Most of Starbase 901 was still asleep, the corridors were still shrouded in nighttime illumination mode. Everywhere there was only quiet. Everywhere that is, except in the Banshee's ready room.
There, under full day-mode illumination, Lee Carter occupied her customary place at the head of the briefing table. The large tactical display screen on the wall behind her currently displayed a three-dimensional diagram of the space sector surrounding their mission objective: a secret Nausicaan depot in a neighboring system.
Three of the four other chairs in the room were also occupied with their customary occupants. Max Vasser, Sam Beckett, and Jo Schmidt were paying close attention to the briefing, despite the early hour, and were taking notes on their PADDs. The fourth chair at the table was empty this morning -- Kim Tycho was grounded until further notice by order of the Captain and per the recommendation of Carter herself -- the consequence of her little 'adventure' with Thomas Riker five days ago.
Carter paused in her dialog momentarily and looked at the empty chair for the hundredth time already this morning and sighed inwardly. She'd been sorely disappointed by Kim's actions. While she realized that Kim was still very young, what she'd done was inexcusably childish. Kim was lucky she wasn't being court-martialed. Going absent-without-leave, theft of Starfleet property, destroying Starfleet property -- those were all serious charges.
Captain Wallace had been very lenient though. It would probably add a spot of tarnish to his credibility, but the Captain had a soft spot for other veterans of the Dominion War and felt it was worth it. Disciplinary action consisted of Kim being reduced in rank to Ensign and being banned from flying until further notice, which was completely academic of course, when you took into consideration the fact that her plane was in a billion subatomic pieces on a deserted planetoid lightyears away.
But enough daydreaming -- the others were starting to look at her funny, wondering why she was just staring off into space. Carter cleared her throat and resumed the briefing.
Kim Tycho sat on the deck of the Starbase 901's main hangar bay craning her neck up at an open hatch on the underside of the port wing of the Lambda Flier. It was 3:30 in the morning, but she couldn't sleep -- too much on her mind.
Yesterday she'd started helping Garek upgrade the couplings in the targeting sensors, so she thought she'd return to that task, in lieu of sleep. But instead of being a relaxing activity as she hoped it would be, the stupid self-sealing stembolt she was holding in her hand simply refused to adjust properly, and she was getting more and more frustrated by the second. Considering recent events, she hadn't been in the best of moods to begin with.
She set down the ornery appliance and tried to find something to wipe her hands on, then remembered painfully that she wasn't wearing her uniform and didn't have to be so careful. She hated the crewman's coverall she had on -- in her mind it had become the symbol of her punishment -- so she savagely smeared her greasy hands all over the front until the beige fabric had become mostly oily green and purple.
Strangely satisfied and suddenly in a much better mood, she smiled, and took up the stubborn stembolt once again. "I'm gonna adjust you right even if I have to take a hammer to you!"
"Now, now," a voice from behind her remonstrated. "What do I always say?"
Kim turned around and saw Garek standing there with his head ducked under the wing, hands gripping the wing edge.
"I know, I know," she said, smiling. "The right tool for the right job!" she mimicked in a stern, lecturing voice.
"You got it."
"So I'll hit it with a hydro-spanner then!" she laughed, standing up from her crouching position. Immediate she was in Garek's arms, he straightening up to receive his girl.
If it hadn't been for Garek, she didn't know how she could have dealt with this difficult time. Being reduced to Ensign was embarrassing enough, but to be denied flying time -- that was almost too much to bear. He'd been there for her though. Eschewing the usual nonchalant, carefree facade that he perpetrated for everyone else, he had sat with her during long lonely nights and just listened to her troubles.
"Problems?" he asked.
"Hm? Oh, just the stembolt," she replied, and nudged the thing with the toe of her boot. But then she wondered if perhaps Garek had meant something more by his question. She decided to answer in the same vein. "I'm having a hard time with this adjustment."
Garek smiled. He understood. With his hand on the small of her back, he gently guided her back to the open panel on the underside of the wing. "All right -- let's see what we can do about that," he said.
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