Boredom

Posted on Wed Jul 23rd, 2014 @ 12:32pm by Lieutenant Trishna Durani

728 words; about a 4 minute read

Mission: Episode 3 - Winds of Change
Location: Crew Quarters

Boredom was something Trishna was very well acquainted with. The events involving the first Unification had been rather eventful to say the least, but on the whole Intelligence work wasn't for those that couldn't sit still, doing nothing for long periods of time. Their job was usually to observe, not act. And when Intelligence did act it was usually to prevent action of some sort. Even on the best of days it was largely reading a lot, collating, and handing out information. But that wasn't so bad, as far as Trish was concerned. The problem was when you were sitting in dock you didn't even have that much to do. There wasn't much observing to be done when you were sitting in the middle of friendly space. She supposed other departments might have the same problem, but at least others like Operations and Engineering were at least essential to ship functions 24/7 and thus were never going to be doing nothing.

Busywork could only go so far. For a while Trish had been quite busy. The Cassiopeia hadn't been in the best of health when they'd arrived at Bajor and the techs had gotten to work restoring her, and transforming her into the new Unification. That had been a time for all hands on deck. As much as people imagined them to be a group of distant, conspiring spooks, that held themselves apart and above from the others. It was an image that Trish did her best to destroy, but it persisted nonetheless. Contrary to popular belief, Intelligence was in fact just another department. They didn't know everything, hell Trish was willing to bet the Captain, and the XO knew more about what they'd be up to next than she did. And within that no Officer was an island, everyone had to pitch in now again.

Then there had been reports. Oh by the powers that be were there reports! Trish had never been a member of the Senior Staff for a ship that had gone down, but it was a nightmare of details. Starfleet wanted everything down to the last isolinear chip accounted for on some level. Especially for the minuscule Intelligence Department, couldn't risk a PADD with something sensitive just drifting out there after all, no matter how impossible the odds were. It had been a nightmare, and that hadn't even taken into account the Cassiopeia. What data, exactly, had stolen from the ship while it was crippled? What about the Galavant? All questions Trish hadn't had any answers to, sadly. After that though, things had to started to slow. A lot of R&R after the troubling events, and a lot more busy work as new crew members started to make their way aboard. It was mostly benign stuff, like doling out security access codes, cross-checking any discrepancies Security had found. Nobody expected something like a Changeling infiltrator, and certainly nobody was going to take things to the levels of the infamous Admiral Leyton. But at the same time nobody wanted to get caught with their pants down either.

And after that was when the boredom had set in for Trish. She sat in her quarters looking over a list of holoprograms, trying to figure out which ones she'd want to take with her when they headed out again. When that was, she had no idea. She expected the staff meetings, and the one-on-ones with the other Senior Staff would start up like clockwork when they were ready. Trish hadn't met a lot of the new staff, not even the new XO. It was a little odd, sitting in quarters that had most certainly belonged to someone else. While that was true every time you were assigned to a ship, unless it was brand new, with the former Cassiopeia it seemed different. When she'd first boarded the ship, it had been a scarred hulk, and she'd needed an EVA suit. Now she was sitting comfortably in a pastel purple seat, with a PADD in one hand, and a glass of coffee in the other. When she'd been aboard the original Unification, she'd remarked that at least it wasn't dull in spite of the arduous work involved. Now though...

"At least there's no insane virus running amok," She remarked to herself, leaning back in the chair a little more as she took another sip of her coffee.

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