As Sh’ill left the Command Center and stepped into the turbolift, his mind was full of turbulence.

“Why.. would they not want the public to know? And more importantly, who is going to be on my crew?”

As he thought of this, he quickly said to the turbolift, “Promenade.”, and it took off. As the lift descended into the depths of the starbase, he continued to think about these issues troubling his mind, and finally reached the conclusion that the Captain probably knows what he is doing, and as such, these issues should be left to him.

As he stepped onto the Promenade, and into the mass of aliens, Sh’ill decided that it was time for him to make the best out of the downtime he had been given, and to go get a drink at the nearby bar. As he entered, he was swarmed by even more aliens, most of them drunk, high, losing games of poker, or any combination of these three.

He sat down by the bar, and was approached by the bartender.

“What’ll it be, big guy?” The bartender, a young Bajoran woman, waltzed up to Sh’ill casually, while wiping the countertop.

“Caitian ale, straight from the bottle. If possible, the Eastern Sea brand.” Sh’ill leaned a bit onto the counter as he placed his elbows on the countertop to make himself more comfortable.

“Got it, big guy. Eastern Sea ale, coming up.” The Bajoran girl moved quickly. She practically danced and tangoed her way to the shelves with the bottles on them, and in a very dramatic way, using nothing but the cocktail mixing spoon, cracked the ale bottle open, and placed it in front of Sh’ill with almost no sound.

“Very impressive, I have to say. I see why this place is so popular with civilians and Starfleet alike.” Sh’ill said as he put the bottle to his mouth, and took a swig, the green-ish liquid flowing in.

“Commander, that’s what you get in a place this big in orbit of a colony. Inescapeable.” She said as she moved to the next customer, and seemed to treat him with as much respect.

“Commander, I get that look that you have on me, you want to know why I’m so nice to everyone, when some of them could be crooks, thieves, and so on. My answer is that every customer gets the same service: you’re a good one and you don’t yell, you stay, you yell and you’re not good, I throw you out with the help of a phaser.” She replied while cleaning some glasses and placing them back under the counter, ready for the next drink.

“Good policy. I better not stay here after I’ve had a few of these.” Sh’ill said as he looked down into the bottle, and took another swig.“You an officer, or..?”

“Lieutenant Erti Jatia, Science Division. Work my shifts as normal, a Ferengi takes care of the bar then, and off duty into the night I tend the bar, and get paid a fair sum. Not that important of a scientist, but making people addicted to various liquids is science, is it not?” She said as she grabbed a tall glass, and filled it with ice, half not looking at it, instead staring into the ceiling and laughing a bit.

“Pleasure to meet you, Lieutenant. Lieutenant Commander Sh’ill over here. Technically medical division, but I command my ship and act as half a medical ship and half as a regular 86er.” Sh’ill smiled as he stared into the now half empty bottle, and then looked back up at the bartender.“Pleasure to know you, Lieutenant Erti Jatia.”

“The pleasure is mine. Now, will you have anything else, need info on the station, need to get illegal stuff, or…” Erti moved to the other end of the bar, and had to practically shout to get Sh’ill to hear her.

“Lieutenant… you should know that I could report you for that.” Sh’ill lowered his voice back to a near Caitian register.

“For what, I didn’t say anything!” Jatia smirked at him as she came back over, and took the now empty bottle of ale from his part of the countertop.

“Hmm. In that case, I’ll go see what this station has to offer. Good night, Lieutenant.” As he said this, he stood up from the barstool he had been sitting on, and made his way out of the bar, and out into the main part of the Promenade.

The Promenade was, to say the least, packed to full capacity. Sh’ill had to push whoever knows how many people just to get to the turbolift, and the lift wasn’t any better. The lift cabin was Starbase sized, wide, a lot of room for a lot of people. But in the evenings it would get quite packed, making breathing in it quite hard.

As Sh’ill got in, he quickly commanded the turbolift to head to deck 50.

Now at deck 50. Sh’ill got out of the less than comfortable lift, and walked through the corridors of the Starbase, on his way to his quarters.“I hope that they gave me something nice…” Sh’ill thought to himself. “And I hope it’s a nice bed…” Sh’ill walked, thinking to himself, with his head down, and while walking nearly hit his head on a wall.“I will have you removed from the station, know that… I should stop walking with my head down, now that I think about it. And I should get my head checked, because I am talking to a wall…” Sh’ill moved out of the way of the wall, and there they were, his quarters.

He headed inside, and almost immediately collapsed on the couch, exhausted from the long day.