Enclosed Conversations

Posted on Sat Jan 31st, 2026 @ 4:17pm by Lieutenant Axod Qo & Lieutenant Tork
Edited on on Sat Jan 31st, 2026 @ 4:48pm

Mission: Port of Call
Location: The Tubes
Timeline: Mission Day 3 at 1530

Lieutenant Axod Qo lingered in the corridor like someone pretending they had an actual reason to be there. It was one of those tucked-away junctions on Deck 7, the kind that looped behind storage rooms and auxiliary access panels, quiet enough that the hum of the EPS lines felt loud. Perfect territory for an ambush of the polite, professional, counselor-approved sort.

Lieutenant Tork, the newly arrived Ferengi engineer, had so far proven… evasive. Whether in a sinister way or in the ‘too busy to sit down with the ship’s counselor’ way remained to be seen. Axod had tried scheduling. He’d tried suggesting. He’d even tried the casual drop-by. All neutralized by Ferengi efficiency and a talent for disappearing behind machinery.

So here he was, positioning himself along a corridor Tork had to cross eventually, unless the man had mastered tunneling through bulkheads. Axod shifted his weight, mentally rehearsing the opening line that would sound neither too eager nor too corner-the-mouse. Something simple. Friendly. Unthreatening.

This would work. Probably.The ship’s soft lighting glinted off a nearby access panel as Axod listened for approaching footsteps, trying to look like someone who absolutely had very legitimate business standing in a lonely hallway with the alert posture of a pouncing housecat. The moment was almost right, almost.

Someone was coming.

For all of the trouble his hearing had given him since his escape from that lovely prison barge the Kazon called a ship, Tork was glad that he could still hear shifts in pitch from the EPS relays... especially when the shift in pitch he detected as he rounded the soft bend in the corridor could only happen thanks to a body being between him and the relay. While not officially part of the crew, the Ferengi had taken the time to memorize the duty rosters he'd glanced at while he was shuffling through the Engineering section on his surreptitious visits in and out of said compartment whilst procuring tools he needed for his current hobby... that being fixing up the ship since he had so much free time and liked to fidget with things anyway. Armed with that knowledge, Tork knew for a fact that no one should be loitering around that particular junction... at least no engineer... which meant whoever it was had picked that particular spot with some particular goal in mind.

The Ferengi's footfalls slowed as he ran through the mental index of every request he had ignored in the interests of keeping the ship he was on in flight and on time to their destination, that being the Pathfinder Station. Most of them had just seemed... casual... in their desire to interact with him. Friendly overtures were, at least according to Tork's current hierarchy of important things to do, at the bottom of the list. Even the few missives from the ship's counselor regarding a visit in response to his 'recent traumatic experience' were pretty low on the list. But as he scrolled down said list in his mind, that seemed the likeliest of culprits for some bizarre corridor ambush.

Tork halted and took a few seconds to map out the floor plan around him, which wasn't hard given that his last ship was double the size of the one he was standing in now, and he knew that one so well he could sleep walk (and had done so after one particularly crazy mission) the entire length of it without hitting a single wall. He could envision at least three ways to avoid meeting the (suspected) hew-mon, and contemplated doing just that before finally deciding that the effort wasn't worth his time. His feet began to move again, rounding the corner just quick enough to catch the eye line of the person lurking, poised for their supposed ambush.

"If you're going to try to sneak up on a Ferengi, do it somewhere with mixed noise from more than just EPS relays behind you. It's obvious to these lobes when someone is standing in front of them if nothing else is happening to explain the change in pitch," Tork said with a tone that dripped with exasperation.

Without waiting for the (now confirmed) hew-mon to reply, the Ferengi continued down the corridor toward the access junction he had been planning to crawl through to fix the plasma junction that he'd noticed had been blinking off and on when glancing at the Master System Display earlier.

Axod slipped out from where he’d been lingering and quickened his pace to catch up with Tork, the long stride of a Doosodarian making up the distance in a few beats. “I wasn’t trying to sneak up on you, Lieutenant,” he said, voice warm but undeniably pointed, “but I’m running out of ways to get your attention.”

He reached out and gave the Ferengi’s shoulder a light, careful pat, more a tap of acknowledgment than anything intrusive, while matching the engineer’s brisk walk. “This was the last option I had before I’d have to start the paperwork to pull you from active duty.” His tone remained even, but the weight behind the words was deliberate. Not a threat, but a line. The kind counselors rarely drew unless they had to.

Axod hoped, truly hoped, that Tork would hear the seriousness beneath the softness. Around them, the corridor hummed with its usual shipboard rhythm, but Axod’s eyes stayed trained on the smaller man, searching for the flicker of recognition that said he understood what was at stake.

"I'll never understand the fascination hew-mons have with talking about their feelings," Tork grumbled as he punched the access panel of a Jefferies Tube before looking over his shoulder at the counselor, "If you're not afraid of tight spaces, you can tag along and... do whatever it is you were here for... pointless as I think it is."

The Ferengi turned back around and crawled into the crawlspace, though for him it was far from 'cramped' as most engineers he knew would often complain. Yet another racial advantage to being small of stature yet large of lobe.

Axod nodded and followed the Ferengi into the crawlspace, lowering himself carefully as the space narrowed around them. The metal walls felt close, humming faintly with the ship’s systems. “This is… cozy,” he remarked lightly, a small chuckle softening the word as he adjusted his shoulders to avoid a conduit.

He cleared his throat and continued crawling until he was closer to the Engineer, mindful not to crowd him. “I didn’t come down here to interrogate you,” he said gently, keeping his tone even and unthreatening. “I really just wanted to talk. Get to know each other.” Axod paused, choosing his next words with care. He knew full well that casual conversation for its own sake wasn’t exactly celebrated in Ferengi culture. “We’re going to be serving together,” he went on, his voice steady despite the cramped surroundings. “When things go wrong, and they often do on a ship like this, I want us to be able to speak openly. No guesswork. No walls.”

He offered a small, earnest smile, even if it was only half-visible in the dim light. “An open dialogue makes the difference between a crew that functions and one that fractures. And I’d rather we be the first kind.”

Tork only gave the counselor a portion of his attention, the rest of it rested on the panel that he had just pulled off the bulkhead wall, exposing a host of couplings and conduit bundles. From his toolkit that he'd brought with him, he procured a tool that didn't really look like standard issue gear, as well as several parts that didn't match anything that was currently inside the exposed panel.

"Guesswork and walls come part and parcel with every species," Tork commented dryly as he started pulling parts out of the exposed machinery.

"For all your talk of..." Tork paused to grunt in exertion before liberating one of the many flow regulator modules and tossing it unceremoniously to the deck plates, "open dialogues and homogeneous crew togetherness, most folks don't actually live by any of that. At least, not all the time. Most folks look at me and they see someone who is motivated by greed, avarice, and vice. They don't think for a second that I... Tork... am not what my family wishes me to be and the rest of the galaxy expects. Even you," the Ferengi said, glancing over his should to the counselor, "walked into this meeting with ideas about who I was based on nothing more than third hand knowledge about what a Ferengi might be. You're picking your words so carefully that it's obvious you're not even sure what you can expect out of me."

Tork grabbed one of the parts that didn't look even remotely Federation in origin and began welding it into place where he'd ripped out the old part, "I grew up an engineer. I was keeping my family's tired old cargo vessel together before most Ferengi children learn to count latinum. The only reason I ever got my business license with the Ferengi Commerce Authority was so I could buy more parts and build more gadgets to make keeping my 'home' in one piece a little easier. I'm probably one of the few Ferengi out there that wouldn't shed a single tear if latinum dried up and disappeared tomorrow."

Axod was genuinely impressed by the engineer’s analysis. A hint of amusement crossed his face. “You sure you’re not the counselor?” he said with a grin, one brow lifting as he studied the Ferengi more closely.

The Doosodarian nodded, the motion slow and deliberate, silently affirming the point that had been made. “Bias, unconscious or otherwise, is part of everyone, every culture,” he continued, his tone thoughtful rather than admonishing. “It’s woven into how we’re raised, the stories we’re told, the experiences that shape us long before we even realize it.” He shifted his weight slightly. “I’m certain you’ve got some preformed opinion of Doosodarians,” he added lightly, “or Humans, or any other species you’ve served alongside. We all do.” His smile softened, losing its edge of humor and settling into something more earnest. “What matters isn’t that the bias exists, it’s how we choose to use it. Whether we let it limit us, or challenge it and grow beyond it. That’s where the real difference is made.”

Tork finished his improvised repair while the counselor spoke, waving a tricorder that had been buried under other tools over his patchwork. A nod of his head indicated his satisfaction with the job he'd done and the tricorder was tossed back into his toolkit with about as much interest as he'd discarded the defective part. Once he'd put the plating he'd removed back in place, her turned toward the counselor.

"Any perceived skill in the therapeutic arts can be blamed on an old friend of mine when I was at the Academy," the Ferengi said with a somber half-smile as he snapped closed his toolkit and slung it back over his shoulder. "As far as my own opinions about hew-mons... I am much more inclined to weaponize the ignorance of others than I am to making snap judgements about them. If you hadn't said you were a Doosodarian, I would neither have known or cared that you weren't another hew-mon. And honestly... I still don't actually care. Just like me, you don't represent your entire species. You are just... well... you. I'd have used your name but you never actually said it, just assumed I actually read any of the messages you sent me."

Tork was already heading further along the junction, his sadistic little smirk hidden from view as he continued his brisk crawl through the tight confines of the ship's access crawlspaces. He led them into a node junction when Tork could stand at his full height, though anyone taller than him would still have to hunch over just a little. He tossed his toolkit to the ground and fished out the cutting tool to remove yet another chunk of the ship, this time on a pipeline that ran from floor to ceiling.

"Now that we've reached the point where you've danced around your point for doing this, and I have given you just enough information about me to make it seem as if I'm willing to cooperate, but haven't actually given you anything worth writing in a report... how about you tell me what this is really about," the Ferengi said without glancing at the man behind him.

Axod lifted an eyebrow as he followed Tork deeper into the space, carefully matching the Ferengi’s pace. “My apologies for not introducing myself sooner,” he said, his tone measured and calm. “Axod Qo. Axod is fine or Ax, if you prefer.” He took a deliberately audible breath, more for himself than for effect, the close quarters pressing in around them in a way that made even his thoughts feel crowded.

“I’m not sure what gave you the impression that this has anything to do with a report,” he continued, giving a small shake of his head as if to dislodge the idea entirely. “That’s not why I’m here.” His voice softened slightly, losing any edge it might have carried. “My job is to check in, to make sure people are… adjusting. Everyone who was aboard the Kordra-Lisrit went through something significant, whether they want to acknowledge it or not.” He shifted his weight, careful not to crowd the engineer. “Add to that the fact that you’re new to the ship, learning a new crew, new routines, new expectations…” Axod offered a faint, knowing smile. “Well, that’s what I’d call a double whammy. I’m just trying to make sure it doesn’t hit harder than it has to.”

"Everything in Starfleet comes with documentation," Tork said with a mirthless chuckle, "The Chief Engineer on my last ship spent more time filling out logs than he did doing any actual repair work. Some of that may or may not have been in no small part thanks to my more hands on approach to maintaining a ship."

The Ferengi paused as he began prying out a large and important looking component from inside the now cut open protective pipe it had been concealed inside. A few grunts of exertion later and the component was liberated from its place and deposited roughly against the bulkhead.

"I do not, however, have any trauma from being on that ship. If you'd ever been aboard my parents' cargo freighter, you'd understand why," the engineer said dryly as he dug out yet another part from his kit that didn't look anything close to Federation in design. "Then consider for a moment that, until we get to Pathfinder Station, I'm not entirely sure if I'll end up staying here, be shipped off back to the other side of the galaxy, or something in between. So I'm just staying busy and trying to keep this ship from falling apart in the same spectacular fashion as the last one."

Another pause ensued as he started to tighten down the foreign part into place, "Unlike hew-mons, we Ferengi are built differently... if the lobes didn't already give that away. Piddly little things like temporary forced employment with no compensation isn't exactly unheard of, and it certainly isn't something to get upset over. For me... I know hew-mons are more sensitive to those things. And that's fine, no shame in making due with what you were given by the Blessed Exchequer when your species was negotiating terms of existence. My people just didn't bother with any of that, that's all."

Tork finally turned to the man that had joined him in the tubes and looked him over in a slightly exaggerated manner before grunting, "You don't like it in here, do you? I've seen plenty of young engineering trainees get that same look. Not of fan of walls being too close, are you?"

Axod offered a small, half-formed nod, his expression thoughtful. “I wouldn’t want to have to work in here,” he admitted, shifting his weight as the tight confines pressed in on him. He glanced around once more, then added, a touch too quickly, “but… it isn’t that bad.” The words sounded reassuring, though it was hard to tell whether they were meant for his companion or for himself.

Sensing the faint awkwardness settling in, he moved to steer the conversation elsewhere. His shoulders relaxed, and a spark of genuine interest lit his features. “I’d really like to hear more about your life aboard your family’s freighter,” he said, his tone warming. “It must have been… different, always on the move.” There was a hint of excitement in his voice now, the kind that came from imagining a life so unlike his own.

"It was like being on the Kazon ship," Tork said with a mirthless chortle, "Substandard living conditions, half the ship was patched together with self-sealing stem bolts, the other half was either stolen or otherwise appropriated trash that only worked because I made it work... with no small amount of percussive engineering and a litany of swearing and other words not generally used by the small lobed among us. According to what some of my hew-mon classmates at the Academy told me when I explained what I had left behind to join Starfleet, I was living in 'hell'. I've been to the place on Earth, it was actually very nice, so I'm not sure where the comparison comes from..."

The Ferengi shrugged, "That said, spending the amount of time it will take to finish our conversation in these tubes should give you a good frame of reference for how I spent my childhood. Just take whatever you are feeling now, stretch it over twenty or so years, and you've got life as a child on a Ferengi freighter. The only thing you're missing now is the handsome lobes."

Axod instinctively reached for his own earlobes, suddenly aware of them in a way he never had been before, as though they’d been found wanting by comparison. The thought was fleeting, but it was enough to make him shift his weight, self-conscious for half a second before the absurdity of it caught up with him. A smirk tugged at the corner of his mouth despite himself.

He adjusted his position again, easing some of the tension from his shoulders, and looked back at the Lieutenant with open interest rather than deflection. “Well, Lieutenant,” he said lightly, warmth threading through his voice, “if you happen to be sticking around, I’d like to get to know you more.” His eyes flicked briefly to the cramped conduit around them before returning. “Perhaps… a little more casually,” he added, amused, “and preferably not in a maintenance tube.”

Tork snickered a bit to himself before pointing upward, "Climb the ladder one level, take the tube to your left down ten meters and you'll be back in the corridors. If I do decide to stick around longer than the trip to Pathfinder Station, I'm sure we'll bump into each other again. Even I can't live off plasma cutter fumes and conduit grease, so if nothing else you'll see me in the mess."

The engineer turned back to the conduit he'd been working on, putting the covering he'd removed back in place before picking up his tool kit and heading toward a tube access junction. "Watch your head on the way out, Axod, there's a pipe fixture sticking out that'll jump out and get you if you're not ducked down far enough right before the exit. Wouldn't want you hurting yourself down here," Tork said with a cryptic smile before disappearing into the crawl space and disappearing.

Axod lingered a moment longer, watching the Ferengi disappear around the bend of the tube and into the ship’s inner maze of conduits and junctions. The steady thrum of the engines filled the brief silence he left behind.

‘Well played, Tork…’ Axod thought, a crooked smile tugging at his lips as he shook his head lightly.

The exchange had been unlike any he’d had so far aboard. No emotional walls thrown up in panic, no polite deflections wrapped in Starfleet professionalism—just careful sidestepping, cultural nuance, and a kind of verbal chess he hadn’t quite anticipated. It left him oddly impressed.

He exhaled through his nose, adjusting the fall of his jacket. This ship never stopped surprising him. Every crew member was a new puzzle, and Tork had just made it clear he wasn’t going to be solved the easy way.

Lieutenant Axod Qo
Chief Counselor

Lieutenant Tork
Roving Engineer