Oh shit!
La Sirena lurched as another immense surge of gravitational waves hit the ship.
Sat in her captains chair Seven held tight to one arm of the seat while attempting to right the ship with a swift movement of her holo controls.
After several seconds during which La Sirena struggled to respond under the stresses and strains of the gravitational forces the ship eventually returned to a reasonable if a little bumpy stability.
“That’s my second mug of coffee all over the deck...”, a frustrated voice rang out from behind her.
Raffi, holding the handrails tight, struggled to make her way up the steps from the lower level as the ship shook and shuddered all around her.
“Sorry ‘bout that Raff… but I’ve almost got all the data I need”.
The ship shuddered once more as another wave hit and Raffi struggled her way across the deck and grabbed onto the arm of Seven’s chair for her own safety.
In all the years she had known this ship Raffi had never seen it thrown around quite like this.
“Look it’s nice of you to help Cris like this Honey”, Raffi grimaced and held on as another wave knocked La Sirena very heavily to starboard, “but I was hoping you’d do it without getting us killed”.
The ship stabilised once more under Seven’s control and it seemed, even if it was just brief reprieve, that the waves eased off a little.
As the ship calmed both Seven and Raffi looked out of the main window at the star named Stannax 1 that they had stopped off to unofficially study.
“Rios should be here next week with the Stargazer and a mission to study the star’s gravitational waves”, Seven tapped her fingers on her holo display to save the data she had accumulated during the two hours they had been positioned here, “I just thought that as we were passing this way I could grab him some preliminary data to get started with”.
“Ah I see…”, Raffi winked, “you’re doing his homework for him huh?”.
Seven winked back and made a shush gesture with a finger to her lips, “don’t tell Starfleet”.
Raffi laughed.
She was pleased that Seven and Rios had struck up such a good friendship and she watched as Seven moved her data files around the floating holo screen and dropped them into the comm system ready for imminent dispatch to the Stargazer over sub space. All she needed to do was key in a recipient and hit send.
A warning suddenly blared as sensors detected another wave incoming.
This time it was too late to react and La Sirena once again crashed through the invisible galactic force, a huge crash echoing through the ship on impact and both Seven and Raffi grasping onto the chair as the ship this time pitched heavily downward on impact.
Once more Seven reacted speedily to correct the struggling ship but this time with her data collecting project complete she turned La Sirena, quickly engaged warp and the ship was soon distancing itself from this unstable yet interesting star.
The job was done, there was no need to hang around any longer and it was time to head to Earth for some rest, relaxation and good company.
Both women breathed a sigh of relief as the Stannax 1 star vanished into the distance and the waves and heavy movement became a thing of the past.
Raffi was about to speak, she was going to make a joke about making sure Cris’s beloved former ship hadn’t been scratched, scuffed or otherwise dented but then she looked to Seven.
“Seven?”, Raffi prompted.
Seven was sat still, her eyes locked on the display of her holo control and her mouth open as if in some shock.
“Babe?”, Raffi gave her arm a squeeze.
“Shit”, Seven placed a hand over her mouth.
A concern grew within Raffi, especially given the battering La Sirena had taken over the last couple of hours.
“Are we… are we damaged?”.
Seven still stared unblinking at her display.
“I sent the wrong file”, absolute disbelief was clear in both her posture and voice, “I must have dropped the wrong file into the comm as the wave hit”.
Raffi shrugged. She failed to see quite why Seven seemed so horrified by such a simple mistake.
“Well that’s hardly a big deal, just send the right one”.
The Ranger leant forward in her seat. She placed her elbows on her knees and let her face drop into her hands.
“Shit, Shit, shit…”, Raffi could hear Seven’s muffled curses from behind her hands.
Watching Seven’s reaction to such a simple mistake gave Raffi a distinctly unsettled feeling that there was perhaps something more to this than a simple miss-click.
“Uhmm, this is a big deal because?”, Raffi enquired.
Slowly Seven emerged from behind her hands and her right hand balled into a fist which she thumped hard into the arm of her chair.
“Woah woah woah”, Raffi raised her hands for calm, “why the overreaction?”.
Seven breathed out harshly, annoyed at herself for such a stupid error and then looked to Raffi.
“Raff… I don’t think you understand...”.
With a flick of her hand Seven called up her files on the floating holo screen and pointed...
“This is the file I meant to send to Rios... file STX_01”.
Raffi nodded and “Mmm-hmm’d” her understanding.
“But when the wave hit this is the file I mistakenly sent...”.
Raffi looked.
She saw the file and it’s name and looked to Seven, her mouth falling slowly open.
It wasn’t...
It couldn’t be?
“File SEX_01?”, Raffi had a bad feeling rising within her about this and it was mostly because she herself had a copy of a file of exactly the same title and size saved on her own system back at home.
“Honey that’s not...”.
“Our sex tape”, Seven confirmed Raffi’s worst fears.
Raffi took a step back. She placed one hand over her mouth and ran the other through her curls as she took in the full realisation of what had happened.
“You mean the…”, Raffi could barely find the words.
Seven nodded, mortified.
“…The recording we made six months ago by activating the ships optical data network and focussing it on our quarters”.
Both now fell to silence, lost in their own thoughts of their most deeply personal and private recording having been so accidentally shared.
After some moments of internal panicking Raffi’s expression brightened.
“It’s encrypted though?”, she asked encouragingly and with a hopeful smile, “isn’t it?”.
The Ranger now squirmed somewhat uncomfortably in her chair.
“I…”, she broke from Raffi’s gaze and fiddled absentmindedly with her Borg capped fingers, “I didn’t see any reason to since there was nobody here but myself to view it”.
Raffi wanted to speak, wanted to say something, anything but right now her mind was racing.
This had never been foreseen the night they made the recording.
It had been filmed during a period of leave Raffi had taken from Starfleet during which she had spent time catching up with Seven aboard La Sirena and tagging along on a few of her Ranger missions.
On Raffi’s last night before departing La Sirena they had made their recording and ensured that each had a copy intended for personal use during times when one or the other felt lonely. Never had it been intended to be shared with anyone outside of their relationship.
Raffi took a few agitated paces across the bridge, and then back to the other side in rapid thought.
“Okay, okay let’s think damage limitation”, she was half talking to Seven and half thinking aloud, “I mean it’s not that bad right?”.
Seven’s ocular implant raised slightly in response to this question.
“I mean c’mon we’re all grown adults right? And grown adults have sex? It happens, infact there’s millions of people having sex all over the galaxy right now”.
“But are they all using handcuffs, a blindfold and a strap-on?”, Seven’s response was deadpan.
Once more Raffi stopped. She stood beside Seven, closed her eyes and breathed out in defeat.
“We’re fucked”.
“Both literally and metaphorically”, Seven agreed and then looked up to her partner, “I’m sorry Raff”.
Raffi couldn’t be mad, especially considering the sheer battering the ship had been taking at the time of the mistake and the troubled way Seven was looking at her right now.
“Honey it was an accident”, she reassured and placed her hand firmly on Seven’s shoulder, a hand the Ranger herself reached up and covered with her own, “with the hits this ship was taking it could have happened to either of us”.
Seven squeezed Raffi’s hand in appreciation, giving a small smile and nod at the understanding.
After taking a moment to compose her thoughts Seven reclaimed her hand.
She set about accessing the comm records on the holo screen and swiftly accessed the “sent files” folder.
“Damnit”, she cursed once more, looked down and rubbed her forehead as her attempts to salvage what she could of this disaster hit a dead end.
“Comm records were scrambled by the wave… I can’t even tell for sure if it was sent to Rios or someone else on the ships contact list. Raff that last hit was so big I can’t even say for certain if my finger clicked on Rios…”.
“It could have gone to anyone on this ships contact list?”, Raffi’s eyebrows elevated higher as she double checked that she was hearing this right.
“Most of the contacts were left over from Rios, I just hadn’t purged them from the system yet”, Seven slumped back in her chair in realisation that her day couldn’t really get much worse, “any intelligence operative based suggestions Raff?”.
Raffi blew out a long breath as she thought.
The scrambled comm information was most likely irretrievable, corrupted by the interference generated by the wave so that was a no-go which meant all that was left was…
“We either wait until someone contacts us and asks what the fuck we just sent them”…
“Or?”, Seven urged.
“We fly ourselves into the nearest sun and never have to think about this ever again”.
“Just great”, Seven gave up, “all because I tried to help a friend”.
“Oh no no no Honey”, Raffi waggled her finger to dismiss Seven’s self blame, “I already said it wasn’t your fault, and besides, you would have put a message with it right? Won’t that make it clear that the attachment is a mistake?”.
Seven called up the sent files once again and although the recipients were scrambled the record of the actual text of her message did still show.
She called it up on screen.
“A little something to brighten your day.
Don’t tell Starfleet.
- Seven.”
Both Raffi and Seven looked at the message.
In its original intended context of ‘weird star data’ it seemed fine, but with the accidental attachment of unintended pornography it suddenly took on a whole new meaning.
Seven and Raffi both looked to each other absolutely dumbstruck at the perceived new context, then back at the message, and then back to one another once more.
“We really are fucked”, Raffi said through continuous nods.
“I’ll find the nearest sun”, Seven agreed.
NEXT TIME: Which person (or persons) might receive an unexpected item in their inbox??? 😵💫😉