Lt. Undine glanced back at Kletsova, glanced to the Captain, and then put her attention back to her piloting. Undine was not human, she was Zaldan. The only evidenced of this were her webbed fingers and toes, and a very straight forward manner that was often mistaken for antagonism. Consequently, she didn’t feel the need to try to soften the Captain’s mood or in any other way ease the tension that filled shuttlecraft ‘Mississippi Moon.’ As a Zaldan, she not only saw courtesy and compliments as a form of dishonesty, she believed it was a waste of time. She was aware that Garcia knew his performance was flawless. Saying so could only be construed as social manipulation, an attempt to distract him from his present anger. An anger she believed he was entitled to.
As it was, Garcia ignored the compliment. He didn’t even look back at Tatiana, a friend since enrolling in Star Fleet Academy. Instead, he tried to distract himself by the fragment of a song in his head, “Mississippi Moon want you keep on shining on me…” Normally he would be working hard on forgetting the song that was stuck in his head, a manifestation of OCD, but his anger was stronger than his obsession with the lyrics or the tune in the background of his mind. All the shuttles were named after songs, either direct titles or words found from random lyrics, and this was no doubt the immediate trigger of Garcia’s current musical tangent, a necessary distraction that was aiding him from verbally chastising his crew in an unproductive manner.
Lt. Commander Tuer, the security officer for the New Constitution, was unable to tolerate the continuing silence and scowled as only a Klingon could. “I don’t see why you’re angry at me,” Tuer said. His uniform was similar to Tatiana’s in that it was silver with red highlights, minus the skirt, of course, but it also had Klingon style armor. Polished and cleaned armor, something Garcia had insisted on for his Klingon crew. He wanted his warriors to appear as if they didn’t lack for state of the art materials, whether it was weaponry or defensive tools. “It’s not like I started the fight.”
Captain Garcia closed his eyes, biting down on his first response. “In all of my studies and research of Star Fleet history and protocols, I have never once heard of such a stupendous blunder as the one you pulled, Lt.”
“It was a misunderstanding,” Tuer protested.
“No,” Garcia corrected. “It was a hand-wash sink!”
“It looked like a urinal,” Tuer went on.
Kletsova laughed out loud. Garcia shot a ‘cross’ look at her.
“Shuttlecraft Mississippi Moon to New Constitution,” Undine said. “We’re on