A New View

Posted on Tue Jan 24th, 2023 @ 10:26pm by Lieutenant Taylor Haines

520 words; about a 3 minute read

Mission: Short Treks
Location: Various
Timeline: 2431-03-11, 1000

Thirty-two days, thirty-two long, boring days had passed since Taylor’s trip to his new assignment began. From a Starfleet Medical Center near the ‘northern’ reaches of the Alpha quadrant, he got aboard the USS Essex.

Five days into the journey, the Essex’s warp engines experienced issues and the ship was stuck at impulse drive. It took three days for the USS Andor to get to the scene. Taylor hitched a ride to Starbase 4 and waited another day for the Lexington to arrive and resume his journey.

The Lexington was small and didn’t have very many amenities, so he was bored out of his skull for sixteen days. There were only so many times one could read logs and personnel backgrounds before one’s eyes crossed and one fell asleep.

Five days ago, he hopped a ride on the USS Rhine, a runabout, bound for the station with some medical supplies. The two runabout pilots were nice enough to let him take the helm a few times on the way there. Taylor had caught up on his rest and learned to play a number of card games he had never played before.

Taylor was dozing in the back when he heard, “Hey, El-tee, thought you might want to see this.”

Taylor went to the flight deck and let out a, ‘Woah’ as he looked out and saw the station seemingly grow as they approached. He had only seen one other station this large, which was McKinley.

“Thanks Chief”, he said to the pilot and headed to the back. “I think I will get my stuff ready.”

Although Taylor was normally quite confident in himself, he had to wonder if someone in personnel got the paperwork wrong and somewhere on Betazed there was a Commander wondering why they were in charge of the small embassy’s security.

There weren’t all that many Lieutenant’s in charge of departments on the station. They were only in the medical section. Hell, there was a Lieutenant Commander that would be reporting to him. He had wondered a number of times why they weren’t the head of the department.

Taylor was jostled from his session of self-doubt as the runabout touched down on the station’s deck. He grabbed his duffel.

“Thanks for the ride Chief”, he said before he departed.

He wasn’t twenty feet away from the runabout when an Andorian male approached. He was dressed in a Starfleet uniform and held the rank of petty officer.

“Lieutenant Haines?”, he asked.

Taylor nodded and asked, “And you are?”

“I am Petty Officer Rejak”, he replied. “I have orders to escort you to Admiral Teagarden’s office as soon as you arrive. You are here, so if you would, please follow me.”

“Well, let’s not keep the good Admiral waiting”, Taylor replied. He hadn’t wanted to at least grab a shower before he had presented himself.

“Good choice”, Rejak remarked. “The Admiral has not been in the greatest of moods lately.”

‘This should be fun’, Taylor thought as he followed along.

--
LT. Taylor Haines
Chief of Security

 

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