Paperwork

[NDak 0]

The hard, cold steel of his mug clanked lightly against the table in the senior officer’s mess. Coffee, at least the Romulan version of it, was one of the few true guilty pleasures he actually indulged himself during missions.

 

Daise’Erei’Riov Destorie N’Dak shuffled through the stack of ISD’s on the table looking at the headers briefly, wondering where the elusive io he sought had wondered off to while he wasn’t looking. Finding it, he sighed happily. Momentarily, he wondered just exactly what he was thinking when he took the position of executive officer, and why anyone would actively seek such a job. For all the perks of the office, they did na, in his opinion, out weight all the damned paperwork he was now in charge of keeping track of and assuring was filed correctly or the dozens of minor tiffs between personnel that he now had to resolve.

 

Case in point, he currently held in his hand the requisitions for every ounce of cargo moved aboard the vessel during the refit and then resupplying in preparation for the year-long mission to the Gamma Quadrant. Not only did he have to check off that all of the supplies were properly delivered, he also had to make sure that they were also stored properly; that all of the equipment was functional, and installed correctly; that all of the new crew were settled in properly and integrated into duty shifts. On top of that, as the numerous ISD’s indicated, he also had a report on the wormhole transit to supervise, compile and deliver to the Khre’Riov himself, Oira duty shifts to organize, sensor time while they were at the Plasma Flare to allocate, a report on that to send to the science geeks, a report on the status of a complaint filed by an assistant deckhand against his immediate supervisor to file and then resolve said complaint, a grievance filed by a member of the cook staff against some erien in Engineering (apparently said erein had ‘rigged the cookstove to burn off his eyebrows’) to resolve… the list went on without end.

 

His mother propped herself on his shoulder next to his sister, both of whom were giggling. “It is because au can na resist power, Sheuiji.”

 

Batting a hand in the air, he mentally told the figments to "buzz off’’ as the Lloann’na would say. True he did like power; however, power came at price… and all of this damn paperwork was more than he’d bargained.

 

It was like that time on Qo’Nos where he’d bought a glorious vintage skiff from a Ferengi dealer only to end up putting more money into repairing the engines that he’d been assured were in ‘better shape than when they were new’ and fixing a leaky seal that caused water to flow in and nearly swamp the skiff when it was at speed. The only difference was that then he could track down the Ferengi dealer and hold his lobes at knife point till he gave him his money back (and enough to cover the repairs). He could not, however, hold t’Rexan at knife point. Well, not without getting more scars on his back or burned by lasers. Or hooked.

 

A shudder traveled over his body and he felt a sudden, sharp, searing pang in the scars on his back at the thought. Yeah, no knife point. No, he’d have to finish all this paper work and resolve the disputes. And that was assuming nothing came up in the next several hours; in this quadrant Elements only knew what could be lurking behind any corner.

 

He glanced back to the paperwork and sighed. He needed another cup of coffee.