"Quiet Afternoon"
Written by Jessica Williams
Cadet Keda Tal, Astrometrics

Keda sat in the pleasantly soft swivel chair in Stellar Cartography, bringing up windows on the huge dome screen in front of her, displaying various star systems and intricate diagrams of anomalies. A cup of steaming raktajino stood on top of the console in front of her...she knew food and drink were technically not allowed in any part of the Science department, but Tal had never been able to relax without flouting at least some of the rules.

She smiled to herself...so he did remember her! Keda hadn't wanted to say anything to Captain Utex about Lenti Tosh and Ayris Tal's meeting once, years ago, just in case he had forgotten. But she had remembered. It had taken her a while to put a name to his face, after all Tal had had another host after Ayris, and before Keda...a male called Corran.

Keda took a sip of her raktajino and pulled a face. She personally didn't like it, but Tal loved it since discovering it in the twenty second century. She heard the doors swish open and she carefully put the cup on the floor, obscuring it with her chair. She nodded to an ensign who was busy checking the results of an on going experiment that she hadn't really enquired about.

She closed the observation windows and vacated her seat, surreptitiously picking up her cup and hiding it behind her back, gliding out of Stellar Cartography, placing it in a replicator to be recycled.

She headed off to the officer's lounge. Because Keda was only a cadet, she shifts were a bit shorter and punctuated with short breaks. Tal didn't really remember things being runned this way when it was at the academy it's first and second times around, and Tal much preferred the duties of her former host, Commander Corran Tal.

Corran Tal, the executive officer of the USS Empress, had worked as hard as a Klingon on a battlefield, and was like a dog with a bone when he was involved with an issue he felt strongly about. It wasn't very long ago that Tal had been joined with Keda, and on some occasions Keda actually thought she was Corran. This was peculiar for people watching her as she had a tendency to duck when she entered rooms, to avoid hitting the ceiling - a classic Corran reflex. At six foot four, Corran used to hit his head on ceilings on a regular basis, but Keda, at five foot, had never experienced this in her life.