// Leaving Risa //



Cayden DiNay stopped by the room of her accommodations, a lovely old
mansion of a building, the style of which was quite exotic and unusual
to Cayden. In fact, it was a replica of a British Country Home of the
Victorian Era on the planet, Earth. The estate was well crafted with
great attention to detail. It was set on a large parcel of property,
with acres of gardens and fountains and footpaths to numerous gazebos
and stables, and lakes.



Her room arrangements had been courtesy of her friend, Craig Campbell,
whom she had not seen for 4 days. She had enjoyed the Estate very much
and would take some very pleasurable memories with her as she left
Risa. She smiled as she looked at the outrageously prissy room for the
last time. She would never admit it to anyone, but she had enjoyed the
finery and satin sheets that smelled of some lovely fragrance. Every
night, she had filled the tub with hot water and luxuriated in
bubbling scented froth. The Estate had provided her with filmy, soft
nightclothes in a soft pale yellow fabric, dancing with tiny white
buttons, lace and satin ties. She had enjoyed admiring herself in the
huge mirror, which was bordered with a wide carved wooden frame.



She was dressed again in her ‘personal’ uniform of dark blue slacks,
slim at the waist and hips, the legs falling straight along her
slender thighs down to bunch at a break on top of her boots. A fitted
soft teal-blue knit top with ¾ length sleeves and a round, scooped
neckline softened her somewhat chiseled features. Today, she had added
an unstructured, pale yellow, sleeveless vest, loose and flowing,
which fell to a mid-thigh hemline. Yellow to remind her of the lovely
night-dress tucked away in her pack.



The visit to Risa had been relaxing, for the most part. She had spent
a day with Craig Campbell on a strenuous scuba diving excursion, which
included a climb, with equipment, up an extinct, but challenging,
volcano, and diving in the exquisite and cold water of the lake within
the crater. On the hiking/diving excursion, she met Nancy Graves, a
lieutenant from the Science Department on an exploration vessel, the
USS Livingston. The woman was quite fascinating, full of knowledge
about the volcano, the flora and fauna, and the lake and the kinds of
life to be found in its waters. Cayden had enjoyed her bubble bath and
a deep dreamless sleep of relaxed exhaustion that night.



Graves had invited DiNay to accompany her on a glider flying
expedition and her third day was spent soaring like a bird in a wood
and cloth aircraft of the most simple design. The sense of weightless
buoyancy was far more engulfing than any space experience she had yet
encountered. The craft seated two, Graves was piloting, and DiNay
occupied a second seat behind her. Talking would have been a violation
of the sublimity, and the solitude was broken only by the sound of the
wind over the surfaces of the aircraft. The view was not so difference
from that of a shuttlecraft, except for the sense of harmony with the
landscape. That quality was totally lacking in the sealed compartment
of a massive shuttle. But in the tiny, featherweight glider, DiNay
felt each ripple of the air currents rising off the undulating surface
below, until she felt herself to be an echo, intimately a part of the
air, light, heat, and energy between her and the planet. Graves’ ship
had left orbit the next day, but DiNay had returned to soaring each
remaining day of her visit.



She sat in the shuttle as it made way out of the atmosphere and toward
its mothership. The sky turned from blue to black and eventually
points of starlight appeared. The lovely planet of Risa glowed, hung
in the darkness of space, swirling in an orbit of the system’s star.
DiNay looked over at the blue Andorian across the pod from her, but
her mind was still in the little cloth airplane. In space, you would
not feel the motion, nor hear the straining of the fabric in the wind.



// Wildcard //



The diminutive Aldean woman walked with silent steps through the
corridors from the shuttle bay to the Observation Lounge. Entering,
she approached the replicator, and quietly ordered a cold beverage,
and took a seat at the conference table. A few other officers were
present, some chatting, others, like DiNay, still transitioning from
wherever and whatever they had been for the past several days into
their role as officers and crew of the USS Wildcard.



~~

Cayden DiNay

USS Wildcard

S31 Black Ops