The barrage of fiery insults was audible even before the turbolift doors had opened, and as Sehgali stepped out from the lift car into the small corridor outside engineering, the clarity only increased.

“… you wouldn’t know a functioning Tinserg coupler if it was lodged in your cerebellum!”

“There must be one lodged in yours if you think it’s the right tool for this!”

Sehgali came to a stop inches from the door’s sensor and drew in a deep breath, letting it slip through her gritted teeth with a slow hiss. It was a constant surprise that these two women could so easily find a source for argument.

“I won’t miss this,” she informed an empty hallway. For a moment, she expected the bare walls and plush blue carpet to accuse her of a lie, but the walls held their tongues and the weft of the carpet remained silently judgmental.

With a short tug on her uniform top and a quick check on her delta-shaped armour, she took a step forward, and the doors pulled aside to reveal her newest field of battle.

“Why do you insist on making every task more complicated than it needs ot be?” Vhan sniped from the small workbench in the corner, twirling a hyperspanner between her manicured fingers.

“I am not.” Oscuri hissed back as she needed an open panel with a curving tool that looked more like a torture device than an engineering tool. “The Tinserg coupler is much more accurate with its adjustments.”

“And wouldn’t even be necessary if you hadn’t disassembled the pre-injection assembly. Which didn’t need to be done -”

“-The assembly wasn’t compressing-”

“-You’re an idiot if you think the issue is with-”

“-Don’t call me an idiot-”

Sehgali’s head bounced back and forth like she was watching a championship tennis match, an overhead smash comment about competency, a backhand about that time on Ricckus V, a caustic drop shot about someone’s mother. The volley of insults quickly shapeshifted into a building cacophony of venom-tipped words as Lieutenant Commander Sima grabbed Sehgali’s arm desperately.

“Thank god you’re here, Commander.” Sima offered a weary smile of gratitude. “They’ve been going at it for half an hour.”

“What are they even arguing about?” Sehgali stepped to the side of the room, drawing the tired-looking engineer into a small alcove to mute the argument minutely.

“They have different opinions about how to fix the dodgy injector assembly.” Sima risked a look around the arching pillar. Work had stopped completely now as the two women traded angry volleys of insults. “Which turned into this.”

“You asked both of them to work on it?” Sehgali tilted her head quizzically. The pair’s fractious relationship was well known aboard the ship and had even garnered a reputation beyond. When on mission, the pressure seemed to temper the fire of their frustrations, but here, with no stakes to weigh them down, it appeared there was nothing to mitigate them.

“Not exactly,” Sima confessed. “They sort of volunteered themselves. I came back from grabbing a coffee to find them already taking the secondary assembly offline.”

“Which one?”

“Both.” Sima’s brows furrowed, her slender eyebrows turning into a dark forked ‘v’ across her forehead, a valley of confusion and frustration.

“So you don’t actually want either of them?”

Sima shook her head rapidly, the sharp lines of her signature bob slicing the air.

“Why not just tell them to go away?” Sehgali asked, though the answer was already evident from the tears that ran down a young lieutenant’s cheeks who worked nearby, hidden from view at a corner station.

“You’ve met them, right? Vhan knows more insults than a Naussican dock hand.” Sima shrank into her shoulders.

“Well, we’re not on the docks anymore.” Sehgali placed a comforting hand on the woman’s cowing shoulders. “Leave it with me, chief.”

“One last bomb defusal?” Sima offered a weary smile. “What will we do when you’re gone?”

“With any luck, it won’t be your problem anymore.”

Sehgali allowed a sigh to seep through her bones and into the deck below, its slow hiss of air closing the lid on her friendship with the two women as she set it on the high shelf in her heart. Her new role in the division team would require a more focused management style, particularly with the stern and orderly Captain Harrison as mentor. With a minute click of her shoulders as they set into place, the woman was set aside, and the XO stepped forward.

“Enough,” she growled, the deep strands of her normally melodic voice resonating in the air.

The silence was immediate and total, even the consoles muted their quiet chittering as everything came to a halt in the small engineering room.

“You’re making fools of yourselves and each other.” Sehgali chided as she morphed into a persona borrowed from a childhood governess. In her mind’s eye, her hair coiled into tight, perfectly turned curls, held in place with a thousand secret pins, whilst her breath became suddenly cold as an Andorian blizzard.

Her father had briefly entertained fanciful notions of living like the aristocrats of old, one of several ill-conceived fancies that had rarely lasted longer than a summer. And whilst the young Indira had not taken much from the stern old woman who had lived with them for a grand total of six dull weeks, she had filed the persona away for later reference.

“Like school girls squabbling over who has the shiniest rock. You’re embarrassing yourself.”

Both women found themselves knocked into a stunned silence, Sehgali’s normally maternal tone having turned into something sterner, more matronly.

“She started-” Vahn began, but was cut off by a raised palm from the commander.

“I am not interested in who began what,” Sehgali admonished, an uncomfortable twinge knocking in her own stomach as she echoed a statement the old governess had forged into a mantra around the young girl.

“We were trying-” Oscuri muttered, her normal bravado disappeared behind a doe-like panic.

“It doesn’t matter, you are causing more of an inconvenience than a benefit. You should be grateful Sima has not chased you out of an airlock.”

The air was turning icy as Sehgali found the stern character summoned with ease, stirring from unexpected depths, even she was surprised by the curtness of her words.

“I’m sure there are other tasks more suited to your individual skills.” Sehgali finished with a stony full stop. “Elsewhere.”

There was no movement in the small room, the collected crew turning into marble effigies in the cold, unblinking, gorgon stare of the commander.

“My apologies, Commander, for any disruption.” Oscuri offered Sima a slight bow of apology across the room, before gathering her tools into one hand and making towards the wide double doors and quickly disappearing down the corridor.

As the statues of the assembled engineers began to resume their activity, their bodies unfurling alongside tongues that carried surprised whispers, Sehgali allowed the governess persona to begin to slip away. The role of nanny was not a comfortable one for her, though the pleasant tang of authority so rarely demonstrated, and almost never so directly, hung in the corners of her lips. The imaginary locks of the stern matron sprang back into the messy crown of dark brown hair, and her shoulders slipped back eagerly into their relaxed sockets.

“That was unexpected.” Vhan wore a small smirk as she shuffled across the room towards the now decidedly more relaxed commander.”It’s not often we hear that tone from you.”

“I can be terrifying when I want to be.”

“I wasn’t completely convinced.” Vhan tossed the hyperspanner she had been playing with into the open engineering kit, smirking as the quiet working din of engineering returned to equilibrium.

“No?” Sehgali let out a slight sigh; clearly, her authoritarian persona needed more work.

“Nah, my mum left me with a Gorn babysitter.” Vhan offered a playful grimace. “You do not get told to tidy up your toys twice by three rows of teeth.”

A light chuckle bounced around the compartment as the pair allowed the joke to diffuse the last of Sehgali’s sternness, the final threads of her matronly character being folded back into the mental closet for next time.

“I’m sorry for the fight. We just get under each other’s skin,” Vahn confessed with a weary tone. “I’ve tried to be nice, but she always finds a way to get under my skin.”

“You’re too similar.”

“Yeah… I guess. I just can’t stop her getting me riled up.”

“What about moving house?” Sehgali offered abruptly.

Vahn fell silent, the slow and barely perceptible hiss of her rebreathers the only sound escaping her lips.

“If that’s you’re way of firing me, maybe I’d prefer the mean lady back.” The older woman’s brow furrowed in confusion.

“Move house, come with me to Typhon,” Sehgali clarified.

“And how does the captain feel about your pinching her crew?”

“I think the only thing she’ll miss less than your squabbling is me.”