Forgotten Glory – Kitchen
by HoD Ro' Matlh & Soghla' Marie St. Helene

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Post Details

Title   Kitchen
Mission   Forgotten Glory
Author(s)   HoD Ro' Matlh & Soghla' Marie St. Helene
Posted   Sat Feb 22, 2014 @ 7:36am
Location   Kitchen
Timeline   T 0:00
There was a bright light and a ringing noise in Marie's ears. For a moment she is confused and disoriented. As her vision clears, the sounds of activity around her begin to seep back. She becomes aware of heat and nice smells around her.

Vaguely she makes out a large kitchen and food preparation area. There are a dozen people all standing around in uniforms of kitchen staff or waiters. They all look slightly dazed as well.

Looking down Marie notices that she is also dressed as a waiter and has a covered dish in her hands which is uncomfortably heavy.

Marie looked around for somewhere to put the dish but all the bench space was taken by other dishes and pots and pans. There was only one thing for it, deliver the dish to whoever had ordered it. That only presented one tiny problem. She had not a clue what it was, let alone whose it was.

“Remind me,” she called out. “Who is this for?”

The young man next to here blinked as if he had just woken, but his training stepped in and he peered at the ticket, "Er... Lady Theressa."

He looked up at Marie with a pained look, "I have no idea who that is. She must be in the ballroom, though, or there would be a table listed."

He waved his hand vaguely towards one door where the sound of music could just be heard.

Marie walked up to the swing doors, turned around and pushed them open with her bum. Then she turned into the ballroom beyond. The music was coming from a small orchestra up in a podium at the far end. The ballroom floor was alive with dancers twirling to the strains of ‘On the Beautiful Blue Danube’ by Johann Strauss II.

Last time I heard that I was watching an old holofilm back on Nouvelle Nouvelle Calédonie, Marie thought. Now what was it? Ah yes....

“Watch out!”

Marie snapped out of her reverie. She was standing just inside the ballroom, effectively blocking the doors from the kitchen. She took two paces forward.

“Do you know which one is Lady Theressa?” she asked the woman behind her.

The woman sneered at the wench daring to speak to her and pointed a single elegant finger at a beautiful woman in a green dress.

As she set off in pursuit of her quarry, her mind returned to its previous thoughts. ’2001: A Space Odyssey’ that was it. Ships coming in to dock at a space station. Now how the hell do I know all that? For that matter, where the hell am I? Last I remember I was....

No matter how much she struggled, she could not recall where she had been. All she knew was it was not here.

She moved towards the green woman who stood at one side of the dance floor. The wall behind the orchestra, from floor to 20' ceiling was made of glass panels and the woman was staring up at the sky.

Just before she reached the woman Marie stopped dead in her tracks. The woman was radiantly beautiful and with a dagger through the heart Marie recognized her.

It was Tell.

Just as she thought about how unfair life was, the image in green was whisked onto the dance floor. Marie could see her spinning and dancing amongst the figures on the dance floor.

Marie was left holding the now cooling dish. Her arms ached. At the same time, her heart ached. Seeing the radiant, self-assured, figure spinning and twirling on the dance floor, all Marie’s old feelings of yearning and desire came flooding back. She had thought them buried, consigned to the dark recesses of her mind but here they were, back to torment her anew.

She hurried from the ballroom and placed the dish unceremoniously down on a piece of vacant bench. “Lady Theressa is otherwise occupied,” she announced to everyone and no-one in particular.

All she wanted to do now was escape to the nearest toilet and cry her eyes out.

A man at the bench sneered. "And what do you expect me to do with..." he lifted the cover, "... a pile of hand guns?"

Marie half turned. Piled on the plate were a pair of high yield Disruptors, a grenade, a clip together Plasma caster, and a Flaming Rita (a particularly nasty device that spews napalm randomly over a wide area).

"I...thought weapons weren't allowed at the symposium?" one woman said carefully.

Perhaps Lady Theressa is assisting Treman," the man supplied, carefully replacing the lid, "Though I would expect the Corporation's lead Weapons trader to deal in something a little more advanced than spare Klingon weaponry."

Marie wished she could crawl into a hole and disappear. She didn’t have a clue what was going on but she knew that somehow she had stuffed up mightily, possibly even fatally. Apparently, all she had had to do was deliver some weapons to Tell. She didn’t know why and she didn’t care: there would be time enough for that later.

“They’re props,” she said quickly. “They’re very, very good fakes with very real noises. Lady Theressa wanted them for a little stunt she’s putting on at the end of the evening.” Words were tripping over themselves to get out. She paused for a quick breath. “A bit like fireworks but more high-tech. She wanted it to be a surprise. Anyway, the rules on weaponry meant she had to be discreet.”

Marie snatched up the plate and replaced the lid before anyone could recover enough from this blatant confection of lies to question her. She dashed out the door and across to where Tell was pushing through the crowd.

Bon appetit,” she said as she thrust the plate in front of Tell. She tried to duck away before a word could be said. She wanted no more to do with whatever was going on but she doubted she would be so lucky; not where Tell was concerned.