"First Watch"
Lt. Cmdr. Shirik Lektar, Chief Operations Officer
Location: Transporter Room 1, Lektar's Quarters, Computer Core, USS Vanguard
Stardate 58806.27, 11h20
***
Four people clad in shipyard overalls stood on the transporter pad. One of them smiled at Shirik. "Bye, Commander."
Shirik gave the worker a nod of acknowledgement and tapped on the control console before her. The familiar whine of the transporter filled the air as the people shimmered away. She stood there for a moment watching the empty place where they'd been. The silence, which she'd been waiting for for months, seemed out of place now that it was there. She locked down the console and stooped to pick up her single duffel that had been beamed over. The ship was officially hers now, and for a few hours or days she would be its only occupant. She grabbed her PADD off the console and left the room, heading down the corridor of Deck 2. Her quarters were conveniently located just down the hall from the transporter room, making for a quick and convenient unpacking. Now that she was allowed to work as an Ops officer and not an engineer, she had much to do to prepare for the arrival of the other department heads and crew. The ship had been fully certified just that morning, but was nowhere near ready for the actual launch yet.
The doors whooshed open on her new quarters. Conveniently located between the counseling office and sickbay. She wondered if that had been intentional on someone's part. She waited until the door closed behind her and the darkness enfolded her, then stood silently for several moments more, listening, her heat vision examining the room.
Of course no one was there, she was the only one on board. But she still checked, something inside her never letting her feel completely safe.
"Computer, lock the door. Authorization Lektar-alpha-two-two-seven." The computer chirped its compliance, and only then did she move into the bedroom, leaving the room in darkness.
A tension had taken hold of her as soon as she entered the quarters, and it wasn't alleviated until she opened her pack on the bed and removed from it her most valued possession - her kemla. The blade had saved her life several times, and these days she never quite felt safe unless it was on her person. There had been many nights when only the feel of it in her hand had allowed her to sleep.
She laid the blade on the bed and decided she would need at least some light in which to complete her unpacking. "Computer, lights to 30% of standard." The light in the bedroom came on just enough to let her make out the objects in her pack, that her heat vision wouldn't be able to pick out in the dark.
She moved to the dresser and opened the bottom drawer, the drawer that would be the home for most of her collection until she packed them back up again. They were items she seldom or never used, but things she couldn't simply get rid of, either.
Into this drawer went the case holding her commendations and medals, which came out of the drawer only when she was required to wear them for some official function. Following the case was the padded velvet bag containing her sundvas, the flute-like musical instrument from her homeworld that she played only once since joining Starfleet. Next an isolinear chip, containing a holodeck program she had never run. Lastly, a small box, containing the Bajoran friendship bracelet given to her by Sorg Jurell. She closed the drawer, enfolding the items in darkness.
There were a few items left. On top of the dresser she placed a holoimage of her family. No such image actually existed, she had made this one from separate images of the individuals, pasted together to look like they had been gathered in a group. She herself was not in it. In the image, no one was smiling. All but one of them was now dead. Beside it she placed an image of two Vulcans, a man and a small boy beside him. They weren't smiling either, although the boy had a mischievous glint in his eye. Accompanying the holoimages on the dresser's surface was a brush given to her by her longtime bodyguard Voren when they met at Starbase 12.
For a long moment she stared at the image of the two Vulcans, as memories and emotions resurfaced. He too was dead, or missing, only the boy still lived, but she'd likely never see him again. Technically under Vulcan law he was her son, but her people would never see him that way.
Into the top drawer went a few articles of clothing she had brought from her homeworld back when she attended the academy. She seldom wore them. And the last item, a small round terrarium covered in black fuzz. She knew the Vanguard didn't have an arboretum, so she's have to be creative in finding a place to plant some.
Packing complete, she picked up her kemla from the bed and just studied it in her hands. There would be a new crew, a new security chief, a new captain. She didn't know if she'd be allowed to wear it this time. It seemed every ship she managed to kill at least one person with it, whether she wanted to or not. She strapped it on her thigh and decided to wait and see what would happen.
"Computer, unlock the door." When the chirp sounded she stepped through. "Computer, lights out." She would have to take time later to reprogram the computer in her quarters to her standard security and command protocols. But for now she had work to do. She consulted her PADD and saw that crew were already beginning to be assigned. She raised an eyebrow as she saw who the new XO was going to be. "Hmm." she mused, surprised that already she would know someone, but now instead of her equal he would be her boss. Perhaps she would get to keep her kemla this trip after all. The thought brought a small smile to her lips and she went back down the corridor the way she'd come to arrive at the turbolift. The doors whooshed open and for a moment she stood there looking into the empty space of the lift. A lot of unpleasant things had happened in turbolifts over the years. She took a breath and stepped inside. "Computer Core."
The lift moved sideways, took a turn, then went down two decks before turning again and finally opening into another corridor. She headed down the hall a short distance then into another door. Here the two twin cores filled the room and went up another deck. It had been her first posting as an Ops Officer so long ago on the Sulu. This room was smaller than that one had been, but not by much. She went to the controls and started running final checks on all systems, making sure everything was ready. She made sure all vital systems were fully powered up from the batteries, including life support, gravity, inertial dampeners, and replicators. The main warp core wouldn't be put online until the Chief Engineer arrived and ran his final checks. Until then the batteries, recharged constantly by the umbilicals to the drydock frame, would power things.
While she was there she started going over the locations of various crew quarters, already assigning those that would be used by the senior staff, as they had dedicated spaces on board.
She would spend her shift alone on board checking all the ship's systems. She made a tour of the entire ship, retracing the paths the inspection crew had taken, from the bridge down to the landing struts, making sure everything was in order. The ship was ready, she was ready. She just needed to wait now.
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