The Waiting Game

[Mark Garrison 0]

“The Waiting Game”

 

Deck 6, Officers Lounge

 

Mark swirled the drink in his hand for a moment as he glanced over a padd. More patrol deployment schedules, patrol reports, and complaints about the patrols. He glanced up at the clock: 18:00 hours. He did a double take; it was simply impossible that it was that early. The math rolled through his head as he sipped the whiskey. The synthehol version somehow tasted worse then the original, but drinking on the job was generally looked down upon in Starfleet, and he needed a stiff drink right about now.

 

It was hard to believe it’d been only fourteen hours since the baby had been kidnapped. He rubbed his chin, surprised to find a two-day growth had developed, with the facilities on Aiesse Station poorly lacking. Garrison’s brow furrowed. He had stopped in his quarters before the kidnapping though, right when he got back...because he stank. He replayed the events in his minds eye as he took another sip. He had got out of the shower, was about to shave...and then the alarms went off. Crap.

 

Sleeping arrangements weren’t exactly...pleasant on the station, add on a Oh Three Hundred red alert, chasing the Bog ship into the thicket, exploring said Bog ship and exploring the thicket only to end up floating in the middle of no where, and now have no plan on what to do? It was all extremely frustrating. Tiring too. Commander Admiran’s timely creation of a cloaking device was the only saving grace to this day from hell. The entire bridge fiasco, which was what he was calling it, was a democratic bitch session by everyone about everything. Laarell agreeing with Victria was just weird. They’ve been acting all buddy-buddy for the last couple days, which worried him as much, if not more then when they were stones throw away from nuclear war. If they ever learned to scheme together they could probably take over the entire ship.

 

Garrison considered his drink, then switched it for a coffee. He hated downtime, right now in particular. Science and Engineering were crunching numbers to make the cloak work, and medical had plenty of it’s own affairs. So what was he to do? He could participate in a patrol, or go to main security and manage the patrols, or deal with the plethora of padds in front of his regarding patrols.

 

He glanced up at the clock again... 18:15.

 

He hated waiting.