Supply allocation reports were perhaps one of the worst parts of his role as Chief Operations Officer, but Jaylen Myles had come to appreciate them as a necessary evil of his promotion to the senior ranks after years of working in junior roles on other ships within the squadron. To get to the exciting parts one had to make do with the mundane, that had been the advice of Commander Sovin within the first day of transporting aboard, and the Vulcan was so right. Working through them at breakfast time made them more bearable, though. Bacon and eggs on buttered toast with a cold apple juice had the potential to make anything better, even this mornings reports. Oblivious as he was almost three paragraphs in, it was only when someone dropped a tray opposite him hard enough to disturb his beverage that he finally looked up.

Sliding into the seat opposite him, the purple haired Ensign Nisea fumbled and dropped multiple breakfast items onto the table without so much as an acknowledgement of the impressive amount of food she had brought to their dining experience. “Please tell me you aren’t doing paperwork at breakfast,” she glared at him, picking up the first of her pastry items and tearing it apart, errant flakes dropping into her lap and forcing her to tuck her chair in.

Glancing at the data PADD, Jaylen shrugged. “Technically its resource management…”

“Technically,” Nisea mocked him as she shovelled in the first half of her croissant, “that’s even worse than paperwork.”

Jaylen looked on in disgust as the young Boslic began working her way through the food she had brought to the table. He soon relented though and placed down the PADD to allow him a few minutes to work on his own breakfast before it turned to something akin to stone from being exposed to the atmosphere of the lounge for too long.

“So,” she paused her chewing to take a sip of her own drink, “exciting first mission, huh? What do you think happened to the relay station?” She grinned while chewing ferociously on the second half of her pastry.

Finishing the first bite of his eggs on toast, the man opposite shrugged as he pushed the plate aside. “Probably some sort of systems failure…” he surmised quite expectedly.

“Ugh,” she frowned, reaching for an apple and chomping a bite out of it, “that’s such a gold-shirt type of answer.”

“What did you expect?wl” Jaylen shook his head, gesturing to his uniform with one hand and sipping on his drink from the other before picking up his data PADD and resuming his work.

”Yeah, but I was hoping for something more interesting… something more mysterious, you know?” Another chomp of her apple. “Subspace pirates. Spatial anomalies. Klingon warlords. Hell, maybe a giant alien gas cloud,” she shrugged between finishing her apple and the peeling of a banana.

Glancing over the upper edge of his PADD, the Ops chief raised a brow Sovin would have been proud of. “And you find alien gas clouds and Klingon warlords reassuring, do you?” He inquired

She reached over and flicked his data PADD. “Compared to that? Absolutely.” While she devoured the banana, Jaylen lowered his PADD briefly, watching her and shaking his head.

“What?”

“How can you eat all of that?” He asked, watching as she moved on to peeling a massive orange.

“Stress eating is kinda my thing,” she smiled awkwardly, staring at the orange as she rolled it between her hands, removing as much of the peel and rind as possible. “Anyway, don’t change the subject. We’re critiquing your job, remember? So how many of those supply acquisition report thingys do they actually make you do?” In went the first of several orange segments.

“Too many,” Jaylen sighed, placing the PADD on the table between them, resigned to the fact that he probably wasn’t going to get much more finished now the youngest member of the team was intent on making small talk. “Besides, it’s resource management not acquisition requests. That comes next time we dock,” he corrected her with a wave of the data recorder.

“If that’s the kind of stuff I’d be forced to do, remind Rme to never v o get promoted,” the Boslic smirked, popping another segment in. And another.

Jaylen smirked faintly. “I’ll be sure to let Sovin know,” he added, reaching across and stealing a blueberry muffin from her pile of treats. It was then that he saw a familiar face enter the room, and began praying that she would choose anywhere to sit but at their table. No such luck, however, as she appeared at their table, data PADD tucked under one arm and a steaming coffee cup in hand.

“Uh oh…”

Through narrowed eyes, Dazia glowered at the pilot. “What?”

“You’ve got your serious face on again,” Nisea remarked, eyes darting from human to Trill and back again.

“I always have my serious face on,” the unjoined Trill countered.

“Therein lies the problem,” Nisea grinned, lifting up her cup of tea in mock salute.

Ensign Dazia Kiaol, coffee in hand, slid into the empty seat beside Nisea. “Some of us like to prepare for the unknown,” she scolded the pilot with the tone of someone far superior in wisdom and age, which was odd considering she was less than four years the pilot’s senior.

“Some of us,” Nisea countered while waving a sausage on a fork, “know that breakfast isn’t a combat operation, and can therefore relax and converse freely.”

“Pfft,” the Trill scoffed between sips of her scorching drink. “Anything can turn into a combat situation in the blink of an eye if people are careless enough. Even breakfast.””

Jaylen quietly lifted his PADD again and skipped ahead to the tactical supply section, just.  in case the Trill should ask any questions and draw him into her battle of wills with Nisea. It was the young Boslic that dragged him in for reinforcements though, not the Trill.

“Are you listening to this?” Nisea lunged over the table at her colleague from Ops. “This is the problem with people in this day and age. It’s like she’s preparing for the next great war and we haven’t even dropped out of warp yet.”

“Given the fact that just a few short light years from the station we have some of the most hostile Klingon houses known to Starfleet,” Dazia countered, “it would be folly not to prepare.”

“It’s terrifying to think of the dark world you live in,” the Boslic shook her head furiously, brandishing another fork-stabbed sausage at the Trill.

“Commander Sovin is terrifying,” Jaylen chimed in absentmindedly.

For the first time, Dazia showed a different type of emotion as she tried her best to stifle a laugh. She was just about to respond when a shadow fell across the table, causing everyone to look up and lock eyes on the tall human with scraggily black hair. He stood there, waiting patiently to be invited to sit with the team, all while nursing a beverage that looked so dark and so viscous it had to be a medical experiment of some kind.

“I see the early morning conspiracy theories have begun,” he smirked, sliding into the vacant seat next to Jaylen. “I can’t imagine a more healthy start to the day.”

“There’s folly and there’s foolhardiness on one side, and there’s daring and calculation on the other,” Dazia replied, relaxing into her chair.

“What she said,” Nisea nodded, then looked across at Myles with wide eyes and a shocked expression.

“Terrifying,” he mouthed, enjoying the look of horror on the young pilot’s face as she realised she found herself on common ground with the Trill, even if it was only for a split second.

“Frontier relay stations survive on caffeine, lies and poor maintenance schedules. Odds are somebody forgot to replace a plasma relay. One missed comm cycle later and Starfleet’s panicking,” the physician took a slow sip of his morning brew. “If they genuinely thought there was risk of a Klingon attack, do you think they would send little old Bristol, when there are ships like Lakota, Astute and Lexington nearby?” he shook his head in disbelief that they could be so wrong.

“Sending ships like them would likely provoke a larger conflict,” Dazia scoffed, “maybe you should leave the strategy to those of us who studied more than Tactics 1-0-1 at the Academy.”

“I suspect you are all wrong…”

Spinning on her stool at the breakfast bar, the ship’s Cardassian scientist finally joined the raging debate. “If Jeto was here, she would tell you that simultaneous relay silence across multiple communication bands would be statistically improbable for a simple systems malfunction,” she advised, rising to her feet and taking two steps towards the group.

“So, I’m right then?” Dazia’s smug grin lit up the room, “It has to be sabotage.”

“Not necessarily.”

“Klingons?” Myles’ eyebrows furrowed.

“Also improbable.”

Leaning forward again, the Boslic whispered to the Ops chief. “See? Giant alien cloud doesn’t seem so stupid now, does it?”

Nisha Kedam ignored the young pilot entirely. “What should concern us all is that Starfleet chose to reroute Bristol so quickly. Command rarely responds with such urgency unless they have some form of intelligence suggests a potential escalation of the situation.”

Finally, the table grew quiet. No quips from Dazia; no rapid-fire theories from Nisea. Even the trademark Beckett cynicism had vanished. Eventually, it was the science officer standing over them all that broke the silence.

“You know what bothers me the most?” The Cardassian asked, eyes scooting around the occupants of the table, hoping, but receiving now answer from her comrades. “The absence of a distress call. If systems on the station failed, they would get a call out for help before they shut down completely. If somebody attacked them, fine. But they would still get a distress out of some description. But nobody says absolutely nothing unless something’s wrong. Unless something is very, very wrong.”