The Continuing Missions I: The Mission Continues

All Star Trek references, except where I have created them from whole cloth, are the property of Paramount/Viacom. All rights are reserved to them. However, this particular story is (c)2005 by Josh Cohen, and may not be reprinted except for personal use.

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Part One.

***

The door chime pinged softly, startling him out of his reverie. He shook his head a bit, trying to clear it of the stuff and clutter floating around, and called out, “come in.” The doors slid apart, and the slender form of the captain stood silhouetted against the dimmed hallway lights characteristic of the delta shift.

“You ready, Kyle?”

He stood and moved to his desk – what used to be his desk, in any case – and closed the carrybag sitting there. “As ready as I’ll ever be.” He shouldered the bag and went to the doorway, then turned and looked around his former quarters for what would probably be the last time – the next first officer would probably get these rooms, he mused.

The captain put a hand on his shoulder. “Come on. You’ve got a ship to get to.”

He smiled. “Indeed I do, Captain.”

The doors slid shut behind them with a slight whisper, almost unheard by the two officers as they walked toward the transporter room. “You know,” the captain said, grinning up at her former first officer, “you can call me Donna now, if you want. We are the same rank, after all.”

“That’s true.” He paused, rolling her name around in his brain. “Donna. Hmm.” Another moment. “No, I don’t think that’ll work. I’ll just keep calling you captain, if that’s all right.”

“Your call, Kyle.”

The transporter room was not far from his quarters, and the doors slid aside before the two captains. Inside the transporter room was the newly-minted transporter chief, Lieutenant Wooden, and the chief medical officer, Doctor Elizabeth Iovino. Inwardly, Kyle sighed – he was not looking forward to what he thought was about to happen.

“Captain Frost,” Wooden said, smiling as he motioned Kyle up to the transporter platform, “the Katana is awaiting your signal.”

“Thank you, Bob.”

“Thank you, sir.” Wooden smiled more broadly – it was Kyle’s pushing that got him promoted to transporter chief after the previous chief became part of the new crew of Kyle’s new ship.

“Captain Frost,” Donna – Captain Murphy to her crew – said formally, “it’s been quite an honor having you serve here on the Palo-Alto. We’ll miss you.”

Kyle bowed slightly to his now-former captain. “Thank you, Captain. I’ll miss all of you as well.”

“Ready, sir?” Wooden asked.

“En—“

“Wait, please.” Iovino stepped into the picture, turning to Captain Murphy. “Can we have a minute, Captain?”

“Sure,” she replied, and nodded to Kyle. “Best of luck.”

“Thanks,” he whispered, but it was to her retreating back. Then he stepped down off the platform and motioned to Iovino, ushering her into the staging vestibule on the other side of the transporter room. He leaned back against the equipment lockers, crossing his arms, and Iovino sat down on the bench in the middle of the room. “What is it, Elizabeth?”

She sighed, her hands tightly-knit between her knees, eyes downcast. When she turned her head up to look at him, there were tears glittering in her eyes. “Kyle, why do you have to go?”

“Elizabeth, you know why. You knew I would eventually have to go.”

“But why did you bring her?” ‘Her’ was Lieutenant Commander Jennifer Lessener, who Kyle had brought to the Katana as executive officer. “She doesn’t deserve you.”

Kyle dropped to his knees in front of Iovino, putting his hands on her knees, looking up into her eyes. “Elizabeth, listen to me. If I could have brought you, I would have. But the Katana didn’t need a doctor. All their doctors survived the attack. I’m sorry.”

“But…”

He leaned forward and gently kissed her cheek. “Elizabeth, I have to go. I’ll miss you.”

She buried her face in her hands, and he sighed, rocking back on his heels. “Goodbye, Elizabeth.” Then he stood, returning to the transporter platform.

“Everything okay, sir?”

“Fine, Lieutenant. Energize when ready.”

“Bon voyage, sir.” Wooden manipulated his console, and the bluish haze of transportation cascaded across Kyle’s vision. When it faded, he was in a transporter room not unlike the one he’d left – the operator’s console was a workpit-type area, but otherwise it was in the same place, directly across the room from the pads. The hallway off to his left appeared to lead to the operator’s washroom and a waiting-staging area for away teams, and the corridor door was on his right. However, the Starfleet Design Corps didn’t change things much when they worked.

But the steps were a little shallower than those on the Palo-Alto, and he almost tripped on his way off the pad, much to the amusement of the woman at the controls.

“It’s not funny, Commander,” Kyle said darkly.

“I would imagine not.” The woman smoothed down her smile, but her blue eyes continued to shine with humor. Then she saw the captain’s expression, and realized why he hadn’t laughed at himself – especially since he was often the first to do so.

“She did it again, didn’t she?”

Kyle shouldered his bag and stepped down from the transporter platform. “You knew she would, Jennifer.”

Lieutenant Commander Jennifer Lessener shrugged as stepped up out of the workpit area and handed a PADD to the captain. He pressed his thumb to the identification patch, and the computer whirred for a moment. “Captain Kyle Keitarou Frost recognized. Please state confirmation code to activate command codes.” He rattled off a ten-digit number, and the computer beeped in satisfaction. “Captain Kyle Keitarou Frost activated as commanding officer of the U.S.S. Katana. Welcome aboard.”

“Very nice computer,” he said, chuckling, as he handed the PADD back to Lessener.

“It’s a little irritating.” She slipped the PADD back into its receptacle in the transporter console, then grinned at him. “I suppose we’ll get used to it.”

“I suppose so.” He moved around the workpit to the door, and motioned to her. “You coming?”

“I have to wait for the new transporter chief to get here. That’ll be the end of my last shift in any operations department.”

“Give me a call when you get off duty.”

“Got it.”

The door whispered open and he stepped through, leaving her to sit at what was soon to no longer be her console, steepling her fingers in thought.

A new ship, she mused. A new crew. I hope no one finds out this time.

But she knew they would. They always did.

Frost looked around for a moment to get his bearings. The corridors looked pretty much the same as they did on the Palo-Alto, except that the ceilings of the corridors had new tracked ship’s status displays. He moved out of the flow of corridor traffic, watching until the location came up on the small screen, and then turned around. He knew where he was going now.

It was only a few dozen meters of corridor away, tucked into a small office block at the end of a hallway. The quartermaster’s facility was mostly dark – it was 0400, after all, and the quartermaster’s office wasn’t usually open for official business until 0600. But he knew who this ship’s quartermaster was. The captain moved through the darkened outer office and used his override code to open the inner office. As he expected, the lights were on.

“On your feet, Lieutenant!” he barked. The tall, thin black man behind the desk shot to his feet before he realized who had commanded him.

“Commander Frost!”

“It’s Captain now, Gus, remember?” He grinned, and quartermaster Gus Auman laughed once, reaching down to tap commands into his computer. “Got everything ready for me?”

Auman turned the computer around and motioned to the captain. “The rest of your things are in there already. You’re on deck four, cabin 101.”

Frost keyed his personal lock code into the quartermaster’s computer system, and it pinged in confirmation. “Anything else I need, Gus?”

“You’re set, Captain. If you think of anything else, give me a call and I’ll do what I can.”

“Thanks.” Frost turned to leave the quartermaster’s office, but turned back. “Good to see you again, Gus.”

“You too.”

The captain found a turbolift nearby and pressed the call button. An ensign in engineering gold stepped next to him. “Good morning, sir,” the ensign said.

“Good morning.” A moment passed. “You know, Ensign, I’ve always wondered why they don’t put staircases on starships.”

“Excuse me, sir?” The ensign, a short, stocky human with a startling shock of reddish-brown hair, had a purely confused look on his face.

“Where are you heading, Ensign?”

“Deck 12. Why?”

Frost sighed, tapping his foot as he waited for the lift. “Well, I’m only going to deck four. But in the time it’s taken for this lift to get here,” and then the door beeped and slid open. Both of them stepped inside, and called out their destinations, before the captain continued, “I could’ve gone down a simple staircase to deck four, and you wouldn’t have been inconvenienced by having to wait for me to get off at my stop.”

“It’s not an inconvenience, sir.”

“It’s the principle of the thing, Ensign.”

“If you say so, sir.”

The captain shook his head. “Good morning, Ensign.”

“Good morning, sir.”

The door closed behind the captain, leaving the ensign in bemused bewilderment, and the turbolift whirred away. Frost made it down the few meters to his door and keyed it open.

His new quarters, except for the boxes containing his irreplaceable assets, were not all that exciting, although they were larger than the ones he’d had on the Palo-Alto. The window in the main room was much larger, showing the expanse of space in all its glory – and out of one corner, the Palo-Alto, warping away to her next assignment. The bedroom, its door behind his desk, was larger than his previous one as well, with a larger closet and longer bathroom. He noted with approval that the interior had been remodeled from the generic Starfleet beiges and greens and blues into the auburns he favored. The carrybag he placed on his bed, and then went to his closet, where he hung his Palo-Alto crew jacket and pulled off his shirt. Inside the closet were several captain’s uniform shirts, one of which he pulled over his head. Then he took one of the uniform jackets out of the back of the closet and pulled it on over his shoulders. He preferred the jackets to the standard uniforms anyway – less form-fitting, a feature of Starfleet uniforms that always bothered him.

Done in the closet, he stepped to his mirror, examining the new captain he saw there. Medium-brown hair, bright blue eyes, a beard and moustache, and surprisingly few signs of age for a 35-year-old. Frost was a bulkier man than most, even a slight bit overweight for his 1.85 meters of height, but it never bothered him. He always passed his physicals – at least, on his other ships, he did, although he didn’t know much about the Katana’s chief medical officer. Not yet, anyway – he had a staff meeting scheduled for 0800 to formally introduce everyone.

Properly attired and ready to head to the bridge, he went back into the main room of his quarters and sat behind his desk, reviewing some of the specifications on his desk computer screen. The ship’s ambient temperature had been adjusted to 19 degrees Celsius, and the appropriate memo had gone out to warn the crew of the captain’s affectation for lower temperatures. The new crew members were all assigned to quarters and everyone had returned from planetside shore leave. Everything appeared ready to go.

It was still a little disconcerting, though, to be sitting in a dead woman’s quarters, and even stranger to be taking command of a dead woman’s ship. But needs must, Frost sighed, shrugging at his own thoughts, then standing up and heading out of his quarters.

The bridge was a quiet nexus of activity. While Frost had toured it in drydock, seeing it up and running was a different matter entirely. From the port-aft door that led to his ready room – which he’d stopped into on his way up, to drop off a couple of holos and a cushion for his chair – he looked out upon the nerve center of his first command. There was the standard viewscreen tucked into the front wall of the bridge, with two workpits – Starfleet had been leaning toward having two officers at the fore of the bridge, instead of just one, and this, the Brand-class cruiser, was one of the first ships refit with this design – the portside for the helm and the starboard for the operations officer. Behind them, rimmed by the steps that led to the command area, were his seat, with the first officer’s to his left and the observation chairs to his right. He had considered having the observation chairs replaced with another command chair, for his executive, but eventually decided against it.

Built into the rail behind his chair was the tactical console, in a position where the tac officer could see everything going on all around the bridge. To his left – for the tactical officer on this ship was a man – was the bridge engineering console, and to his right, the science console. Each console had a turbolift a couple of meters aft, and beyond that, the vestibule in which the captain was standing – on his side was the auxiliary control console and the library computer console, and in the matching vestibule opposite the ready room was the door to the corridor of Deck One and the conference room, a door that shared space with the environmental systems console and, just fore of that, the mission ops console, where the bridge’s third-in-command often stationed herself – again, he knew it was a woman, but this was because he knew her very well.

This bridge, where the Palo-Alto’s was wide, was long, longer than many bridges the captain had been on in his travels. It was the length of this bridge that he quietly, slowly walked along, down the steps into the command area, before coming to a stop standing in front of his chair. The command console, its sensors finding him standing there, extended out from the right side of the chair, ready to be used.

Frost assumed that his orders had been assimilated by the computer, because the annoying “Captain on the Bridge” chime Captain Murphy had so enjoyed on his old ship was deactivated. In fact, until the operations officer turned in his chair and noticed who had come to the bridge, no one seemed to even sense the captain’s presence.

“Sir,” the tall – not as tall as the captain, but tall – olive-skinned Vulcan said as he turned to the rear portion of his console; on this ship, the helm and ops stations had two separate consoles, “spacedock control reports ready for departure at 0500 hours. All stations secured.”

“Very good, Commander.” Commander, in this case, was the Vulcan, Lieutenant Commander Satan – a name that Satan had shared a private, Vulcan eyebrow-raise of a laugh with Frost over, back when they were on the Palo-Alto – the Katana’s alpha-shift operations officer and Frost’s second officer. “Confirm with Commander Lessener that everyone who’s not coming with us has disembarked.”

“Yes, Captain.” Satan turned to his board, and the captain turned around slowly, realizing that every eye in the bridge was now turned toward him.

He saw most of his command crew – which was odd, considering that he’d already put into practice his shift rotation, which put the command crew on alpha shift. An alpha shift he had scheduled to start at 1200. Evidently much of the alpha shift was going to get short-shrifted on sleep, but it wasn’t the captain’s concern.

Next to Satan – who Frost considered a friend, who was typing back and forth with Commander Lessener, who had just stepped onto the bridge and seated herself at mission ops – was Lieutenant Melimora, the alpha-shift helm officer. His first officer, Commander W’Hoof, the huge, hulking Kanid, had been chatting with an Andorian officer that the captain assumed was his chief engineer as they emerged from the portside turbolift, but their conversation drained away and the chief engineer took his seat on the port side of the bridge, while W’Hoof stepped down into the command area. From the starboard-aft door came a sharp-eyed black human Frost knew to be Lieutenant Commander Briarcliff, the chief of Security. The chief of sciences, Horta Lieutenant Shibasht, shuffled onto the bridge after him, followed by a woman the captain had met once before, the Chief Medical Officer, Dr. Atridena. Chief Kenel, the beta shift watch officer, had even made an appearance, seating himself unobtrusively at the environmental systems station.

“The gang’s all here, hm?” Frost joked as W’Hoof moved toward him. He looked up – and up – at the huge being who was his second-in-command and said something that sounded to the rest of the bridge crew – the humans, anyway – like a dog barking. Then he crossed his hands at the wrist in front of his chest and bowed his head. Shocked, W’Hoof did the same, smiling a little stiffly.

“Your accent is quite good, Captain,” W’Hoof said in his heavy, thick voice.

“I’m glad you approve.” He took another look around the bridge. “I hadn’t expected to see the rest of the senior staff until 0800.”

“Most of them traded shifts. They didn’t want to miss the relaunch.”

Frost’s face darkened a little. “Indeed. Well, then, let’s be off.” He motioned to the first officer’s position, and W’Hoof sat down. Doctor Atridena took the CMO’s prerogative to sit in the observation area to the right of the captain’s chair.

“Lieutenant Melimora,” the captain said in what he called his “command” voice, adding a thread of firmness to it that wasn’t there in ordinary speech, “confirm departure with dock control.”

The tall woman ran long fingers over her console. “Confirmed, Captain.”

“Commander Lessener, time?”

From the aft station came Lessener’s light-yet-husky voice. “0457, Captain.”

“Satan, allcall.”

“Go, Captain.”

Frost took a deep breath.



“To the crew of the starship Katana: Good morning, first of all. This is the captain. In slightly more than two minutes, our ship will be relaunched. I know that many of you worked tirelessly on this ship the past six months, bringing her back to spaceworthiness in record time. I know that many of you have lost friends, loved ones, and shipmates in the horrific attack upon this vessel. But I also know this: we, all of us, are Starfleet officers. This is why we wear the uniform. Because we overcome. We overcame the Borg. We overcame the Dominion. And we will overcome this.

“We’re not a front-line cruiser. We don’t go where no one has gone before. And yet this ship is one of the most popular for academy graduates. More of them want to come to the Katana than any other ship, except maybe the Enterprise. That’s got to mean something. And I think I know what that is:

“The Katana is, without a doubt, one of the best ships in Starfleet. We do what must be done, when it needs doing, and we do it better than any other ship in the fleet.

“And now, the mission continues.”



Frost nodded to Satan, who cut the channel.

“Commander W’Hoof?”

“Sir?”

“You’re the ranking original officer. Would you like to give the word?”

W’Hoof shook his head. “It’s your ship, Captain.”

The captain nodded and turned to face the main viewer once again. “All right. Let’s go. Melimora, clear all moorings. Thrusters to station-keeping.”

“Moorings cleared.” The ship vibrated ever-so-slightly. “Thrusters at station-keeping.”

Frost stepped backward, lowering himself slowly, cautiously into the captain’s chair. In less than a second, his rational mind had absorbed the comfortable cushions, upholstered in synthetic replicated leathers, the armrests he had specifically requested, and the way the back of the chair kept him supported while still allowing him to be relaxed. At the same time, those parts of his mind that had been fostered by his grandmother during his upbringing – he was from a town called Hinata, in Japan, on Earth – told him that he was sitting in a dead woman’s chair. A chill passed through him, but he fought back against it. Captain Zohar hadn’t known what hit the ship when it was attacked. She’d been killed instantly, without suffering.

Just another feeling to deal with.

“Lieutenant, ahead five percent sublight. Take us out.”

“Five percent, sir.”

He held his breath, watching the latticework of the Vulcan spacedock complex pass on the viewscreen, the desert planet occupying a portion of the screen, her twin planet T’Kuht bright red behind it. Out of half of his right eye, he watched the ship’s position monitor on his console, and when it emerged fully from the dock, he looked up, watching the stars creeping along. “Half-impulse on a course toward Vulcan-north, Lieutenant, until we clear the system, and then increase to warp four.”

“Heading, sir?” she inquired as she plotted their course, taking them out of the system the short way, instead of taking the scenic route past the outplanets.

“Cardassia Prime.”

Only Satan saw Melimora’s face as she input the course.

“There’s someone we need to see.”

The captain had retired to his ready room once the ship had accelerated to warp speed, leaving W’Hoof in command. There he had brought up his personal files on the desktop computer and begun filling out the minutiae that came along with a change of command – address details, medical forms (another physical, he grumbled mentally), and the like. At 0745, Commander Lessener sent him a text message reminding him of the staff meeting.

What’s the reaction been like out there? he asked her.

There was a pause. Not bad. Mostly quiet. They have to get to know you first.

All right. I’ll meet you in the conference room.

Lunch later?

I have to take a tour and meet up with Dr. Atridena for yet another physical. I’ll have dinner together for 2000, when you get off-shift.

All right. See you then.

He closed the window and closed down the computer. Bringing a PADD in one of the ubiquitous pockets of his jacket, he slipped out the back door of his ready room and into the conference room. A stop at the replicator secured him a large glass of water, and he took his seat at the head of the table. The chair wasn’t as comfortable as the one in his ready room, but it wasn’t bad. He figured he could handle it for the two hours a week he’d set aside for a staff meeting – considering how long he’d spent on creating the shift schedule and setting up watch officers and so forth, he’d better be able to handle it.

Commander Lessener was the first into the room, a couple of minutes before 0800, and she briefly rested a hand on his shoulder before slipping into the seat to his right. She was a pale, smallish Namerican-European from Earth, like himself, with a short cap of blond hair and blue eyes that matched his own – should they have any children, Frost would sometimes joke with her, at least they’d all have blue eyes. Under the Starfleet uniform, he knew she had what Satan had once, in his pursuit of learning new Anglish idioms, called “dangerous curves,” much to Frost’s amusement and Lessener’s brief but pointed chagrin. As the executive officer – in a command system he’d borrowed from Captain Murphy, anyway – she was nominally in charge of personnel, sciences, and medical, as well as the alpha-shift backup watch officer.

The rest of the crew came in shortly after, all of them silent. W’Hoof took the seat to the captain’s left, as it was on the bridge, his uniform – reinforced because of his size – lying a little oddly, owing to the coat of black and gray fur over his body. Kanids, a race contacted first by the legendary Captain Piper in the early part of the 24th century, were almost like huge, bipedal Earth canines, hence their Anglish name. W’Hoof was even bigger – coming up through security had made him far bulkier than the average Kanid. His ears, a trait of the ruling class on Kanidu VIII, were floppy and a little forward-tilted, and he had a muzzle in the center of his face where most humans had a nose and mouth, but otherwise was built more-or-less the same as humans.

Commander Satan, the Vulcan second officer, took the seat next to Lessener, his hands steepled in front of him, the gold of his uniform clashing just a bit with his complexion, and next to him, Doctor Atridena – Allia Atridena, the severe Centauran woman he had been treated by once upon a time. She was made up of warm colors, long, straight auburn hair and medium-toned skin with chocolate-brown eyes the same color as W’Hoof’s, but inside she was icy. Had she been blond and blue-eyed, Frost had joked with a fellow patient at the time, her tall, slender form would have made her the perfect ice queen. On her left, there was a large, flat chair that looked for all the world like a huge pizza platter. Lieutenant Shibasht, the Horta science officer, shuffled onto it and it lifted to table level. Frost had never worked with a Horta before, but he was looking forward to it.

Next to W’Hoof, Lieutenant Commander Thenow, the Andorian chief of engineering, had the characteristic blue skin, white hair, and long, slender antennae atop his head that were normal of his race, but Thenow wasn’t quite as reedy as most Andorians Frost knew. He knew Thenow played klin zha, though, and the extra muscle made sense. He’d heard Thenow’s voice earlier, and it was the soft sibilance of other Andorian voices. Next to Thenow was the helm officer, Lieutenant Melimora. Also tall – only a few centimeters shorter than the captain – she had curly black hair pushed carelessly behind her ears, but on her it was attractive, and startlingly-glowing red eyes. That, the captain reasoned, meant she was from Pentekos, a colony world settled early in the days of human spacefaring, and the eyes were a legacy of that planet’s background radiation. Rounding out that side of the table was the chief of security, who was visibly brooding, a muscular black human named William Briarcliff. Commander Briarcliff, the captain had been warned, had been very attached to much of the old crew and might be difficult to get along with.

But the captain didn’t have time for all of that right now. Once everyone was seated, he delved into the meeting itself, and his concerns were pushed to the back burner as they began running down the little details that made a starship run.

The staff meeting had lasted three and a half hours – with a crew of 614, almost four times as much as the Palo-Alto had had, there were a lot more administrative details. The captain had returned to his ready room for lunch, leaving Commander W’Hoof with the conn, and then spent some time nosing his way around the ship, trying to find the gym.

Eventually he did find it, in the forward-port quadrant of Deck Nine. At this time of day, in the middle of alpha shift, there weren’t many people there – no one was in the lockerroom as the Captain changed into Starfleet-issue workout pants, running shoes, and a Katana t-shirt, and no one was on the track as he stretched out and then began jogging the half-kilometer track that ringed the room. When he finished, having gone through three kilometers at a jog and then an all-out run, a couple of crewmen had joined him, but no one paid him much attention – which was how he liked it. He hated when people bothered him during his exercise period.

Although, he mused as he folded himself into one of the weight-resistance machines and began the strength-training portion of his workout, it would have been nice to see the crew taking interest in their health. Perhaps during his regular workout shift – on the four-week schedule he’d designed for the crew, he normally came in toward the end of alpha shift, around 1800, during the first week – he might see more of the crew.

Then he applied himself to the machine and thought no more about it.

Three-quarters of an hour of strength training and another lap around the track later, the captain was quite ready to leave the gym. Once upon a time, his father had told him he’d enjoy exercising if he kept at it long enough, but he never had, not in all the time he’d been in Starfleet. A quick water shower – sonics were nice in their place, but they never made you feel clean, he would often say to those who wondered about this peculiar habit – and a new uniform from the replicator in the locker-room, and he was ready to move on to his next stop.

Or, at least, he thought he was. His brother, a broadcaster for Federation News Frequency 58-DB-0, called it stopping for “station identification” – one of his many archaic idioms that no one in the family understood – and on the way out of the ablution nook (he figured it was crass to call it “the place where the designers put the toilets and the showers”) he was so absorbed in his own thoughts that he didn’t even see the young woman until he’d practically bowled her over.

“Oh dear,” he said softly, offering her a hand. She took it and he pulled her to her feet. “Sorry about that.”

The woman smiled at him. “It’s all right, captain. Sometimes I get that way myself.”

“Indeed,” he replied, taking a moment to try and figure out who she was – maybe twenty centimeters shorter than he, slender, eyes the color of an iced mocha with slightly olive skin. “I’m sorry, but I can’t seem to…” he trailed off.

“Tennet, sir.” She held out her hand, and he took it. “Lieutenant Michelle Tennet. Computer core technician.”

“Ah, yes. That’s right. I thought you looked familiar.” It only made sense – of all the junior officers on the ship, the only ones the captain needed to personally approve were those who worked as computer technicians; with their access to the computer core, they had access to everything on the ship, and the captain had to at least know who they were. “I am sorry for knocking you over.”

“Don’t worry about it, sir.” She bent to the side for a moment and retrieved the towel she’d dropped in the collision. “You didn’t hurt me.”

“All right, Lieutenant. Have a nice afternoon.”

“You as well, captain.”

Tennet stepped past him and into the ablution nook, out of sight, and he heard the water start in one of the showers as he walked through the lockerroom area and out the door.

It never even crossed his mind that all she’d been wearing was the towel.

It was the 24th century, after all.

The captain’s next stop was up on Deck Eight. Again, he was reminded of the lack of staircases on starships, and privately wondered if he should have just taken the Jeffries Tube ladder up a deck, rather than waiting for the lift. Sickbay, which was only a few tens of meters from the turbolift, was a brightly-lit, antiseptic chamber. Four biobeds on the left, three on the right, and the main exam area ahead, past the nurse’s station in the center of the room. A nondescript-looking human man sat there – if one considered blue hair the color of the sciences-and-medical tunic nondescript. He knew instantly who this man was – the head nurse, Lieutenant Alforth 107 – and he knew why he had the blue hair – it was the hallmark of citizens from Charon II, a planet of human clones.

“Good day, captain,” Alforth said, standing and reaching out with his left hand. Frost took it and shook it firmly. “Welcome to sickbay.”

“Thank you, Lieutenant. I gather you know why I’m here.”

“Indeed, sir.” He led the captain over to the main exam biobed. “Doctor A’klen will be along in just a moment – she’s just in the lab right now, finishing an experiment.”

Frost’s brow furrowed. “I would have thought Doctor Atridena would be doing the baseline physical.”

“No, sir. Doctor Atridena is presently working in her office. Doctor A’klen has been assigned to cover for her.”

“I see.” The captain sighed and hitched himself up onto the biobed. Alforth returned to his duty station and whatever it was he had been working on when the captain came in. There was the hiss of a door opening, the door that was off to the starboard side of the main entrance, the door that led to the back area of sickbay – the quarantine rooms, recovery rooms, and laboratories were behind that door – and a short, stocky Klingon woman in a medical blue tunic under a long blue lab coat strode in.

“Captain,” she said, her voice low and dark. “Good afternoon.” She slipped a tricorder out of her pocket and thumbed it open. “If you would lie down?”

He swung his legs up onto the bed and complied. The Klingon, apparently Doctor A’klen, tugged the biosensor out of its receptacle at the top of the tricorder and began waving it over him.

There was a handful of seconds of silence. Then the captain broke it.

“You could make small talk,” he quipped.

A’klen stopped in her scan and looked down at him. “Small talk isn’t necessary. I’m a doctor. You’re a patient.”

“I see,” Frost said softly. “Whatever you say, doctor.”

“Yes, captain. Whatever I say.”

He sighed again.

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End of part one. I've actually written up to part four (the entire piece), but I have to leave now, so I'll post the rest tomorrow.