Acres of failure.

Posted on Sun 24th Sep, 2023 @ 1:14am by Lieutenant Claire Minelan & Jaeih Havraha

1,037 words; about a 5 minute read

Mission: Neither Yours Nor Mine
Location: Romulan Farm
Timeline: MD 4: 1545

It was the third time that the flame redhead had walked around the farm that was designated for the romulan enclosure. Muttering to herself under her breath the botanist took samples of the soil and the water being given to the farm plants and took smaller samples of leaves that were not thriving. She felt very much like a rabbit under the circling wings of a hawk, so closely did Jaeih watch her every motion. It was as if the woman was taking notes of her mannerisms, and it made her uneasy.

Why aren't these thriving. They have the same spectrum of light that Romulus had, and the temperatures are controlled to the locations in which the crops would have been grown. The soil is as close to the same makeup as anyone can get it. What am I missing? What are we missing? What part of Romulus would we not have here?

"This doesn't make sense. The crops should be thriving and they aren't." Claire muttered to herself, still going through in her head the list of all the things that could go wrong to create the crop failure. "There are no insects, or predatory animals to feed on the crops. There are no fungal or bacterial infections on the plants. There are no parasites or symbiotic relationships present that I can scan for. The water is the same. The soil is as close to Romulus as we can get it. The weather patterns are programmed to be appropriate. The temperature is within limits for the plants. It doesn't make sense."

"I know all that Human" came the snarl from the Romulan who had been increasingly agitated as the woman took her time to take in everything around the compound she'd fastidiously built and maintained.

"Claire is my name, I'd thank you to use it" The redhead snapped back without any real effort. Her tongue slid over her lower lip, in a gesture indicating depth of thought, leaving it glistening in the simulated sunshine. Vaguely she recalled another Romulan garden, and it seemed to be doing well.

Jaieh spat on the ground in frustration.

Ooh, Im getting to you. Im not sure I actually like that. The flame redhead ignored the increasingly agitated Romulan and tried to focus on the problem at hand. "Yours is not the only Romulan garden here. Why is yours not thriving when the others do seem to be?"

"This is precisely the reason you are here t-" Jaeih cut back the curse, but the tone of her voice was clear enough to communicate her meaning.

Claire snorted at her, unimpressed by the show of bravado. She was made of stronger stuff than to be afraid of someone cursing at her. The woman she was facing was dangerous, that much she was sure of. But not, she suspected here and now. The young Lieutenant felt very much like a rabbit being stalked by a hawk the first time she'd met the chill gaze of Jaeih. Dispite the danger, Claire found herself coming close to teasing the Romulan woman, which was perchance more dangerous than challenging her outright. Claire suspected in fact that she was more angry with the fact that the she had not been able to solve the problem without the aid of Starfleet, and that her humor was diffusing the situation in part because the Romulan woman didn't care for it. She had a rather intricate problem on her hands, and it was a shame that they couldn't scale it down into its constituent parts. It was not a scalable problem, nor a multifaceted one...or was it?

"I'm going to go take samples of the other Romulan Gardens that are thriving and compare the signatures of each. There's something that I'm missing that's going to seem stupid once I find it." The redhead chattered, and pretended not to notice the Romulan clench her teeth at her bright cheerful words. She bounced off with her sample kit in her hands.

Jaeih ground her teeth in frustration, before parting thin lips to ease the tension in her muscles there. Fingers callused from hard work, rose to massage her mandibular joint, and the tiny bump there on the bone. She'd had it broken for her in training, and sometimes her frustration made it ache. It hadn't been healed correctly on purpose, and she resented that acutely some nights. She'd wake clamping her jaws on a howl, and for a time be unable to open her mouth. Forcing herself to relax enough to move was some mornings more difficult than it would have been to just have stayed with the Tal'Shiar and used her ability to set the stage for death to be used to their advantage. Yet another reminder of the toll that her previous life had taken on her body. She'd been a good operative, and she was loyal...more to herself now than any empress. The Empress had abandoned her to the enemy and she found the furnishings of the enemy comfortably and surprising. Studying their wars she'd seen a comment that resonated with her new mentality very well. “Wars begin in the minds of men.”–United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) constitution preamble, and the dehumanization that the article had spoken of during wartime had been jarring. Never had she felt such kinship to the humans, as when reading about the remarkable atrocities they'd committed against their own people.

A tongue reddened by the sharp cinnamon candy that she favored slipped over her lips, wetting them to a glisten as she stared out over her wilting plants. I could cheerfully murder that woman with my bare hands...yet I find myself oddly amused by her. If she were Romulan, she'd just have dissappeared without a trace. This time last year I would have murdered her and thought nothing of it. Made it look like an accident, for its well known she's clumsy. I'd bet real coin that she drops something or knocks something over more than once a shift. I think, I am going soft. This place is ruining me. And yet, I feel that ruining me...is somehow saving me.

 

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