Surprisingly Uneventful

[Cptn Swain 0]

Swain yawned lazily as he opened another box. One never truly realized, he considered, how much crap you had until you had it in boxes laying around after a move. He’d been on the Excalibur for little over two weeks and between getting settled in with his new crew, inspecting the ship, dealing with the inherent bumps of a new command (getting the crew used to how he wanted things done), breaking in his yeoman and executive officer -- he’d barely had time to unpack anything, let alone the non-essentials.

Digging into the box, he removed a spherical object, little bigger than a tricorder. Smiling, he stood up sitting it on his desk, positioning it several times before walking back and taking a look. The astrolabe, he considered, was one of the oldest known tools for navigator, and it was one of the few keepsakes from his home that he’d kept with him from his earliest days at the academy and on every assignment he’d had since. Smirking, and recalling having to explain to his bunkmates what it was, he dug back into the box again. Removing another keepsake and placing it before returning he sighed happily. The place was starting to come together.

As a career military officer, you quickly learned to adjust to changes in surroundings. If you didn’t you washed out pretty quickly. Command level officers tended to have it often a little better than the juniors, as they could be moved around starships like someone playing the coconut game; still when you’d been on the same ship for nearly a decade it did start to feel a little bit like home.

Home. That was a strange concept. His home, his real home, was on a small, low-tech planet in the Nerin Cluster, but he didn’t have a house there, and he hadn’t spent more than a few nights in his parents home since he’d graduated the academy. It wasn’t that he had anything against them, or anything particularly against Abscean. Far from it, he just somehow never found the time. Earth had never really been a second home for him either, or the Sol system frankly. Swain knew a number of officers called it a second home, and many of them had apartments and homes somewhere in the system; but other than his time at the academy he’d never spent much time on Earth. It was, he supposed, a product of being an astronomer and stellar cartographer. Sure you could look at stars all you wanted from some stuffy observatory, but until you were out there, face to face with the unknown, you couldn’t really say you’d seen it.

Maybe that was why he’d been so apprehensive about this assignment. Pausing after he finished hanging a star map on the wall, he cocked his head, making sure it was straight before heading to the replicator for tea. Sure he was going to be on the fringes of known space on a regular basis, but he was also going to be commanding a ship more tied to a direct command structure and a base. That was going to be a rather new experience, and one he wasn’t exactly looking forward to frankly. The only time in his career he’d been close to having such an assignment was during the Dominion War.

The replicator flashed to life and produced a chrome mug of Azar Grey tea. He put it to his lips, letting the flavors mingle before swallowing. There was little he could about the situation, he supposed. For whatever preference he had towards being a scientist, he was also a solider. And soldiers followed orders. Drinking another sip of tea he considered that for a moment. He was here because someone couldn’t follow orders.It was a sobering reminder.

Still, despite the crews somewhat infamous reputation, he’d found them to be entirely adequate through the first week of his command. The stop over at Mars had gone off without incident, not even so much as loading incident while they brought aboard new fighters. There had been the revelation that the Spacedock folks had loaded them with torpedoes sized for the old launchers instead of the newer models they’d installed, a problem Commander Admiran was working to resolve before they arrived at Camelot. There also seemed to be a mix up with the small arms lockers, and something about the differences in Marine armaments and Security armaments and which went to which locker. Thankfully though, he was dealing with adults and they seemed to have a handle on the situation and were working to resolve the situation peaceably.

He smirked. It was going to take him a while to get used to the the new crew, for sure. He still found himself referring to his old crew -- even having to apologize to Rue for calling her Alyssa repeatedly -- but other than that, they were making the transition easy.

Deep Space 9 had been another uneventful layover; he’d had a wonderful dinner with his executive officer, played a little Dabo, and even had a little time to do some shopping on the promenade. The preliminary

reports also indicated that the crew had taken the Commander at her word and avoided run ins with the authorities. Medical, it seemed, had even managed to avoid getting inundated with the usual injuries, food reactions, and the assortment of issues that typically went along with a layover, but then, he reminded himself, despite it’s architecture and quasi-independence, Deep Space 9 was still a Federation base.

The trip through the wormhole had even been uneventful, if not colorful and surprisingly smooth. Perhaps inertial dampeners had simply improved, but he’d always remembered the passage between quadrants to be somewhat rougher and more tense -- they’d practically waltzed through this time. Still, he wasn’t complaining.

Taking a sip of his tea. The replicators, he decided, could use a little tweaking but that could wait till later. For now he’d have to live with his tea having a slightly artificial taste; and if that was the worst thing he had to get used to in his new command, then this was going to be a rather pleasant change of scenery afterall.