((Deck 4, Sick Bay))

“There’s only 8 of us aboard, So we’ll be running three 8 hour long shifts, and when on routine operations we’ll each work 6 days on 2 days off. Beta shift begins at 1400h, so about 2 hours from now. Doctor Lister and Ensign Green will be on duty. Delta shift will be the graveyard shift, that’ll be Ensign Podivinski and Ensign T’Par. Chief Patron and Petty Officer Nixx will be our swing shifters. Alright punks and punkettes, that’s all I got.”

As the group meeting in the middle of the sleek modern sickbay facility broke up, Patron walked over to Doc Lady and caught her as she was hovering back towards her office.

“It’s a grand facility ma’am.” Patron said as he looked around at the large open concept main section.The sickbay itself took most of the central forward section of Deck 4. It had 4 in-patient beds, 2 trauma beds, along with separate rooms that contained, a small 2 table surgical war, an isolation chamber, a small medical lab, and a pharmacy.

“It’s groovy, but it’ll take us a while to get it dialed in, that’s why I got you on the swing shift.” Lady said to Patron who had been her most frequent shift partner during their time on the Blythe together.

Just as Patron was about to ask the Doc to recommend another ‘pop punk’ album for him to listen to when the CO and new gray haired, goateed black clad Commander entered the sickbay.

“Sir! Welcome to sickbay.” The excomp said effectively feigning a cheery disposition as well as her programming would allow

“How’s it going Doc?” Wong said.

“Good, just briefed the team, sir.” Lady said as the other 2 approached.

“I see. I’m just getting a quick tour of the ship from Commander Fields here. He and his team will be attached to us for our mission.”

“Well it’s a pleasure to meet you commander.” The Exocomp replicated an articulating polymerizated fake human right hand and extended it towards the Commander. It was a little thing she was trying out to try and get humanoids a bit more comfortable with her, but it usually had other unintended consequences, like having them think she was even more nuts then she was.

Fields’ eyebrows raised for a quick second before he shook the Doc’s ‘hand’.

“Nice work embarrassing the son of D’Ghor on Khitomer last summer Doc.” Fields said, recalling the random Intel notice that an exocomp doctor had almost started an interstellar incident on a cultural exchange mission at Camp Qa’ Pla.

“Aw…you heard about that.” Her upper power cells glowed(blushing) and one of her foot pads wiggles back and forth(the toe wiggle).

“Yeah, fucker had it coming though.” She added in a lowered voice.

Wong fought the urge to roll his eyes and/or admonish his CMO.

“His house is without honor.” Fields agreed.

“Yeah, that’s what I said.” The exocomp perked back up, realizing that the intel guy wasn’t being facetious or puting her on blast for the incident at all.

“Well, only halfway through the ship so far, so we should probably carry on.” Wong said.

“Thanks for stopping by Cap, nice to meet you Commander.” Lady said.

As Wong and Field departed they heard Doc Lady interact with one of her staff saying “Hey, Podivinski, get over here, I’m gonna turn you into a PhD, you’re only 3 med school credits short of your degree. I need another Doc, not a fucking Pharmacist.” As the door closed.

“Sorry about that too.” the CO said.

“What for? Seems like you got a good bunch here. A bit eccentric, but what crew isn’t at times?” Fields snickered. An Exocomp Surgeon as a CMO was a new one  on him though.

“Seemed like Starfleet slapped a bunch of misfits together and threw us out on the Blythe at times. Sometimes I marvel at some of the things they come up with, other times I think I’m in a madhouse.” Wong admitted.

“The line between genius and psychosis is often pretty fine sir. Alright here we are, main Engineering.” Field stopped at a large set of double doors.

“Wait, main engineering is right next to sickbay? Is that safe?” Wong said.

“As safe as a ship this size can be actually. So its true that the rear of sickbay is right through this wall, but this wall from deck 3 through 5 is a reinforced black wall, and the area can also be condoned off from the rest of the ship by armored bulkhead doors that can lower into place during emergency situations….so everything from that wall rearward on decks 3 4 and 5 along with the engines themselves constitute the ‘secondary hull’ of the ship. No, it doesn’t  separate into 2 ships.” Field smiled, pre-empting Wong’s next question as they walked into main engineering.

“It’s an arbitrary design choice for safety,  and that blast wall also forms one of the main structural spines of the ship as well.”

He stopped, staring at the rear end of an engineer that was hanging out of a jefferies tube to the left of the large warp corps assembly in the middle of the room.”

“Look at this shit! The reaction assemblies got 2 redundant buffers, and what’s that? A filter matrix on the throttle actuator. Unh uh, nope, rip that shit out Boone, Lasage is losing almost a quarter second of reaction time on the impulse drives for literally no tangible increase in safety or efficiency.” Lt. Tesa withdrew from the tube and noticed Fields and Wong standing there.

“Oh hey sirs, sorry, didn’t hear you there.” Tesa said. She has grease or soot smudged all over one cheek, a small cut on her forehead that was starting to coagulate with crusty dried blood, and plasma scorch on the left shoulder of her uniform.

“Lt. We’ve been here like, a grand total of like 27 minutes. What is going on here? Tearing the ship apart already?” Wong asked

“What do you mea…Oh, yeah, is it still bleeding?” Tesa pawed at the little gash on her forehead with the back of her hand.

“You’ll live.” Field said.

“Oh, Commander Fields, this is our Chief Engineer Lt. Kyra Tesa.” Wong introduced them.

“Oh any relation to…”

“No. Ugh…” Tesa turned and walked over to a console next to the warp core and started a simulation model for a few more ideas she had just had.

Wong shook his head and sighed. “And the plasma burn?”

Tesa checked her shoulder, “Oh that, that’s nothing, I was just seeing what would happen if I ever had to manually bypass the EPS feeds away from our new funky crystal power routing matrix thingy.” Tesa said as she pointed upward to the sky blue colored chamber that appeared to be filled with a blur of asymmetrically shaped crystal lattices.

“And?” Wong pressed.

“And it sparked a little bit, no big deal, I got Boone installing a makeshift cowling around the bypass node, we’re good.” Tesa reassured the Captain.

“Selkar, add a level 3 diagnostics on the antimatter injectors for 1330h, I’m gonna start getting ready to install that extra pair of shunts down below the injector assembly… That’s where I got this, should get us warp nine six, maybe nine six 5 in a pinch though… and we’ll be able to cruise at 9.1.” Tesa had pointed at the cut she had received while crawling around under the injector assembly before wandering off to another console.

“Bridge to Captain Wong. Incoming communique from the CC sir, they’d like to discuss plans for re-orbiting the Blythe sahib.” Singh said through the comm.

Wong tapped his comm badge, “Have them stand by, I’ll be right up Lt.”

“Guess the rest of the tour will have to wait. Carry on Lt, uh, just, take your time, we got a 2 year mission ahead of us.” Wong said as he walked towards the main entrance.

“Pacing myself, aye sir.” Tesa said absently as she typed a few notes on a padd.

“Feel free to accompany me to the bridge Commander.” Wong said as the bulkhead double doors whirred as they opened.

“Gladly sir. Mighty kind of you.” Fields motioned the way to the nearest turbolift.

“So, you mentioned you have a variety of different specialists on your team Commander, would you be willing to have your team take some duty shifts in relevant departments as we get our duty roster set, I’m sure there will always be holes that need filling especially with such a small crew. Bridge.” Wong said as they entered the turbo.

“If you didn’t ask, I’d have offered sir. I’ll forward you my team’s certs and quals the first chance I get.” Fields replied.

‘Well this could work out nicely.’ Wong thought to himself.