Shazam found it fascinating, yes, but couldn't get over the fact that he was somewhere that people only whispered about.  Crossing the catwalks high above the orange gardens, the commander breathed in the fresh scent of verans, which contained, in theory, options for future enzymes that would neutralize many of the plants on foreign planets.  Too sweet to eat, this would make them edible so expensive processors wouldn't have to be employed to make them useful.  To his direct left was commander Ritter, a stout man with a pretentious accent that was the soul reasoning behind their little excursion.  In retrospect, Shazam supposed that he was thankful, but really Ritter was a know-it-all crybaby and the last thing he wanted to do for the next week was sit in a dungeon talking about posh matters like 'proper etiquette' in front of royalty.  He supposed it could be worse, but still...

"I'm simply outraged, however, that we still won't be allowed into the labs..."  He twirled his mustache gingerly and turned to face Shazam, who was no longer paying attention, but leaning up against the guard rail, arms crossed, and observing the tours on the other side of the room.  Though Ritter had asked for he and a companion to be the only audience of these special gardens, the advisory board on the ship said that they could only see what others could see- nothing more.  Shazam, having been on too many late-night drives across space, knew all too well how sitting in a single room, staring at a blank wall, could drive someone mad...  So he invited all the pilots he was currently overseeing to walk the gardens.  Ritter said very little of the matter, but noted that Shazam truly had "Good form."  There was later a discussion of how pilots could be like sheep, in that they trusted the shepherd as long as he fed them on occasion.  Pretentious little...

Exiting through the transparisteel security doors, Shazam picked up the conversation where Ritter had been openly looking for similar exaggeration by saying- "Honestly, I'm not sure I wanna see what's in the labs.  You've heard the stories haven't you?"  To this, the dark haired man chuckled with amusement, any bereavement of Shazam's on discontent disappearing as he replied- "Right you are, right you are..."  And around the corner came the tour group, a couple of grins here and there and a few frowns of boredom on a few of the men who hung back; perhaps they would have rather stayed in thier cabins.

"I hope you enjoyed the show?"  Shazam said to the group; he'd only seen them on paper and this would be his first time formally meeting many of them, but he thought he'd started it off on a good note by inviting them to the gardens.  There were nods from the folks in the front while those in the back just stared off in to space, knowing that any rudeness toward the commanding officer would likely be festered upon in the coming boredom.  "Right, well, if you'll accompany me to the messhall, we'll have a short lunch and then I'll be moving us to the breif where the mission overview will be presented."

---

"Come in!"  Terra was glowing, as always, and seemed more excited than usual to see him.  "Yes- just set them there..."  She seemed to glide across the floor despite the absence of an elaborate dress or levitation skills.  Rick Ovio nodded genuinely and went to the table she indicated, placing the single blue flower in it's vase. 

"And what are you so excited about?"  He asked it, laughing slightly, but interested none the less because so many people got drug down working on a ship for so many hours, and Terra was anything but rewarded for her work.  She was a machine.

"Did you see the pilots?"  She brought him over to the sofa and took a seat, taking a quick sip from some a cup she had sitting on a stack of holos, datapads and actual books; she'd been studying botany for years aboard this ship, and no information, whether old or new, could be ignored.

"I thought I saw some new faces on the way up- the folks in the dark jump suits, I presume?"  Rick reclined into the couch long enough to site a new centerpiece on the table to his right...  Hello...  I don't remember you... he thought, about to take a closer look when Terra turned him back toward her, saying-

"That Imperial group on the fringe!  Do you remember them!  They've accepted my work and want us in Vectra System by next week!"  Rick was speechless...  They'd been on this ship for some eight years, and never had any of the request been given any heed; their medical frigate turned botany lab had finally been recognized...  Rick needed a drink.

Lamel stepped out of the dock; she smelled the wonderful scent of flowers.  She hesitated because this scent reminded her of the orphanage.  She wrinkled her nose at her best friend, who said-

"Lamel? Are you alright?" She asked this as she saw her stop dead in her tracks on the walk.  Her friend touched her shoulders gently. "It is ok Lamel, none will hurt you ever again. Even though this place smells like it, it is not the orphanage. It is part of a laboratory." As soon as she said this, Lamel seemed to snap out of it. "I am alright, I guess...But this place...It looks like the very place I was hurt at." Her friend frowned.

"Here... Let me take you elsewhere; come on." She took her friend's hand and lead Lamel over a catwalk, a metal clang to her boots as they walked across it. She heard the doorbell ringing.

"What is that my friend?"  Asked Lamel. Her friend giggled.

"Why that's a bell, silly.  What'd you think it was? An alarm?" She walked with her friend into the messhall where they sat down to eat. "Was that bad Lamel?" Lamel would shake her head at her friend.

"Not at all except the memories need to go away and fast."

Lamel was innocent, very much so and normal in appearance. Save for her memories of an orphanage called 'Se'era' which was the name of the orphanage that she was brought up in and eventually hurt in, she had little else to think of. This was the orphanage on Coruscant where she was from.

Shazam turned the orange noodle over his fork, a look of bewildered amazement obvious across his facade as he continued to turn the fork.  As Wing Commander he'd been offered the gracious honor of first in line at the mess hall counter, something that would have been nice to have years ago aboard Imperial star destroyers.  Sitting alone at his table with a datapad, his tray and a beverage he hadn't had in some time, Sundrop, he hardly noticed the pair coming toward him.

"...All the other seats are taken anyways...  And we should get to know our commander, right?.."  Then the other voice- "...I suppose...  Maybe we should go eat somewhere else..."  Back to the original voice- "No- let's eat riiiiiight..."

Shazam blinked up, suddenly aware of their presence as the first lady, fairly young with long brown hair down to her shoulders, smiled politely, lost for words as her tray rattled to the table surface.  Her friend, a bit shorter with straight, black hair, only glanced Shazam in the eye once before sitting down next to the brown haired woman.

Returning to the fork and the noodle, Shazam continued to roll the fork between his thumb and forefinger, noting a moment later- "How's it goin, ladies?"  There was a pause as the two of them looked at eachother, the first girl giggling politely, but neither of them actually said anything.  Breaking his trance with the noodle one last time, he looked at both of them from the side of his fork, returning to it suddenly saying-

"This, possibly, is the longest noodle I have ever had the pleasure of rolling onto a fork..."

***

The stage aglow, a single platform high above the rest of the bridge, the captain sat in his chair, staring out the oblique masterpiece of space, his viewport the only barrier between he and the lifeless vacuum.  How it had captured his attention over all of these years when he had thought it just become another part of the scenery...

"Captain- you transmission came through on the secure channel.  Would you like to put it on the bridge holoprojector?"  At these words the captain spun around so fiercely that one have thought he had found one of the fabled lost beasts, in his chair.

"No!"  He whispered it sharply, the crewman taken back just slightly before replying-

"Very well...  I'll have the crew send it through your chair console."  The captain's outstretched hand slowly came back to his side, his sight seeming to return to normal as if the minor outburst had been nothing...  "Nothing at all..."

Spinning his chair back toward the viewport, the rest of his bridge crew far behind or below him, he fidgeted nervously in his seat, knowing not what reply he would receive...  Then the projector fizzled and burst into a sharp image of a man in white cloak, his hood up but his face un-obscured.  "Captain Onus..." the voice began, crisp and almost casual as a single hand appeared from inside his robes to hold himself at the midsection as he gave a gentle bow.

"Yes?"  Onus said it anyways, even though he knew the holo was only a recording and he wasn't actually speaking to anyone.  The voice continued-

"You have been most gracious in your entreaty with us...  Thanks to your contributions, our ships will arrive within five minutes of when you receive this message.  This means that you might make yourself indisposed..."  The message shorted out immediately thereafter, a look of horror on the captain's face as he brushed his cheek lightly in terror, a single breath escaping as if it were his last.  Then he straightened, spun his chair about, and stood after making eye contact with the bridgeman that had appeared earlier.

"Crewman- I'll be in my quarters.  The bridge is in the Executive officer's control..."  The crewman nodded and Onus left the bridge to head toward his room, where he would barricade the doors and wait for the arrival of the enemy.