—- Chief Counselor’s Office, USS Seattle —-

The new Assistant Chief Counselor looked a bit taken aback by the news that she would at least temporarily be the Chief Counselor. Assignments on the edge of Federation space did not come along that often and she had taken this position to assist the Chief Counselor and not to be her. Yet it was hard to fault her new (and now old) boss who was clearly not happy with this situation either.

”The Captain is just short a First Officer on this mission so I got promoted seeing as I’m the Second Officer, and so you’ll have to handle most of the Chief Counselor’s duties for the time being,” Lieutenant Yuhiro Kolem said with a smile. She could feel the uncomfortableness coming off her new colleague, and did not blame the woman at all.

Lieutenant Junior Grade Torma nodded, and tried to smile at the half Betazoid, but felt anxious about it. This was her first posting as even an Assistant Chief and now she was being moved up, even if temporarily. This Was also coming off the back of a very difficult conversation where it had been explained to her that the reason the ship was predominantly staffed by women was that the male members of the crew had been poisoned and it was still recovering from that.

”Look I get it, I’m not a First Officer and yet I’m being thrust into the role,” Kolem said, “We learn on the job, you’ll learn and I’ll be handling sessions when I can get away from being Number One.”

Torma nodded her bright eyes lighting up, “And you’ll be back soon right?”

”Of course I’m not ready to be a full time XO yet, I’ve got years to go before that happens, no matter how short staffed the Fleet is,” Kolem said, hoping that sounded reassuring.

—- Ready Room, USS Seattle —-

The Captain waited as the door slid shut behind the new addition to her team. Part of the transfer of the USS Seattle to Task Force 86 had been that the teams needed some hardening. Previously they’d been on primarily a scientific and diplomatic posting and now they’d be handling all sorts of issues at the border. The USS Seattle was a ship that “punched above its weight“ but the small Rhode Island class was meant for going out and studying the unknown not cargo inspection duties. More over the crew had been built around the first job, and it was important now that the ship’s mandate was changing to bring in people with more specialized skills.

”Take a seat Lieutenant Avila,” Captain Adriana Cruz said, “Welcome to the USS Seattle, I trust you found your cabin and everything.”

The Angosian woman smiled and nodded, “I have Captain, thank you and thank you for the welcome.“

”So let me give you the lay of the land, the USS Seattle is a Rhode Island-class we’re small and we’re tough but by no means do we want to get mixed up in larger fights if we can avoid it,” Cruz said from behind her desk. Rhode Island-class ships were not that common but they were close enough in design to other exploratory or science classes that most officers were able to understand its advantages and limitations fairly easily.

Cruz continued, “Now that we’ve been reassigned to Task Force 86 we’re going to be handling more aggressive duties, I assume. So one thing that we don’t have is a Hazard Team, which I’ve brought you in to establish and lead.”

Avila nodded she had assumed as much, she had lead a Hazard Team on the USS North Star and as Starfleet was currently recovering from the Borg attack on Fleet Day her skills had been in demand. She doubted that she’d be able to recruit many people, the ship was small and at ninety crew was already near its capacity. This was not a five hundred person craft with space for another twenty. Still it was worth asking, “Would I be able to bring people on?”

Cruz nodded, “If you can think of anyone who’d fit in, sure. However we’re pretty full and even with a few people moving on it may be hard to get too many new people in so make them count. Overall I’d like you to draw from Security and now we have a ten person intelligence ops team who you can draw from.”

The Lieutenant nodded, “I also tend to like to add medical and an Operations crew member or two.”

”Of course, right now we’re down an Assistant Chief Medical Officer but we have nurses who have triage and field experience,” Cruz said.

”I’ll start taking a look at the crew roster and creating a team right away,” Avila said.

”I’d like it to be flexible, but I imagine we’ll be handling ship inspections and small scale planetary landing parties,” Cruz said.

Avila nodded, already getting an idea of what tasks lay before her.

—- Starbase 415, Section E Lounge —-

The Chief Engineer of the USS Seattle was drinking. While the ship had come out of Cardassian space unscathed it had been a harrowing journey for Lieutenant Commander James Young. He was not a particularly active social butterfly, so having gotten into a deep relationship with Assistant Chief Medical Officer T’Rala had been surprising to him, and also important. Now she’d stayed behind on a planet full of lost Romulans, breaking up with him in the process. Neither T’Rala or the crew knew when she was going to be back. 

The Romulan governments had been contacted, but it was unknown when they could get a ship out to the lost colony and how they’d treat a Starfleet Officer let alone one that was biologically Romulan. There was a chance that Doctor T’Rala never got back to the USS Seattle. Even if she was returned to Federation space, she might be returned to another ship.

Young had always been focused on engineering problems and hadn’t really reached out for anyone before he’d found T’Rala or rather she had found him. Now he didn’t know what was going to happen next, would he end up with his engines as his true mate or was there more to life.

He was studying the bubbles in his beer when he head the metal on metal scrapping of a chair being pulled out from under the table. Looking up Young saw the dark skinned Lieutenant Diya Acharya the USS Seattle‘s Chief Diplomatic Officer. He’d not really spoken to her outside of mission briefings as she was new to the ship, and in all honesty he did not spend as much time thinking about the politics of it all and just wanted to focus on his engines and taking care of them.

”Hey,” he said.

”Hey yourself. Why so glum?” Lieutenant Diya Acharya asked sitting down. She had with her a plate of papadams and a second plate of dips to go along with it, “It’s Doctor T’Rala right?”

”Yeah,” Young nodded.

”Have a papadam, it’s harder to be depressed when you’re full of papadams,” Acharya said.

Young reached out and took one of the flat breads, dipping it into a not-so-spicy dip that Acharya suggested and then he folded it in half and stuck it in his mouth beginning to chew. He had not had a lot of experience with non-Western (Earth) foods so though Indian food was popular around the globe back home it seemed as exotic as eating a plate full of something Vulcan.

When he finished chewing he nodded, “It’s good.”

”See impossible,” the Lieutenant smiled. 

“I guess you’re right,” Young agreed.

”Now you’re here, happy, and full of papadams,” Acharya said, “What do you want to do? We’ve got a whole Starbase it’s time to live a little.”

”Have you ever heard of baseball?” James asked.