A New Beginning

Posted on 01/29/2020 @ 10:04pm by
Edited on on 02/28/2020 @ 7:04pm

Mission: S1E1: Out of the Barn
Timeline: Day 1 at 1230

The transporter had been docked at the Starbase for almost four hours, and they were still stuck inside. It had been three days of pure hell, trapped in a tin can that seemed to be suffering from perpetual environmental issues. The recycled air wasn't being filtered properly and the smell of sweat and body odor hung in the air around them. The replicators weren't working properly, so the crew of the transporter had taken to handing out ration packs, though judging by the smell of them they had likely gone rancid. All in all, Maddie was glad the stench of body odor had turned her appetite.

The child sitting behind her had spent a large part of the journey entertaining itself by kicking her seat and pulling her braids. She would have turned around and scolded him herself if it wasn't for the fact that she truly felt sorry for the mother who had spent the entire trip trying to placate an infant that did not want to be soothed, did not want to be fed, and did not want to sleep. Judging by the teeth, which were constantly on display amid angry screams of protest at their situation, Maddie assumed the infant to be predominantly Klingon and was probably going to be prone to biting, an assumption proved correct when she tried to be nice and offered to hold the infant for a while so the mother could rest. For her kindness she got a perfect set of infant sized tooth prints in her upper arm, her shoulder and her wrist.

Now, all she wanted was a long soak in a hot tub and then a solid twenty four hours of sleep before she had to start her first duty shift, and she was close, so close... except it had been four hours since they had docked at the Starbase and they were still no closer to being allowed off the transporter.

Why?

Because one of the scientists that had been travelling on the transporter had dropped a small vial and shattered it. Unfortunately for all of the passengers on the transporter, he had failed to adequately label the vials and his manifest showed that he was carrying sealed spores retrieved from an Iocraskess plant, which, when inhaled, reacted with lung alveoli and ended up developing bacterial plague like symptoms.

She leaned back in her seat, closing her eyes, trying to ignore the child behind her and it's screaming sibling.

"Ensign Castine?"

The voice called down the center row of the transporter. Maddie sat upright and leaned around the seat in front of her, just as they called again. Standing up, she tugged at her uniform jacket and held one hand half up. "That would be me."

"Ensign, you have cargo in the hold that has been cleared to be removed from the ship but we don't have a final destination on record for you, so your cargo will be transported to the main cargo hold on the Starbase, you will need to collect it from there."

Maddie's face fell. "You have to be kidding me!" she shot back. "All my transport information was put in there. I'm being reassigned to the USS Crazy Horse" She sighed. "Look, I know it was put in there, I watched them enter all my information!"

"Sorry Ensign, I don't know what to tell you. We had a systems glitch, but all your stuff will be waiting in the primary cargo hold on the starbase once we're cleared from here."

Maddie ran her fingers through her dishevelled hair and shook her head slightly. "Is there ANY way you can change it to just send my stuff directly to my new quarters? I can give you all the details, I have my transfer orders on a PaDD in my luggage here," she pleaded.

"Sorry Ensign, it's out of my hands, I'm not allowed to update anything at this point. We should be out of here soon."

With a heavy sigh, Maddie dropped back down into her seat, leaning back, willing herself not to cry.

THUMP!

The back of her seat was kicked again, this time likely with both feet. Instead of retaliating, she leaned forward, resting her forearms on the seat in front of her, leaning her head down and closing her eyes, offering up a silent prayer that this would just all be over soon and she could get off the transporter, retrieve her belongings and then get to that bath she was so desperately wanting.

This was not a very auspicious start to her new assignment.

A post by

Ensign Madeleine De St. Castine
Medical Officer
USS Crazy Horse