Rest and Reconciliation

Posted on 08 Nov 2012 @ 9:39am by Lieutenant Scott Parker & Captain Jonathan Holliday

2,449 words; about a 12 minute read

Mission: Episode 02 - Resupply
Location: USS Galileo - Mess Hall, Deck 2
Timeline: MD03 1704hours

[ON]

Down time; Parker was sick of it. He had spent the best part of three weeks living like some kind of alpha quadrant tourist and would be glad to pick up an extra duty shift. Yet here he was, having just boarded the Galileo at the point where the crew was preparing to lap up a bought of shoreleave. At Vega colony, nevertheless, which was frighteningly terrestrial. He felt like a grounded teenager, confined to his room or banned from pursuing his real loves in life. After only five hours of actual work - most of it unwelcome as the crew had their own schedules - he was feeling antsy and unfulfilled. He wanted this ship to make her way back out into space. He wanted to run his department and process the tactical system parameters. He was craving the freedom of Starfleet life, which had been denied to him for almost three years now.

The chronometer had just struck five o clock, meaning that whilst Vega colony was already turned in for the night - save those late workers - San Francisco was sitting down to dinner. That meant, of course, that every manned starship was also preparing to sit down to dinner. For most, particularly enlisted crew, that meant a trip to the mess hall. Scott was no different. He liked to eat in company and take the opportunity to get to understand his colleagues. Friendship was a commodity in an officer's line of work, particularly on such a small vessel.

He stepped through the threshold of the mess hall accessway and immediately unzipped his jacket, grateful to let a little air in and around his body. He may only have been supervising security procedures throughout the afternoon but it had been tedious work. The place was busy; plenty of people were eating, many of them chatting in groups. For such a small ship, it was a surprising sight. He beelined for the bar, smiling awkwardly at two passing crew members. Who was this stranger? This new guy? They seemed curious.

"I'll have a soda if you've got it," he said to the server, further surprised that somebody was present behind the bar. "Lemonade or something like that?"

"Sure, Sir, hold on."

The drink was poured freshly for him, the clear liquid fizzing happily in a slender tumbler. It looked oddly refreshing. Scott was just guzzling the first half of the glass when a tall, red trimmed officer stepped up to the bar next to him. Scott paid the man a brief glance before a flicker of recognition crossed his features. He grinned, turning his body. This was the XO - the rank said it all.

"Jonathan? Jonathan Holliday?" He asked, tilting his head to see the man's face better. "Ha ha, surely that isn't you."

The last few hours of his duty shift had been nothing if not stressful. Between damage reports, power shortages and preparations for the new supplies and crew being moved aboard, John felt like it had been years since he hadn't been looking down at a PADD. Having made his way from the Bridge to the Mess Hall without so much as raising an eyebrow or looking up into the corridor, John had almost subconsciously wandered into the most sociable room on the ship in search of some time off.

It only took a second for his thoughts to be disturbed by a voice that grabbed his attention. It was one that he had heard before, but not for quite a while. Looking up out of sheer interest, Holliday had to study the man's face for a moment before his memory came back to him.

"Parker? I haven't seen you since the Academy? What are you doing on Galileo?"

"Working here, I hope, Sir," replied his former classmate, still blinking in mild disbelief. In the twelve years that had passed since his graduation Scott had yet to bump into anybody from his Academy days. Seeing Holliday, in a command uniform nonetheless, was a real kick in the behind. He shoved a hand out towards the taller man and straightened himself up. "Look at you; red uniform and three pips. You hit command quick."

Looking at Scott was a real blast from the past, it had been years since they had last worked together on anything, and even then it was as cadets, and not as fully fledged officers of Starfleet. Reacting to the hand thrust out to him, the XO returned the favour and shook it warmly. He was pleased to have someone else on board with a tactical background, rather than the majority of scientists that he was surrounded by on a daily basis.

"Not entirely by choice either.." he paused for a second to examine the collar of his colleague before continuing "Lieutenant. I was teaching at the Academy before I was shipped out to help with the Romulan relief mission...then ended up being put in a red uniform and shipped out to Galileo...been here ever since."

The XO had to chuckle for a moment as he thought back to the series of events that had led to him being here. Only a few months ago he was the tactical officer of a starship doing supply runs between faltering Romulan colonies and occasionally transporting the occasional diplomat from planet to planet. Now he was the XO of a vessel that to any observer appeared to have gone to hell and back again in one mission...and they wouldn't be wrong.

"How about you? I...haven't had chance to catch up with some of the crew transfers...although if memory serves we were expecting a Lieutenant to replace Orexil at Sec/Tac?"

Scott decided to take the opportunity to pry into the previous mission; the details of which had been witheld from him. He circumvented his new colleague's question with his own. "Yeah, there's that name again - 'Orexil'. People keep mentioning it to me. What the hell happened on this assignment?"

"I....don't know how much clearance you have but....suffice to say we got our asses handed to us by the Klingons more times than I'd care to count....Kestra Orexil was our Tactical Chief....damn near got herself killed during the repair efforts...she was a damn good officer...one of the best."

Holliday took a moment to look at his boots as he thought over the events of the last few days. Their little ship had taken a battering when it was virtually new out of the box, and the damage meant more than just blown conduits and damaged deck plating.

Parker seemed oblivious but he had lowered his voice to it's naturally soft-spoken state. He put their catch-up to the side for one moment to explain his situation. "They haven't given me a thing, John. No crew manifest, no assignment bill, no co-ordinates..." The new security chief heaved out a sighed and shifted slightly closer to his old classmate. "I didn't even know who the captain was until this morning. Hell, I secured my own transport to the colony. Paid for it, too. Why would a Nova class starship be on such a classified tasking?"

"Suffice it to say..." John started, being ever-mindful of the limitations of what he would be allowed to say to anyone who had not been originally issued with the necessary security clearance to review the Sienna files,
"Starfleet thought we'd be a less interesting target for certain...rogue political elements....and they got it wrong. Damn near got us shot out of the sky, took enough of our crew to virtually cripple us..."

"You said these were Klingons?"

"Yeah...just a few....last time I stopped to count there were half a dozen birds of prey circling, oh and a Vor'cha for good measure...damn near blew us apart if Sienna hadn---"

Grabbing his tongue before he could give any more information away, Holliday sighed and tapped the PADD in his hand against the palm of his free limb, taking a few seconds to think before opening his mouth again.

"If we hadn't have been...fortunate - like I said Scott - I have no idea if you're cleared to know the ins and outs....sorry."

Though his glance was barely reactionary and his eyes reflected sympathy, John could sense the apprehension in the air. Parker wouldn't have denied his jealousy if it had been questioned there and then. He was a latecomer to the academy and was several years older than Jonathan. Seeing the younger man qualified in command and witholding information due to a security classification bothered him. It also bothered him that this crew had been through something so challenging and he hadn't been around to help ease them through it. He was an outsider.

Scratching his stubbled chin, Scott grunted with acknowledgement and nodded, taking a moment to drink his beverage as he surveyed the mess hall. After a moment he turned back to the first officer and sighed. "Fortunate might be a good word. I won't press you on the details, I know it's not your place to tell me. But it's good to see a familiar face around here. Everybody else has been holding me at arms length."

"Yeah I had the same problem when I first came aboard; a soldier surrounded by scientists. I was happy on the phaser range, whilst most of the crew here were happier in a laboratory....trust me you'll get used to it pretty quick. Some of these academics act snotty when they first meet you, but once you've saved their asses from a hoard of rampaging Klingons, they get pretty comfortable with you around."

John had a laugh for a moment as he thought back to those first few days aboard Galileo; it had been less than easy, and for most of it, the XO was happy to stay within the confines of his office where at least he felt a little more appreciated than he had wandering the decks. That was all past him now though, and he was hopeful that his old acquaintence would have the same welcome given time.

"But you," Parker pressed a finger into John's chest and grinned wildly, "you are a lieutenant commander now and scuttlebut says you'll be a full screw by tomorrow evening. I have a real eerie feeling that I'm going to have to get accustomed to calling you 'Sir'."

It seemed that the rumour mill had been working overtime onboard Galileo recently. John had heard nothing beyond the officers that he had been asked to promote during the ceremony tomorrow, and the thought that he himself might have been up for an honour had never even crossed his mind.

"A full Commander huh? I doubt it.I only got the hollow pin a while back and you know how me and those assholes at Command sit together; we're like antimatter and matter without a containment field"

Parker laughed and nodded. "Remember Professor Fipps? He had it in for you in systems engineering. He hated security cadets."

"Yeah...if I remember that guy wanted nothing to do with anyone who wasn't born clutching a hyperspanner. Used to love showing why an anodyne relay was a far better piece of technology than a phaser could ever be."

John had to join in with his classmate and laugh, some of the instructors he had come up against were unfortunately pure academics and had no grasp of the real world, sadly through, these were the men and women who controlled his entrance into Starfleet at the time.

"If I recall he was rather fond of a certain Cadet Parker, and any other student in his class that was looking to go into Ops or Engineering for that matter! You guys always had it easy in those lectures!"

Parker shrugged and looked a little smug. "Yeah? Maybe he did view us with some bias, I guess I can't deny that. Imagine if he could see me now? I'm like some kind of turncoat or traitor. Shifting in the line departments, taking up the security station. He'd flip out."

"More than likely" John replied with another chuckle, taking the time to think back on his days as a raw young cadet and the amount of time and dedication it had taken from each and every one of his classmates to make it through to the end.

"And now here you are on the same little Nova-class as I am, about to be flung back out into space again, small galaxy huh?"

"Might seem that way," replied his colleague, huffing a breath out between pursed lips. "Three weeks it took me to get here. I got the warning order a month ago, before your last assignment and then the billet was filled. There was talk of going somewhere else - I don't know, man, it was just so brutally disorganised. So I've been hopping space stations and starships just to get here. I didn't think the Tynas sector was so far out from the inner systems."

Parker could only shrug, realising that complaining wasn't going to maintain this tentative old friendship. He drank from his glass and took a few moments to monitor the activity in the mess before sighing, yet again, and turning back to the XO. "It's just nice to have an assignment; a starship assignment, not a desk assignment. This is what I signed up for. Any longer on a fixed starbase and I'd have turned my papers in."

"Tell me about it. If I'd been stuck teaching at the Academy a month longer I'd have lost the plot. Sorry to hear about the assignment mess-ups, they didn't exactly plan on Galileo showing up on Vega I don't think."

John looked down at the PADD in front of him, tapping in a few more commands to pull up his schedule before the flashing red message of an impending status update took over the majority of his screen.

"Dammit...listen Scott, I gotta go, there's a board of Starfleet Admirals, with tickboxes at the ready, wanting to know the most recent updates on repairs and if I'm late they'll spend an extra twenty minutes reciting the regulations on timekeeping - mind if I catch up with you later?"

Parker nodded softly and gestured openly with his hand. "Sure, don't let me stop you. We'll get time to talk later, I guess."

"Looking forward to it Lieutenant." John replied, before turning on his heels and heading for the doors.

[OFF]

Lt Cmdr Jonathan Holliday
Executive Officer
USS Galileo

&

Lieutenant Scott Parker
Chief Security/Tactical Officer
USS Galileo

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