Welcome Aboard

Posted on 21 Jun 2017 @ 2:48pm by Lieutenant Sterek & Commodore Harvey Geisler

1,221 words; about a 6 minute read

Mission: The Finnean Crisis
Location: Various
Timeline: MD 4 || 1930 Hours

It was the USS Avalgariad which dropped him off; his old assignment, with a few new faces amongst the old. Sterek had made an effort to introduce himself to them. Whilst vulcans tended toward the antisocial, it was Sterek's opinion that a physician who didn't know how to interact with people was like an engineer who never learnt how to properly handle their tools. He'd been a doctor for long enough to know that you couldn't just sever the patient from the condition.

They'd seemed to like him, anyway. The pictures of Eddy had garnered a number of compliments. She was no doubt waiting in his quarters by now, having been beamed in and released from her carrier by a helpful member of Ops. He was going to make that his first port of call - after, of course, he'd reported to the Captain. He tapped his commbadge as he stepped off the transporter pad.

"^Lieutenant Sterek to Captain Geisler.^"

Captain Geisler sat in the Ready Room, pouring over the intelligence Lieutenant Corwin had managed to gather thus far. Tomorrow afternoon he had the unfortunate pleasure of negotiating for the return of Deep Space Fifteen. An all-out assault was out of the question for multiple reasons. Aside from Task Force Command wanting to distance themselves from the Consortium scourge that had soured the name of Starfleet in the Gamma Quadrant, Starfleet was in a rebuilding phase. If Starfleet managed to fight their way back into the Finnean Sector, both the Rakhari and the Selubassari could just as easily retake it, and make interstellar relations far more difficult.

When his combadge chirped, Harvey didn't even look up from his pile of PADDs. He recognized the name, one of a few late arrivals to the Black Hawk that was dedicated to the medical department. He reached up and tapped his badge. "This is the Captain. Go ahead, Lieutenant."

"^I am aboard ship and ready to report in, sir.^"

Sterek walked as he spoke. Gazes flicked toward him and away again as he rounded the corner into the corridor. Even now, after almost twenty years, there was the occasional blink of recognition; his face had done the rounds on various Federation media channels, after all, and vulcan faces did not change so quickly as human ones. The Aidoni Nine, they'd called them, which seemed odd, as if the three who hadn't survived had never been there at all. But he was long past the point where those looks even glanced off his emotional barriers. There was something to be said for the healing properties of time.

Harvey glanced at the chronometer on his desktop terminal. It wasn't yet late, but given their current mission, deferring this until the next day was not an option. "Proceed to the Ready Room, Lieutenant," he instructed.

"^Acknowledged, Captain. On my way. Sterek out.^"

The vulcan stopped to check a nearby wall display, and then continued on, meeting every searching look with a polite nod.

The sight that greeted Harvey Geisler in the doorway to his Ready Room was a tall, wiry vulcan male, wholly unremarkable except for the unusual shortness of his hair - making it stick up in a slightly disorderly way that most of his kind probably wouldn't have tolerated. Sterek stood to attention and offered a Vulcan salute.

"Lieutenant Sterek, reporting for duty, sir."

Harvey looked up from his PADDwork to see the newly arrived Lieutenant. The Captain had served with many Vulcans before, but his service aboard the Black Hawk had been quite devoid of them. To have more than one set of Vulcan ears aboard should prove these next few missions interesting.

The Captain raised his right hand and returned the salute, an exercise quite simple for Harvey. "I trust your transit was uneventful." That is, unless the Vulcan arrived on the same runabout as Lieutenant Jaxer which in turn had a nearly fatal experience landing in the shuttlebay.

Sterek inclined his head in acknowledgement of the Captain's gesture. "Acceptably so. I understand there have been other recent arrivals who were not so fortunate." He'd heard the shuttlebay personnel discussing the incident as he disembarked. "Is there any assistance I can offer?"

Harvey lowered his hand. Like the rest of those who'd reported to him already, the Captain gestured towards one of the empty chairs, offering the gentleman a seat if he so desired. "Thankfully no one was injured, though I'm certain the engineers are not looking forward to repairing the damage, especially right before a mission begins. I would, however, recommend checking in with Doctor Kij as soon as you're done here."

"I am required to report into sickbay anyway as per Starfleet Infectious Disease guidelines item 10.9." He tilted his head slightly. "I trust you have been apprised of my status? Previous captains have required reassurance in person that I am not a threat to the rest of the crew. With periodic treatment, the virus is essentially dormant in my system and cannot be transmitted to others in its present state."

The disease, snappily named XHdIL-V2, was one of those tricky entities which basically encoded itself into the host's immune system; unlike other pathogens it could not simply be filtered out during transport, but fortunately it needed nothing more than a quarterly dose of antivirals to stay benign.

For a non-Vulcan, Harvey was certainly a professional at arching his left eyebrow, an exercise that he just now demonstrated. He hadn't noted that piece in the Vulcan's file and Harvey raised a mental flag to make sure that he reviewed it again. "I'm afraid I'm not aware," Harvey explained. "I practiced medicine in a former life, so I would simply caution you to maintain those regular intervals."

Sterek showed no reaction to Harvey's surprise, but then he was Vulcan, after all. "Please rest assured that I will, Captain," he said gravely. "The details should be in my medical history, but with your understanding of medicine, I doubt you will find them a point of concern."

"Concern, unlikely," Harvey replied, straightening in his chair. "Light bedtime reading, probably so."

"Xenotropic viruses are a fascinating area of study," he agreed, then paused. "You mentioned the crew were about to embark on a mission - will I have access to the relevant briefing materials on my console, or will I require an in-person briefing?"

"A general brief is available to all crew. To summarize, we're on a mission to Finnea Prime where a Federation outpost was recently overrun. Our objective is to recover the base, restore the balance of power, and tend to whatever issues may be lingering on Finnea Prime." Harvey left out the matters introduced in the senior staff briefing as they had been rendered top secret, especially where the probe was concerned. Any of the other details regarding the station, planet and the Selubassari had been made available to the crew.

"Thank you, Captain." Sterek quickly filed the information away in his mind, and made a mental note to read up on the situation as soon as possible. "Was there anything else you wished to discuss?"

The Captain shook his head. "Not at this juncture, no. I'll leave you to it then, Lieutenant. Welcome aboard."

Sterek nodded. "Peace and long life, Captain. It is an honour to serve," he said, and headed out.

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