Ears Out

Posted on Mon Jun 29th, 2026 @ 1:02am by Lieutenant Xex Wang & Lieutenant Tork

3,857 words; about a 19 minute read

Mission: Port of Call
Location: Deck 3
Timeline: Mission Day 9 at 06:00

[MD 9]
[Deck 3, Access Corridor]

“...wasn't kidding when the computer said under the Arboretum,” Xex muttered as she edged along the tiny access corridor, thankful that at least it was full height... for now. When Gatien had mentioned their new Ferengi guest hadn't come in as scheduled to have his ears checked after his course of antibiotics and -virals, Xex had leapt at the chance to escape sickbay. While it normally gave her a sense of peace and control to oversee the running of sickbay, today she had been restless and her office had felt more prison than sanctuary.

Now though, as the corridor ended abruptly in a hatch, she was beginning to question her rash choices. There was a reason she hadn't become an engineer, and tiny inconvenient spaces into which one had to shove one's body had been a not insignificant factor. Still, the man wasn't answering his commbadge, and she'd already come this far. “Computer,” she said, as she began the release sequence on the hatch, “Please confirm that Lieutenant Tork is located in the compartment behind this hatch.”

“Lieutenant Tork is located on subdeck 2a, within containment area delta fourtee--”

“Close enough,” Xex interrupted, then belatedly added, “Thank you.”

The hatch glowed green, and she cycled it open, squeezing into the Jefferies tube beyond. She could hear scufflings and the shush of fabric sliding on metal as someone moved around. Intermittently, the sounds of metal being pried open or scraping against other metals could be heard echoing around the crawlspace, the source obscured by the echoes they produced. “Lieutenant Tork?” she called, her voice suddenly loud in the confined space, making her flinch as she inched forward.

A Ferengi head appeared from behind a corner a few meters ahead, appearing as if it was somehow floating unattached to a body. In reality, the engineer had just leaned backward from his seated position in front of an access panel he'd opened, but only he knew that at that moment.

Xex jumped, inhaling swiftly at the unexpected head appearance, but managing to keep the curse that bubbled up clamped behind her teeth.

"Who's asking? I already had my head shrunk, so if you're looking to do it again, I'm not interested." Tork said with a narrowed, skeptical glare.

Managing to take a couple of deep breaths despite the confined space, Xex asked, "Did you? It doesn't look it from here." Smirking with ausement at her own joke, Xex inched forward and introduced herself, "Xex, chief medical officer." She performed a truncated sort of bow, which in the close confines, looked more like an aborted yoga position.

"Ha ha..." Tork said in a mocking tone before his grin returned to his features, "I was actually wondering when I'd hear from you. One of your nursing staff said you were... hibernating? Something like that. Anyway, I didn't expect you to make a... tube crawl? Wait... the hew-mons call it a house call, don't they? Never mind that, you look like you hate being in the tubes as much as that poor head shrinker. You could have just... I don't know... sent me a message."

The engineer frowned after he'd said it and muttered, "Oh... right... I never check those... so that might explain all the visitors..."

Xex waited patiently, expression professionally interested while Tork ran through the sequence of events that led to her presence here in the tube. "Exactly. I think the terminology would depend on whether your 'house' is in a tube, wouldn't you agree?" she asked rhetorically, and before he could try to answer such a question, she continued, "Indeed, I was indisposed for some time," she said, without really explaining anything about her hibernation, "I apologize I wasn't able to meet you on your first visit. Gatien was most... expressive when he described his interaction with you."

Her lips twitched as she tried to hold back a smile at the memory of the nurse's gesticulations. Managing to keep the twitching to a minimum, she inclined her head to his point, "In point of fact, there are several reasons I am not suited to engineering and this is one of them. However, you seem to spend an inordinate amount of time in the tubes, so that, coupled with the fact that here, you are unlikely to be able to escape quickly made me think perhaps this was the idea place to... make a call." Her brows lifted in invitation for him to deny her logic.

"If you don't think a Ferengi who's live their life crawling through smaller spaces than this can't escape someone who's claustrophobic and has no sense of direction down here, you are woefully misinformed. But, as luck would have it, I need your services more than I need to fix the other four things I had on my agenda to work on today, so if you'll give me just a second..." Tork said before his head disappeared back into the passageway he'd popped his head out from.

Looking bemused at Tork's logic that, while exaggerated, was not entirely inaccurate, she couldn't help but add, "Dislike does not a phobia make, my good sir. Still, I suppose I shall have to count myself lucky your other four things are less important than your hearing." By the end, her voice had gone very dry.

Several grunts of exertion later, the engineer reappeared, this time with a body visible as well, and waved the doctor to follow behind him. "I know a shortcut to get us to a corridor near a turbolift shaft. Unless you want to perform an operation in the tubes. Wouldn't hurt my feelings."

Xex's expression twitched, like she couldn't decide whether to be incredulous or amused. She settled for a wry smirk, "Perhaps not, but I can assure you it has a very good chance of hurting more tangible things than your feelings." Making an awkward movement that might have been a bow if she wasn't squeezed into a Jefferies tube, Xex waved in invitation, "Please, lead on."

The Ferengi shrugged and turned to lead the doctor down a stretch of tube that spanned roughly ten meters before taking a left down a junction, then a right, and finally brought them out of an access hatch into a corridor that, strangely, wasn't occupied when they made their egress. Tork moved out of the hatch with the practiced grace of a true tube rat, making it easy for Xex to leave the cramped space behind.

"Alright, we're out. Turbolift is..." the engineer paused for just a second to visualize where they were on the ship before twisting to point behind him, "that way."

Emerging with considerably less grace than her guide, Xex managed to wriggle free of the hatch, stumbling slightly as she straightened up. Tugging at her teal uniform to get it to settle more comfortably about her-- clothing, no matter what it was, always felt odd for the first few weeks after the Sleep-- she glanced around the corridor, apparently also seeking to orient herself. Before she could, Tork was pointing. Wasting no time, the doctor led the way, her limp a little more obvious than usual. She glanced over her shoulder to assure herself the Ferengi was following and said, "I must confess, I've been looking forward to our meeting. Granted, I didn't expect it to be in a Jefferies tube, but what is it the humans say? Variety is the spice of life. What is it you were doing down there?"

"Replacing a power coil that was about two weeks out from exploding with something that will probably still be there when this ship goes for an overhaul in fifteen years. Nothing fancy," the engineer seemed ambivalent to what most people would find to be a rather braggadocios claim. Despite Federation technology being the front-runner in the Alpha and Beta Quadrants, they were remarkably temperamental at times and more than a few people have been hurt or worse when the power grids behind the panels they are using explode from an overload from, in most cases, stress induced by combat that the ship wasn't specifically intended to endure.

Xex's brows arched, but not with surprise at his casual brag, rather with interest. “That sounds like fortuitous timing. How is it that you find such a thing? I was not aware Ferengi had any type of skill with prescience...”

"It's a skill I honed from living on a freighter that was always about to fall apart. When parts start to fail, the noises they make change subtly. For all the problems I've had with my lobes lately, the mechanical whines have been a whole lot clearer," the engineer explained.

The pair rounded a soft curve and the turbolift alcove came into view. Tork pressed the call button when the doors didn't immediately open, a sign that the lift corridor was currently empty.

"So, what exactly are you? You look sort of hew-mon, but your skin shimmers way too much for them. Or is it just that you are human, but the colony that your ancestors settled on did something weird to you over time but it wasn't dangerous so you decided not to mess with it? Just curious, mind you. Doesn't really change anything as long as you can fix the lobe issue I have going on... or at least make sure it won't get worse. Option two is probably more realistic, though, huh? Organics aren't like machines, can't just throw in new parts and keep going..." the Ferengi paused in his thought before muttering, "Well... maybe the Borg can do it, but I'm not sure I want to be maintenance drone number thirty seven..."

Xex waited patiently while Tork ran through the obvious options as to her origin, a slight smirk beginning to play at the corners of her mouth. When he finally got into Borg theory, the smirk widened into a half-smile. “Who's to say this is not a cosmetic affectation?” she asked mildly, holding out an arm and shoving up her sleeve to rotate the limb in the ambient light. The shimmer that played over it was, in point of fact, quite pretty.

The lift chimed and the doors opened, but Xex hesitated long enough to allow Tork to precede her in.

The Ferengi boarded the lift and leaned up against the wall, "I've seen a lot of cosmetic alterations done in my time. You don't grow up on a Ferengi trading freighter and not see a few people with some odd aesthetic tastes, but that doesn't seem to be the case. You can tell when someone's smug about how they look. You? You don't give it a second thought. So it's all natural. Just don't know what that natural glow is indicative of, species wise. Not that I'm a biologist or anything on the side, just curious for curiosity's sake. Kind of like all that stuff about strange new life and what have you from the recruiting posters for Starfleet."

Xex followed Tork into the lift and said, "Sickbay." The lift chimed as the doors slid smoothly shut. Although they shouldn't have been able to feel the movement at all, it shuddered slightly as it shunted them more sideways than up and Xex subconsciously braced her hip against the wall of the lift to compensate, grimacing slightly. Turned out when Kazon blew holes in your ship, it didn't work exactly as you might like it to. Tork's words, meanwhile, melted her grimace into a truly pleased smile, the glimmer of her skin shifting subtly... was the good doctor blushing? Affecting an ironic bow, she said, "I'm truly uncertain whether you meant that as a compliment, but I shall take it as such." Rubbing a hand over the barely-there stubble of her bald head, she said dryly, "I find vanity difficult immediately out of the Sleep." She didn't elaborate on this point, bracing again as the lift shuddered slightly again, bringing them to a halt. The doors slid open and she preceded Tork this time, leading him down the curving corridor toward Sickbay. "The glow isn't really indicative of anything more than skin color might be on a human," she relented enough to explain. "Sure, you might be able to tell someone's health or lack thereof by the tone of their skin, but hardly anything more concrete. So too with my own skin. It is genetic though," she added with a flash of a grin back over her shoulder at him, an unsubtle nod to his powers of deduction.

"Nothing wrong with vanity, or a lack of vanity. Not sure why a lot of hew-mons and the like consider it to be such a bad thing. It's always been good for business. Might not be a business I invest my latinum in, but I can see the appeal," Tork said with a soft chuckle as he followed the doctor along the corridor. "And none of that answers my original question. Not that I mind you dancing around it. Far be if from me to discourage someone from living by Rule #239... even if you aren't doing it intentionally."

As they reached the double doors of sickbay, Xex paused, her expression thoughtful. “There are a great many humanoids that find vanity for vanity's sake to be a moral failing,” she said a wry smile twitching at her lips, “And while I can't entirely disagree with them, you do bring a valid argument... commercial though it might be.” That said, she waved the doors open and stepped into the brightly lit medical space.

At this hour, sickbay had settled into the comfortable routine of the day. The place was spotless, the chaos of the Kodra-Lisrit rescue long-since cleaned up, although there were still a couple of display panels that did not seem to be functioning correctly-- one presumed they were nonessential, as there weren't engineering or ops people swarming all over them. One human patient was getting a full diagnostic scan, while a nurse and a medtech stood by, and a single glance told Xex the procedure was well in hand. She took a brief sniff of the air, but detected nothing but disinfectant; all had proceeded easily in her absence, as she had been certain it would. When she half turned to gesture Tork to the other biobed, she lifted a brow at him, “I try to be intentional with everything I do. Would you be willing to refresh my memory about Rule #239?”

“Never be afraid to mislabel a product,” the engineer replied as he did his best to clamor up to the bed without looking completely foolish given his height disadvantage.

Xex's bark of laughter wasn't the beautiful peal of bells; she guffawed rather than giggled, but the genuine amusement in it rounded off its harsh corners to make it almost infectious. The nurse at the next bed shot her a glance but it slid off the side of Xex's head as she turned to the terminal to one side of the bed, ignoring-- or politely not noticing-- Tork's climb. "Never be afraid to mislabel a product," she repeated, bemused, as she tapped a few commands into the terminal to one side of the biobed

"So, what are you going to do to my lobes? From what the tech said during my last visit, I take it there might be some lasting complications from that device that damaged them in the first place. Not that I'm complaining... as long as the pain and the bouts of dizziness disappear, I'll call it a good trade," the Ferengi followed up while his legs swung unobstructed beneath the bed's edge.

Xex looked up, pinning Tork with her gaze now. Her levity was gone, sloughed away to leave only calm competence, and it was with this that she asked pointedly, "And has it? Gone away, that is?"

"Not completely, no. The pain is still there, not like it was but still noticeable enough, especially when I move my head too fast. Same with the dizziness. It doesn't happen every time I move my head now, at least, but sudden movement does a number on me sometimes," Tork reported his symptoms.

Xex's brows arched with interest. “The pain comes specifically when you move your head? Or increases in intensity?” she asked, maintaining an air of attention despite stooping to remove something from a compartment beneath the biobed. When she straightened again, the helmet Tork got familiar with last time he was in sickbay is held between her hands, dark and silent for now.

"A little of both, but not always together," the Ferengi reported.

Xex hummed in reply, a sound originating somewhere in her chest that seemed like it could indicate anything from concern to mild interest. Knowing doctors, the ambiguity was probably the point. She rotated the helmet thoughtfully for several beats of silence, before finally holding it out to the engineer. “I know it's a tight fit, but if you wouldn't mind...” she said, “I really do need to get an-up-to-date scan of your inner ear before we can make a plan of action. Gatien mentioned you were also having some hearing anomalies,” she put politely, rephrasing the nurse's dry commentary, “Are those still present?”

"I sometimes miss things when people talk, or mishear a word now and then. I thought it might be a Universal Translator issue, since Federation Standard isn't a language I'm as fluent in as I am a few others. Just between us, I speak Breen better than I do Federation Standard, since my parents did a lot of business out there when I was a lobeling. Anyway, I thought I could just have picked up a faulty commbadge. Burned through three before I ruled that out," Tork explained.

Xex was immediately diverted-- how she ever got anything done is a mystery-- her gray eyes lighting with interest. "You spent time with the Breen during your childhood? What were your impressions?" she asked, leaning forward to tap a few places on the helmet, making it light up with a wave of blue light that bounced forward, than back, then lowered to a 'standby' level of dimness, ready for use. "I am quite certain I have never met anyone with that sort of experience," she said, either to flatter his vanity, or as explanation for her immediate questions about things that were in no way audio-adjacent.

"They were always a bit frigid," the Ferengi offered with a smirk. "Their engineering skills were impressive, at least from my perspective as a lobeling. Looking back, a lot of things they did don't seem so difficult to replicate, but a younger me was captivated by them. I think I still have a few pieces of Breen tech sitting in one of my storage crates. They won't be outdone when it comes to durability, but they aren't very multipurpose. Probably why they last so long, actually. Reminds me of the Breen themselves, very single-minded. And not very good conversational partners either... it shows in how blunt and clipped their language is."

Xex's chuckle was wry and she said dryly, “Even I must admit that the thought of a lively Breen conversation far-fetched.” As the helmet squeezed down onto the Ferengi's oversized head, Xex adjusted it just slightly, lining up the sensors where they needed to be for optimum diagnostics. Then she tapped a few places on the side of the helmet and it began lighting up on the outside as it ran through its audio and physiological scans. “Have you had any success marrying Breen technology to Starfleet standard?” she asked, as much to distract the engineer from the no-doubt uncomfortable helmet as out of any real interest in the engineering aspects of alien technology.

"Plenty," Tork responded. "My last ship has a few pieces of Breen technology in it. I've only used the parts I brought with me sparingly since there's no way to get a new shipment of them out here. They'll probably last until the ship's next refit. The looks on the faces of the people who find them in there will be priceless. A shame I won't get to see them."

Xex's smile held more than a little mischief and she said, “Next time you will have to install some kind of monitor to capture the moment of discovery.” Her eyes sparkled, then slid from his, caught by something on the terminal out of Tork's peripheral vision. She gently tapped a few commands into the side of the helmet, and after a few last passes of light, the device chimed pleasantly and she said, “You can remove it now.”

"You know, you might be on to something there," the Ferengi murmured as he pulled the device off his head with a small amount of effort.

Xex took the helmet from him and placed it back into its home somewhere in the myriad cubbies beneath the biobed. “Well Tork, it looks like you managed to remember your meds, if not your appointments. The swelling has reduced, although you still have some sort of crystalline objects in your cochlea, which I imagine has something to do with dizziness you have been experiencing. Repairing your eardrums should be simple enough, but I cannot tell simply from the diagnostic how embedded the crystals are and thus how difficult they will be to remove. The surgery should not take long, but there is a chance you will need some time to recover-- depending what we find with the crystals.” As she spoke, Xex held Tork's gaze, her expression professionally earnest. She suspected he was not one given to 'recovery,' and she wanted to make certain he was taking her words on board.

"Do what you need to do, Doc," Tork said with a breezy shrug of his shoulders. "We'll play it by ear about the rest though." The subtle grin on his face spoke of just how deliberate his choice of words had been.

Xex shot him a Look that handily answered his grin, both not amused and appreciative of his attempt all the same. “Good,” she said, stepping back and gesturing for him to stand. “In that case, my philosophy is ‘sooner started, sooner finished.’ Shall we?” Gesturing toward the surgical suite, she indicated that he should precede her. Unsure when she would be able to corner him again, she reasoned now was as good a time as any to take care of the minor operation.

"That works for me if it works for you," the Ferengi shrugged with a small smirk.

Xex fell into place a half-step behind and to the side of Tork,. "Getting you healed up is what works for me," she assured him as they moved toward the surgical suite, "We'll make sure you are back up to Jefferies tubes shenanigans as soon as possible."

It was only as the doors to the suite opened that it became clear who the 'we' was in her sentence.

"Computer, activate LMH."

A post by:

Lieutenant Tork
Rogue Engineer

Lieutenant Xex Wang, MD
Chief Medical Officer

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