—- USS Hood, Captain’s Ready Room – Week One —-

The holoprojected image of Commander Strie Ryaon grinned back at the captain. His short sleeved uniform fitting with the tropical vista behind him. He was clearly more relaxed about the situation than Captain Olivia Carrillo was, though she had to wonder if that was because of the enthusiastic reception he’d been receiving from the female members of the host delegation welcoming them to the resort.

“Sometimes a pleasure planet is just a pleasure planet,” Ryaon said, clearly having decided that his captain’s concern was a bunch of nonsense.

Perhaps it was. Most of what a captain did was a bunch of nonsense when you got down to it. The crew knew what to do normally, and nobody needed to tell them their duty. Still she was a new captain, and Carrillo knew that her danger sense was not as finely tuned as it would be later on. She’d served under captains that could be relaxed ninety-nine percent of the time, and yet somehow intuit when a situation was dangerous well before the danger manifested in an obvious way. Perhaps that was something you learned with experience. Perhaps it was a quality she would always lack.

”I feel better being up here and keeping this all systematic,” Carrillo said, all the crew would get to go and spend a week at the resort just in shifts with a quarter of the crew taking each week.

Ryaon nodded, “More surfing for me.”

”There’s surfing?” Carrillo asked, she unlike her First Officer, was not a surfer but she was surprised that a planet that did not seem to have natural tides had surfing.

”Lieutenant Aka gave them the specifications on how waves should be and they made them. I haven’t seen real natural waves for years,” Ryaon said clearly excited.

Carrillo did not point out that if the Pernod had created the waves they were not natural, just because they weren’t holographic on the holodeck, but she figured there was no harm in her First Officer enjoying himself. He may not have been her first choice for the position, but she genuinely liked the man.

“Just do me a favour, listen to your gut. If something feels off look into it,” Carrillo said, her last concession to her fears.

”Will do ma’am, and you consider coming down bring the husband and kid. They deserve a break too,” the Hawaiian man said, and then the screen went dark.

The holonovels and even Starfleet Academy training made the job of being a captain seem far more romantic and action packed than it was. While she had had her share of dust ups, her last had been on the USS Selene hunting pirates. The USS Andromeda had basically been a floating hotel, and the USS Hood had spent nearly three months charting gaseous anomalies. There had been the issue with the Dominion last month, but that had resolved itself in an unsatisfying way.

Exiting her office Carrillo nodded to the bridge crew. It was a skeleton shift, as most of what was happening was that they were orbiting the planet and unless a fleet of Dominion battleships dropped out of warp all of a sudden there was little to do. Science, Engineering, Linguistics, and other conns were empty as the officers on duty could work better down in their own spaces in their own departments. Unless she decided otherwise, the bridge had a basic flight control and security team manning terminals to ensure they didn’t drift into the planet or get pulled into a star.

—- Pernod, Poolside —-

“Need help with that?” Lieutenant Edward Krisham asked a pale Lieutenant Jacob Siegel that looked as if he had not been in the sun for years. Siegel was attempting to apply a medicinal spray to his skin to prevent burn.

Siegel looked up, shading his eyes with the spray, “I know apparently I technically don’t need this. They learned how to stop sunburns on this planet centuries ago, I’m just…”

”Really pale?” Krisham laughed, “I get it. Here I’ll rub it in.”

Siegel said, “You don’t have to do that.”

”No I don’t, but I want to,” Krisham said, “I’m actualizing my best self.”

“Well I wouldn’t want to stand in the way of whatever nonsense that is,” said the perpetually grumpy historian.

”I’m going to take that as a yes,” Krisham said sitting on the lawn chair behind Siegel and starting to rub the sun spray into his exposed back.

—- Pernod, ‘Wailea Beach’ —-

Lieutenant Leylani Aka had already completed three runs out into the surf and then back on the newly constructed beach that she had called ‘Wailea Beach’ after a beach near her home back on Maui. However they were fabricating waves in the ocean here was remarkable, and if she were an engineer she’d probably have asked how it worked.

She was sitting in the surf, out about two hundred yards from the beach when Commander Ryaon paddled out on his own board wearing his long swimming trunks.

“You’re late,” she pointed out.

”I had negotiations with the First Minister,” Ryaon said, trying to end that part of their discussion.

”That’s what we’re calling it?” Aka asked, rolling her eyes. Ryaon was a large muscular man and attractive. The Pernod First Minister, in fact everyone here was an idealized specimen golden and willing to laugh at whatever dumb human jokes the humans in the crew told. It did not take a ship’s counsellor to see what Ryaon might have gotten from his lengthy negotiations.

“I’m still your commanding officer,” Ryaon said, though even saying it like that felt wrong. He wasn’t used to pulling rank, and he was not good at it. This was proven by the eye roll he got in return.

“What’s Lieutenant Commander Hume think of your negotiations?” Aka asked, eyeing the waves, looking for the right one to merge with.

”She’s fine, we’re friends,” Ryaon said.

Aka got that meant he hadn’t told his on-again-off-again fling in Strategic Operations. She also knew that as far as she could tell Canadians were a lot less relaxed about ‘friends who negotiate together’ than Hawaiians. White people seemed way less capable of flowing with the current.

“You’re convincing me,” Aka said starting to paddle at an angle. She timed it with the wave cresting, standing and ducking into the swell as she left Ryaon watching behind.

His relationships were his problems. She was glad she hadn’t gotten involved with that. She enjoyed surfing too much to waste it on worrying about men.