Back Home Again

[Samantha_Kent 0]

Sam stood in one of the Arcadia's science labs, leaned slightly against the door and just looked at it silently. It was kind of bizarre to think that it was time to be a science officer again; it had been weeks since the junior officers had entered into their prison time on Axrekrav, and the short time she'd spent on the ship before that seemed like another life altogether. She remembered her arrival on the ship, fresh from a cushy starbase job, unacquainted with any of her fellow officers. It seemed so long ago. She and those unfamiliar men and women had now been through a sort of hell together.

 

It felt odd going back to the routine of scientific work; she realized now that her early years in the service had been years of incredible naiveté. She had to be prepared to accept all aspects of fleet life, the hard as well as the soft, and her life was slowly changing to adapt to this realization. She had contacted Josh as soon as the crew's release was secured, but both of them had quickly realized that a labor camp experience apiece had grown them apart, forced them independent in ways their relationship wouldn't stand. They had parted on amicable terms and now she was alone, but surprisingly enough that didn't bother her much. It almost felt like something of a necessity; she was going to have to learn to stand on her own two feet if she wanted to succeed in Starfleet; she had begun to learn, begun to adapt, in those weeks on Axrekrav.

 

Being back on the ship felt bizarrely, incongruously easy; there were sonic showers, replicators, medical supplies. Her tricorder hung at her hip with a quiet, reassuring weight, and her neck no longer itched constantly with the pressure of the implanted poison injector against her skin. She couldn't deny a feeling of relief at any of that, but beneath that was a feeling of not knowing quite what to do with herself.

 

She stepped fully into the lab and approached one of the consoles, touching it almost cautiously. "Computer, initiate a level-2 diagnostic on the sample analysis scanners and call up whatever's next on the analysis queue." The computer beeped and two small canisters of rock popped out of a storage container by the wall. Sam crossed over and took them.

 

Most of the first few days back on the ship she had spent sleeping, with a little reading, a little exercise and food, thrown in for good measure. Now, however, she needed to get back to work; restlessness had started to take hold of her and it felt good to have a science board in front of her again. Whatever else Starfleet was or would turn out to be, she still had this to keep hold of, and she was grateful for that.

 

She crossed back across the lab as the computer beeped successful completion of the minor diagnostic. "Alright...time to make myself useful, huh?" she muttered to herself, letting a small smile drift across her face, and inserted the first geologic sample canister into the analysis program. "Computer, begin a compositional summary of sample alpha and download the results to the file I'm creating."