[Engineering]

It was exacting work. Though the ship was newly refurbished there was maintenance to be done and with most of the engineering team either sleeping or on the colony planet helping to setup defense batteries it was left to Chief Engineer Lieutenant James Young and his upstart Assistant Chief Engineer Chief Petty Officer Vanessa Constable to perform. A few yellow suited engineers wandered past but the pair was left along with Young flat on his back as he tugged at isolinear chips from beneath a console for the other engineer to scan.

”I didn’t realize this promotion came with more work,” Constable complained handing back a fistful of chips.

”More interesting work,” James countered and the woman’s laugh told him what she thought of that. Granted this was pretty much the most mundane thing that they could be doing, but this time in orbit was perfect for these routine repairs that could not be done at warp speed, or when you needed to move quickly. It was probably too early in the Anaheim’s deployment to do them, but better to check them off now than to wait until it was much later. 

Vanessa Constable was gruff, a “proper union woman” as his grand father would have said. It was as if she timed travelled from the days that they still used money and worked for a living instead of just worked to better themselves and had a beef about seizing the means of production from the plutocrats. Young increasingly was liking her despite himself. She was smart, and funny but in a mean and cutting way. Mostly she was going to keep him honest, which he figured every department head needed.

Putting the last of the chips in place he scanned the console with a tricorder and said, “I’m getting a 98.8% through rate, you got the same?”

Starfleet manuals wanted anything more than 97%.

Picking up her own tricorder she nodded, “Sounds about right.”

”What do you think of the Andorian, is he single?” Constable asked.

Young shifted beneath the console uncomfortably, “Umm you mean Chief Security Officer Th’kaotross?”

“Yeah,” Constable said as she keyed in a change in coding.

Young had known that was who she met. There weren’t many Andorians on the mainly medical focused ship, and as far as he knew the Chief of Security was the only one that Constable had any regular dealings with now that she was an assistant department head. 

“I can’t really say. We’re friends, sort of, but we haven’t talked about that. I do know he’s not married and doesn’t have anything back home in terms of like a wife or fiancé,” Young said, not wanting to get involved in the private lives of his friends and crew mates. He had his engines and his own life to lead, those were confounding enough without worrying about what his Assistant Chief Engineer and the Chief of Security got up to off hours. 

Constable made an interested ‘hmmpphhing’ sound that Young was not sure how to interpret but no more questions about the personal lives of their crew mates came his way, which he was glad for. The pair moved down the line to take a look at the shield output, and the conversation moved on.

[Sickbay 1]

The hypospray hissed as the drug went into Lieutenant Junior Grade Yuhiro Kolem’s bloodstream. She closed her eyes and the pain eased off her face as it took effect. Near the end of the eight hour dose of the medication the empathic powers that she had had since she was born had begun to return and with it the sense of loss, and pain emanating both from the colony below and now the crew onboard the Anaheim. A suppressor drug was needed to keep her, well keep her limited to her human half at least until they moved away from the planet.

Doctor Va’Tok tilted his head and studied the half-Betazoid curiously. It was clear he had a question, one did not need to be empathic for that, but that he also knew enough about human interactions to not probe a patient.

”You want to know what it’s like not to be empathic suddenly?” Kolem asked. Sitting up on the examination table.

The Assistant Chief Medical Officer nodded, “Vulcans of course are not as empathic, but we have our own abilities. I am more curious about your experience finding them limited than the abilities itself, as Betazoids and partial Betazoids have written many accounts of their experiences.”

Kolem sighed, “It’s sort of like being blind. Like okay, you’re usually a blank void, but Doctor Mueller over there usually feels like something. I can ’sense’ her even without reaching out to see her specifically. Maybe the closer analogue would be like you can hear her breath, even without fully focusing on her she’s a presence you’re aware of. Now there’s just nothing, nobody.”

The Vulcan nodded, “That was a very articulate description Counsellor. Thank you. For a Betazoid I imagine it is lonely suddenly being alone in this way.”

”It is actually yes,” Kolem said surprised that the Vulcan doctor was so emotionally perceptive as to acknowledge that. Of course being in the medical field he would not have gone far had he not had some degree of humanized bedside manner. At least not in Starfleet, which valued such things.

It was true, without her empathy she felt cut off from the crew. If only because one of her senses had gone dead.  Even if only temporary and for a good reason, the result was disconcerting. 

Va’Tok set the hypnospray down, “I am incapable of providing the service you do to the ship. You do a very good job Counsellor. I believe we were skeptical of you at first, given your relative inexperience and high position. Yet on this mission you have continually proven yourself invaluable.“

Kolem understood that by saying ‘us’ and ‘we‘ instead of talking about himself he was also meaning Chief Medical Officer Doctor Michelle Mueller as well. Despite their recent bonding the two women had not seen eye to eye at first, in part because Captain Hawthorne had taken an instant and irrational liking to the Counsellor based only on her being half-Betazoid like the old Enterprise-D‘s Diana Troi and him not liking doctors that much. Now it seemed that Doctor Mueller was warming up to her, as much as the woman ever warmed up to anyone. In fact Va’Tok seemed like the more human of the two doctors, despite being the Vulcan in the medical bay.

“Thank you Doctor,” Kolem said.

And the Vulcan nodded. Kolem waved a wave of thanks to Mueller but did not interrupt the woman who had her hand in a man’s chest to talk. Instead she slid off the bed and done, at least until her next dose, headed for the door of sickbay.

Complicated cased from the colony were being brought onboard, where the facilities were better. There were not that many any more, allowing the medical teams to focus on second and third level triage cases that would require more time and effort.

[Nine Forward]

”Is this like a date?” Thomas Winfield grinned at the half-Betazoid who looked far less than impressed with the statement. He leaned back in the booth and smiled at the woman, he knew that this was not a date at all, but It was not HIS job to make her feel at ease in this moment. That came when he was flying something like a shuttle or the Anaheim. Here in the lounge, he was just a guy in the lounge.

”I thought that you would be more comfortable here for out initial appointment than my office which is a bit more formal. This is not a date, I’m assigned as your therapist so you can talk to me as you experience issues either as part of your personal or professional life,” Kolem explained, fairly certain her fellow Lieutenant Junior Grade understood all of this already and was just being a smart ass.

”Assigned by who?” Winfield asked, “Yourself.”

Kolem shrugged, “There are two of us, the computer divided the ship’s roster up randomly and unless we have specific reasons or conflicts we just took that. But yes, I guess to get to the root of your question I could hand you off to Lieutenant Dravin if I wished.”

”Do you ever dress like Troi?” 

Kolem glared at him, then relaxed, “I am not Counsellor Troi.“

”Right but she got to wear like weird non-uniform clothes,” Winfield said.

”The outfits were Betazoid in nature, and yes. Counsellors can often dress differently as some find it helps set the crew at ease. However I have, as Troi did later in her career, selected a Starfleet uniform as the appropriate clothing opiton. Now unless you have other questions involving a woman who I have never met, please can we discuss you?” Kolem asked, seeming to try to reign in her anger. 

Winfield knew better than to keep pushing, especially since he had become better friends with Ensign William Hume in security than anyone else on the Anaheim and the two were dating or something. Winfield didn’t know the nature of the relationship, but knew that Hume would be annoyed if he deliberately made the woman’s life that much harder.

“Alright I’ll back off,” Winfield said holding his hands palms facing the therapist as if in surrender to a Klingon prison guard. 

Kolem smiled, “Thank you. I apologize everyone is on edge, so tensions can flair. How are you holding up with the mission we’re on?”

Winfield shrugged, “I just fly the shuttles. I get that digging through the rubble is hard, and I see how the teams I take back to the ship are spent and worn out but honestly I’m just a chauffeur most of the time. I’m definitely not getting it to the same extent that everyone else it.”

“Tension can be contagious, you don’t need to get it first hand. Someone is rude to you, then you take it out later on someone else. In Starfleet we’re taught that any problem has a solution. Heck even the unwinnable scenario at the Academy was famous for James Kirk winning it. Problem, solution. The reality is though that life isn’t as clean or simple as that,” Kolem said, reasonably. 

Winfield nodded. She was right. The Academy, as great as it was, hard an optimistic and rosy picture of the universe that did not alway translate to real life. Everyone, it assumed, would eventually work together and peace could be achieved even with our deadliest enemies. Even the Borg would one day join the Federation and link arms in unity.

”Look I’m not actually a jerk. I just play up the bravado a bit. One of my dads is runs a restaurant. He says you can have the best chef but if he’s a jerk to the rest of the staff get rid of him quick because a kitchen is already tense and you don’t need that in there. I get it, I don’t want to be the guy making things worse for everyone else,” Winfield said.

”What kind of food does he make?” Kolem asked.

”Like New Orleans flavors,” Winfield said.

”That’s a region on Earth right?” Kolem had never been.

”Yeah. It’s like spicy food. Gumbo and soups, crawfish and stuff,” Winfield said.

”It probably sounds scandalous to you then but I’ve never eaten real food,” Kolem confessed.

“Seriously? How?” 

Kolem shrugged, “My father was a lecturer and didn’t prioritize that stuff. Then he died and my mom had to raise us and replicator meals were quick and easy. Then the Academy, and then I’ve been in Starfleet ever since. No real chance.”

Winfield slapped the table dramatically, “Okay when we get back to Starbase 72 I’ll take you for real food. Hume too. We’ll get something, anything, that’s not out of a replicator.”

Kolem laughed, “It’s a date.”

”A date?”

”Like on a calendar, not a date date. Unless you’re going to start dating Ensign Hume too,” Kolem smiled.

”You never know,” Winfield grinned.

[Navigation Lab]

”Tsskkk’ clickkkkkiikkk,” Lieutenant Scchhttt’aaakkk said. 

His Assistant Navigation Officer disagreed, “Chiiippp kkkrrr, hhhrrrr kkkk.”

Scchhttt’aaakkk splashed some water on the ground from his tank to make the point and looked up at the monitor. No, his way was the better way, what did his Assistant Chief know anyway, this would save them ten kilometers on their return trip to Starbase 72. Why would they not take it, even if it was a tiny savings out of the full percentage of the trip.

Sometimes you just couldn’t reason with an Orca.