Theo couldn’t help the startled yelp that escaped his mouth as the shuttle dove wildly down toward the superstructure of Starbase Bravo. They had dropped from warp only a few moments earlier and as soon as they were back at sublight speeds, the pilot, who he just found out was going to be piloting the ship he had been newly assigned to, threw the throttles on the shuttle wide open. His reaction just caused the pilot to beam widely.

“Where’s your sense of adventure sir,” Niobe said, as she slide around a Saber class in the parking lane. “I haven’t crashed once, hell I haven’t even chipped the paint.”

“I find that very hard to believe,” Theo replied. “Also, you do see that warp nacelle right in front of us, right?”

Niobe rolled her eyes. “Of course I do, you need to learn to lighten up a little.”

They coasted over the top of the nacelle. “I have everything under control. We’re going to have to learn to work together, especially since you’re the new chief engineer.”

“Of which I would very like to spend at least one day being,” Theo said. “Please tell me that you aren’t going to fly the ship like this?”

Niobe winked at him. “Only if the captain asks me to.”

Theo thought she was joking, but judging by her semi-sinister grin, she wasn’t. He made a mental note to double-check all of the ship’s flight control systems as soon as he got aboard, just to make sure that Petty Officer Watts hadn’t modified them. She dove to the side, narrowly missing a Cardassin freighter. 

“You might want to contact traffic control,” Niobe said, as she settled into a more appropriate approach pattern. 

Theo tapped his station. “Starbase Bravo this is shuttlecraft Camden, requesting approach vector for docking maneuvers.”

“Continue on the current approach vector, prepare for remote piloting.”

Niobe leaned back in her chair and kicked her feet up. “And now the computer takes over and does all the boring parts.”

At least with the computer flying they weren’t going to bounce off an engine nacelle, Theo thought. But he decided to keep his mouth shut. He’d have to work closely with the petty officer and didn’t want to start out with bad blood between the two of them. 

“Are you looking forward to this assignment?” Niobe asked.

“I guess so,” Theo shrugged. “I just wanted to get far away from ESD.”

“I don’t blame you, I’m so glad that I got reassigned out here. After the incident at my last post, I thought I’d be assigned to some backwater transporter post or something.”

“What do you mean incident?” Theo asked.

Niobe waved the comment away. “Nothing really, hardly worth mentioning.”

Theo opened his mouth to ask about it anyway but then quickly shut it. He knew that he wouldn’t want her prying into his own past so, he decided not to say anything, at least not yet. He could always see what he could dig up from her personnel file later anyway. Moments later, the shuttlecraft sailed through one of the smaller docking bays and then settled onto the deck.

Niobe stood up and stretched. “Alright, let’s go meet this CO and hope that he’s not a tightass like my last one.”

Theo said nothing as he stood up. He just hoped the CO wasn’t anywhere anything like their helmsmen otherwise he’d have to seriously reconsider his assignment.