Author's Note: This story takes place between the events of the stories Warnings Unheeded in Darkest Night and Early Warning.
* * *
Second Officer’s Log, USS Reykjavík. Stardate 2877.9 - Terran Julian Date - August 23rd, 2321.
Reykjavík is less than a day from completing our escort mission to the dilithium refinery at Gamma Oberon in the Sydon Belt. We and the Khitomer are shepherding nine ore freighters to the ore processing complex at the Titania Congregate.
We are continuing to detect what may be scanning anomalies at extreme range, sensor ghosts that nevertheless could be one or more craft shadowing our convoy. The objects remain at the same distance from us and appear to be matching our maneuvers. Science Officer Garrett has been giving this development her full attention, seeking definitive answers.
Normally we’d request reinforcement to the escort detail and then go check out these contacts for ourselves, but this close to the frontier Starfleet is spread thinly and no additional ships are available. I have a sneaking suspicion that once we’ve completed our current mission, Captain Trujillo may take us out for a reconnaissance of the area.
We’re scheduled for some shore leave at the Congregate, but knowing our ship’s history, I wouldn’t wager latinum on our being able to enjoy all the time we’ve been allotted.
- End Log -
* * *
Lieutenant Arwen DeSilva leaned over Ensign Rachel Garrett’s shoulder, brushing back a lock of her long auburn hair that had escaped the otherwise tidy bun at the back of her head as she studied the readouts on the ensign’s display.
DeSilva was tall and willowy, a strikingly beautiful woman whom many had underestimated at their peril. A native of Lisbon on Earth, DeSilva was as intelligent and capable as she was attractive and had steadily carved out a notable career for herself in Starfleet.
As the ship’s second officer, DeSilva had taken Garrett under her wing as soon as the ensign had reported aboard. She saw the younger woman as a promising officer, intelligent, driven, and a true believer in Starfleet's principles. Talented as she was, Garrett was also one to push herself too hard for too long, and had not yet found avenues outside her duties to help decompress. DeSilva was determined to ease Garrett out of her shell, and hoped to imbue in her a work/life balance that would help her career to be a long and fruitful one.
Despite eschewing such shallow pursuits as fixating on physical beauty, Garrett still found it difficult not to feel mousey by comparison when in DeSilva’s presence. Though the older woman never traded on her looks, at least not aboard ship, she had an energetic, vivacious personality that only seemed to accentuate her appearance.
Garrett was shorter, and while more compact than DeSilva, she had a graceful neck supporting a well-proportioned oval shaped face, a pert-nose, expressive lips and brown eyes that often held a reserved cast. Garrett’s dirty-blonde hair which was normally a golden ombre had been embellished with red highlights, her sole concession to vanity.
“You’re up early,” DeSilva observed as she leaned in, noting the empty coffee mug perched precariously on the console top at Garrett’s workstation. “Still tracking our ghost?”
Garrett paused to rub her eyes, taking a deep breath. “Not early, sir… late. I held over from Beta Shift to keep my eye on it.”
DeSilva smirked at the young junior officer. “You’re up way past your bedtime, Ensign.”
“Don’t I know it, sir,” Garrett replied, punctuating the comment with a yawn.
DeSilva stood back up, glancing over the various displays at Garrett’s science station. “If I’m not mistaken, that’s a clearer return than any we’ve picked up so far.”
“Yes, sir. In fact, it’s the best sensor return from any of the five of our ships who’ve reported similar phenomena. Aenar and Kingston got some decent sweeps, but nothing tangible enough to prove it’s not a sensor reflection bouncing back off a dark matter aggregate or a stellar shell.” She gestured pointedly to her primary display. “That’s a genuine sensor return off a three-dimensional object moving at warp. A superluminal spacecraft.”
DeSilva patted her on the shoulder. “That’s excellent work, Rachel. The captain will be pleased. I think she’s got a bet going with Commander Glal on this mystery that involves a rather pricy bottle of liquor.”
Garrett laughed tiredly. “Is that always their currency of choice?”
DeSilva nodded, her expression one of pride in an apt pupil. “So, you have been paying attention. Every ship has its own cultural quirks and traditions. On Reyky, a rare bottle of spirits is more valuable than latinum.”
The swish of the turbolift doors opening was accompanied by a deep, rumbling laugh as Lt. Commander Glal stepped onto the bridge with Lieutenant Gael Jarrod trailing behind.
The squat Tellarite first officer had deeply lined, porcine features partially obscured by his greying, thatch-like beard and mustache. Two tusks, one chipped, protruded through his coarse facial hair at either side of his mouth. He exuded authority, the natural byproduct of more than forty years in Starfleet service, first as an enlisted rating, then as an officer, one held in high regard by a succession of captains.
Gael Jarrod was of average height for a human male, just a touch shy of six-feet tall, but possessing a well-built physique which he maintained as part of his duties as Chief Security/Tactical officer. His skin was a golden bronzed hue, testament to his rumored use of pigment altering therapies, and he had a well-kept mustache and goatee that gave him a somewhat rakish quality.
“You didn’t!” Glal exclaimed, clearly in good humor this morning.
“Indeed, I did, sir,” Jarrod countered. “They were cleaning up the place for days afterwards. I stood captain’s mast with Müller for it, lost an entire month’s leave privileges, restricted to quarters when not on duty.”
“Feh!” Glal snorted, “you got off easy! Captain Joltaric always was soft on his junior officers.”
“Would to be that brash young ensign again for just one day…” Jarrod mused nostalgically as he stepped to the tactical station and relieved the chief petty officer manning that post.
DeSilva departed the science station and moved to scoop up a data-slate occupying the otherwise empty captain’s chair. She handed this to Glal, assuming an at-attention stance as she did so.
“Gamma-watch shift updates and pass-a-long, sir,” DeSilva reported. “I relieved Commander Kura-Ka as the duty officer about fifteen minutes ago. We’re one-point-two parcecs out from Gamma Oberon and all vessels in the formation report nominal operations. We had to detour three degrees off our planned course for an ion storm that’s forming near the Galadriel Quasar, extending our ETA by two hours, seventeen minutes. The refinery has been notified of our updated itinerary. Revised ETA is six hours, thirty-eight minutes, sir.”
Glal took hold of the data-slate in his thick-fingered hands, scrolling through the shift’s reports as he listened to DeSilva.
“Ensign Garrett remained on post overnight to continue monitoring of the transient sensor contact we’ve been tracking since departing the Coridan system. She reports the first confirmed sensor sweeps of a verifiable object, proving that it is a vessel of some kind rather than a sensor malfunction or echo.”
Glal emitted a growl deep in his throat, the particular pitch indicating an expression of profound satisfaction. “Very good, Lieutenant. You are relieved and I have the conn. Please take your post.”
“Aye, sir. I stand relieved,” she confirmed, turning and moving to replace the ensign at Operations.
Glal eyed Garrett warily before barking, “Ensign Garrett, front and center!”
The young woman stiffened at hearing her name bawled in such a fashion but recovered quickly and made her way across the bridge to come to attention before Glal.
“Sir?”
“Mister Garrett, based on your work today it appears that you have accomplished something that the Science divisions of half-a-dozen other starships have failed to do, namely confirm that this ghost that’s been plaguing our ships for months is actually a vessel of some kind. In so doing, you have also cost me a bottle of Andorian brandy that has been in my possession for five years after having been gifted me by Captain Sulu.” He raised a bushy eyebrow. “Do you have anything to say to that, Ensign?”
Garrett appeared to give the question serious thought before finally replying. “The fact that you’re having to surrender your cherished bottle is indicative of your having bet against me, sir. If I’m not mistaken, Commander, this is a prime example of the Federation Supreme Court’s ruling in the case of Action v. Consequences.” She cleared her throat and then appended, “Sir.”
She had punctuated the last sentence with a tilt of her head, unable to stifle a smirk from gracing her lips.
Stunned silence on the bridge was followed by much laughter, one gasp, and many open stares of disbelief as Garrett stood her ground in front of the legendarily mercurial XO.
A slow smile spread across Glal’s face, and he turned his head to look at DeSilva. “I like her more every day, Lieutenant.” He fixed his attention back on Garrett. “Well played, Ensign, and nicely done.”
He made a shooing gesture back towards her station and Garrett took the opportunity to retreat to her post.
* * *
The Titania Congregate began over a century earlier as a dilithium processing facility built into a mined-out asteroid in the Sydon Belt of the Gamma Oberon system. Business had been good, and the facility had grown by leaps and bounds over the intervening decades, attracting workers, their families and sundry businesses to serve that growing population.
It was now a bustling star-port, serving Starfleet and various commercial interests throughout the region, some representative of spacefaring civilizations which had not yet joined the growing Federation.
The seventeen-kilometer-long asteroid at the conglomeration’s center was six kilometers wide at its broadest axis, and what the Tellarites’ left as a hollowed out husk the Vulcans and Rigellians had transformed into an enormous cylindrical habitat capable of supporting a population of seventy-thousand humanoids.
The rocky exterior of the asteroid was partially obscured by outgrowths of additional habitat modules, factories, refineries, docking ports and a host of other structures.
Over time, as expansion was required, more asteroids were tractored in, cored out, and secured by gantries and umbilicals. This created space for more industrial production, ore processing and a growing shipyard that constructed vessels for civilian and Starfleet contracts.
Reykjavík had docked with the station after delivering her charges safely to the refinery, where the raw dilithium they carried would be refined into stabilized crystals capable of channeling the enormous energies of matter/anti-matter reactions.
* * *
A group of Reykjavík’s senior officers exited the gangway extending out to the ship’s berth, chatting happily as they started their brief shore leave.
Kura-Ka, their Zaranite Chief Engineer, wore the native garb of his world, a heavy brown robe bedecked with necklaces fashioned from the horns of the berbbotjahaa, with beaded tasseled fringes at his beltline that jingled softly as he walked. Attached to his belt was the gas cylinder that fed the man’s form-fitting facemask, the device delivering his species’ fluorine-rich atmosphere to sustain him.
It was almost unheard of for the reclusive Kura-Ka to accompany his fellow officers off ship in this fashion, as after his duty shifts were concluded the man customarily retreated to the comfort of his pressurized and reinforced quarters filled with his people’s fluorine-based atmosphere. There he could remove the mask that most of his crewmates had come to mistake for his real face.
However, the station supported a vibrant Zaranite community in their own fluorine-dominated section, a rare treat for the reclusive engineer.
Glal, the stout Tellarite XO, was still in uniform, but the others were all clad in some manner of civilian clothing.
DeSilva, the crew’s self-appointed fashionista, wore a revealing top only partially obscured by a gauzy shift, coupled with sheer leggings covered by a sarong. Her hair, usually restricted to a tight bun or elaborately braided while on duty, had been freed, and cascaded to past her waist.
Dr. Lawrence Bennett, the ship’s Chief Medical officer, was in his early fifties, a Caucasian Human with receding salt and pepper hair and two days’ beard growth clinging to a lean, weathered face. He wore a tan jacket over a simple off-white buttoned shirt, and dark brown pants.
“So, where to first?” Bennett asked. “I saw the arcade has the new Imperium Galactic simulator. The game is all over the social feeds.”
Glal grunted dourly in response. “That game is ridiculously complex. Getting up to speed enough to play it sounds too much like training, Doc. I can’t speak for everyone else, but the last thing I’m looking for is something that makes me feel like I’m on duty.”
“There’s several casinos throughout the cluster,” Farouk Naifeh offered helpfully, not bothering to hide his hopeful grin. He was a young Human of Middle Eastern descent, with short-cropped black hair and a closely trimmed beard and mustache. He served as the ship's senior flight officer, the only other ensign besides Garrett afforded a senior staff position.
“That sounds more like something that would hold my attention,” Glal said, sharing an approving nod with DeSilva.
Lieutenant Jarrod had come as well and was wearing a form-fitting military-style zippered sweatshirt and BDU pants, the kind of look that screamed ‘Starfleet’ while not displaying so much as a single delta emblem of the organization.
Garrett had tagged along reluctantly, after being encouraged to go with the other senior officers by DeSilva. Though officially one of the command crew, she didn’t always feel like one. Yes, she attended senior staff meetings, but there were half a dozen other more senior ensigns aboard Reykjavík, each of whom had more service time than she did. And yet here she was, in charge of an entire department aboard ship.
“Ensign Garrett?” Glal asked, shifting to look at the young woman who was wearing a light blue jacket over a blouse with darker blue capri-style pants. The combination caused her red highlights to stand out even more.
Garrett tried to muster a genuine smile and almost succeeded. “My first time here, sir. I’m interested in seeing the sights. It’d be a shame to make port here and never set eyes on the habitat cylinder, though.”
“The Eclipse is in the habitat, right next to the park band,” Naifeh was only too happy to provide. He glanced at Garrett, “It’s one of the larger casinos.”
DeSilva smirked at Glal. “What, no seedy spacer bar? Usually, security has to drag you out of some disreputable watering hole kicking and screaming before leave is officially concluded.”
Jarrod laughed and gestured to his neck, saying, “He doesn’t scream, actually. It’s kind of a low octave keening from way down in his throat. He makes it while he’s kicking those little legs of his.”
Glal gave them all a chary expression. “May you all suffocate in the lowest levels of Crighar, drowned in the excrement of a billion u’urush-beasts.”
The resulting chorus of laughter made him squint and appear even more fearsome. “I don’t like any of you people. Come on, Mister Garrett, let me show you the sights while these miscreants wallow in the stale backwash of their collective ‘humor.’”
“Aye, sir,” Garrett said cheerily, throwing the others an energetic wave as she followed in Glal’s footsteps. “Fare-thee-well, miscreants!”
* * *
* * *
Second Officer’s Log, USS Reykjavík. Stardate 2877.9 - Terran Julian Date - August 23rd, 2321.
Reykjavík is less than a day from completing our escort mission to the dilithium refinery at Gamma Oberon in the Sydon Belt. We and the Khitomer are shepherding nine ore freighters to the ore processing complex at the Titania Congregate.
We are continuing to detect what may be scanning anomalies at extreme range, sensor ghosts that nevertheless could be one or more craft shadowing our convoy. The objects remain at the same distance from us and appear to be matching our maneuvers. Science Officer Garrett has been giving this development her full attention, seeking definitive answers.
Normally we’d request reinforcement to the escort detail and then go check out these contacts for ourselves, but this close to the frontier Starfleet is spread thinly and no additional ships are available. I have a sneaking suspicion that once we’ve completed our current mission, Captain Trujillo may take us out for a reconnaissance of the area.
We’re scheduled for some shore leave at the Congregate, but knowing our ship’s history, I wouldn’t wager latinum on our being able to enjoy all the time we’ve been allotted.
- End Log -
* * *
Lieutenant Arwen DeSilva leaned over Ensign Rachel Garrett’s shoulder, brushing back a lock of her long auburn hair that had escaped the otherwise tidy bun at the back of her head as she studied the readouts on the ensign’s display.
DeSilva was tall and willowy, a strikingly beautiful woman whom many had underestimated at their peril. A native of Lisbon on Earth, DeSilva was as intelligent and capable as she was attractive and had steadily carved out a notable career for herself in Starfleet.
As the ship’s second officer, DeSilva had taken Garrett under her wing as soon as the ensign had reported aboard. She saw the younger woman as a promising officer, intelligent, driven, and a true believer in Starfleet's principles. Talented as she was, Garrett was also one to push herself too hard for too long, and had not yet found avenues outside her duties to help decompress. DeSilva was determined to ease Garrett out of her shell, and hoped to imbue in her a work/life balance that would help her career to be a long and fruitful one.
Despite eschewing such shallow pursuits as fixating on physical beauty, Garrett still found it difficult not to feel mousey by comparison when in DeSilva’s presence. Though the older woman never traded on her looks, at least not aboard ship, she had an energetic, vivacious personality that only seemed to accentuate her appearance.
Garrett was shorter, and while more compact than DeSilva, she had a graceful neck supporting a well-proportioned oval shaped face, a pert-nose, expressive lips and brown eyes that often held a reserved cast. Garrett’s dirty-blonde hair which was normally a golden ombre had been embellished with red highlights, her sole concession to vanity.
“You’re up early,” DeSilva observed as she leaned in, noting the empty coffee mug perched precariously on the console top at Garrett’s workstation. “Still tracking our ghost?”
Garrett paused to rub her eyes, taking a deep breath. “Not early, sir… late. I held over from Beta Shift to keep my eye on it.”
DeSilva smirked at the young junior officer. “You’re up way past your bedtime, Ensign.”
“Don’t I know it, sir,” Garrett replied, punctuating the comment with a yawn.
DeSilva stood back up, glancing over the various displays at Garrett’s science station. “If I’m not mistaken, that’s a clearer return than any we’ve picked up so far.”
“Yes, sir. In fact, it’s the best sensor return from any of the five of our ships who’ve reported similar phenomena. Aenar and Kingston got some decent sweeps, but nothing tangible enough to prove it’s not a sensor reflection bouncing back off a dark matter aggregate or a stellar shell.” She gestured pointedly to her primary display. “That’s a genuine sensor return off a three-dimensional object moving at warp. A superluminal spacecraft.”
DeSilva patted her on the shoulder. “That’s excellent work, Rachel. The captain will be pleased. I think she’s got a bet going with Commander Glal on this mystery that involves a rather pricy bottle of liquor.”
Garrett laughed tiredly. “Is that always their currency of choice?”
DeSilva nodded, her expression one of pride in an apt pupil. “So, you have been paying attention. Every ship has its own cultural quirks and traditions. On Reyky, a rare bottle of spirits is more valuable than latinum.”
The swish of the turbolift doors opening was accompanied by a deep, rumbling laugh as Lt. Commander Glal stepped onto the bridge with Lieutenant Gael Jarrod trailing behind.
The squat Tellarite first officer had deeply lined, porcine features partially obscured by his greying, thatch-like beard and mustache. Two tusks, one chipped, protruded through his coarse facial hair at either side of his mouth. He exuded authority, the natural byproduct of more than forty years in Starfleet service, first as an enlisted rating, then as an officer, one held in high regard by a succession of captains.
Gael Jarrod was of average height for a human male, just a touch shy of six-feet tall, but possessing a well-built physique which he maintained as part of his duties as Chief Security/Tactical officer. His skin was a golden bronzed hue, testament to his rumored use of pigment altering therapies, and he had a well-kept mustache and goatee that gave him a somewhat rakish quality.
“You didn’t!” Glal exclaimed, clearly in good humor this morning.
“Indeed, I did, sir,” Jarrod countered. “They were cleaning up the place for days afterwards. I stood captain’s mast with Müller for it, lost an entire month’s leave privileges, restricted to quarters when not on duty.”
“Feh!” Glal snorted, “you got off easy! Captain Joltaric always was soft on his junior officers.”
“Would to be that brash young ensign again for just one day…” Jarrod mused nostalgically as he stepped to the tactical station and relieved the chief petty officer manning that post.
DeSilva departed the science station and moved to scoop up a data-slate occupying the otherwise empty captain’s chair. She handed this to Glal, assuming an at-attention stance as she did so.
“Gamma-watch shift updates and pass-a-long, sir,” DeSilva reported. “I relieved Commander Kura-Ka as the duty officer about fifteen minutes ago. We’re one-point-two parcecs out from Gamma Oberon and all vessels in the formation report nominal operations. We had to detour three degrees off our planned course for an ion storm that’s forming near the Galadriel Quasar, extending our ETA by two hours, seventeen minutes. The refinery has been notified of our updated itinerary. Revised ETA is six hours, thirty-eight minutes, sir.”
Glal took hold of the data-slate in his thick-fingered hands, scrolling through the shift’s reports as he listened to DeSilva.
“Ensign Garrett remained on post overnight to continue monitoring of the transient sensor contact we’ve been tracking since departing the Coridan system. She reports the first confirmed sensor sweeps of a verifiable object, proving that it is a vessel of some kind rather than a sensor malfunction or echo.”
Glal emitted a growl deep in his throat, the particular pitch indicating an expression of profound satisfaction. “Very good, Lieutenant. You are relieved and I have the conn. Please take your post.”
“Aye, sir. I stand relieved,” she confirmed, turning and moving to replace the ensign at Operations.
Glal eyed Garrett warily before barking, “Ensign Garrett, front and center!”
The young woman stiffened at hearing her name bawled in such a fashion but recovered quickly and made her way across the bridge to come to attention before Glal.
“Sir?”
“Mister Garrett, based on your work today it appears that you have accomplished something that the Science divisions of half-a-dozen other starships have failed to do, namely confirm that this ghost that’s been plaguing our ships for months is actually a vessel of some kind. In so doing, you have also cost me a bottle of Andorian brandy that has been in my possession for five years after having been gifted me by Captain Sulu.” He raised a bushy eyebrow. “Do you have anything to say to that, Ensign?”
Garrett appeared to give the question serious thought before finally replying. “The fact that you’re having to surrender your cherished bottle is indicative of your having bet against me, sir. If I’m not mistaken, Commander, this is a prime example of the Federation Supreme Court’s ruling in the case of Action v. Consequences.” She cleared her throat and then appended, “Sir.”
She had punctuated the last sentence with a tilt of her head, unable to stifle a smirk from gracing her lips.
Stunned silence on the bridge was followed by much laughter, one gasp, and many open stares of disbelief as Garrett stood her ground in front of the legendarily mercurial XO.
A slow smile spread across Glal’s face, and he turned his head to look at DeSilva. “I like her more every day, Lieutenant.” He fixed his attention back on Garrett. “Well played, Ensign, and nicely done.”
He made a shooing gesture back towards her station and Garrett took the opportunity to retreat to her post.
* * *
The Titania Congregate began over a century earlier as a dilithium processing facility built into a mined-out asteroid in the Sydon Belt of the Gamma Oberon system. Business had been good, and the facility had grown by leaps and bounds over the intervening decades, attracting workers, their families and sundry businesses to serve that growing population.
It was now a bustling star-port, serving Starfleet and various commercial interests throughout the region, some representative of spacefaring civilizations which had not yet joined the growing Federation.
The seventeen-kilometer-long asteroid at the conglomeration’s center was six kilometers wide at its broadest axis, and what the Tellarites’ left as a hollowed out husk the Vulcans and Rigellians had transformed into an enormous cylindrical habitat capable of supporting a population of seventy-thousand humanoids.
The rocky exterior of the asteroid was partially obscured by outgrowths of additional habitat modules, factories, refineries, docking ports and a host of other structures.
Over time, as expansion was required, more asteroids were tractored in, cored out, and secured by gantries and umbilicals. This created space for more industrial production, ore processing and a growing shipyard that constructed vessels for civilian and Starfleet contracts.
Reykjavík had docked with the station after delivering her charges safely to the refinery, where the raw dilithium they carried would be refined into stabilized crystals capable of channeling the enormous energies of matter/anti-matter reactions.
* * *
A group of Reykjavík’s senior officers exited the gangway extending out to the ship’s berth, chatting happily as they started their brief shore leave.
Kura-Ka, their Zaranite Chief Engineer, wore the native garb of his world, a heavy brown robe bedecked with necklaces fashioned from the horns of the berbbotjahaa, with beaded tasseled fringes at his beltline that jingled softly as he walked. Attached to his belt was the gas cylinder that fed the man’s form-fitting facemask, the device delivering his species’ fluorine-rich atmosphere to sustain him.
It was almost unheard of for the reclusive Kura-Ka to accompany his fellow officers off ship in this fashion, as after his duty shifts were concluded the man customarily retreated to the comfort of his pressurized and reinforced quarters filled with his people’s fluorine-based atmosphere. There he could remove the mask that most of his crewmates had come to mistake for his real face.
However, the station supported a vibrant Zaranite community in their own fluorine-dominated section, a rare treat for the reclusive engineer.
Glal, the stout Tellarite XO, was still in uniform, but the others were all clad in some manner of civilian clothing.
DeSilva, the crew’s self-appointed fashionista, wore a revealing top only partially obscured by a gauzy shift, coupled with sheer leggings covered by a sarong. Her hair, usually restricted to a tight bun or elaborately braided while on duty, had been freed, and cascaded to past her waist.
Dr. Lawrence Bennett, the ship’s Chief Medical officer, was in his early fifties, a Caucasian Human with receding salt and pepper hair and two days’ beard growth clinging to a lean, weathered face. He wore a tan jacket over a simple off-white buttoned shirt, and dark brown pants.
“So, where to first?” Bennett asked. “I saw the arcade has the new Imperium Galactic simulator. The game is all over the social feeds.”
Glal grunted dourly in response. “That game is ridiculously complex. Getting up to speed enough to play it sounds too much like training, Doc. I can’t speak for everyone else, but the last thing I’m looking for is something that makes me feel like I’m on duty.”
“There’s several casinos throughout the cluster,” Farouk Naifeh offered helpfully, not bothering to hide his hopeful grin. He was a young Human of Middle Eastern descent, with short-cropped black hair and a closely trimmed beard and mustache. He served as the ship's senior flight officer, the only other ensign besides Garrett afforded a senior staff position.
“That sounds more like something that would hold my attention,” Glal said, sharing an approving nod with DeSilva.
Lieutenant Jarrod had come as well and was wearing a form-fitting military-style zippered sweatshirt and BDU pants, the kind of look that screamed ‘Starfleet’ while not displaying so much as a single delta emblem of the organization.
Garrett had tagged along reluctantly, after being encouraged to go with the other senior officers by DeSilva. Though officially one of the command crew, she didn’t always feel like one. Yes, she attended senior staff meetings, but there were half a dozen other more senior ensigns aboard Reykjavík, each of whom had more service time than she did. And yet here she was, in charge of an entire department aboard ship.
“Ensign Garrett?” Glal asked, shifting to look at the young woman who was wearing a light blue jacket over a blouse with darker blue capri-style pants. The combination caused her red highlights to stand out even more.
Garrett tried to muster a genuine smile and almost succeeded. “My first time here, sir. I’m interested in seeing the sights. It’d be a shame to make port here and never set eyes on the habitat cylinder, though.”
“The Eclipse is in the habitat, right next to the park band,” Naifeh was only too happy to provide. He glanced at Garrett, “It’s one of the larger casinos.”
DeSilva smirked at Glal. “What, no seedy spacer bar? Usually, security has to drag you out of some disreputable watering hole kicking and screaming before leave is officially concluded.”
Jarrod laughed and gestured to his neck, saying, “He doesn’t scream, actually. It’s kind of a low octave keening from way down in his throat. He makes it while he’s kicking those little legs of his.”
Glal gave them all a chary expression. “May you all suffocate in the lowest levels of Crighar, drowned in the excrement of a billion u’urush-beasts.”
The resulting chorus of laughter made him squint and appear even more fearsome. “I don’t like any of you people. Come on, Mister Garrett, let me show you the sights while these miscreants wallow in the stale backwash of their collective ‘humor.’”
“Aye, sir,” Garrett said cheerily, throwing the others an energetic wave as she followed in Glal’s footsteps. “Fare-thee-well, miscreants!”
* * *
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Also, great to see Isaac having his own command after his stint as third-in-command aboard Detmer in "Borderline Justice."
