Mission Thread 1

[STSF Corizon 0]

For a very long moment, Kale “Tug” Johnson just sat at his desk and exhaled. Though he’d spent nearly his entire adult life aboard starships and stations, he’d fought the Jem’Hadar in battle, he’d went to the mat with some of the most demanding captains in the fleet, he’d put the snidest of Ensigns in their place, yet for some reason this mission aboard the Excalibur seemed somehow more stressful and tasking than all of that rolled into one mission.

 

Of course, he knew what he was getting himself into when Captain Corizon contacted him personally to ask him to serve as the chief NCO aboard the then newly minted Excalibur-C; after all he’d spent the better part of the last two years in the Gamma Quadrant aboard Camelot Station where often interacted with the crew of the Excalibur’s predecessor as well as working with the Captain personally during his short stint as commanding officer of Camelot. Corizon was, as a commander, an exceptionally talented leader who exuded confidence and clarity of thought, if not a bit meddling at times. Working under him was actually rather easy. He asked only that Kale run a tight ship and keep him informed if anything required his attention. Still, the day to day fiasco that seemed to be this ships mission was taxing.

 

At least they were getting some R&R for a change, but that meant that all the officers would be out playing with the Satarimi and his own people would be too… which translated to him needing to keep a watchful eye, he didn’t want his people to lead the list in “leave related sickbay and brig incidents.” He left the ‘honor’ to the ‘rowdy’ Marines. The leave was welcome. Everyone was on edge from the recent mission. Somewhere, Kale very quietly wondered why anyone would have their child with them on duty, let alone an infant. The hubbub from his friends down their was that the thing was still green, he supposed that was a good penitence, though he did hope that they’d think twice about keeping the child aboard once the ship got home to Camelot.

 

Kale took a deep breath and leaned back into his chair. His desk was covered with paperwork that needed filed, but at this rate he’d still be working on it tomorrow and it wouldn’t be done, with only a day of leave before they headed off on god only knew what mission, he figured he might as well enjoy the leave. He heard something about a nice little pub on one of the cloud cities…