—- USS Seattle, Holodeck 1 —-

Lieutenant Junior Grade William Hume hurt in muscles that he did not even know he had. As Lieutenant Commander Jake Dornall the ship’s Chief Intelligence Officer helped him to his feet it was clear that one of them had years of experience under his belt and the other was named William Hume. 

Lieutenant Rebecca Avila who was over seeing everything was walking through the remainder of the Hazard Team that she was assembling and shook her head. Even though they had yet to add in Operations or Science personnel they were still too soft. The members of the tight knit intelligence team worked well together with their own, but trying to meld the ship’s security and intelligence departments into one was not going smoothly. 

“Maybe a break?” suggested the Chief Strategic Operations Officer Eleanore Dorian in her Irish accent. 

Avila nodded, “Yeah okay, we’ll all rest and come back at sixteen hundred hours for another session.”

Nurse Chief Petter Officer Rachel Smith was attending to Rosa Flores who had broken her wrist when she’d fallen from a Borg bridge onto a lower level, “Come on I’ll take you to Sick Bay to get patched up.”

The team shuffled out defeated. Aside from the intelligence officers they were still unfamiliar with their new roles as enforcers. They were fine probably for shipboard security duties, but the task Avila had been given was to assemble a Hazard Team to deal with tense away missions that stemmed from the USS Seattle’s new role as a border enforcement asset. So ten intelligence officers could not be all that she had to rely on.

Dornall slapped Hume on the back, “We’ve got a few hours want to grab a coffee or something on the Promenade of Starbase 415.”

Non pulsed Hume shrugged, “Sure.”

The two men were not friends, and not just because Dornall was dating Hume’s ex-girlfriend Lieutenant Kolem. Hume was not sure how long the intelligence officers planned to be on the USS Seattle, and did not like how things had gone down with them running a questionable operation out of the ship when they had gone deep into Cardassian territory to rescue an old war informant. Still there was no point in not being friendly, and the one thing the offspring of two Starfleet Officers had been taught was that you had to get along with all types of people.

—- Starbase 415, Section E —-

The Assistant Chief Of Security for the USS Seattle took a seat. The Chief Intelligence Officer took the other as the pair settled into a two seater in an English Themed Pub on the station’s Promenade. Though Hume had never been to England there had been enough English influences in Vancouver to support a few pub’s that stuck him as more authentic than this one that was run by a Bolian. 

“You ever been to England?” he asked Dornall as he took a sip from his pint of beer.

”Never been to Earth, I heard good things though,” The Risian answered. 

“It’s lovely, I’ve never been to Risa,” Hume said.

”I thought all humans made the trip to Risa, to get your debauchery in,” Dornall said.

Hume coughed on his drink, not sure if the other man was kidding or not. Certainly the planet of Risa had a reputation as a destination that many young Starfleet officers hoped to experience. Hell it was said that they had over two hundred Nuvian masseuses on the world, which given how sore he felt right now sounded great.

”Well maybe one day but you know I have a girlfriend,” Hume said.

Dornall smiled, “Good. I’m glad to hear it, given your history with Lieutenant Kolem.”

Hume sighed, this was the topic he had hoped would not come up but he feared it was inevitable, “Look man, I screwed up. I was hurt and angry and I did something stupid. I’m not going to be a problem for you okay.”

Dornall nodded, “I know. I just wanted to check, and besides you seem like a fine guy. You screwed up, we all do. Just I know Kolem is special, and I’d hate for her to get hurt.”

”I’m done hurting her, okay,” Hume said, “Fact is the last interaction we had she recruited me into a cult after she became a god and we tried to take over the ship.”

Dornall nodded, “I read the reports. Betazoids can be freaky sometimes.”

”We all can be,” Hume said.

“So explain hockey to me, I never got the appeal,” Dornall said, changing the subject to something a little more comfortable.

—- Sánchez Family Vineyard, Just Outside Mexico City —-

Ernesto smiled, Andrés Sánchez watched him get in the shuttle and head across the city and along with his half-sister Captain Adriana Cruz waved a good-bye. Once the shuttle had disappeared from sight he nodded at his sister.

”You know you could have any job at the winery you wanted,” Sánchez said. 

“I know you think that, but I’m only good at being a Captain. I’m afraid I’d be terrible at everything else. Besides he wants a wife, not a whatever I’d be,” Cruz said turning back to the large villa.

Her half-brother made a noise that suggested he did not agree but was not going to argue about it. While it had been easy enough for him to translate his science background from Starfleet to the winery he knew that it was not so simple for his half-sister. She might make a good people manager but she was headstrong and willful good qualities in a Captain but they often needed tempering for civilian life.

”It’s not over, he’s coming out to Risa on my next rotation,” Cruz said.

”Risa? I can’t believe you’re my sister, dirty dog,” Sánchez teased. 

Cruz rolled her eyes, knowing the double standard that allowed male crew members to go to the planet and get celebrated for it and females to have their moral characters questioned. While she could tell that her half-brother was teasing she doubted that he’d have made a similar joke if she were a man.

“He needs to get off Earth and I would have suggested a bunch of other locations but Risa was the instantly appealing one,” Cruz said, “For some reason Vulcan just doesn’t have the same allure.”

”Do you think you’ll ever settle down? Or are you a lifer,” Sánchez asked.

”I don’t feel like I’d fit in well with the Admirals, but I’d like a long mission to explore,” Cruz said, “A five year mission or something like the original Enterprise, USS 1701.”

Sánchez nodded, “That’s what I always wanted, but I kept getting stuck on short assignments. Fighting pirates or something.”

”Or getting taken over by an ancient god from a dead civilization,” Cruz joked.

Her half-brother smiled, “Yeah, that was something. After that, well what’s the point. It was the new worlds and new civilizations that were missing. Now though I’m helping my family and making wine.”

Cruz smiled, and held back from saying dramatically that she had not family. Sánchez was only a recent addition to her life, and her mother had passed long before the father that she had never met. She’d gotten used to being alone, and felt no obligation to another person. Instead her life was her own, which was why she was not looking to last herself to a man who’d never left the planet Earth or wanted to see beyond the stars.