Move out, Move In

[Matt Morris SFM 0]

"Move out," Morris said calmly to the squad leaders. He had just received word from the XO by comm that they were cleared to make their way onto Excalibur. The squad leaders repeated the order to the rest of the Marines with a tad more volume and enthusiasm. Besides a duffel with their personal belongings, the grunts were also carrying totes with the 26th Marine Company's various articles of business. They'd stop off at their HQ on deck 3B. drop off the totes, and then head off to the barracks further foreward. It would be the job of First Sergeant Matthew Kenneth Morris to sort it all out.

 

Grabbing his own duffel and a tote, he followed behind the briskly moving squads. Standing a few millimeters short of two meters, Morris' build could only be described as wiry; when he was younger he'd managed through much blood, sweat, tears and daily protein supplements to keep some muscle mass on, but his body just wasn't designed for it. Now that he was more of an administrator, he could afford to lose some of it. By any description, though, he was still in excellent shape. His cool grey eyes were level, watching the squad move in front of him.

 

The new Starfleet Marines were still a small bunch, and so were their companies. Only twenty-five members in the group, two of which comprised the CO and XO. Each squad also had a trained medical corpsman, though they were still good fighters and would put standard Starfleet medical types to shame in combat situations. There was also a non-com trainer, who filled the role of loud-mouthed, low-tact Sergeant to the hilt; he was also a shrewd poker player and a load of laughs.

 

As for himself, Morris had seen that end of the spectrum before, though he usually kept a lower decibel profile. Now, though, he could save the yelling for when it was truly required. As the Staff Non-Commissioned Officer of the 26th, it was his job to manage the enlisted members. His first priority was to be the administrative assistant to both the CO and XO; this would also make him the "bridge" between the command and execution portions of the company. Besides playing receptionist and filing clerk, he would work with the training NCO to organize various drills and other training matters as the command staff required. He would also assemble all known data for the tactical planning stages, and distribute the command staff's orders when they weren't delivered in person.

 

All of that could certainly be a handful, but it was a small company. Old Earth Marines would have had multiple sergeants handling these duties; of course, those same old Earth Marine companies were anywhere from two to five times the size of the Starfleet version, so it was to be expected. From that historical perspective, the modern Marine companies were rather top-heavy platoons, but for only being a couple years old, they were doing quite well.

 

Having served in Starfleet since the age of eighteen, for a rather nice total of twenty-two years now, Morris was certainly comfortable with the routine. Though he was a little anxious about this coming assignment: it would be the first time he'd been posted on a starship. He'd spend most of his time pounding the ground around Geneva and some in San Francisco, with a dreadfully painful move to Betazed that had cost him a few muscles and had in physical therapy for months. It was only after accepting the offer to become a Marine that he'd been shipped out into space, and now he'd be on an Akira variant starship in the Gamma Quadrant.

 

He'd only just recently become comfortable with his Marine rank. He hadn't had time to settle in at either Master Sergeant or Master Tactical Sergeant. Having been in the standard fleet operations rank scheme, he'd always looked forward to finally becoming a Chief Petty Officer. He'd been diverted to the Marines before that, though, so his first promotion into the elite enlisted ranks had been as a sergeant instead. Though he could say one major advantage to him, from purely an aesthetic standpoint, was the move to the grey from gold. His coloring and the security undershirt hadn't been the best combination, and whenever he had a holo-portrait taken for his mother, she'd insisted that he either wear the grey dress uniform or something else entirely. The last set he'd had taken, he was in one of his Academy Athletics pullovers from his days rooting for the parrises squares team.

 

Well onto the Excalibur by this point, he walked down the corridor of deck 3B behind the rest of the company. He'd only studied a diagram of their HQ, so he only had a vague idea what he'd have to work with. As the group in front filed in to the starboard side door, Morris steadied the tote on one knee so that he could run a hand through his black hair. Having studied the old Marine history, he was thankful that the tradition of shaving one's hair to within a millimeter of the scalp had been tossed aside in this century.

 

After another few moments, he was inside the starboard section of their HQ in the main "lobby." It sported a dual seat console desk, he saw, four waiting area seats, and one more doors than total chairs. The other Marines had stacked their totes in front of a storage locker near the head, and he did the same. Looking back, he studied what would be his primary workspace.

 

The trainer would have the office behind and to his right, and there were two auxillary offices on the foreward wall. One of which he would use for more sensitve work. There were five storage lockers and cabinets in the room, two of which he figured were packed with empty PADDs. The aft wall held the doors that led to the conference room, and the door to the briefing room which also led to the XO office and combination work room/communications section. The locker room and armories were on the port side section, as well as the CO's office. That latter didn't hurt his feelings one bit. While certainly Major Cloud Makisu was a well qualified company commander, he was also rather unpleasant company. The further away from his own space the Major could be, the happier Morris' workdays would be.

 

The rest of the Marines had filed out to head to the barracks, leaving only Morris and his loud-mouthed friend behind.

 

"Nice digs," the man said.

 

"We'll see how long it lasts," Morris replied. "All right, I can sort out this junk later. Let's head to our quarters." They set off for their small shared room. Due to their advanced rank in the enlisted group, not to mention their duties, they at least could have a bit more privacy. Thankfully, they were also friends, and neither of them snored. "No doubt the Major will have you running the squads through plenty of drills soon enough."

[LeftEar JoNs 0]

Oh gods...they're multiplying.