Education

The last drop of ale slide out of the glass and into his mouth. I am finally finished, the engineer thought to himself. He had made it his goal to stare at his computer screen for his entire shore leave to learn the entire database of engineering schematics and protocols for the USS Horizon.

Lieutenant S'Tan Solius slid his chair back and stretched, for what seemed like the first time in weeks. He now understood most of the Reaction Drive's systems as well as the additional unspecified modifications made to the warp core by TPG's scientists. He finally felt like an engineer again; a master of his craft.

After feeling somewhat unhelpful on the ship's last mission, once they arrived back at Starbase Lotus, S'Tan was determined to learn everything he could about the systems he was in charge of. He spent most of his days in his room learning. It wasn't the worst thing in the universe either. He had always enjoyed his time studying on Romulus...even if what he learned was really no longer useful. Since he was one of the few Romulans on station, he was sure that he was not missed at the bar and other recreational events the starbase held.

But it didn't bother him. Especially after receiving that message from his cousin. Large gatherings of low-grade security sounded more like asking to be poisoned than fun. He instead learned. And tinkered. His starbase quarters now could easily replicate Romulan Ale. He was already thinking about transferring that programming to the Horizon, although he wasn't sure if it was worth the risk on the ship. His activities were mostly ignored by the starbase, but on the ship, he already knew of the stringent security protocols the newly restored Captain held.

After shutting down his computer, he stepped outside his office. The call to return to duty had gone out over night and he reported to his office first thing to finish up his final 'exam.' He nodded to Baoule who was walking in as he was walking out.

"Good morning Lieutenant." the man said, "Enjoy your shore leave?"

The Romulan smirked and laughed, "I kept my head down, yes."

"It's too bad that they can't just let us hang around on the station forever. It's so much...calmer."

"I don't know you for that long, Robert, but I feel like you'd hate being stuck on the station for longer than a few weeks. I am going to the mess to get some breakfast, I will return shortly."

The two men separated and the Romulan continued walking towards the turbolift.

After a short ride, he arrived at the mess and grabbed a plate of viinerine. For some reason, most people said it tasted like slop. S'Tan always enjoyed it, as it reminded him of his mother and father. And so he ate and relaxed, in preparation for what was to come.

"Enjoying the wait, Lieutenant?" Snowfire had seen S'Tan enter the mess from where she had been sitting over at one of the smaller tables. She'd...well...she was pretty sure that she'd worked straight through the night without even slowing down. She really needed to get a handle on that...no, no, concentrate. She smiled down at the seated Romulan, eyes bright despite the tiredness she knew had to be evident somewhere in them - then again maybe not, the normal schedule she kept to gave her about four times the amount of rest she actually needed. And she was getting distracted again, Goddess take it. She gestured at the seat across from him.

"May I join you?"

The Romulan smiled, "Of course. Please, join me. it's not often I get company."

After the woman was settled, "Did you enjoy your shore leave?"

"More than I expected, less than I would have hoped." She gestured to the rank insignia on her breast. "Promotion to what is effectively command rank within Starfleet does....not make things easy for me. Especially so as I am the only member of my group to gain a rank higher than your previous one." She sighed, then, aware that S'tan likely had no idea what she was talking about. "I'm part of a cultural exchange group from my people's navy, you see, it's the reason that my uniform is different. Given your own experience," she was stretching here, much of S'tan's record remained classified to her, but it was an easy guess to make, "I think you might understand better than most."

The engineer had no idea what she was talking about. But, in usual Romulan fashion, he did not let it show. "Yes, it is a whole new culture here. Just look at our time here in stardock. The Romulan navy only put ships in for emergency repairs and then immediately sends them out. For us to have so much time free is very....unusual. I had been wondering about your uniform...not that we've had any time to chat. Was this a choice of your own doing?"

"The Council's doing - my people's government - not my own," Snowfire replied. She had to be careful here, picking up too much would...probably be extremely rude. "It was part of the treaty we signed with the Federation ten years ago, designed to help us learn more about each other." She carefully did not comment on the fact that she knew it had been more a method for IDFC to gather information on a possible foe than anything else. "As for a whole different culture, indeed it is. Yet so fragile." The words were sad, as if she knew something S'tan didn't, yet her tone changed swiftly. "The Romulan Navy...they use singularity based systems for power, don't they?"

"Indeed they do. Incredibly dangerous system, compared to the Federation. But the Romulans are set in their ways about many things. Partly due to paranoia instilled by their own government, and partly due to the fact that currently, they make their own parts and pieces. If they changed to something...better, they might have to rely on the Federation, Klingons, Dominion, etcetera." He took a bite of his food while he collected his thoughts. "Are there any Federation officers serving in your military?"

"Well, using them as a power source on their own would be dangerous. I was more wondering...well, my people's technology is heavily slanted towards gravitics. I guess I was curious to see if your people had worked out how to use them properly." She raised a placating hand. "I don't mean that as an insult, I must hasten to add, but it's a result of the fact that we never developed the warp drive on our own. We got that off of the Borg." She cocked her head at the question of Starfleet in the IDF, a smile tugging at the edge of her lips. "By nature a treaty for mutual discovery must go both ways. There is a small group, but they are still embroiled in our version of Starfleet Academy. Our one takes a decade to complete, you see. The first wave of students will be graduating this year though."

The Romulan nodded in understanding. "There is no need for apologetics, Commander. Unlike you, I am not here on loan. Though I am sure we are both monitored to the full extent of the Intelligence Division. The Romulans use the Singularity drives and they require 24/7 monitoring. They are a waste of time and resources, compared to the Warp Cores of the Feds." S'Tan could feel his pasty cheeks becoming inflamed with anger and remorse. "Ever since being posted here, I have never once checked in with my engineering team to make sure they still existed. As you know, the drive is generated by a miniature black hole. There have been ships that have just vanished out of space, as their singularity drive implodes, devouring the ship out of existence. So, you may tell your superiors that yes, the Romulans have figured it out. But every few months we lose a ship or four to an unstable core."

He paused for a moment, letting the anger that rose up settle back down and return himself to calmness.

Snowfire was confused for a moment, why would there be a problem - oh, of course. They put the system together as a warp drive. She couldn't do anything complex just sitting here, but the basic math was painful enough. High level gravitational effects had an innate effect on subspace, unless you could filter them out through interference like the Fasset Drive did whilst in wormhole space. Trying to compensate for the effects that would have on an already varied subspace terrain...she didn't really want to think about it. The question was how much she could trust him with, saying even the smallest thing here would stray perilously close to the restrictions she still had on her. Yet his anger was real, and he did seem comfortable here...where else better to take a leap?

"So your R&D focused on using the singularity to simulate a warp drive. I can understand your anger then, considering how hard it must be to keep something like that from destabilising and taking the entire ship with it, especially when taking into account the nature of subspace terrain and how fast it would change at warp speeds. I'm honestly impressed that you don't lose more ships." She left it there. If he wanted to know how her people's FTL and subspace drives worked, he could ask her or try to look it up. And then end up having to ask her anyway, if he wanted to find the right file.

"I am surprised that is not taking the Federation officers longer to get through your academy." He smirked, thinking about his time in the academy on Romulus. "I am not sure they would even survive the Romulan Navy's. But our academy is more about military might than educational experience. Going from there to here was much more enjoyable. I wasn't even fed poison!" He concluded, laughing.

Snowfire chuckled at the joke. "Well, it's not like the entire group is graduating this year. If I remember correctly, the projections are for no more than twenty percent of the group making it to the finals, and of those?" She chuckled again, it was surprisingly pleasant sound. "My aunt is faculty at one of the Academies where we're training Starfleet officers. She isn't expecting more than three out of the twenty three assigned to her Academy to pass. Considering the rate at which some of them are progressing, she's quite confident that several of them will request transfers before they manage to finish. And there's nothing we can really do about the timing without invalidating our entire training process."

That was the reason that her aunt had given, and it was also one that Snowfire resolutely agreed with. There were other reasons of course, but those weren't the ones most at fault here. It was...well...a matter of experience. "Even with the best work ethic and retention rate in the world, when someone is up against cadets no younger than two hundred years old who have spent at least five years in one of the prep schools we have for Fleet Academy, it's not really a fair contest." She shrugged. "But they'll get there in the end, I'm sure."

The Lieutenant could easily tell that there were more reasons than just experience and education for not being able to graduate. Maybe if he lived long enough in the Federation he would become enraged about the unfairness of the Ilythiiri...but it wasn't his concern or place to vocalize them.He simply smiled and grinned, hoping his understanding of the true reasons would come across on his face. 

It was at that point Snowfire noticed the figure of the Horizons first officer Commander Neil Redding entering the room, he seemed to be looking for someone and shortly spotted her and headed over to their table.

"Snowfire." he said with a grin then looked over at S'tan  "And Lt. Solius, perfect. You were on my list as well."

He sat down without waiting for an invite. "I was hoping to speak to you both on a matter of inner ship familiarization between the different professional groups, namely Security, Engineering, and Sciences."

"I've purposed a team building off duty exercise that's already been cleared with the Captain involving a Terrain competition that traces it's ancestry all the way back to 3200 BC, that's more than four and a half millennia Solius, and was once called 'the sport of Kings' and I'm currently looking for promoters and team captains." 

"Now, I'm sure both of you would love to be a part of such an endeavor so I came to you first." He raised an eye brow at them.

Snowfire noticed something different about the Commander, but she couldn't yet put her finger on it.

"Sport of Kings, commander? As far as I am aware, weren't most kings in Terran history fat, lazy slobs who made others do their bidding?" The Romulan quipped. "I'd like to hear more about this. If Romulan databases are anything to go by, weren't all old age competitions 'to-the-death'?"

"Worried I was planning to challenge you to a match Lieutenant?" He said with a wicked grin.

"But no, to my knowledge there was never a single 'death match' in all that time and you are correct, it is often played by slow, genially lazy people who, as I understand it, tend to consume quantities of low-grade alcohol, commonly referred to as 'beer' during matches."

"I'm referring of course to the game of 'Bowling' and I would like the two of you to represent your departments" He smiled again pleasantly.

The Romulan cocked his head. "Excuse me? What does a food bowl have to do with combat?"

Snowfire considered bringing up the differences, but they were too small to focus on right now. Conversation could make things difficult, but that didn't mean she wouldn't look later. It didn't feel like an imposter, but who knew? The galaxy was a strange place. Yet, the answer to his question was easy enough. She gestured over at S'tan.

"What he said, officer. Except double."

Redding shrugged "The name might be a bit misleading, I think when people used to play this sport they wore these odd little hats called 'bowls' because of their round shape and a rim around its base, they became know as 'bowlers' and thus it became known as 'bowling' to the common people." his look was dead serious, but Snowfire could sense he was playing with them.

"But it is in fact a game in which you take a spherical object of good density and roll it a short distance in the attempt to topple up to 10 placed objects referred to as 'pins'. You then add up the total score for each group and announce a winner. At the end of the season the top 4 teams with the best score would compete in a final match and the winner would receive an award called a trophy, and then repeat the events the following year."

He put his hands to his chin, elbows on the table. "Mostly it's just to promote team work and interdepartmental relations."

Then glanced over at Snowfire "But we could do boys against girls as well." and gave a half grin.

"I'm pretty sure you'd lose that, Commander." Snowfire replied, her purple eyes flashing with mischief. "We're not just pretty faces, you know."

The Romulan cocked his head, still not understanding the specifics of the game. After thinking for a moment, he exclaimed, "Then my team selects our pins be made of neutronium and our bowling will be made from rolling a photon grenade, with proximity detonation enabled. Your pins do not stand a chance!"

"And I'm pretty sure that we don't want to have to rebuild the recreation decks every time we play a round, S'tan." She chuckled. "It would give your department so much more work to do."

"Not to worry Snowfire, those munitions were outlawed in the early 20th century and all the pins are made of the same regulated material to prevent unbalancing factors in the competition, but as for winning or losing between boy girl games?" Redding sat back up and shrugged.

"That's the true beauty of this game you see, anyone can be good at it. It's a sport that allows you to use whatever your good at to guide your performance." He stood up to give his gestures more room.

"Are you big and strong? you can power bowl those pins into oblivion ."

"Are you strong and frail?" he motioned at S'tan off handedly. "The proper lead into off the head pin is the way to go."

"Or perhaps your hundreds of years old with advanced hand/eye acuity.. well, there are two groups of people that I know of that can't seem to bowl, Elaysian, for obvious reasons, and Vulcan."

"It's theorized that the prime ingredient is actually passion, with all seriousness." He said with a wave of his hand. "Because no matter how unlikely, or likely someone is to be good at the game, if they're 'into it' they score consistently better."

"So in effect, anyone could be as good as anyone, despite build or intelligence.. in fact one of the best bowlers I ever knew was a Pakled.. anyway, I believe it would be an excellent team building exercise."

"So, sensing that there just might be a little confusion about the game I've reserved two lanes at the bowling ally, and yes the ship actually has one, down on the recreation deck for 1800 hours. Which, I just happen to know, is after both your shifts."

He waited a second looking them over. "So.. any takers?"

Snowfire chuckled. "Far be it from me to pass up on an opportunity to get to know more of the crew." She looked over at the Romulan across from her. "What about you, Lieutenant?"

The engineer smiled, "Of course. I can't promise anything spectacular on my part, but I am sure it will be entertaining in some way."