Missing The Bus

Ensign Barker waved a final goodbye to his younger sister. He didn't really need to as she was still chattering away in his head, saying how good it had been to see him again, how much she was going to miss him and to take care in the Beta quadrant.

Being half Betazoid had its advantages, but having a sister that didn't know when to shut up was not one of them. He was going to miss the shuttle to Starbase One if he wasn't quick, but he had to try one last time to persuade Samiz to take up the position of Assistant medical officer on the Leviathan, but it had been a futile effort. She was as suborn as their mother had been and just as beautiful.

Their mother had been a Medical Officer on the USS Valdemar and they had picked up a distress signal from a small settlement that had been attacked by the Dominion.

The Valdemar was en-route to meet a task force that was going to attack a Dominion spy outpost near the Cardassian border and could not answer the call directly. Under protest from both her Captain and the Chief Medical Officer, she had finally been allowed to take a shuttlecraft, two volunteer junior medics and all the medical and food supplies that they could 'cram' into the small craft and set off.

From the shuttle logs that were recovered, the Jem-Hadar vessel had attacked from out of nowhere. The sensor logs had shown that they had been using a clocking device, most probably recovered from one of the Romulan vessels that attacked the Founder's homeworld in the Omarion Nebula. The log also showed that the cloaking device was not perfectly matched with the Jem-Hadar systems. When the USS Valdemar had returned to search for their 'lost lamb', they had been able to follow the ion trail that had been left behind right to the Jem-Hadar vessel which was quickly destroyed.

Since their mother's death, Chu and Samiz had become even closer to each other. It had hit Chu hardest though, as he had 'seen' the attack some forty-eight hours before, but had been unable to get a message through to their mother to stop her from being killed.

This was another good reason for having a medical officer who knew Chu's problems with his 'dreams', being able to see the future was a burden, not a gift. To get to sleep was sometimes hard, especially if he was stressed out and being able to get something to 'relax' from medical was always helpful.

Mostly of Chu's premonitions came as vague images in his dreams and usually turned out to be something trivial, but occasionally they were something bigger, something happening to someone close, like his mother's death. She used to joke that Chu knew that he was going to have a sister even before she did. He had only been six at the time and didn't understand exactly what I had seen, but his mother knew when he had tried to explain to her what he had seen.

There father was a Trill host and Chief Science officer on the USS Malinche (NCC-38997) an Excelsior class vessel under the command of Captain Sanders. The current mission status and position of the Malinche were 'not available', but judging from their father's last message, she was somewhere in the Gamma quadrant.

It had been Captain Sanders who had mentioned the opening aboard the Leviathan and Chu had been overwhelmed when his request had been accepted. To serve on a ship with the new Slipstream drive was an opportunity not to be missed. To explore the far side of the Beta quadrant was a bonus.

Before returning to Earth and joining the Leviathan, Chu had been working at a research facility on Bajor working on a transpectral sensor array that would penetrate the plasma storm interference of the Badlands. When the Dominion 'wiped out' the Marquis, the project was 'shelved' and the team had been broken up and gone their separate ways.

Returning to Earth was good, it gave him a chance to see his sister, something that he'd not done in over a year. He'd visited the academy, taken a refresher course in emergency medicine and another in shuttle piloting (Something that he wasn't very good at, but you can always walk away from a shuttle crash in a simulator his father always said) and caught up with some of his friends.

Ahead of him, he saw one of those friends, outside the shuttle that would take him to his new ship and to the Beta quadrant. Ensign Ray Barrass (Raymondo to his friends) was pacing up and down outside the small craft and Chu picked up his pace and finally 'jumped' aboard the small transit vessel.

Ray quickly followed, closed the door and sat in the pilot's seat. Ray was an ace pilot, but because that was all he was really good at (All his other grades had been average) shuttle pilot was all he had been able to get after leaving the academy.

Ray was obviously a little angry with Chu for being late, "Where have you been all this time, I've should have been back as Starbase One over ten minutes ago". "Sorry, I had to say one last goodbye to Samiz" Chu apologised.

"Yeah, yeah, I know what sisters are like. Say when you going to let that gorgeous sister of yours have the pleasure of spending an evening with me ?". "When I'm Chief Science officer of Starfleet command, my friend" Chu replied.

They sped off up into the sky and within a minute the sky darkened and the star's came out. As they approached Starbase One, a ship had just left the space dock, spun around and sped off into the solar system at full impulse.

"Looks like you've just missed your bus mate" Ray remarked.

Chu had recognised the Leviathan as soon as he had seen her, beautiful and sleek, the fastest ship Startfleet had to offer and he'd missed her maiden voyage. Okay, it was probably just a 'shakedown' flight, once around the block and back home for tea; the Slipstream drive would probably not be fired up on such a 'trivial' journey.

Ray landed the shuttle in bay five, giving the shuttle bay controller some yarn about having a dodgy inertial damper that he'd had to get checked out, as way of an explanation for his arrival over twelve minutes late. Chu got off the shuttle and said goodbye to his friend, "See you in the bar later Ray".

*I may have missed the 'bus'* Chu thought, but there's no reason I can't toast her on her maiden voyage.

"Which way to the bar" he asked the computer after he'd registering his presence with it. The computer had informed him that there were infact three bars on the Starbase, that the Lunar was the closest to Chu's current position, that Moonrise would be in twenty seven minutes, sunrise in another thirty four minutes and that the Leviathan would be back in a space dock in twelve hours according to the flight plan logged..

Two hours later, having toasted the Leviathan, the rising of the moon, the setting of the moon, the rising of the sun, the setting of the sun and the rising of the Moon again, Ensign Barrass finally arrived. The first thing he asked Chu was had he heard the news.

The Leviathan had jumped to the Larris III system to answer some distress call, the images of the ship stretching and then disappearing had been broadcast all over the news networks. Chu's heart saddened at the news, he'd missed it.

*Well there's always next time" he thought.

"Another drink to toast the Slipstream drive I think" he said to Ray "Get 'em in mate".