"Come in." Her voice, quiet and calm as ever, came through the speaker built into the wall beside her door.
A normal greeting, had he actually gotten to sound the buzzer to let her know he was outside of her room. He hadn't. Instead he stood with his finger just on the button, caught in a moment of surprise which he immediately felt was unwarranted.
This was Mel, after all.
Further unsurprising was that after only a few breaths of pause where his eyes closed and an involuntary smile spread across his face, the door he was standing before hissed somehow impatiently and slid with a familiar clunk into its frame.
He kept his eyes closed. Fully expecting her to be fully nude on the opposite side of the now opened door.
This was Mel, after all.
"...what are you doing?" Her voice again, quiet and calm. Still speaking through the speaker.
The humidity in the hall rose significantly as what he could only imagine was a very steamy bath had escaped her bathroom and now out to reach him. The scent of her expensive body wash and shampoo hit him next - his mind wandered to wonder at how exactly she managed to have things which smelled expensive.
"It is the undertones." She began explaining unprompted. "The things you do not smell. Cheap scents have many filler products. Additives intended to fool the senses into appreciation. Whereas the products I use require little augmentation to please."
"Nice to know." He finally spoke, peeking through his left eye to see if it was safe.
"I said come in." She repeated.
Through his squinted eye he could see her moving. On her bed, across the room. The glisten of her still damp skin played against the low lighting to make her appear to glow.
That or the various parts of her that actually did glow set the norm for the rest of her. Even as just a blurry outline, she was an unmistakable figure. Small, barely there. Short black hair. Brown skin toned, and barely an inch anywhere on that canvas was not somehow marked or adjacent to an indication that she was heavily modified.
When she looked over her shoulder at him, her luminous green eyes stood out sharply enough to cast the rest of her as more a silhouette than anything. Unsettling to most.
Alarming to the wise.
"I heard you." He replied through an exhale. "You decent?"
"Am I ever?" She replied in the same eased tone, this time from her actual mouth. "Step inside. You are letting out the warmth."
He took two steps in. Heard the hydraulics of the door hiss and engage again as the door glided shut. A secondary clunk and faint settling sound told him she had locked the door behind him and sealed the gaps. Engaging the 'privacy barrier' which was ironically laughably ineffective against her in particular.
"You gonna let me talk?" He opened both eyes now. Looking around the room, deadpanning as dimmed illumination strips running along the meeting between wall and ceiling warmed to a brighter golden shade. She typically kept her room very dark - and any illumination tended to be flat red lighting. Unless she had company.
Adjusting the lighting for him was accommodating but, again, done unprompted.
"I do not need to let you do anything. Sir." Her tone was still relaxed. If anything she sounded distracted. Borderline disinterested.
He knew she could not have been that consumed with whatever she was doing across the room. She was half tangled in either blankets or towels across her legs. As far as he could tell, she was completely nude - indicator lights from the implants lining her spine brightened and dimmed in ways the ones attached to her bodysuits typically didn't.
As best he could tell, she was applying lotion to her lower body. An oddly organic thing to do for such a clearly inorganic creature.
Her attention to beauty overall was odd with that in mind. Consistent, but odd.
"Fair. But I'm not here to give you orders." He agreed with a shrug.
"Those were delivered this morning." She replied simply.
"Those were delivered this morning." He echoed. Took a deep breath, preparing to continue - then preparing to be interrupted.
She remained silent. There was only the sounds of her movements on the bed, some rattling in a vent, some dripping in the bathroom. His own breathing, the faint scent of coolant mixing with all of the other smells in her bedroom.
"Got any questions?" He pressed after the silence had dragged on for a bit.
"Had I any they would be in your inbox. Sir." She replied in the same distracted tone.
"Fair. Got any feelings?" He reframed the question, looking around the room again. It was a bit of a mess. He was never sure how he felt about the clash between her clinical and precise manner and her sometimes seemingly wild habits. There was clothing strewn across about half of the floor. Her workstation was an amalgamation of notepads and tools and half empty bottles. Her closet was open. There were weapons of various kinds here and there, though most of the visible ones were tucked into racks lining the walls. The weapons were the most orderly bit about her space, all things considered.
"Had I any, they would - " She began.
He was the one to cut her off.
"Meliha listen. You've been... great. You've been great about taking these deployments in stride, you've been great getting in and getting out and-" She returned the interruption.
"- and finding absolutely nothing every time."
That was not what he was going to say. He knew that she knew that was not what he was going to say. So the choice to interrupt him with the incorrect completion was entirely voluntary.
It was a start.
"You didn't find nothing." He started again, taking a step further into the room. She had stopped whatever she was doing, though she'd kept her back to him. "The New Eden data was-"
She interrupted him again. Filled in yet again not with what he was going to say but - "- inconclusive."
Rather than attempting to pick up where he had left off when she interjected, he took his turn to let the silence linger. Lingering is what it did. A full two or three minutes of silence until she finally spoke again.
"That is what my review said. Inconclusive." She repeated.
"That's not a bad rating, Mel. That's not really a rating at all." He took a deep breath, preparing to press on.
"Because the mission was incomplete, Captain." She spoke into the pause.
"The mission was complete, Lieutenant Commander as per standing directives. We still don't know what was causing those rifts, but we do know they match patterns from a few other sites recently. That's enough. Your withdrawal wasn't a retreat, it was a reassignment to somewhere you're needed."
As he spoke he moved his gaze from taking in her room to looking at her back. It only felt fair as - especially given he was in her space - he was certain she could see and feel him from every sensor and device in the room. Catching everything from the slight tension in his jaw to the few decibel uptick in his last sentence. He was trying to remain even with her, but sometimes...
"Tau Ceti? Tau Ceti. I had to dive deep into archives to find the relevance of this particular 'verse and location. There had been no updated records in decades. I know what it looks like to be put in a corner, Captain. This assignment is to nowhere at all." Some of the icy, even tone in her voice had defrosted a bit. Only to reveal irritation.
"That's exactly why we're sending you in. Because the UESC Marathon should be about the least interesting place in the multiverse and-" He knew she was going to cut him off this time.
" - and so command has decided it is appropriate to waste my time and our collective resources sending me somewhere to 'cool off' as though my iso chamber has suddenly malfunc -"
...and so he spoke over her. " - and for some reason all of a sudden it isn't."
Another pause. Silence between them in the room. There were moments where he swore he could feel her processing analyzing. Reconfiguring.
"What?" Her tone had gone quiet and calm again.
"Got your attention." He huffed, a grin pulling at the right corner of his lips. "You've been bouncing around from one dead or dying 'verse to another. You seem to think it's your place to heal or restore something about them - half the time, you do. But we all know more of them are dying than not, and that's the way things are. That's the way things always are. Right?"
She did not respond immediately. He continued, taking the silence as an invitation this time.
"So it's sort of odd when one of the 'verses that's been on ice for a... long time. Almost longer than even I've been around. Just suddenly wakes up. We've seen flickers here and there. We've seen 'verses reach a sort of equilibrium of... not dying but not doing anything. But never. Not a single time. Have we seen one just wake up. We're not the only ones who've noticed how odd it is. And thanks to you, I think we're a lot closer to answers than everyone else is."
"...who is everyone else?" She asked, curiosity warming her tone.
"Opsec." He replied immediately.
"You know I can just - ..." She stopped herself. Paused. Redirected. "Fine. That is interesting. Worth investigating. But Orion has assets better suited for investigation. New Eden required me because of the inherently hostile nature of New Eden. The spacetime surrounding the UESC Marathon should be empty. That is what derelict means."
"Fair point. Empty worlds don't just wake themselves up from the inside."
Silence returned to the room. She finally turned on the bed, letting her legs dangle off the side. She placed her hands on either side of her, on the edge of the mattress. Leaned forward some, her glowing green eyes piercing into nothing in particular ahead of her.
He did not resist the urge to look over the rest of her before returning to her eyes. Even aware as he was that, most likely, the shift in position to show more of herself was a tactical move to set his mind off course and give her a few seconds to catch up. She did not like being behind, rare though it was that she might be.
"Usually." When she spoke this time, it was not from her lips. It seemed to come from every direction - various speakers on devices throughout the room. She was working now and did not bother to localized her voice again.
"Usually." He agreed. "And usually there is a minimal viable magnitude of the waveform that anyone can lock onto. Too quiet and we can't get in unless something gets out. That 'verse is still way below the threshold. Forward team's been in and out already though. Door's open. More like a... tunnel. It's very intentional."
"Who is holding the door open then? And who has been digging. Is it a tunnel in or out?" Her questions came rapid fire from multiple directions. Some at the same time as others. "Is it Durandal? What is the intention? What are the rules? What-"
"Mel." He interjected. The various voices of her silenced instantly. Her green eyes jumped to look over at him. "That's what you're going to find out. We need someone who can think on their feet and... plainly, think down the barrel of a gun. We could just wait for the waveform to grow. Set a beacon and wait for it to brighten. But I doubt anyone else is going to wait when there's already a way in."
"Who is anyone else?" She asked, head tipping to the left slightly.
"...ah, my bad. I meant everyone else."
"Everyone?"
"Everyone."