"If Wishes Were Horses"

[Damian Porter 0]

"If Wishes Were Horses"

A joint log by Lieutenant Junior Grade Damian Porter and Chief Petty Officer Rosalind Wills

 

Porter was just back on duty again after his ordered rest. He was still a bit miffed at Chirakis because she had sent him to bed like a little boy. It wasn't like he didn't have enough work for 10 people, either.

 

Walking down the corridor he was absent mindedly mumbling to himself, going through his to do list. First he would visit Wills. They had to go through supply assignments and he wanted to check how mad she was because her midway cargo hold was sealed off and cargo bay 3 held a fighter and thus was also sealed off.

 

The doors of the cargo area in which he had located Wills swished open, or so he had thought. Still not paying attention to his surroundings he walked into something big. But it was decidedly too soft and too warm to be a bulkhead. Porter took a couple of steps back and looked up only to find Little standing in the door looking utterly dumbfounded as if he'd just seen a ghost. "Do you plan on spending the rest of your shift on that doorstep or will you let people work, Petty Officer?" Little stepped aside, his head a decidedly unhealthy crimson colour. The large man didn't utter a word, though, and hurried away.

 

The space which he had occupied cleared to reveal the chaos of the cargo bay which Porter had entered. With two of the other bays shut down for normal operations, the work in the rest had nearly tripled. Blurred forms tinted in red jogged this way and that, working on the transport of salvageable goods out of the damaged bay, as well as responding to normal requisitions made even more complex by the simultaneous sudden upswing in requests for engineering equipment and medical supplies. It didn't help, too, that Cargo Ops had taken a hit to its personnel roster during the initial attack. If there was a crewman in that bay who wasn't doing the work of three men, it would be very hard to find him.

 

As a result, CPO Rosalind Wills was in even more of a sour mood than usual. She was easy to spot -- and to hear -- where she stood in the center of the bay, a short, stocky, sonorous chief with a chip on her shoulder, a job to do, and not nearly enough time in which to do it. The sound of the doors grinding open brought her green eyes snapping around in Porter's direction with the air of a Doberman spotting an intruder. She didn't address him immediately, however, but tracked the huge bear of a man moving away from him first. "Little!" she barked. "Find Miller and tell him I need someone from maintenance up here yesterday -- we just blew a fuse in one of the transport consoles."

 

Porter spotted Wills at once and walked over to her grinning. "Chief Petty Officer, we're quite chipper today, aren't we?" He knew he shouldn't be teasing her, but he couldn't resist temptation.

 

Wills gave him a look that would have burned a hole through duratanium. She was exhausted, mind-numbingly busy, and trying not to think about the amount of seat-of-the-pants reorganization that was being done to her system with every passing minute. She was not in the mood for Porter's smirks. "What do you want, Lieutenant?" she asked curtly, turning away from him and all but snatching an offered PADD from the nervous-looking PO standing behind her.

 

"Ah, what a question; shore leave and a quiet post on Earth where I'm not being held at gunpoint, so to speak, every other day is what I want. But sadly, neither Ambassador Drankum nor anybody else cares about what I want." As he said this Porter wondered whether a quiet post was really what he wanted. Certainly, he didn't like the fact that dying on the job was a lot more likely out here, but at least it didn't get boring.

 

"Normally, Porter, I would be more than willing to sit at your feet and listen to you rhapsodize about what might have been, but frankly this is not a good time," Wills returned irritably.

 

Porter let out a mock sigh before replying, "Oh, well. One of these days, Wills...just you and me in front of a fireplace..." He inserted a dramatic pause here for effect. "...and I'll tell you all about what I want and stuff." Inwardly he braced himself for a slap, despite the fact that Wills couldn't possibly have mistaken his joke for a serious desire.

 

Wills looked at him sidelong and her eyes narrowed slightly. What little patience she had was slipping. "Porter...much as I'm sure you adore my company, I find it hard to believe you didn't come down here for some more specific purpose. And if you did not, perhaps you can go work on determining whether that fighter will be out of bay three before we all commit mass hara-kiri down here."

 

At that Porter's mood deteriorated faster than a sugar cube in a glass of water. "I cannot tell you that Wills. I have nothing at all to do with what's going on in Cargo Bay 3 and from what I've been hearing I really, really don't want to. You'll have to make do with what you got. Speaking of, Commander Chirakis has ordered every crew member to get enough rest, even if that means shorter shifts. I know that difficult, especially since we're short on staff anyway after the attack and everybody pulled at least double shifts. But and order's an order, even if it causes me a major headache. How's everything else going?"

 

Wills bit back a sarcastic retort, realizing both that she had overstepped herself in tone somewhat and that Porter was not in a much better mood than she was, grin notwithstanding. So she just shrugged. "We're holding it together. But losing two bays at once is not a fun contingency."

 

That wasn't exactly a surprise to him, he had known before he had come down here that Wills would be fuming. "I know, but it cannot be changed. Anything else I can rely to Commander Chirakis?"

 

Having finally had the opportunity to vent a bit, Wills' tone got a little more businesslike at the question. "Not all of the damaged cargo is salvageable and we're still working out exactly how much is lost permanent; I can have a full manifest written out for you and sent up but it will probably keep changing for a couple more days yet."

 

Porter nodded; he had expected this, too. "I will have it replaced, we'll need a whole lot of supplies anyway, the repairs have drained our resources quite a bit."

 

"I'd imagine so. I've had the wrench jockeys running in and out of here every five minutes since the attack...never seen them so needy in my life." Wills finally cracked a slight grin, then glanced at Porter with a somewhat curious expression. "Do we know who did this?"

 

"Not yet it would seem. But I've been off duty for a few hours. However, I doubt that they've made much progress. It wasn't a species I have ever seen, and everybody else seemed just as puzzled." All that Porter had gathered while doing his work on the CT was that the ship was short of alive or the life form was fused with the ship, or some such thing.

 

"Lovely. Preferred when it was the Breen...at least then we knew what we were dealing with," Wills grunted, shaking her head slightly.

 

At this Porter grinned again. "Looks like neither of us will be getting what they wish for today, eh, Wills?"

 

"Guess not, but I've learned to take nothing for granted around here," Wills drawled, quirking an eyebrow upwards at the younger man. "Unless there's anything else, it sounds from the Commander's orders like I've got a shift schedule to revise."

 

"Indeed Chief Petty Officer, you may continue." With that he turned around and walked towards the door, carefully checking that Little was nowhere in the vicinity.