Shooting the Breeze
Posted on March 9th, 2021 by Scott Ammora

There’s something about the ocean.

There’s an inherent uniqueness in it. Everyone tries to describe it. There’s the sounds, smells in the breeze, the colors, and the feel of the sand, but the complexity of it all is mesmerizing. Scott had seen plenty in his travels, his training, and his holodeck adventures. Every single one slightly different, but somehow all the same. While he had never been one for oceanography, marine cartography, or anything related to water-based science, he appreciated the beauty of it all.

There were the random one-offs that were more eye-catching than others. Calas IV had the purple tint with the bioluminescent green caps on the waves, Jalaria had the sweet aroma that countered the standard salty scent, and Langmar had the gravitational irregularities that caused circular waves on the beach. Wave circles, the locals had called them. All amazing… unique… perfect, in their own right.

Scott found himself on the highest perch above the away team. He saw the kayaking science officers paddling, stopping, and taking their samples. He saw the lava flow to his left and those taking readings. Ammora’s Summit, he thought to himself as he shifted the weight of his bag on his shoulder. The frontier – the thing he had wanted – was right before him.

It was bittersweet.

“It’s like the north shore of Oahu, right?”

It took Scott a fraction of a second to comprehend the thought. “Nah, it’s better, different, but still better.” And it truly was. For those that never got off-world, off Earth, Hawaii and Fiji and Bermuda were the ‘places to go’. Scott had been to all of them. While they were pretty in their own way, they didn’t match up to this; at least, in his own opinion. Again, beauty was in the eye of the beholder… and this was a sight to behold.

“I’m expecting a group of boats on the racecourse to come from the eastern edge of that outcropping.”

Scott smirked, “Sanspiron for the win.”

“Please, the Klingons were going to take it and you knew it. You just don’t like being wrong…” 

The words floated in the air, much like the breeze off the water. The words were caring, they were nostalgic, and they were true. “You know I always love the underdog.”

“It suits your personality.”

Another laugh, but heartier this time. “I was raised that glass ceilings were meant to be broken. Or, at the very least, chipped away at. You go big or you go home. You rise to every occasion. You know, all the cliché phrases parents give their kids to ensure they’re prepared to succeed. What they don’t prepare you for is that sometimes the glass ceiling is lined with titanium. Sometimes going big will sometimes send you home… and rising to an occasion means falling on your ass.”

“Are you okay?”

Running his hand through his hair as it whipped back and forth in the breeze, Scott shook his head, he smiled, chuckled, and then nodded. “Yeah, of course. Uh, not really, but yes. Sure.”

“Want to talk about it?”

There were few moments in Scott’s life where he found himself utterly speechless. Most of the time it was in a moment where one might expect someone to get tongue-tied. He always prided himself on his composure to figure out something to say, or chided himself afterwards when he said something when he should’ve known better than to speak, and more times than he cared to admit he regretted spouting off stupidly and that got him into trouble: this recent encounter with the medical staff that landed him in hot water wasn’t the first time. “I don’t think so.” Scott finally murmured.

“You’re lying.”

“Go to hell. Why do you always do this?” Scott dropped the satchel onto the grainy slope and sat down on the rock behind him. He put his head in his hands, careful not to take his eyes off the beach, and muttered an obscenity.

“Don’t you mean why do YOU always do this?” 

Words like knives. Intentions blazing hot like a stoked fire. Deeper meanings resonating of untold implications. The count of speechless moments that Scott had endured was climbing at an exponential rate. Scott, in fact, did always do this. Well, not always, but enough that a pattern was increasingly evident. “I tried.”

“Did you?”

Scott swallowed the bile that was welling up in his throat as he shook off the mental assault. “Acacia was right, they were right, they were all right in everything. I shouldn’t have been there in the first place, it just happened, and I was trying to help. I knew what I was doing – at least, I thought I knew – and I wasn’t happy with what THEY were doing.”

“Scott Ammora: out to save the universe.”

Scott picked up a stone and hurled it as hard as he could. There was no way he was going to hit the water from this distance, but he would try. That, in and of itself, was a metaphor that he hadn’t yet grasped. Someday, maybe, but not today. “That’s not it!”

“Then say what it actually is you mean.”

Scott paused. He opened his mouth to speak, and closed it just as quickly. He shut his eyes and took a breath, relishing in what he knew would be a release of tension and, hopefully, anger and regret. “I was wrong.”

“Yeah.”

Scott kicked a mound of dirt close to him and watched it get picked up by the breeze. He hated being wrong, loathed it, and accepting it was so far off his radar in previous infractions that it had left him with a chip on his shoulder the size of the Atlantis herself. Through the haze of the dirt he looked out upon his fellow away team members. He saw Zoe looking as happy as she had on the bridge, the turbolift, and the subsequent trip to the surface when she had found out she was going on an away mission. She was getting to explore a new world… she was getting to explore her frontier.

“You owe her a thank you.”

Scott remembered a little bit of their encounter after Ten Forward from a night or two ago. “She’s the only one I really know, and I don’t really know her. Ain’t that some shit? I think I owe her an apology more than a thank you.”

“I think the apology goes to someone else.”

His feet bounced on the ground. He clasped his hands and put them up to his face. Scott’s eyes were drawn to Acacia, further away than most of the rest of the team from his position, and he nodded. He had had the best of intentions. “Damn it.”

“The truth hurts.”

Scott stood up, slung his bag over his shoulder, peered around the vista, and started down the grade. He had had quite enough of the berating he was receiving, no matter how true it was. He was here on a mission, he had a job to do, and he wasn’t going to sit idly by wallowing in self-pitying existential angst. He was a security officer. A marine. And his job was important to him. Right now… it was the only thing keeping him going. The job was who he was.

Halfway down the grade his foot slipped in the loose sand and he slid a meter or two, catching his balance on a boulder protruding from the soil. He bit his lip, fighting back an aggression that was belied only by what he knew was his error, and he snapped up straight. “Maybe you don’t know me as well as you thought.”

“I know you like to daydream, Scooter.”

Scott’s head whipped back to look up the slope, “Don’t call me – ”

Other than his conscience there was only the sand being picked up in the breeze.