Soup and a Ham Sandwich

Posted on Sat Jan 31st, 2026 @ 9:43pm by Lieutenant Commander Emni t'Nai & Lieutenant Tork

Mission: Port of Call
Location: XO's Office, Deck 2
Timeline: Mission Day 5 at 1300

[Executive Officer's Office, Deck 2]
[MD 5 1300 Hours]

It wasn't memory, so much as an experiential afterimage. Warm breath across flushed skin, drawing goosebumps as it passed. The butterfly soft brush of lips against her neck.... her collarbone... The fumble of cloth and skin and seeking.

The sound of inhalation interrupted--an involuntary response to the trace of her finger tips.

Emni stood before the replicator in her small office, one arm pressed to the wall above it while her forehead rested against her forearm. The food she'd replicated sat abandoned where it had appeared while she put effort in slowing the erratic pace of her heart.

It had been a long time.

A very long time.

With a huff of annoyance the Romulan pushed off the wall, snagging the rapidly cooling bowl along with its accompanying spoon and took it to her desk.

Tork had all but told her he would drop by while she ate lunch. At least he had told her that in the way that was unique to him; a way that might sound noncommittal to anyone else, but that to her... was as good as a guarantee.

It had been a full three hours into her shift before she realized he'd have no real way of knowing when she'd be in her office eating lunch. She'd even nearly sent him a message to let him know, but somehow her pride wouldn't allow it. Had she not just told him the day before that she needed time to process--to consider the shift he'd made to the mental narrative of her first deployment after the Academy? The one she'd use to justify distance. To minimize disappointment and rejection.

How had he come back into her life so quicky and in such a way that she now had to rethink memories that had previously felt foundational?

Lifting the spoon she dipped the bowl of it into her soup, stirring and then slowly bringing just the now-coated end to her mouth to taste.

The chime rang out just before the spoon managed to reach its intended destination, an alert that a visitor had come. Said visitor had, with uncanny certainty, waited until the exact moment Emni was about to enjoy her less than ideally warmed soup before announcing their presence.

Setting the still untouched spoon back into it's bowl the Romulan looked toward the door. "Come in," she said, something between expectation and uncertainty warring in her over the identity of the new arrival.

The figure that was revealed behind the parting doors was none other than Lieutenant Tork, though he wasn't wearing his uniform but the much more casual attire he'd been known to wear during their Academy outings, minus the utility belt he often had stuffed full of tools 'just in case'. He sauntered in and waited for the door to swish closed before his slight grin exploded into the fully mischievous smirk that had been waiting to be set free.

"I heard you dip your spoon in there, so I waited just a few seconds. You didn't mutter the usual curse this time though... I'm a little disappointed," the Ferengi said, his voice tinged with an undercurrent of mirth.

"It's been more than 10 years, Tork, allow me the assumption of some personal growth in that time," she said wryly, standing from behind her desk, and returning the now tepid soup to the replicator, kicking off the recycle process before replicating a new, hot, bowl. "What sounds good?" she asked, not even bother to see if he was planning to join her.

"Maybe just a ham sandwich, light mustard and some water," the engineer said, sinking into the only other chair available to him, "And you should know better than to assume that even after a hundred years, if I hear you doing something I can guess the moment of greatest inconvenience to pausing, I'm not going to do it. It may not be the best use of my hearing, but it damn sure is fun."

"...Although... I have noticed that sounds that normally weren't hard to catch have seemed duller... and those that should be just beyond even my ability to hear I've been picking up ever since my stay on that Kazon dung heap. And the way Mister Savoir made it sound, that might be a permanent consequence. Would be my luck..." Tork grumbled as he watched the woman punching orders into the replicator while she listened to him speak.

"I meant the lack of swearing," Emni said offhandedly returning to her desk with a plate bearing the aforementioned sandwich and her freshly replicated bowl of soup. "And I was serious about you seeing one of our doctors. Dr. Wang, if you can wait another day or two, but Dr. Marwol if not. Me if you're going to be difficult about this, though I really do try not to insert myself into Sickbay if I can help it. Just professional courtesy."

She dropped back into her seat, dipped the spoon into the soup, and popped it into her mouth in one fell swoop, dragging the spoon back trough her lips and swallowing before Tork could make another attempt to interrupt her eating.

"The corpsman said the same thing, that I should probably wait. I take it you're not a fan of this Marwol either if you two are on the same page and haven't even talked about this," Tork said, taking a sizable chunk out of the sandwich before continuing, "I never doubted your ability to have growth, Em. But you knew it was me exactly because you didn't know who else it could be standing there. You could have given me a little satisfaction over my expert timing. I mean... it has been at least ten years since the last time I used a door chime to interrupt something you were doing. Though if I remember correctly, my last triumph was right before you were about to win a kal-toh match with your roommate and it nearly came to blows..."

"She was a terrible kal-toh player," Emni grumbled. "She never should have won that match."

She stirred her soup, considering his words all the same and finding it oddly hard to do more than glance up from her dish while they talked. The dissonance of perfectly natural fits-like-a-glove companionship against the backdrop of the shifting bedrock of her memory was disorienting. The intrusion of other bouts of memory wasn't helping.

She pursed her lips at her soup and then ladled a fresh spoonful, popping it in her mouth and, with not insignificant skill, empty half the bowl of the spoon by drawing it past her lips without any significant slurping sounds.

"Yes, I recall," the Ferengi said, nodding dispassionately, "And yet you still let her challenge you over and over again. And you'd still have that smug little grin on your face the whole day afterward no matter what we were doing. Have you outgrown that particular 'idiosyncrasy', as you used to call them. Not that I ever really minded you gloating over the bodies of your defeated enemies... figuratively, of course. Hell, I enjoy a good gloat every now and then myself. I will likely hold my victory over turning the shuttlebay into an industrial replicator over your Flight Officer for a while, since she all but said it was impossible to do."

"Lieutenant Irynya can hold her own," Emni remarked coolly. "Besides that, you asked a flight controller to sign off on an engineering task. One which, I believe, required clearing with Commander Cross and Lieutenant Parsons."

This time she did shoot the Ferengi a glance. She didn't expect him to be cowed at all by her point, but that didn't stop her hoping he'd be at least the tiniest bit sheepish. "You can't circumvent the chain of command like that," she added. "I get it, but also..." She trailed off meaningfully, eyebrows raised in a way that Tork would understand to mean that it would come back to a 'discussion' with her. The look only lasted a moment, though before she sighed, pausing to sip another mouthful of soup from her spoon before adding, "Sorry. I'm a bit protective of my people. They've been through a lot since the Sojo was commissioned."

"That's fine, Em. But you know from personal experience that I generally resort to... creative engineering when time is short and apologies about rules are better than letters home to next of kin. Not saying this ship would have flown apart if I hadn't commandeered the bay... but I'm also not saying you would have lasted long in a firefight if I hadn't. Much rather people be mad at me now and alive tomorrow when my 'harebrained schemes' keep them from flying out of a giant hole in the plating when a forcefield node goes out at just the wrong time... because I've seen that happen one time too many," Tork shot the Romulan a look that said his statement wasn't idle conjecture but hard won knowledge he had never wanted to have.

"But for the record," the Ferengi said in a dry tone, "I am reflecting on my actions, even if necessity will likely compel me to do something as or more crazy in the future either here or somewhere else."

The look the Romulan gave her lunch companion now was the facial expression-equivalent of asking, Really? Still, she did know. She knew from their time at the Academy that Tork's solutions were often creative and, while not entirely without fault, frequently pulled out results that others had to work much harder to replicate. She also knew that if he had seen a system fail in the way he'd described, that it was a failure he'd taken personally.

"Right. Can we talk about something else?" Emni finally asked several mouthfuls of soup later. She held the back of the spoon up and licked it as if she were the only one in the room. "So you liked the chili crab?"

"I did," Tork nodded, his voice no longer monotone, "It was rather enjoyable, much like the entire evening."

The peaks of Emni's cheekbones darkened slightly, a greenish color giving away what she assumed he might be referring to. "It was certainly..." she struggled to find the right word while her brain opted to offer up the feel of lips trailing down her jawline, "... full of surprises." She finished lamely. She eyed her soup for a moment as if it might offer up a better descriptor until, finally finding none, she looked up to meet his eyes. "I had fun," she said, simple open warmth in her tone and mirrored in her gaze.

"I'm glad I wasn't the only one," the engineer said with a smile that was just as sincere as it was teasing, "Although I do think the next time we have a meal together, we should limit ourselves a bit in terms of the alcohol. Maybe stick to weak hew-mon stuff. I'd prefer to recall everything in detail, not just the sensory memories."

On cue, the flush of Emni's cheeks deepened. "Glad it's not just me, then," she said with quiet self deprecation. "You're the one who brought a bottle of kali-fal," she pointed out, not exactly dodging the comment, but not ignoring it either. She toyed with the spoon in her now nearly empty bowl, watching Tork as if she might be able to unwind the answer to a question that was pressing at her without actually needing to ask it.

"The first bottle was my doing, yes," the man admitted with a brief nod, "But the second and third bottle were not. As much as I like drinking the stuff, I can't walk off the effects of it nearly as well as I could when I was still wet behind the lobes. And I also wouldn't mind recalling why I woke up with wet lobes the morning after, too."

Emni blinked at him, processing that comment even as she tried to consider its veracity. "What do you remember?" she asked.

"Everything up to you fussing over me with that tricorder is pretty clear. Things after that get a little muddled between the kali-fal and the body heat. I don't recall any coherent conversation, but there's a few fragments here and there that I'm pretty sure were said... mostly by you," the Ferengi said with a bit of a shrug of his shoulders, "Why?"

It was such a nonchalant answer. Such a Tork answer. Emni liked to think she wasn't a prude when it came to biological imperatives, but somehow that shrug made the distraction of her morning feel like an over reaction. "No reason," she answered breezily. "Just curious."

"Did we do something you'd rather I didn't remember?" the question itself was innocent enough, but something in his tone made it sound more probing.

"What? No. It's not that," she hurried to clarify. "You just said you didn't remember the why and I wasn't sure if maybe..." She shook her head trailing off. For the sake of all that was good and holy, why was this such a difficult thing to talk about? Then again, it had been a very long time since she cared about whether a partner was disappointed with the experience.

"I just can't remember some of the finer details, and I know what's to blame. That's why I said we shouldn't get so inebriated next time so we can both remember everything. It's more enjoyable that way, don't you think?" the Ferengi cocked his head to the side a bit as he said it.

The next time registered just as she was getting ready to tell him that the finer details of the experience isn't the same as why it happened in the first place. "Next time..." she repeated back to him. Not a question exactly, but a statement meant to confirm she'd heard him. They were dancing around it. She knew that. But despite all of his declared interest yesterday she still wanted to hear him say it -- some part of her still clinging to the memory of the last time they'd been alone with a few bottles of kali-fal and a flat surface. "So you want there to be a next time?" she asked, almost sheepishly.

"Yes, Em," Tork responded bluntly, "I want us to spend another evening together. Many of them if we can manage it. I think we already talked about my desire to stop leaving things in half-measures. That does include things beyond the emotional."

"I didn't think that you'd only meant the emotional," she said evenly, despite the relief that washed through her at his confirmation. "Just... didn't exactly expect that to happen so quickly. I mean... it's been more than a decade, Tork. And even then the only time we'd gone that far was just before finals... just before you told me to go ahead and leave." She sighed. "I didn't expect to find myself thinking about it all morning, either," she confessed, hoping that admission didn't go directly to his head.

"Yeah, I suppose we are moving a lot faster than we did back then, but maybe it's just because we weren't ready for it at the time, and we've both done a lot of growing up since then," the Ferengi said, reclining in his chair.

"Maybe," Emni conceded. She couldn't disagree with his reasoning. But there was still a voice in the back of her head, warning her that too fast and too deep when it was just as likely as not that he was going to be assigned back out to the Alpha Quadrant in a little under two weeks was different than the years of time they had to see each other through crises at the Academy.

She stood, gathering her bowl and returning it to the replicator to recycle as much to give herself a moment to think as it was to clean up her lunch. Finally she asked the question that was burning its way through her. "What if we only have the next two weeks?" she asked him. "What if your original assignment does still stand? Or the favor you mentioned doesn't come through? Or you meet the engineering team and decide this isn't the posting you want?" She leaned toward him as she asked, arms crossed and settled on the desk in front of her. She hated asking these questions. Hated that they were even on her mind. For a moment she wished she could reverse time back to the night prior when alcohol and privacy had made it all seem much much less complicated.

"What if we don't? What if nothing falls apart this time?" Tork countered in an undaunted tone. He didn't elaborate, he didn't fill the silence that came afterward. The Ferengi made his statement and left it at that. It wasn't so much final as it was a challenge to the defeatist line of questions Emni had just listed off.

A dozen quips, reasons why they shouldn't just plow ahead and let things fall out however they will, sprang to mind. All the what ifs she hadn't said. What if he finds he doesn't feel the way he thinks he does after time to get reacquainted? What if something were to happen to him? What if the panic and dread that she'd experienced second hand from Bjorn when Andrew was taken was hers to bear? There was nothing guaranteed in the Delta Quadrant. No certainty of safety. Both of her deployments to the region demonstrated that plainly. And then there were the complications of command structure. At a minimum she'd have to tell the Captain. That, she knew, was getting ahead of things though. For now, there was no guarantee he would even be on the ship in two weeks.

None of these retorts gained voice, though. Instead the Romulan stared at the man across from her, searching his eyes and his body language as if something in them might reassure her that risks were outweighed by the benefits.

"Ok," she finally said. "One thing at a time. For now, at least, we should make the most of the time we have until we get to the Station. The rest... we can figure out when we get there."

"Yes, that is what I was thinking," the Ferengi said with a nod of his head, "My place in line at the Divine Treasury may come tomorrow or a hundred years from tomorrow. I can't spend every day worried about something I can't control. What I can do, is make sure that the acquisition of experiences and things I hold valuable continues until then. I'm sure I'll need them when it comes time to explain why my bank account was so small." Tork chuckled quietly at his own statement.

Emni considered that quietly. It was so similar to what Jori and Sulli had told her in that one fateful conversation. The one that had changed everything. The one that had resulted in the two people she loved most in the galaxy incinerated in the wake of the Hobus supernova while she watched the whole thing from light years away. They'd known, by the end at least, that there was no stopping what was coming--known that they had chosen an experience... a life... that mattered to them over one that could have been much much longer.

She hadn't thought about that part of it in a long long time and the urgent feeling that filled her now gave her pause. She didn't want to miss what could be just because there was no guarantee that it wouldn't be short lived. "So..." she finally said, eyeing the man across from her with an almost painful vulnerability, "now what?"

"Now?" Tork asked, sinking back a little further, his eyes wandering to the bulkhead above them for a brief second before they slid back down to meet her own, "We plan some dates. Not that there's a whole hell of a lot to do on a ship limping back to a starbase for repairs, but that's never stopped either of us from making Slug-o Cola out of slugs. We can surely commandeer a holodeck for an hour or two, right? And I've been brushing up on my kal-toh skills since you last wiped the floor with me. Might even last more than three turns this time. And hell, I could even teach you how to play dom-jot like I promised you when we went on that cadet trip to that one starbase your third year. Unless you're still mad that I skipped out on class to sneak on that trip."

Emni shuddered at the mention of Slug-o Cola. Not that she'd never stomached the stuff, but it was far from her favorite Ferengi comestible. "You've been brushing up on your kal-toh skills?" she asked, latching onto that detail in no small part because until nearly a month ago she'd had a regular kal-toh partner in Karim. "Are you done with that?" she asked, indicating his plate which bore only a bite or two more of his sandwich.

Her mind, though, was considering choices. They did, indeed, have access to the Holodeck. That would be... an interesting approach. The games... it was almost as if they were back at the Academy. Even with the whole of San Francisco to explore, cadets regularly could be found playing games in their dorms or out on the quad. There was even the occasional tournament pitting engineers against scientists and so on.

"How about dinner again tonight, though?" she finally asked. "Without the kali-fal. We can plan our dates then."

"Hmm?" Tork finally looked down and noticed the hardly touched food, "Oh... yeah, I guess if we're having dinner again tonight I don't really need it." He picked up the plate and handed it off to the Romulan before answering her previous question, "I got into a bit of a... how do the hew-mons say it? 'Pissing contest'? With one of the scientists on my last ship over her assumption about Ferengi intelligence. Kal-toh was the game of choice, and while skilled, she didn't hold a candle to you. But I still managed to take some things away from it."

"A pissing contest?" Emni asked, a suspicious amount of innocence in her tone of voice. "I'd have liked to be a fly on the wall for that conversation. How did you settle on kal-toh to try to prove her wrong?"

"I didn't. It was her challenge. She said that, and I quote, 'For as big as my head was, it was too empty to understand the intricacies of a sophisticated game like kal-toh, that's why I stuck to games of pure luck like dabo and dom-jot.' And being the upstanding Ferengi that I am, I had to prove her wrong and defend my people's honor. Maybe I didn't care as much about the whole honor thing as I did the part where I subsequently humiliated her during our first match..." Tork snickered.

"Let me guess," Emni quipped, returning once again to her seat after depositing Tork's plate in the replicator for recycling, "you used the same tactic you tried on me only she didn't catch you?" Her expression, though non-plussed, couldn't hide her wry amusement. As if unable to help herself, one eyebrow crept upward in the signature Vulcanoid facial expression that so many species understood to be skepticism. "I take it she wasn't Vulcan either."

"You bet your ass I cheated," the Ferengi's snicker turned into a full belly laugh, "And no, she wasn't Vulcan, she was Bajoran."

The Romulan shook her head in an approximation of disappointment that fell entirely flat against the backdrop of her laugh. "Should I ask the other obvious question?" she inquired after a moment. "How did you end up in a heated show down with a Bajoran scientist in the first place?"

"See, that's the thing... I have no idea. I was talking with one of my technicians about how positronic matrices were vastly inferior to isolinear data storage when you expose them to certain types of typical radiation found in engineering spaces when she started yelling at me about how empty my head was. Like... who starts a conversation with someone like that? Before then, I didn't even know she was on the ship," Tork shook his head.

Emni took that in, staring at Tork with the kind of knowing look that only came from... well... knowing a person. "You didn't think that maybe she was trying to... I don't know... find an excuse to spend time with you? It sounds like she got several rounds of kal-toh out of the deal and you aren't exactly the quickest on the uptake when someone is making a pass."

The Ferengi began to open his mouth to counter before a look of confusion rippled across his face, "You know something... maybe you aren't as crazy as I was about to call you. We kept the whole kal-toh routine up for nearly five months before I transferred out..." Tork paused to reflect for a few moments before finally shaking his head, "Nah... can't be. Every chance she got, she'd complain about something I did or said... or ate... People don't usually do that if they enjoy spending time with someone... do they?"

"People don't usually go out of the way to pick a fight with someone who has evoked no emotional reaction from them and then proceed to double down on said fight for 5 months," Emni quipped back. "People also show affection in weird ways sometimes. Not saying that was her best play, but maybe she heard somewhere that Ferengi men like to be emasculated. Or maybe she thought you'd eventually introduce her to all sorts of things you like just to prove her wrong. Sounds like a strategy to keep you around... not to drive you away." Emni snorted as another thought occurred to her. "For that matter it couldn't have been that terrible for you to agree to play her regularly for five months. Just think about all the oo-mox you missed out on." The look she gave him then was smug, but charged a suggestiveness to it that she couldn't quite help. "Does she keep in touch?"

Tork gave Emni a look, "You say that like I'd let just anyone touch my lobes. And how could she? Right after I left the ship, I got kidnapped by Kazon."

The reminder of what had brought them together again--the sheer awfulness of it--tamped back the teasing that Emni had been prepared to lob in Tork's direction. "Oh," she said softly. "I'm sorry, I didn't realize it was your last posting." She sighed and frowned at that. "We still haven't been able to reach the Andarok, she said quietly.

Tork's face scrunched into a somewhat strange configuration, "Maybe I was the lucky one, got out just before... well... whatever happened."

"I don't know if lucky is the right term. And you've never been one to quote fate as factor in life. But I'm glad I get to be here on the other side of all of it," The Romulan's tone was sincere, earnest even. She unfolded herself from behind the desk and came around to the side where Tork was sitting, pulling the only other chair in the room close enough that their knees were touching when she sat. She leaned forward, snagging his hands in hers. "Promise me you'll talk to me. Or someone. Counselor Qo. Hell, a holographic version of the Blessed Exchequer is fine by me. Just..."

She shook her head, remembering the way that Karim had barely restrained himself when he got back from the mission at Chrystaya. The feel of his finger, not painful, but pressing hard, against the middle of her forehead as he tried not to fall apart. She hadn't wanted that for Karim, who had been merely a friend at that time. She didn't want it for Tork now. The blindness of her empathic sense with him left her feeling unprepared, as if she would not be able to do enough to help if he ended up needing it.

"Not sure what there is to talk about just yet," the Ferengi said, giving her hands a soft but meaningful squeeze. "If you don't know anything, I know even less. They could just be out there somewhere in a dead zone. Plenty of them out here according to what Voyager reported. Could be putting the plasma relay before the dilithium chamber. But I appreciate that you were quick to be concerned, Em. Makes me feel like grabbing this chance to be together again was the best thing I could have done out here in the Delta Quadrant."

"You know I don't just mean your missing former ship. You were on Subrek's ship for weeks. That's... Look, I get that the Trabe gentleman, Ikade, was there longer, but I also can read his emotional profile and there's some deep rooted scarring there. I just... of course I care. Of course I'm concerned." She returned the gentle squeeze with her own, leaning forward slightly as if closeness was needed for punctuation. "I've seen you through holes blown in your hull before. And I'm seeing it with my crew." She removed one hand long enough to tap her temple pointedly. "Weeks with no guarantee of ever leaving... of ever finding your way back to a Starfleet vessel. I know you're good at keeping yourself in the moment, but still..." She sighed. "Just promise you'll tell me if you need me. Or anyone else. Ok?"

Tork couldn't help but chuckle softly, "That's just it, Em. I think I've always needed you. Maybe not specifically for this... but just in general. I always felt like I was at my best when I was matching wits with you, exploring new things with you...."

The engineer let out a heavy breath, his grip tightening just a bit, "Being on that Kazon ship hardly even registered. They didn't need to beat me to get me to turn a wrench or clandestinely steal parts to aid my escape. I'd have gotten out of there on my own had your people not showed up. I was never worried about that... not after they killed my pilot. You want to know the truth of why I stayed so long?"

Emni nodded, listening intently and letting what he was saying sink down through the layers of self-protecting armor she'd built up over years of coming to terms with the possibility that she simply wasn't meant to be cared about by someone in that way again. "Why?" she asked softly.

"I was planning to blow that rust bucket all the way to the Divine Treasury," he replied in such an even and controlled tone that it couldn't be mistaken for his usual deflection through humor.

She almost pushed him on it. The doctor in her... the medical professional who had cared for Karim whose statements were often a mixture of plain spoken logic and logical obfuscation... was tempted to push him to confirm that he would have gotten off the ship first. But she held her tongue. If he had planned to go down with the ship that was for him to tell her when and if it was necessary. "I'm glad you didn't have to," she finally said.

"I'm probably going to regret not doing it somewhere down the line." the man admitted with a wistful sigh.

Across from Tork, the Romulan's eyes tightened ever so slightly giving away the shift from earnest concern to slight doubt. "You're messing with me now, aren't you?"

"Why would I mess with you about that?" the Ferengi asked in a blunt tone, "Subrek and his band of thugs aren't just going to go hide in a hole now that they've lost some prisoners. They'll go after others... others that wouldn't have to worry if I had rigged the place to atomize itself. And I have to live with that, Em. I made the choice to help your crew over ending a threat that ship poses to the galaxy at large."

Another squeeze preceded his next words, "I did pay enough attention in my bridge officer qualification prep to know that sometimes, the 'right' decisions at the time have unintended consequences down the line. I made a 'right' decision in the moment, to abandon a plan for... not even revenge really... self-gratification more like... to help your people escape. I don't regret that part... but I know that someday I'm going to have to look someone else in the eye and admit that I could have stopped them and chose another path instead."

Realization connected too slowly and then all at once. Emni's eyes widened. "How..." she started to ask and then stopped, peering into Tork's eyes with an intensity that would be alarming to most. "The Kordra-Lisrit self destructed, Tork. Our crew told me they barely escaped the blast radius. There was turbulence..." She frowned, suddenly even more concerned than she'd been a moment before. "You did say you got looked at, right?"

She didn't meant to push or to question. Who even knew the state of each one of them at that moment. She was certainly the last to judge. But she was concerned. And she had to ask.

"A few days later, yeah... but... wait... it blew up?" the Ferengi blinked several times before half collapsing backward into his chair, "I must have passed out when we got on my shuttle..." He continued to mutter to himself in a voice so low the universal translator couldn't pick it up, so it came out sounding entirely Ferengi and unintelligible to a non-native speaker.

"Huh..." he finally said, his expression kind of glazed over, "Worried about all that for nothing."

Emni knew only the most basic Ferengi terms and of those Tork used barely a handful, but she did catch the occasional muttered comment. "No," she said, "not for nothing. There's nothing wrong with appropriately evaluating your view within the information you have. But if telling you that helps to alleviate any worry you were having... I'm glad I could help."

"Kind of annoyed no one bothered to give me that information before now..." the engineer grumbled but ultimately seemed to let it go. "With that little tidbit of news, I haven't got any reason at all to be in the least bit upset about the whole thing. Those bastards got what I wanted to give them in the end, and no one else has to worry about them ruining their lives. Case closed."

"Assuming the Kordra-Lisrit is one ship on its own and not merely a flagship for a larger group." The words were out of Emni's mouth before she considered if they even warranted saying. "Sorry. Whether we're well and truly clear of this mess has been on my mind a lot. Sometimes hard to put the brakes on even when I'm not technically working."

She shook her head. "Anyway... what should we have for our date planning date tonight?" The redirect was less because Emni minded the topic and more of a mindful reaction to the time. Lunch breaks were, after all, only so long.

"If we had access to a kitchen, I could whip up some of my moogie's pan-fried greshk and braised vort greens. Haven't made those in a while, and while you can replicate the ingredients well enough, no replicator in the galaxy will simulate the amount of oil it takes to get greshk to actually fry in a pan," the Ferengi said with a contemplative look.

Emni chuckled and then, removing her hands from his, twisted to pick up a PADD from her desk. A few quick flicks at the interface and she was grinning. "So the Holodeck then? 1900?"

"Ah... yes, that would be a suitable substitute for a kitchen. That's perfect! I'll pick up what I need from the replicator in my quarters before I meet you there. This is going to be fun. Oh, don't pick a program, just reserve the slot. I have just the place in mind for this, but I want to surprise you," Tork said with a grin.

Emni eyed Tork, one eyebrow creeping upward at his grin. "I know that grin," she said, amusement lacing her tone. "That's the I'm about to wow you with my technical prowess grin." She shook her head and tapped lightly against the PADD, finalizing the arrangement.

"Ok, we're booked," she said as her commbadge chirped at almost the exact same time followed by the voice of the ops officer on duty on the bridge. Sighing, she returned the PADD to her desk and stood. "And... lunchtime is over."

"Then I'll go make ready for this evening. I'm glad I don't have a duty shift to worry about in times like that," Tork said with a playful smirk before standing, "See you tonight, Em."

"1900," she confirmed and, with a small pleased smile, tapped her commbadge to respond.

--- LUNCH! By:

Lieutenant Commander Emni t'Nai
Executive Officer

Lieutenant Tork
Untethered Engineer