Empty Promise – Still constructing
by Soghla' Marie St. Helene & Soghla' Terri (Tell) Hope

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Title   Still constructing
Mission   Empty Promise
Author(s)   Soghla' Marie St. Helene & Soghla' Terri (Tell) Hope
Posted   Sun Jun 28, 2015 @ 9:49am
Location   A secret location
Marie was not exactly staggering but nor was she exactly able to stand upright; not without assistance anyway. “This is good stuff, if I do say so myself,” she said though that was not exactly how it came out. Most of the sibilants were slurred. “I must make more of this.”

"We should go onto businessssssssssh" slurred Tell "You do all the making and I'll do the selling right? But we need a chief taster, ahh I can do that to." and then she started singing something about Itches in me Britches. "C'mon Marie join in the chorus it easy."

“Tell you what, I have an idea. No, not that one,” she added as she saw a look of horror cross Tell’s face. “I promise to keep my hands to myself. Well... mostly to myself. No, what I was going to suggest is.... You’re an engineer. You know how to make things. You have access to all sorts of odd things. How about we make a still?”

"A still?" said Tell who stopped singing "Hmm, one step further along the road we go."

“We used to do it all the time back on Nouvelle Nouvelle Caledonie. I’m sure I remember most of it.”

"I think I have a few bits in my workshop that I could hobble together too. Some copper tubing a pressure container and a bucket should do it."

“We’ll need a steady supply of sugar...and yeast, too. I have a yeast bank running but it’s only enough for the homebrew. I could increase the volume but that might risk the integrity of the yeast. As it is, I have to be very careful. Klingons are none too particular about cleanliness for a race that fears death by some unseen enemy. It would be all too easy to get a contaminant or wild yeast in the bank and spoil the lot of it.”

Tell was rummaging through draws and cupboards in engineering and throwing things into a bucket mumbling as she did so. "I can rig up some kind of simple containment field that would protect the yeast. Easy enough to do, wouldn't take long. This any good?"

“We’ll also need something to flavour the hooch. Cocktails will be the order of the month here. We can distil down to something like 98.8% alcohol but the stuff would be undrinkable. Even if kept in the freezer it would still burn on the way down. No, I think about 50% would do for a nice kick. Next landfall we actually get I’ll search out some nice herbs and preserve them in a sugar syrup. Then I can add that to the finished product.”

After much more rummaging Tell came out of the back of a cupboard with what looked like two large paint tubes of liquid. One was red and the other brown. She placed them down in front of Marie. They could have been engine oil for all Marie knew.

"Got them from a mate coming out of Revallant...Revalliss or was it Revallian? Something like that. The red one is strawberry syrup and the brown one chocolate. He said something about the chocolate one being slightly addictive but I've had them a while so perhaps it's worn off. Anyway all chocolate is addictive, isn't it?"

“Now all we have to do is pour some homebrew in and fire it up,” Marie said. She decided she would do the honours seeing as how it was her brew but no matter how hard she tried, she could not get the heating element to work.

“I’m going to bed,” she finally said in disgust.

Tell looked at the rubble in front of her. She was dismayed to say the least that the still wouldn't work. Call herself an engineer? But she would do better if she had a clear head and decided to sleep on it. Problems always sorted themselves out after a good night's sleep. She gave the still a kick and then left, muttering to herself.