With a blip, Joshua’s console came to life. He stopped drumming his fingers on the table and turned to the monitor. “‘From the desk of the Deputy Science Officer’-, wow this is official and everything,” Joshua chuckled as he skimmed the order, “‘Enter into the Paulson Nebula and provide agriculture analysis and relief to the following colonies.’ Huh, I guess I’ll be busy.” The order indicated rendezvous with Ensign Dawa Lôi-Vlček in the shuttle bay on Sector Golf-One-Cyan. “Correction, we’ll be busy.” He downloaded information on the colonies, along with relevant information about the Paulson Nebula, to his PADD and shut down the console. He eyed his Aurous carnivorous plant, which was recovering nicely, and stroked one of its leaves. “Stay strong buddy, I’ll be back in a bit.”

After a quick ride on the turbo lift, he arrived at the shuttle bay. Joshua approached a member of the grounds crew. “I’m looking for,” he checked his PADD, “Ensign Lôi-Vlček.” The man pointed to a woman staring over a console. “I understand you’re my ride,” Joshua said with a chuckle.

The woman had already been wearing a relaxed smile as she completed her work at the console, but the jovial tone of voice made her grin expand as she glanced up at her passenger. “Petty Officer Bryant? Then yep, that’s me! Though more literally your ride will be the USS Susquehanna.” Her smile grew wider still. “I convinced the hangar ops chief that our two-person outfit would be worth a runabout by suggesting we’d be out of his hair that much sooner if we didn’t have to limp along to the nebula at warp 2, though I don’t think I used the phrase ‘out of his hair’ specifically.” She leaned forward and gave an exaggerated aside behind her hand. “He’s a Bolian.” And winked.

Joshua chuckled, “Yeah, that would be a sight to see. No need for formalities, you can call me Joshua. From what I’ve read about the nebula, a runabout would fare better than a fighter.”

“‘Joshua’ hmm? Well, I do appreciate being trusted with a given name. You can call me Dawa!” She logged out of the console and motioned for him to follow her toward the craft. “All the items you requisitioned have already been loaded if you want to give them a once-over before we go, make sure you’re not missing anything.”

“Yes, that’d be great,” he replied. “Once we get out there, it’s every man for themselves.”He smiled. Joshua followed Dawa to the Susquehanna and into its cargo hold. His equipment fit into two small crates, but every bit of it was important. Joshua looked over the contents and confirmed it with his PADD. “It… looks like it’s all here,” He said, closing the crates and securing them. 

He made his way to the cockpit and sat down at the science console. Joshua jokingly made a salute, “Science reporting ready for departure!”

Dawa returned the salute, then reached into her pocket and pulled out a small plastic whale attached to a carabiner. Lacking anything to clip it to in the immediate area, she merely set it down on the far end of her console and gave it a quick pat before engaging in a series of keystrokes. “Now that our full crew complement is here…”

The door of the runabout hissed shut, the impulse and warp engines thrummed, and they began hovering off the deck as Dawa announced departure clearance from operations. Within seconds they were out of the hangar, the starbase quickly disappearing behind them. “It won’t take long to reach the nebula, but it’ll be a few hours before we reach our destination proper. Autopilot will do most of the work, but once we’re inside the sensors get a bit wiggy so I’ll be busy with manual scans to make sure we don’t cross paths with any solid objects. Still, that leaves us with about… 42 minutes for conversatin’!”

“Yeah, conversation is good…” Joshua said absentmindedly as he watched the station disappear from view. Within seconds the ship entered orbit, smooth as always. He pulled up the colony’s information on the console. “So what made you want to become a pilot?” The console beeped, partially drawing his attention, “Oh wow, this is worse than Starfleet thought.”

“Worse than Starfleet’s estimates? Well, that can’t be good.” She frowned, sidestepping his first question and trying to word her statements in such a way that she could hide the fact that she’d only skimmed the morning report past ‘destination’ and ‘equipment requisitioned’. “What’s wrong?”

Joshua ran his fingers through his hair in frustration, “The initial reports on the agriculture status of the colonies stated they were 5-10 years away from being Famine status. Tertiary analyses are now putting that number closer to 3. It’s going to conservatively take a year and a half to implement the same measures used on Cygnia Minor.” He chuckled wryly, “If they don’t have to be modified.” He frowned, “Starfleet may have bit off more than they can chew with this.”

“Oh,” said Dawa, because that was all that immediately came to mind that didn’t sound trite. “I don’t know much about agriculture, but that does seem like a painfully tight timeframe.” 

She sighed and glanced back at her control panel, but the silence felt too heavy, so she tugged gently at the first conversation thread. “I became a pilot because I was tired of being an engineer… You see, my family works at the Sol VI Shipyards, and I did too, for a while. But I wanted to get off that damn moon, and there’s few who get to see as much of the galaxy as a Starfleet Officer, so I joined the Academy. If I’d been a little braver I’d have gone into the sciences division, but research and biology felt too far out of my comfort zone at the time.

“What about you?” She offered Joshua a small smile. “Have you always been interested in botany?”

“I know the feeling. I felt like there was too much to explore beyond Cygnia Minor. I guess that’s always been human nature, to constantly reach beyond our front door.” He pushed a few buttons to call up more colony information. “Anyway, my mother is a botanist on Cygnia Minor, so she was more than happy to see me follow in her footsteps.” Joshua said, dividing his attention between the console and Dawa, “My father was more of a botany geneticist. He was a part of the team that created the nutrients necessary to revitalize plant life at the colony.” He turned to the console, “Which is what I’m hoping to replicate here. But it looks like it’s less of an arid climate and more of a tropical one.” Joshua paused, “Or, at least it was.”

“Don’t sell yourself short, you don’t have to be brave to make a difference.” He chuckled, “Look at us, we’re both just following a path laid out before we were born.”

Dawa laughed, clear and genuine. “I guess so! Sounds like you’ve got plants in your blood as much as I’ve got spaceships in mine!” She made a mental note to read up on the history of Cygnia Minor later, as well as perhaps some other Federation colonies. Was famine such a common thing? “I certainly took for granted living in a colony so close to Earth,” she said, mostly to herself.

“If I had plants in my blood, they’d bloom and I’d die,” he laughed at his lame joke. “But I guess your blood cells are kind of like spaceships,” Joshua pondered this a moment and continued to laugh at the thought of mini starships warping around the bloodstream. “Most of my contact with Earth was through my sister. She’s a captain of a small freighter. She would bring me things, mostly plants, from the far reaches of the galaxy.” He continued to read through the reports, “Have you thought about going back into engineering? Or has being a pilot stolen you away from it?”

Dawa shook her head to rid her mind of the horror movie imagery of plants bursting out of someone’s capillaries, and answered very quickly, “No! Oh no, don’t want to go back into engineering. I much prefer being a pilot. But if I ever did change specialties, what I’d really love is to go into something like zoology. I’m just fascinated by animals. Although plants are pretty great too!” She cast a glance at Joshua. “Were you able to bring any of your plants with you when you came here?”

“I brought a few with me when I arrived at the station. Now that I have a more permanent assignment, I can send for the rest. The problem is you have to judge if they’re hardy enough to make the trip through space. Putting them in stasis usually helps, but some are more temperamental. I have an Aurous carnivorous, that nearly died in transit. It’s uh-” he cleared his throat, “It has a lot of sentimental value. It’s doing better, but I’m working on a protein mixture that will strengthen its cellular structure.” He chuckled and smiled, “Sorry, I went a little deep in the nerd pool there. I’d love to show it to you some time.”

“Ha! Are you kidding? I love swimming in the nerd pool!” Autopilot would be carrying them forward for some time yet, so she swiveled in her seat to face her passenger. “I’ve never seen a carnivorous plant before, so you’d better keep it alive for me to visit the next time our off-duty hours line up. We can compare hours later once this mission is over. Sound good to you?”

Joshua was taken aback by her enthusiasm, “Yeah, it’s a date.” He paused, “I mean, I’ll put it on the calendar.” Dawa’s console began to beep urgently, saving him from further awkwardness. “I think we’re reaching the wiggy part.”