“And this is?” Nathan Kennedy asked as he looked up from the pile of padds on his temporary desk, the topmost of the pile being the subject of his query.

While Atlantis was undergoing repairs, the majority of the crew scattered to the four winds, he’d taken the opportunity to borrow the USS Nyx, with the commodore’s permission, for some training flights with junior officers. But such an endeavour came with a small mountain of paperwork up front as well. Supplies, readiness reports, a dozen intelligence reports for where he was intending to go. And on top of that, more and more requests from Atlantis personnel wanting to go do their own thing over the next few months.

But most of those requests had been sent electronically, not delivered in person.

Lieutenant Commander Gabrielle Camargo stood before him in the small ready room of the Protostar-class USS Nyx, looking ever so much the poster child of Starfleet with a crisp, clean uniform, perfect posture and smile that said ‘I love my job’. “Request for leave for four months,” Gabrielle said, still smiling like she wasn’t expecting any sort of possibility of being denied her request.

“Four months?” he countered, lifting the padd she’d set down and activating it. “That’s a fairly sizeable leave request.”

“It is,” Camargo responded. “Atlantis is going to take a while to be repaired. Then will need to undertake working up exercises before being able to be deployed. I figure another few weeks for resolving shakedown issues once repairs are complete.” She paused for a moment, letting her reasoning for time to sink in before she added the last piece. “And I need some travel time either side of the command extension course I’m wanting to take at Mellstoxx.”

“Command extension course?” Nathan looked the padd over, saw a highlighted section where sponsorship for the course had already been granted. All Gabrielle had to do was get to the academy on Mellstoxx for the next intake on time. He then waited, mulled it over for far longer than he needed to. Watched Gabrielle as best he could in his peripheral vision to see if then smile and relentless positivity would falter.

It did not.

So the straight face he’d tried to present cracked; a slight smile tugged at his mouth as he pressed his thumb to the request, granting it. “You want to keep the second officer position once we get back into space?”

“At a minimum!” Camargo answered excitedly. “But uh, it might way, way too early, but I also want to throw my name in the hat for XO.”

“I’m not going anywhere.” Nathan set the padd down and then waved for Camargo to sit in the one seat opposite him. The ready room wasn’t an expansive retreat for the captain, but a functional, semi-quiet space to get work done, or discuss matters privately away from prying ears.

“Oh, I just thought, with the captain moving on, sorry, commodore, that you’d be taking the centre seat.” Camargo seemed flustered for just a moment, then shook it off. “You have the experience for it, sir.”

“Flattery, Lieutenant Commander?”

“Just stating what I know, Commander.”

Nathan snorted with a shake of his head at that. He wasn’t interested in a command of his own. He had come back to the service to help guide, fill in gaps and teach a new generation of officers before hopefully retiring again to whatever task grabbed his fancy this time. He’d even told Starfleet that when he reapplied in the wake of the disasters over the last year. Told the commodore that when she had selected him for Atlantis as well.

He didn’t want a command of his own.

Did he?

“You’ll need a ride to Mellstoxx,” he stated eventually. Camargo nodded in agreement. “I still haven’t decided which of these young officers is going to be my XO for the next six weeks while we putz about the Federation interior,” he continued, waving at one of the stacks of padds. “We’ll take you to Mellstoxx aboard Nyx. You can be my XO for a week and help me sort out which lieutenant should get a chance at proving themselves once we get you where you need to be. Deal?”

“So, you’re both stuck working repairs over the next few weeks?” Matt asked as he sat down around the large table, directing his question to the two non-officers present. “But you’ll be getting some leave time, right?”

The gaming group had found a reasonably quiet lounge on the station to meet up. Out of the way, comfy space, nice view of ships passing by and tables large enough to accommodate them once a few were pushed together. And no complaints had been heard so far, as long as they cleaned up after themselves.

“Hey, not just them,” Jessica Chu interrupted.

“Yeah, gotta respect the boss lady,” Chuck Handley said, nodding his head in respect to Jessica. “But yeah, we’re all stuck pulling some shifts to help finish cleaning out sections or doing full assessments before we hand over all the work to the yardies. What, another two, three weeks maybe?”

“If that,” Jessica answered. “You and Hito both likely earned yourselves some bonus points and might get off early.”

“Oh yeah,” Hito Tanaka said, clinking a glass with Chuck in celebration. “Chuck’s intuition at it again.”

“Still don’t buy it,” Jessica muttered. “You two are the luckiest bastards I know.”

“Don’t group me in with his black magic,” Hito protested.

“Well, you three get to finish getting Atlantis prepped for serious work, some of us are disappearing off on Nyx with Commander Kennedy.” Kelly Tabaaha, the most senior member of the group now, held her chin high, showing off the dual full pips on her collar. “Six weeks, maybe eight, of putzing about and pretending to do serious work.”

“The commander’s camping trip, eh?” Jessica asked. “Kinda jealous, to be fair. Those Protostar-class ships look pretty sweet. Matt, you going?”

“I wish,” Matt answered, giving Kelly a slightly sad smile as he did so. “Going to take the chance to do some remote coursework, and family are swinging out to catch up, so there’s that as well. Though we should all try and slot in a week or two together. Get some long gaming sessions in, yeah?”

A storm personified in the form of Linal Nerys threw herself into a seat beside Chuck, appearing suddenly alongside a padd sent scattering across the table in displeasure. “Well my plans are ruined,” she growled, then looked up, scanned the assemblage and locked on to Kelly. “Did you say something?”

“No? What? Why?” Kelly stammered.

Matt reached for the padd, reading it briefly and smiling like he’d just read the most magnificent thing ever, handing the padd to Kelly when he was done. “Ladies and gentlemen, may I present USS Nyx’s provisional third officer, Lieutenant Junior Grade Linal Nerys.”

“Oh gods,” Chuck said, then squealed as Nerys elbowed him hard. “I mean, that’s awesome, Nerys. Fantastic opportunity. Love it for you. Please don’t hurt me anymore.”

“Oh, this is going to be fantastic, Nerys,” Kelly said as she passed the padd along. “We’re going to rock it.”

“Yeah,” Nerys grumbled. “Rock it. Woo.” Then she slumped into her chair further. “Right, we all here? What happened last session?”