Quick Fix, Part 2
Posted on Thu Feb 6th, 2025 @ 8:40pm by Crewman Mateo Gardel & Petty Officer 3rd Class Helliun Inant
Edited on on Sat Feb 15th, 2025 @ 11:00pm
2,989 words; about a 15 minute read
Mission:
To Boldly Go
Location: Medical Science Lab 1, Deck 7, USS Fenrir
Timeline: Day 11
[ON – Continued]
Hel listened to him talk as she removed what was currently useless from the work station. There wasn’t much she couldn’t salvage with time, so she would take those bits to Engineering. She remembered the young Operations officer…Vansen, she thought. He knew his way around things, she could ask him to lend a hand if he was bored. She turned to face Mateo, studying him. There was a lot of things he was talking about and she realised that she may have disturbed the sands with her words. It did not give her a bad feeling, she never really felt regret the way those around her did.
She looked at the array of instruments in front of her and then met his eyes. One thing at the time. She reached for a small pouch, opening it to reveal short tubes. "This first, to prep the connections," she said with a smile and lay down, scooting so that her head and neck suddenly disappeared into the cavern of the work station.
"It was a blessing and a greeting," she started, and her voice took a different tone. It was almost like singing. "From the Stars we come, the Light nurturing. To the Stars we go when we die, to once again watch over those basking in our Light. And thus Auris the Mother gave us Light…and to Her Light we Sing." She stopped and smiled to herself. "The Stars do not judge, Mateo. They witness. Our joys and our sorrows, our defeats and our victories. They witness the child starving, the warrior bleeding, the Matriarch carving red stone to feed her clan. They witness and They remember."
She finished what she was doing, considering it. "Okay, hand me what looks like a crude miniature sword, grey with two reddish bits at the handle and six dark grey bits on the blade-like end. It’s an ODN recoupler," she held out her hand out of view, trusting him to hand the correct item to her.
She thought of how he had nervously, but resolutely, said he was not a breeder. It made her smile, as she understood it. "You do not need to reproduce," she said, her voice almost thoughtful. "You, as an individual. Your species have no problems keeping going, there are enough of you. Laying with someone for reproduction, or pleasure, or not at all…it does not matter, as long as what you do is true to you. It does not make you lesser to not do one or the other. My people…have limitations. We are not that many. And if one carries one child, it is a miracle in the Sands. It is…a duty, to us. It does not mean it is always wanted." She spoke from personal experience, thinking back. It had never been a choice, it had been a duty. And once the babe was out of her, she had handed it over and started her life again. Her duty fulfilled.
Mateo listened as Hel worked, his hands absently hovering over the tools in her kit, fingers grazing their unfamiliar shapes as he processed her words.
There was a rhythm to the way she spoke about the stars. It wasn’t just an explanation—it was something ingrained, something recited not from memory, but from belief. He recognized it the way one recognized a song from childhood, something carried in the bones.
His gaze flicked downward as he absorbed it.
The stars do not judge. They witness.
The idea unsettled something in him—not in a bad way, but in a way that made him feel small in the vastness of it. Humans had spent centuries looking up at the stars, assigning meaning, weaving myths, making wishes, begging for guidance. And yet, according to Hel’s people, the stars didn’t intervene—they watched.
He exhaled, thoughtful.
“You know,” he said, tipping his head slightly as he handed her the small pouch she had opened earlier.
“There’s something I read once—Las estrellas guían el camino. The stars guide the way.”
His brow furrowed slightly as he considered it.
“It’s not really something people say anymore—not in Argentina, anyway. But I think it used to come up in old poetry. Or maybe religious ceremonies. I don’t know, I just remember seeing it somewhere, probably in something I read.”
He exhaled, thoughtful.
“It’s not exactly the same as what you said, but… I guess we also look up and see something bigger than us. We like to think the stars are watching, too. But for us, they’re more like—” He hesitated, searching for the right words. “—a direction. A guide. A path to follow.”
His lips pressed together for a second before curving slightly, wry.
“It’s very human, I guess. The need to make everything about ourselves.”
What Hel said about reproduction.
It wasn’t that he felt uncomfortable—just that he didn’t immediately know how to respond.
He had never thought about it—not seriously, not in any way that was personal. And the way Hel spoke about it wasn’t casual, either. It was practical, but not detached. Like she had already long accepted its reality and moved on.
His brow furrowed slightly.
“I guess… that’s one of the biggest differences,” he said after a moment, voice quieter now, less sarcastic. “For your people, having a child is a miracle. For mine, it’s… not always planned.”
He exhaled, shaking his head faintly.
“I mean, humans don’t think about reproduction the way you do. Not as a duty. It just… happens.”
A pause.
Then, something occurred to him, his fingers momentarily stilling against the toolkit.
“And sometimes, people aren’t ready for it.”
It wasn’t a dramatic statement. It wasn’t even something he had ever framed that way before. It was just… fact.
“Some people want a child, but they can’t have one. Some have a child, but they can’t keep them.”
His mouth pressed into a thin line, the faintest crease forming between his brows.
He had never wondered before if the woman who gave birth to him had considered it a miracle or a mistake—or just something she wasn’t ready for.
Maybe it hadn’t been a choice at all.
He blinked, shaking the thought away before it could burrow too deep.
Then, with a small, almost self-conscious shrug, he tacked on, “Not to me, obviously.”
There was a heartbeat of silence. Then, belatedly realizing how that might sound, he scrubbed a hand through his hair, exhaling sharply.
“I mean, just—not something I’ve thought about. Ever. I’d have to be in a relationship first. And, well…” He let out a dry huff.
“At this rate, I’ll figure out warp field theory before I figure that out.”
Smooth. Subtle.
Absolutely unconvincing.
And it wasn’t lost on him that Hel, in contrast, spoke of it not as an abstract possibility, but as something real.
He didn’t ask if it had happened to her. He didn’t need to—there had been something in her voice, something that suggested this wasn’t just theory or cultural principle.
But if it had happened, it hadn’t defined her.
That thought stayed with him as he reached into the toolkit, eyes scanning for what she had described.
His fingers hovered before plucking out a tool—flat, vaguely blade-like, grey with red accents at the handle, dark segments on the tip.
“Miniature sword with weird bits,” he muttered, then held it out to her, smirking slightly despite himself.
“ODN recoupler, right?”
He was not sitting here letting his brain wander into places he had no frame of reference for.
Absolutely not.
Hel felt him hand it to her and she moved her hand, able to tell from touch. "That's it," she said, shifting her body to get better access as she continued working. For her, repairing things was...part of what she enjoyed. It was almost soothing in a way, making her think and rely on her skill and knowledge.
I don't think I am making him feel...comfortable with this talk.
"What will be will be," she said, having noted the way he spoke of relationships. Every species were different. As were every person. She herself used her...unique position in Starfleet to sample what the universe had to offer of partners. Her people were not exactly attached to the idea of monogamy and she had been curious.
I will let this drop. For now.
She had also been able to tell that Mateo was fascinated, or certainly interested, in her people. In what she was. It was no different to her than her own fascination with other species. And he had tried to find common ground, or certainly explain his aspects of it. It showed intelligence and a want for knowledge.
"I had never spent time with others species before I joined Starfleet. Yes, my people have been in contact with the Federation and others for...a long time. We were never explorers though. Our reason for going to space was to be closer to the Stars. Not to seek new lands or encounter others. So when we had First Contact..." she paused, remembering the story well, both sides of it. Her people's version was more innocent, not understanding what had happened, and the Federation's side had suspected foul play for a bit.
Starfleet's First Contact team had landed and...died. Not from violence or even the elements, but from the illnesses that her people had carried, naturally, yet not suffered from. It had not been her people's fault, yet it had slowed things down.
It was also the reason why her people, despite petitioning to join, were still being processed through the membership acceptance. They had gained the reputation of being carriers of disease. Unclean. It was a different thing to shake.
"Well. We still aren't exploring and most of us...spend our lives on the planet," she filled in. "Hand me what looks like a pincher with a light on top." She put down the ODN recoupler, moving her fingers to push things in, smiling at feeling the little click.
"I am here to learn, so one day I can return home and create things to help my people. So we can keep growing," she admitted, her voice soft.
Mateo listened as Hel spoke, absently running his fingers over the edges of the tools inside her kit, their shapes unfamiliar, their functions still mostly a mystery to him.
She hadn’t corrected him when he handed over the ODN recoupler, which meant he’d actually gotten it right, but as she asked for the next tool, he frowned slightly, brows furrowing.
"Pincher with a light on top."
His eyes flicked over the collection in front of him. Several things looked like they could qualify as pinchers. Some had lights. Some definitely didn’t. One had way too many moving parts to be anything useful for this particular situation.
Yeah. He had no idea what he was looking for.
“…Okay, so,” he said, shifting his weight slightly and stretching out his right leg, rolling his ankle. He could feel the beginnings of a cramp forming, his foot half-numb from sitting too long in one position. “By ‘pincher,’ are we talking like… more of a delicate, tweezer-y situation? Or are we leaning toward ‘brute force pliers of doom’?” He exhaled, pressing his lips together as he scanned for anything that fit both descriptions. “Also, please tell me the light is actually on top and not, like, hidden somewhere stupid, because that is the only thing I have going for me right now.”
The dry humor came easily, but underneath it, his mind was very much still processing everything Hel had just said.
She had shifted the conversation away from relationships, and honestly? Mateo was grateful.
It wasn’t just that he wasn’t great at those conversations—it was that he had no frame of reference for them.
Friendship? He was still figuring that out. That alone had always felt like a struggle, something just beyond his reach. Finding people who liked him, who wanted him around, who actually enjoyed his company—that had never come easily.
And when it did happen?
Reciprocating was just as hard.
Not because he didn’t want to. He just… didn’t always know how.
There was a gap between feeling something and expressing it, and that gap had always been too wide, too awkward, too complicated for him to cross easily. It was easier to crack a joke. Easier to default to sarcasm. Easier to keep people at arm’s length than risk exposing something too real, too vulnerable, too much.
Romantic relationships?
That felt completely unattainable. Like something that happened to other people, in other lives. Not his.
So yeah, he wasn’t upset that the topic had shifted. He was relieved.
And he wasn’t about to bring it back up.
But what did stick with him was her story.
First Contact. The deaths. The slow, fear-based diplomacy that followed.
Mateo sat with that knowledge, adjusting his posture as he did, shaking out his foot to restore circulation.
It was one thing to read about it in scientific journals. It was another to hear it from someone who lived with the consequences.
The idea that her people had been branded as carriers of disease—a reputation that still lingered, still kept them waiting for full membership—felt deeply unfair.
And scientifically? It was infuriating.
“Okay, but that’s ridiculous,” he said finally, voice quieter now, but firm. “The whole ‘Axan are carriers’ thing? That’s just a function of host-pathogen relationships. It’s basic microbiology.”
He rolled his shoulders back, wincing slightly as a joint popped. His body was not designed for sitting still this long, and his left foot was completely numb. Shifting, he adjusted his position, bringing one knee up and loosely draping his arm over it.
“The fact that your people are asymptomatic carriers doesn’t make you more dangerous. If anything, it means your immune systems have spent thousands of years evolving to coexist with these microbes instead of getting wiped out by them.” A pause. His brow furrowed. “It’s not like humans—or any other Federation species—don’t carry our own microbial hitchhikers. The only reason we’re not dropping dead from them is because we’ve already adapted.”
He exhaled sharply, shaking his head.
“It’s just xenophobic fear-mongering with a scientific excuse slapped on top.” His mouth curled slightly, bitter. “Classic Federation hypocrisy. They welcome all species, unless one of them happens to disrupt their immune assumptions.”
The worst part?
He’d read about Axan immunology. He’d studied case studies of how their unique resistance to illness had been treated as a biological anomaly instead of an evolutionary advantage.
They weren’t unclean. They weren’t a risk. They were just different.
But people didn’t like different. They liked predictable.
His fingers tapped against the side of the toolkit, a tell that his mind was still turning over the injustice of it.
He thought back to a research project he had worked on in his early studies—something about pathogenic transmission in isolated populations. He had seen firsthand how fear dictated people’s reactions more than actual science.
The more unpredictable a disease was, the more irrational people got.
And that was the problem, wasn’t it? The Federation couldn’t predict the Axan immune system the way they could with other species. That made them nervous. Nervous enough to stall membership, to treat an entire species like a biological hazard instead of a civilization with their own culture, history, and contributions to offer.
Hel, though? She didn’t seem bitter about it. She was matter-of-fact. Practical.
"I am here to learn, so one day I can return home and create things to help my people. So we can keep growing."
Mateo absorbed that statement.
Hel knew exactly why she was here. She had a plan. A purpose. A clear sense of this is what I want to accomplish.
It made him wonder—what was his version of that?
He had always loved science. He loved discovery. He loved breaking things down to their fundamental components just to understand them better.
But was that enough?
Would he ever be able to say something like what Hel just said?
Would he ever be able to say, I know what I’m doing here, and I know what I’m working toward?
The question settled uncomfortably in the back of his mind, like something he wasn’t ready to examine too closely.
So instead, he focused on the toolkit again.
“…Okay,” he said, blinking back into the moment. He picked up an instrument that seemed about right and held it up, tilting it slightly. “This the one?”
A beat.
Then, because he had to say it—
“For the record, if you describe something as ‘pincher-y’ and I grab the wrong thing, I am not responsible for what happens next.”
[To be continued in Part 3]
Crewman Mateo Gardel
Medical Science Specialist
USS Fenrir
&
Petty Officer Helliun 'Hel' Inant
Engineering Officer
USS Fenrir
[PNPC - Hanlon]
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