"Musings at OPS"

[Damian Porter 0]

"Musings at OPS"

A Log by Lieutenant Junior Grade Damian Porter

 

With an hour and a half left until his shift Porter was doing his usual pre-shift workout on the holodeck. Today he had chosen to do his running in the woods. Having grown up in space, spending most of his time in a rather tiny freighter, he was used to doing his recreational activities on the holodeck. And this early in the day he preferred to be alone and not seek the company of other crewmembers. Alone in the woods or on the beach he was free to let his mind wander. It gave him a chance to think about the day and the tasks that lay before him.

 

As Porter was running he hoped, as always, that it would be a quiet shift. Not that he'd had many of those, but hope was what kept him sane. It might, of course, also have been the fact that, despite the fuss he made about his busy job and the stress it caused, he got a kick out of doing what he did. He thrived on the adrenaline rushes that inadvertently came aplenty at the OPS station. Either from everybody talking to him at once, or some sort of catastrophe that threatened imminent destruction of Aegis (like the Ferengi or Breen fleets).

 

If he had trained for any other department or been posted to any other position he would have been somebody's assistant at his age and his rank. But as OPS Manager he was usually in the midst of everything and people listened to him. So, being stuck out here in the middle of nowhere seemed a very small price to pay considering the advantages it had. Managing the OPS division of an entire deep space station definitely couldn't hurt his career. If he'd survive the job, that was.

 

In the past couple of days a new potential catastrophe had appeared on the horizon. Some of the colonists had gotten sick, and despite there not having been any fatalities it didn't bode well for the whole project. Not that Porter cared about the project. It had only meant more work for him, because it had meant an increase in traffic, a fact that he didn't mind much, because they never got much traffic anyway, so the supply ships were a welcome distraction. What he did care about, however, was that they had contaminated, and Aegis provided the only way to get them out of there. The consequence was that they put the station at risk. Of course the medical department had taken every precaution possible, but that didn't mean much, at least not out here. But Porter supposed that was the risk that came with the job. What had bugged him much more was the fact that if something went wrong in the colony, which was almost a given considering the bunch that had been sent down there, Aegis had to come in to save the day. Granted, if the colonists would have to stay on the station it wouldn't make a big difference, but Porter was sure they'd bring with them some deadly disease or something even worse. Somehow he had the feeling that radiation poisoning was something they'd all be laughing about very soon. The only positive thing about this was that turning the dip wing into a quarantine area must bug the heck out of the diplomats, which was more than fine with him.