With nothing to do in sickbay, Serena felt it was a much better use of her time to go ahead and complete the set up for the HazMed locker room. She’d already coordinated with the acting QM for another locker, but because everyone was so busy with so many people getting settled in, especially after the short break on the resort planet, she decided to go ahead and get permission to do the fabrication work herself and spare other people the trouble over cabinetry.
Well, that sounded a lot more technical than it did, which wasn’t really the case. She wasn’t an engineer or a replicator tech, but she knew well enough that if the computer already had records of a previously fabricated item, it could just be reproduced again if there was permissions in the system. And an equipment locker was definitely not something classified or sensitive.
Once the process was complete, she was faced with another issue; how to get the damned thing into the HazMed section?
Using a transporter was out of the question. She was just a Chief and wouldn’t have officer privileges to just issue orders to the transporter officer and move this thing from one place to another. It wasn’t super heavy though it wasn’t something she’d be able to lift by herself, at least not without tapping into some kind of comic book superhero power or something. It was also large and bulky, but not so large that it would get stuck in doorways. There was an antigrav pallet truck nearby that no one was using and it wasn’t like she didn’t have time so…
Well, why not? It’ll be a workout anyway and she could get this done and checked off Commander Keegan’s checklist.
It had been a long day for RJ. He’d started it as the Canterbury’s XO, with a full day of sh… duties to get through, then reality had lurched sideways and he was ending it on the Kirk as CO. Which, he couldn’t really argue with. When command gave you a ship, you didn’t turn around and tell them that you’d check your schedule, now did you?
But that did mean he’d had to hit the ground running, catching up with his new XO and department heads, dealing with transfer paperwork and reviewing the squadron’s training program (which, for the record, was insane). And he hadn’t even had chance to find his quarters yet. He just had to hope that his belongings had arrived, because the Canterbury was long gone by now.
Alone in the corridor while he waited for the turbolift, he sighed and ran a hand through his hair. Lounge next, he could both grab a coffee and show his face to the crew.
He looked up as the door opened, ready to greet yet another member of the crew, and blinked.
There was a locker stood in the lift. Not just stood in the lift, but filling the lift.
“Errr… hello?”
Reena totally forgot just how tiny the lifts were in this ship, and she’d just been able to fit inside with the antigrav pallet cart and just room to spare for at least two more people… or one big person. At least the trip wouldn’t take very long, not with how small the ship was. She even lucked out when she didn’t have to wait long for an empty lift car to board fresh off the engineering deck.
Of course, it was still an active lift car and people were still busy getting to where they needed to go. Feeling the lift car stop followed by the hiss of the doors opening didn’t surprise her. It was the masculine voice of clear puzzlement greeting her cargo so politely that did.
“Hello,” she said from the other side. “Don’t mind me. I promise I’m on a diet. Are you getting on or waiting for the next one?”
The locker had a female voice. A pretty one at that. RJ eyed the size of the locker. Okay, change of plan. There was no way he was letting a female member of the crew lug this around.
“Getting on,” he said, squeezing in between the locker and the wall. “Want a hand taking this to its new home?”
Feeling a little loopy, and totally clueless as to who was on the other side of the locker, she chose to be a little bit spontaneous. “Excuse me? Did you just call me an “it”?”
He grinned. “My apologies, Madam Locker. Would you like some help getting to your new home?”
Reena stifled a chuckle, approving of the guy’s ability to roll with the punches and kept trying to pull a ventriloquist act with a piece of cabinetry as best as she could. “Why yes, thank you, kind sir. That would be lovely. How very nice of you. I hope you can look past my… uh… dimensions. I was just made this way.”
As she said that, the lift car imperceptively began to decelerate, and before they knew it, the doors were opening again to the crew berthing deck and the HazMed section. “I’m just headed down the hall, the HazMed locker room. Do you mind terribly?”
”Not at all, I’ll go backward,” he said, stepping out the lift as the door opened. “Careful coming through this door, small ship, small doors.”
Carefully guiding the cabinet out, he kept up the banter. “I wouldn’t worry about your dimensions, you look absolutely perfectly made.”
She smirked at that. “My, such a kind, silver tongued gentleman. What a rarity these days.”
WIth the antigrav cart, there was barely any resistance as they hauled the locker along the corridor, only the size of it kept them from being careless as the last thing she wanted was to run into anyone or anything because she wasn’t paying attention.
Add to that, shift change just happened, so the corridor was full of people heading to their quarters so she didn’t dare look around the locker to get a glimpse of her helper.
”Coming through here,” RJ called out as the corridors filled. “Watch your ankles!”
