Opening wide, another massive yawn came out of the mouth of Garek Loran. The time was coming up on 0100 hours, and Garek was working late. Working late wasn't new to him at all. Many a time, Garek had pulled all niters, and worked the night shift on the Virgo, not to mention working nearly all the time on the To'Kar, his first assignment. Perhaps that's where he grew a type of immunity to racktijino. The door chime to his office sounded, breaking Garek out of his daze. "Come in."
In the doorway stood Lieutenant Le'Chell Nugent. "Good morning, Commander."
Rubbing his eyes, Garek looked to the base's counselor. "Good morning to you as well, Le'Chell. What can I do for you?"
"I was going over the crew roster, and when I came across your name, I saw that you hadn't been to a counselor after loosing your eye on Xenon III." Le'Chell took a seat in one of the chairs on the opposite side of Garek's desk. "Care to talk about it?"
Laughing, Garek looked at her. "It's one o'clock in the morning. I'm going to have to ask you why you're up first."
"I sometimes enjoy doing some late night reading. I see you like doing it as well." She looked over to a stack of PADDs next to Garek's computer.
"Touché." Garek leaned back in his chair, and placed his hands on his head. "Well, I'm already under fire from Lieutenant Carter about not having an up to date medical file, so I might as well answer any questions you have for me, Counselor."
Smiling, Le'Chell said back, drawing a PADD from one of her pockets, "Alright." She scrolled down the list of different information files on her patient, along with medicals, engineering logs, and evaluations from his former CO's. There was one from the Klingon captain Gan'grel of the To'Kar. "Well, why don't you tell me about how you lost your eye for example."
Taking a deep breath, Garek began. "Well, it all started back on the USS Virgo. We somehow stumbled onto this strange planet where we were somehow forced to help a group of people named the Borials to defend themselves against another group of people. I can't even remember exactly how we came about this. Anyhow, the bad guys, whom our allies had named The Horde, were destroying the planet and resources of the people. They also had enslaved another group of aliens named the Aody. Funny little things. They were about 3 feet tall with muscular legs they used for hopping. Very strange, yet very smart creatures."
"Anyways, I was incharge of an archery squad made mostly of my engineers and some Borial archers. Jen Antilles, boy was she a shot. A William Tell." Le'Chell gave him a confused look. "Sorry, I'm deviating from the subject. Anyways, our group was to protect an entryway into the main Borial fortress from incoming Horde attacks. Well, we did our job, and did it well for that matter. We fought them from on high with our bows and arrows. The only problem came when they started using chemical weapons. They put some kind of acid gelatin on the end of their arrows. They would shoot them in the air, and the arrows would come down, splattering acid in every which way. Well, some of this junk got in my left eye, and bingo, I'm out an eye."
"My gosh," Le'Chell said, copying this information down for later use. "How did you feel?"
"Well, needless to say I was angry. I stuck the rest of the battle out. Then, I went to my doctor Nori Dana..... Maruu Dana, my mistake. Anyways, she, along with Borial physicians were able to treat me the best they could. Eventually, when the Virgo was restored, along with us to our uniforms and positions, My eye was replaced with an ocular implant, and I've just been using that ever since."
"Mmhmm..." Le'Chll nodded. She copied a few more notes down onto the PADD. "Well, I thank you for your time Garek."
"Always a pleasure, Counselor. Nice to talk with you."
"You too." Le'Chell gave a friendly smile as she left the office.
Nice woman, Garek thought to himself. He turned off the computer terminal and made his way over to the transporter pad in a room adjacent to his office. "Computer, one to beam to Commander Loran's quarters. Energize." He disappeared in a column of light, reappearing in his quarters. Changing, Garek crawled into bed to get some sleep.
Awaking the next morning, Garek checked the chronometer on the wall. Currently, the station time was 0800 hours. However, you wouldn't know this from walking on the Commerce Section promenades. Granted, not all of the establishments were open, but it was getting there.
Walking over to his computer terminal, Garek accessed duty assignments, and frowned at what he saw. Multiple store owners were complaining of some power fluctuations causing brownouts and power surges all over Commerce Section Alpha. Most likely cause, a faulty fusion generator. Well, this is one of many problems to look at, he thought. He also would have to find time today to test fire the dilithium crystal core incase of an emergency. Never fails, does it Garek?
Transferring all of the requests to a PADD, Garek closed down his computer, and stepped into the sonic shower. Thinking, as always, Garek began to address the problem of the suspicious sensor readings from within the Hood, and something didn't match up. Sensors onboard the Hood had been restored, and were now active. For some reason, though, he still couldn't scan outside of Engineering from Engineering, or scan outside the Bridge, from the Bridge. Needless to say, he was getting upset with this problem. Then, there was the question of a dampening field.
The sensors might be reacting to a dampening field. The only problem is to find out how to penetrate the field. Once on the Liberty, a group of Maquis were hiding in a ship graveyard near where the battle at Wolf 359 had taken place. The Operations officer Lieutenant Okanra was able to penetrate a dampening field using ultra low frequency radio waves and thermal imaging. Normally, a dampening field blocks scans on higher frequency subspace radio waves, thus making the area inside the dampening field unable to be scanned. However, lower wave radio frequencies could penetrate the field if it wasn't modulated correctly. Okanra penetrated the field, and used thermal imaging to locate the Maquis. They were hiding in a shuttle, inside the wreckage of a Miranda class vessel's shuttlebay. Bingo.
Rushing out of the shower, and putting his uniform on, Garek reached for his commbadge and tapped it. "Loran to Murphy. You there?"
There was a slight pause, then the response came. "Yes sir. How can I help you?"
"Where are you right now?"
"I'm crawling in a Jeffries tube in Section 1 of Commerce Section Alpha."
"Get your butt out of there and head to the Operations Center. You and I have to talk to the Commander."
"On my way." The communications channel closed, and Garek left his quarters heading for the Operations Center.