PLOT

[kavan thelin]

There was a steady hum that restarted as the force field came back up, keeping the inside of the shuttle bay pressurized. It had faltered for a second as a result of an energy glitch, which had been enough to start sucking out pretty much everything in the bay out into space, including ensign Kavan Thelin. The Andorian had managed to grab a hold of a console, and the shield had come on before anyone else had been swept out into the cold vacuum of space, but at least two weeks of rations had been lost. Most likely one of the Earth bound salvage companies that made money picking through the debris that orbited Earth, mostly from the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, would find the crates and resell them. As it was it was not worth the man hours to chase after them.

A lieutenant barked that they should all get back to loading the supplies into the ship. The Andorian nodded, and got back to the grunt labour. That was what this was, simple mindless work. It was not the stuff that a warrior relished doing, but he understood that for every second a dagger spent in battle, it first had to spend hours being crafted. The U.S.S. Enterprise was that dagger. An engineering team was requested to come and check out the force shield, to ensure that it would not falter again and put more lives at risk.

Once the supply shuttle was cleared the next three housed new crew, transported directly from Earth. Though the Enterprise's newest Chief Engineer had managed to revolutionize how things were transported, the new innovations had yet to be put into widespread use throughout the fleet as Starfleet Science was still wanting to test his new calculations. Which meant that while most of the senior staff would come onto the ship via the space station, the bulk of the crew would enter this way.

Which left him standing off to the side as other security officers checked through the new arrival's belongings and marked them off from the crew roster. The dagger was not quite ready to be used, but soon and for one Kavlan Thelin could not wait.

// OPEN //

[sem d. maered]

A sickening feeling of certain doom filled Sem as that brief moment when the shuttle bay force field came and went. His mind filled in that blink of an eye with the image of his bloated body, starved of the oxygen it so desperately needed. And yet despite the fleeting thoughts of letting go and freeing himself from his familial duties, Sem grabbed hold of a ladder rung as his hair and uniform whipped up in the rush of fleeing atmosphere. The hum of the shields filled the air again as the large, gaping aperture was sealed once more. As a small cadre of engineers rushed over to the shield controls to find the source of the shield glitch, Sem watched as the slowly drifting crates of rations tumbled back toward Earth. That could have been any of them. He watched with that feeling of dread retook his stomach. It could have been him. He dismissed his thoughts as he was called back to attention.

He was handed a stack of PADDs with very simple instructions: hand them to the new crew member while scanning their emotions for any hint of negative feedback that might need looking into. As one of the Enterprise's few crew members capable of taking a peek into another person's mind, his empathic ability had granted him one of two positions needed for the assignment. However, it would be granting him neither the attention of the captain nor an honorific that would see him home sooner or safer than his brother Brixem. Handing each PADD to the crew members whose names ended in letters A through M, Sem did as he had been instructed and searched each cranium for what traces of anxiety or nervousness, or depression or aggression, and after concluding that two of the thirty-five men and women who had passed by him personally were of any real threat, he recalled that it was the end of the shift and they would need to be debriefed before being let go. He gathered with the other securities officers assembled for this particular assignment and eagerly awaited their commanding officer to dismiss them.

[kavan thelin]

Eventually, finally the last shuttle of the day had arrived and was checked though. It was well past the end of his shift's duty rotation, but they had not been substituted thanks to the fact that the C shift had been required for other tasks. It had made for a long and fairly ardous shift, but Andorians were used to working under much tougher conditions than the soft cushy ones that Starfleet was used to. Though he did not really like Vulcans, he had to lay the blame for Starfleet's more lax work ethic on the humans who tended to like creature comforts like coffee breaks and working less than 14 hours a day.

As the shift ended the crew began to break off into the social circles that had already begun forming. Some had been preformed from the Academy, others had developed on different ships or in spacedock. Not quite tired enough to simply return to his quarters and fall asleep, the tall Andorian sought out someone who also seemed to have no social circle. Coming upon Sem Maered he grinned, "That was most dull. How about we retire to the mess hall, I have some Andorian ale we could enjoy to celebrate our posting to this fine ship."