'm impressed you made it that far." She gave him a careful look. "Or are you making that face for other reasons?"
Dunham smiled up at the bartender from his perch on the bar stool. “Oh, just contemplating life the universe, and everything” He swirled the remains of the drink around in the bottom of the glass in reflective contemplation. “Were do I get ship?”
It was an odd question coming from a pilot, she thought, but she may be able to help. "What sort of ship are you after?
Dunham shrugged “dunno, some sort of light freighter or small independent cargo ship,” he shrugged, “a fixer upper maybe? I honestly don’t know how these things work, I never bought ship before, Starfleet has always provided for my flying needs, but I kinda fancied having a ship of my own, even saved all my pennies for it” he said with a flash of a smile.
"Then I guess it all comes down to how many pennies to the strip." She rearranged some of the bar tools whilst she thought about it. "Cabron down on level 4 has a dealership that covers used transports. But out here, they're not cheap." She sucked her lip for a moment. "How serious are you about a fixer upper? What do you think you can take on?"
Dunham breathed out through pursed lips, making a funny noise. “Well every Starfleet pilot has to be versed in basic starship maintenance, plus I took a module in engineering at the academy, but I’m no Bruce Freeman. However I reckon I can pull my weight when it comes to fixing up some old bit of space chunk” said Dunham with a smile.
She drummed her fingers on the bar top. "You know, Cabron will stiff you thoroughly if you go to him. He's no Ferengi, but he follows the rules of acquisition as if he was the Grand Nagus himself. If you're not afraid of a challenge, I think I can help you out myself. I've been meaning to trade in the ship Klia and I used to get here. A Bedford-class freighter. Enough space for two people to handle, but not much more. Its space worthy, but it could do with some loving care."
Dunham mulled it over in thought. He took out a stick of gum from his back pocket, unwrapped it and started chewing on it. Then he scratched the stubble on his chin; basically he didn’t have a clue about ship prices or what a Bedford-class Light freighter was. Dunham's remit on ships included Starfleet vessels, and the vessels of both their enemies and allies. “hmmmm” he said pretending to know what he was talking about. “I’d have to take a look at it.”
Yolanthe nodded. "Fair enough." She looked down the bar to where a young bajoran man was also serving. "Pelin? Can you cope for half an hour so?"
He never looked up from the drinks he was mixing. "Sure boss."
Yolanthe turned back to Dunham. "Now a good time?"
Dunham smiled "Its date", he gestured for her to continue, and he would follow.
------
Deck 1125 was mostly shuttle storage, and therefore only dimly lit. It took Yolanthe a good five minutes to find her way to the shuttle bay where they'd mothballed the elderly freighter they'd arrived on the station in. She keyed the door, and it slid open.
Inside was a squat, stubby little freighter, maybe only two or three times the size of a Danube-class runabout. Its nacelles were boxy, the hull pitted, and the deflector array was very definitely taken from an early Valkyrie fighter. On the nose a name plate was fixed in both federation and Orion script. The Federation plate said "Green Machine."
Dunham put his hands on his hips and smiled, “What a piece of junk” he said fondly; Dunham suspected it might be love at first sight with this ship. “What kind of speed does she do?”
"It varies between frustrating and bloody terrifying." Yolanthe ran a hand through her hair. "Up to warp 4 I think. But the impulse engines make you want to get out and push."
“Can we take a look inside?” he asked politely.
"Sure." She crossed to the main crew door and squatted down in front of it. She threw the manual release, settled her weight evenly, and then heaved. Her muscles flexed hard, and then with a final screech of protesting hydraulics and a greedy sucking noise the seal broke and the door came up. "It's been powered off." She brushed her hands off on the back of her trousers, "Not that it would have made a difference. Its deaf." She stepped inside and felt her way along to the cock pit for the main ignition. A moment later, and there was the gentle hum of a engine core idling. The lights come came on. "Come on in."
Dunham glanced the women up and down as he crossed the threshold onto the ship. She was a lot stronger than she looked. “It’s pretty much what’s meant by the term fixer upper isn’t it? I mean how did you get anywhere in this thing?”
"With my eyes closed." She laughed. "Klia's a terrible pilot." She sat down in the helm seat. "But she's pretty good with the technology. It wasn't in good condition when we got it, so she had to do some basic repairs, patch a few holes. She scavenged ever junk yard from Betazed to here to get spares, so there's plenty out back. She said she never knew what would fall off next. I have the pattern books if you need to replicate anything."
Dunham nodded an affirmative as he sat down in the co-pilots seat, his fingers stroked lightly over the ships helm controls, and they resembled something like the old NX-Class control systems rather than anything of modern standard. Dunham leaned backward and forward in his seat. “Chairs a bit squeaky” he said to himself. It was a swivel seat and he turned it around on it axis to face down the ship. He sat there a moment taking it all in. “Can we take a look at the engine please?”
"No problem." She got up and led him down the internal corridor. "Crew compartments. Takes four." She pointed to the two doors they passed almost immediately on leaving the bridge. "Cramped, unless you're a midget like Klia. Basic, but they do." She didn't stop for him to look. The door ahead slid open and she led him onto a gantry around the main cargo bay. Several large crates were up against the wall, filled with twists of metal. Other than that it was empty. Underneath the gantry at the opposite side was the main cargo doors. Above them were two more sliding doors leading onto the gantry. "Access to the sensor array, deflector shields and other stuff." She pointed to the door on the right. Then she moved up to the door on the left, "This one is Engineering."
The door only opened half way. "Breath in!" She squeezed around it and moved into the cramped space beyond.
Dunham breathed in as he slipped passed the door into the engineering section.
The deep breath wasn't just for the narrow entrance. The engine room smelt of something. Something sweet and stale, like rotting meat. Yolanthe wrinkled her nose and tried not to choke. She moved over to the warp core. The main chamber was patched, the cooling system taken from two or three different craft and the whole thing was covered in a sheer layer of oil that gave the assembly a sickened gleam.
She kicked a hatch and it fell off. Inside he could see the anti-matter containment unit. It was pristine. "We had to dispose of the anti-matter before we could store the ship. Someone in Engineering took it away. Who knows, they might still have it. " She moved to the dilithium loading chamber, examined the panel for a moment before finding the one that released the unit. "I'm afraid you're probably going to need more dilithium." She pulled out the fuel. There were only a handful of finger sized crystals left, "They're a bit tired."
Dunham scratched the stubble on his chin in thought. “I could reconfigure the flow of gravitons from the isolinear processors, to manipulate a graviton wave to the anti-matter injectors; this in turn would harmonise and re-power the dilithium matrix, at least in the short term. What is that funky smell?” He said changing the topic.
Her skin down shifted to a shade of aqua for a moment. "I don't understand a word you just said." she grinned. "As for the smell? I'm not sure. It’s entirely possible something died in here. I tried to leave this place to Klia. She never found out what it was." She waved at all the mismatched panelling and jury rigged pipes and ducts. "We never had it offline to take a proper look."
Dunham smiled, shrugged, and thrust his hands in his pockets. “So you could be selling me anything right?” He said with a lop sided smile. “How about we take a look in that engine now?”
"I said it would be a challenge. All I can guarantee is that the environmental seals and the antimatter containment system are 110%. After that, what you see is what you get." She pointed to another loose panel. "I think it's in there. You're on your own. It would be a very tight squeeze for the two of us." Her skin moved to a dark magenta for a moment and then back to dusky violet.
Dunham frowned for a moment “One day I’m gonna find out what those colour changes mean” He then went about moving the panel; or door, to gain access to the warp core room. He shifted the panel aside and squeezed through. Mumbling could be heard from inside the dark shadowed room, highlighted by the occasional spark, yelp of pain, and flash of torch light “Power flow to the plasma coils, have to be to re-aligned to start the quantum filament alignment in the fabric of phase transition circuits.” Their came another series of bangs and crashes, and an indignant “I have no idea what that is?” followed by a piece of small charred metal flying out of the room as Dunham chucked it over his shoulder. “You know if you had flown in this thing much longer you would of got a inverse energy degradation of the a structural integrity field, resulting critical cascade failure. I think?” There came more mumbling from the room, then Dunham emerged with black smudge marks on his face, and a smile. “How much?”
She tucked a strand of aqua hair behind an ear. His commentary meant nothing. She wasn't sure she understood half the words he used, even though she was sure he spoke federation standard. She thought about the price. "Ten strips?" The only things worth anything were the remains of the dilithium and the anti-matter system. The rest was a couple of hundred tons of scrap.
“I’ve only nine.” He said honestly, rubbing black smudges off his face with the back of his sleeve. He was a Starfleet officer. He had no actual need for money, what he had gathered thus far was only from this and that over the years of his service. “How about nine and I you owe you a favour?” he said with a smile.
She looked him over. He was a grubby and smudged, but the little boy grin was very endearing. "I'll take that deal." She had a few ideas how he could work that debt off. "Shall we go toast the new owner?"
“Why not,” he said with another smile. Soon they were back in the Box of Delights, Dunham perched himself back onto the bar stool. “What are we drinking?”
She looked along the rainbow of bottles that lined the bar. "Scotch." she pulled the bottle from its place, and poured two servings over ice into a cocktail shaker and topped it up with soda. She gave gave it a flick, sending it spinning into the air, caught it and poured. "Diluted, for you abstemious fleet types. Here's to the new master of DS5's most dilapidated cargo runner."
Dunham chuckled at the truth of the comment. Then proffered his glass for a toast, he smiled as their glasses clinked together. “Here’s to you also Ma’am” he said with another smile and a raising of his glass. He then took a sip of the scotch.
"May owning the damn thing give you as much pleasure as I have in seeing the back of it." She put her glass down. "And before I forget. Nine strips of latinum, please."
Dunham took out bag from his pocket and poured the contents on to the Bar. What came out was in fact nine bars of gold pressed latinum, not strips, bars, each carrying a different maker’s mark. To Dunham they were strips. The man had no concept of money or the value system. “All yours” he said with a smile.
She looked at the nine bars for a long moment, her skin fading through shades of powder blue, pale pink, and misty grey. "Oh, sweetie," she sighed. The nine bars gleamed dully on the bar, begging her to sweep them into her cash box. The federation would arm its men, teach them to fight and hunt and kill, and then leave them babies in other matters. Well, she wasn't a Ferengi. She wouldn't take advantage of those adorable dimples. He couldn't help being innocent.
Eventually she said, "I think you can afford a better ship. Those are bars not strips." She went a burnt orange for a moment, then a blue-grey. "Its twenty times what I asked."
Dunham looked from the pile of gold bars on the bar, then up at Ibalin, then back down to the bars, then back up at Ibalin. “Is that a lot?” he asked in honest curiosity?
Yolanthe shook her head in near disbelief. Two and half years out in the galaxy and she still couldn't get her head around the Federation's lack of economics. She opened the cash box. "I swear, I should make fleeters pay in cash and not let you sign it off against your allowance. Currency 101." She took out two slips, and chinked the tiny tokens together. "Slips. Two will buy you a root beer. There are a hundred slips in a Strip." She found one in the cash box and placed it next to the slips so he could see the size difference. "So, fifty bottles of root beer, a so-so bottle of Romulan Ale, or 20 tokens on the high stakes dabo table. Dinner for two at Anatole's on a not particularly special occasion. With me so far?"
“Yep,” said Dunham affirmatively, and nodding in enthusiastic agreement.
She lifted out eight more strips and piled them on top of the first. "One spectacularly crappy cargo ship" Then she rooted in the box and scraped out every last one. She put a dozen next to the eight. "20 strips is one bar." she pulled one of his bars next to the pile of strips for comparison. "That little haul," she waved a hand at Dunham's nine bars, "is about what one of my dabo boys can expect to take home in a year, given average tips and no work on the side."
Dunham pushed the bar of latinum that was sitting next to the stack of its sister strips, across the bar towards Ibalin. “For your ship Miss Ibalin, and a thank you for not ripping me off.” He said with a soft smile. “Thank you, I mean it.” He gingerly put the other bars of latinum away in there bag. “I wonder what gonna do with the rest of these.” He said with a small sigh.
She gave him a warm smile that lifted her skin to the colour of a tropical ocean. She pointed into the far corner of the Box, "That’s Jessica," She indicated a pretty young human woman dealing cards at a table, "and that’s Ahjess," she indicated the equally pretty trill male spinning one of the dabo wheels. "They'll help you with that."
Dunham smiled and shook his head lightly, “Alas not my cup of tea. Bad Karma” He finished his drink, winked at the bar tender, and got up to go and sit in the corner for a little bit of quiet. As he was turning to go, he turned back to owner of the establishment. “Oh and I don’t owe any favours now either,“ he said with another smile and a thumbs up.
------
Klia came down from the holosuites as Dunham moved away and found her friend scooping cash off the bar. She looked her up and down, and then glanced at the pilot's retreating back. "You're a funny colour." she waved a hand at the smoky rose skin and salmon hair.
Yolanthe dropped four strips of latinum into her hand. "I've managed to get rid of the rust bucket. There's your share."
Klia whistled. "You did good." She stuffed the money in her pocket. "Did you tell him what I did to the computer? I never got round to putting it back to normal."
"Nope." She thought about calling the young man back. But he’d dodged his favour, and the issue wasn't deadly. "He'll find out."
Off
Lt Richard Dunham
Squadron Leader
&
Yolanthe Ibalin
Owner & bartender The Box of Delights