Lieutenant Commander
Posted on June 28th, 2021 by Emilaina Acacia

Doctor Acacia came into her quarters after a long shift and dropped herself backwards onto her bed, groaning as she stretched her toes inside of her standard-issue boots. She wiggled the boots off, kicking them over to the wall. Vinny, the creature that Emily had started calling the ‘racken’, jumped up onto the bed and then onto Emily’s stomach, eliciting a guttural “oof” from the Doctor.

Beady black eyes stared up at Emily as she lifted her head to look at the creature. Vinny cooed, a soft purr-like sound that he used to get attention or express happiness. His body was now covered in black-striped brown feathers with a soft white fur undercoat, the white only really showing on his rat-like head and the top of his chicken-like hind legs.

His front two legs were misshapen wings with small paws at the tip, the right almost fully formed but the left stunted. When he walked on all fours he had a sideways limp because of the shrunken wing, though he could also walk on just his back legs for a short time. He knew that Emily coming home meant that it was food time, and the thousand-yard stare in his deep black eyes was pleading.

“Computer, replicate feline supplement 12, and racken supplement 4,” the Doctor pushed Vinny aside, got up, and crossed the room to the replicator. She set her cat’s food next to the couch he was hiding under and took Vinny’s food back to her bed where he was still sitting.

She sat down next to him and fed him the pellets out of the palm of her hand, a trust-building exercise she’d been doing with him for a while. He scarfed down the pellets like his life depended on it, squawking his displeasure when the supply ran dry. He fluffed his feathers, shook his feathered tail at Emily, then jumped back on the ground to find a place to hide. Emily chuckled.

Emily felt a twinge and looked at her computer a moment before the alert popped up that her older sister was calling. She jumped up and scurried over excitedly, sitting in the chair in front of her desk and answering with video feed.

“Hey, girlie, how’s it been?” Averi was in uniform as well, both women having just finished a shift. Emily sat up a bit and smiled, pointing to her collar to indicate her pips. Averi leaned in and squinted before grinning excitedly, “Oh, look at you, Lieutenant Commander! Already caught up to me, eh?”

“You’ll have to work harder to stay ahead of me,” Emily mused.

“Well, word on the street is I might be up for promotion as well, so don’t get ahead of yourself,” the older sister smirked, “How are you?”

“Doing well. Been busy. You?” Emily half-smiled.

“Man, same. It feels like a never-ending series of things going wrong around here,” there was a pause and a frown, “I imagine the prospect of war is weighing heavy on you.”

“You imagine correctly,” Emily sighed, “Our chief engineer stepped down the other day. Seems like things might get a lot worse before they get better.”

“Well we’re rooting for you from afar. My ship’s been recalled to Earth, dad’s was pretty far out there last I checked. I’ll say hi to mom and Tori for you.”

“Thanks.”

“Have you watched the holo-dad for your promotion? Mine was good stuff,” Averi reminded her.

“I keep forgetting I have that. I have a few to watch, when I have time,” Emily smiled softly. 

“So, spill, how was your day?”

 

***

 

Emily picked an empty holodeck and entered, still in her uniform as she didn’t feel like walking through the hall in her pajamas. She adjusted her uniform top, first calling up the program that displayed her mother’s family farm. She sat in the kitchen and summoned the holo-dad, sipping a blend of tropical Betazese fruit and peaches. 

“Promotion to Lieutenant Commander,” she ordered, and holo-dad smiled before morphing into another video recording. 

“So, you’ve made it to a command rank. Of course, I always knew you would,” Darok gestured to the camera, and Emily smiled.

“Although, as a Doctor, I’m sure you’ve already had to pull rank once or twice…” Emily snorted, covering her mouth and wiping fruit smoothie off her chin shamefully, “…there’s something different about being trusted with command decisions. I’m sure you’ll wear it well.”

A moment passed and Emily wondered if that had been it, but sat up a bit straighter when he pulled out a familiar stringed instrument called the haji. It was a bit like a guitar, but closer to the size of a violin with a large, rounded body that produced a hollow, plucky sound. 

He began to strum an island tune, and Emily hummed along, rocking back and forth slightly. When he finished he continued to speak rhythmically in their shared tribal tongue, a sort of poem-story. He told her of a time he had to order someone to their death. Because he hesitated, three people ended up dying, and he had never forgotten them. Some lines of the story rhymed, and he idly picked at the instrument to the mood of the story. Since he couldn’t tell a smoke story with the hologram, this was the best he could do to evoke emotion, and it really worked. Emily shed a single tear. 

“Hard decisions are ahead of you, keep your head on and head into the future,” he finished, strumming a last note and smiling before, as always, reaching forward to turn off his holo-camera. Emily took a deep breath, dabbed away her tears, made a mental note to call her dad after the battle, and began checking through the banks to see what other recordings she was due to watch.