“After my picture fades and darkness has turned to gray.

Watchin’ through windows, you’re wondering if I’m okay.

Secrets stolen from deep inside,

The drum beats out of time” Cyndi Lauper, ‘Time After Time’

“Well… that was amazing…” Lt. Kyra Tesa said as she caught her breath. She hopped out of the water and laid herself out on the chez lounge style sofa without bothering to don any clothing.

After taking a few seconds to get his wind back with several deep breaths through his blowhole, Mee IH squeeked, “like I always say, practice makes perfect.”

The little Beluga nudged his padded ‘sleeping cradle’ over to the edge of the pool deck nearest to her and sluggishly swam up onto it. The pair’s unusual yet strangely organic relationship had evolved over the past few months from being friends with benefits into a full fledged romance.

“Want me to stay the night tonight, or are you doing an all nighter?” Tesa asked as she rubbed her fingers absent mindedly along the backrest of the couch. She knew that the pygmy Beluga’s metabolism made it so that he only usually needed to sleep for 4 to 6 hours every second night.

“Up to you babe. I’m not on duty until 1400h tomorrow. So I’ll probably snooze for a while.” Mee IH enjoyed it when she did spend the night, for some reason he always slept better in his cradle when she stayed over.

“Same for me. I’ll crash here then. We can do a morning swim together and grab breakfast.”

“Sure. I was planning on meeting up with Moop at the gym at around 1100h if you wanna join us.”

“You two have been spending a lot of time together. Is there anything I need to be jealous about?” Tesa teased.

“Oh, no, we’re just friends. Fascinating guy though. He told me yesterday how his little offshoot of his species had gone from a primitive mindless band of bone drinkers into an enlightened warp capable species in less than a thousand years.” Mee IH recalled the conversation aside he was doing tail curls in the fitness gym in deck 7 the day before.

“That’s quick, not as fast as you and your fellow cetaceans though. You did it in less then a hundred years, right?”

“Enh, yeah, but we had help though. A lot of it was due to the work of Doc Taylor, grace be to her.” Mee IH said with obvious reverence for the woman who helped spawn the ‘great leap forward’ for the cetacean peoples in the late 2200s.

“So, I was thinking babe, we both have some leave saved up, and the ship is due for a period of pre-deployment leave after the exercises. Why don’t we go somewhere together?” Tesa had a plan brewing.

“Sure, sounds like fun, why don’t you go ahead and book us a trip. Surprise me.” Mee IH said, obviously suffering from a clearly debilitating case of PNC. He added an audible yawn for good measure.

Having her prey fall right into her ‘trap’, she giggled, “Perfect I’ll make all the arrangements, it’ll be so much fun. So how is your family doing, didn’t you mention one of your sisters getting married earlier?”

Light snoring noises.

Along with falling for her vacation planning gambit, her Beluga boyfriend had also fallen fast asleep.

About four and a half hours later the XO awakened in the darkened quarters. The only illumination was from a few underwater consoles in his pool, though he could see Tesa sound asleep on the couch, he also noticed she had dragged it right up to the edge of the pool, presumably to be closer to him.

“She’s so sweet, I don’t deserve her affections.” He thought to himself as he slipped off of his cradle, silently raised himself up out of the water and gently kissed Tesa’s shoulder before slipping below the surface and heading for the submerged exit of his quarters.

As he got out in the main communal pool and started swimming towards the lavatory to do his morning ablutions, he sensed LtJG Timmesin, the massive male Orca, peek his head around the wall, and peer at the Beluga from his large corner section of the main pool. As the killer whale saw that Mee IH was just headed to the lavatory, the Beluga sensed the whale’s head droop as he slowly turned around and swam back into his corner.

Mee IH instantly started feeling bad about his first first meeting with the younger staff member, he had let his genetic pre-disposition to fear and flee from an Orca affect him. The XO realized that the guy was probably just lonely. Being as large as he was, Tim could only access the main pool area and the operations pool which was connected via a lateral hatch on the starboard side of the main pool. He made a note to stop and check in on the big blackfish on his way back to his quarters.

After finishing up in the washroom, he swam over to the operations pool and popped his head up to find Joe and Stu on duty. Joe, the hopeless romantic of a dolphin, was busy piloting a simulated route though a nearby region and Stu, the cybernetically enhanced Narwhal, was working on updating star charts.

“Hey, sup folks?” He squeaked.

“Morning sir.” The Xindi-mammalian computer technician from a station along the far wall in Cetacean ops bay.

“Hi boss, just working on updating the charts for our trip coreward. How are you sir?.” The Narwhal, with the shaved down foot long protruding tooth, said.

“Doing alright. Just got up, figured I’d come and see how you all were doing.” Mee IH noticed Joe get done with his sim and pop back up to the surface.

“Heya sir, what brings you by our humble pool?” Joe constantly ribbed Mee IH for not spending much time in cetacean ops now that he was the XO.

“Ah, just checking in, nice work on the nav plan for the trip around Freecloud by the way, I liked the formation layout, it should be quite effective.”

“That was mostly Tim, the formation move around that corner of the border was all his idea. Kids got a good mind for tactics, too bad he’s stuck in the pool all the time, he’d probably make a good Tactical or Strat Ops officer.” Joe replied.

“Hmmm, speaking of Tim, what do you all think of our Cartographic Analyst, I noticed he tends to stay in his corner of the main pool a lot, you all work with him more than I though?” Mee IH bobbed up and down as he tread water in the middle of the pool.

“Yeah he’s quiet, keeps to himself mostly, but when he’s on duty, the guys on point.” Joe squeaked back.

“I’ve only worked one shift with him so far, no complaint, but yeah he is a bit quiet.” The Xindi chief replied from her seat across the room.

As the conversation shifted away from Tim and back to operational matters Mee IH hung out for another half hour before heading back out into the main pool. He swam across to Timmesin’s corner and noticed the Orca floating nearly vertically with his headset on and a bunch of flashing consoles and holo-dislays above the water.

Mee IH surfaced on the edge of what appeared to be the middle of a combat holo-sim.

The killer whale was wearing a headset not unlike the one he used on duty and a set of haptic feedback sensors on the tips of his pectoral flippers.

“Squad Two push, hit that right flank hard! HQ group lay down covering fire! I’m gonna fire off a few iso-mags into that guard tower, Squizzy cover me!” The Orca called into his headset.

Tim then noticed the XO bobbing quietly to his left, “Oh hey boss, gimme two minutes I’ll be right with you sir…Squad One, breach now, don’t stop until you get to the flag! There’s only four enemies left, don’t let them respawn, push push.”

Mee IH realized now that the Junior officer was playing a Holonet VR game, as he could faintly hear what he presumed were Tim’s teammates responding to his orders coming from his earpiece. After another minute the Holodisplay paused and large strobing blue letters spelling out “BLUE TEAM WINS” across the screen.

“Nice job team. Well done. That’s a big win people, we’re in the quarterfinals now. Our next match started in about 30 minutes, let’s take a break and meet back in 15, we’ll go over our plan. I’m gonna be AFH(away from his headset) for a few minutes. Nice work Squad One.” Tim then flipped up his headset eyepiece and turned to face the XO.

“Sorry sir, my Frontier Scouts 2500 competitive team is in the middle of a capture the flag tournament. Do you play hologames at all sir?”

“Nah, not since I was a kid. Looks like you’re having a good time though. I was just coming to see how you were doing and thank you for the work you put on the new nav plan, Joe said the formation plan for the trip around Freecloud was your idea.” Mee Ih looked closer at the lobby screen of the hologame Tim was playing, it was filled with a myriad of buttons and symbols with an inventory box, with a bunch of eclectic weapons and gear. There was a corner of the screen dedicated to the tactical loadout for his character along with a side screen that showed his teammates and their loadouts.

“Oh, yeah it just seemed smart to have our support vessels perform a sweep as we pass by, helping us practice our formation flying and whatnot. The idea came to me when me and some of my teammates on my Final Fantasy 54 Arena team were practicing for a match.”

Mee IH giggled and asked “Oh so you’re a hardcore gamer then eh?

“I don’t know about hardcore, but I’m in the top 100 on FS2500 in terms of my KD ratio. But our FF team is barely ranked in the top 500, a few people on our roster decided to go Pro so we’re in a bit of a rebuilding phase.”

“There’s professional hologame players?” Mee IH asked.

“Oh yeah, there’s a couple different holo-stations devoted to broadcasting pro league holo-matches.”

Mee IH started to realize that maybe the Orca wasn’t lonely at all.