[snip]

Taking the ‘prize’ Rick, still on one knee, carefully tied off the top of the bag, blinking and making a face as some of the pungent mass assailed his nose. “Good advice, ma’am. Bit of a rookie on this with getting surprised by this bundle of furry joy.” Reaching out he ruffled her neck and head. “Good girl.” Then to Naomi, he said, “She has a list of commands she knows longer than some of my engineering manuals. But she is here now and we’ll have to work on how to fit her in here. Captain already knows about her. He met the sergeant by the cargo bay and told us - ah, Ensign Gagarin and I. Seems the Captain was awake too.” Maybe there ‘was’ something about officers being vampires. Many of them seemed to be up in the middle of the night. He was happy to just be a lowly petty officer in that case. Unlike other officers, Rick felt more relaxed with Naomi. Maybe it was the way she carried herself - not uptight or formal like and she had enough curves to not give the Sergeant Rock look that a lot of officers seemed to project. Well, maybe not Sasha Gagarin. He was more of a boy just out of the sandbox. Rick, my contrast, projected a pretty uninhibited ‘country boy’ manner. He seemed of an age to Naomi which helped. He moved away a bit and gestured to her. “Nessa is pretty friendly and on duty even if she just did, ah, her duty.”

• Rick Walters Eng PO

Nessa gave a crisp “..Bark..” in reply to the comment of being a ‘good girl’ and getting a ruffled pet on her neck and head. After the words passed Nessa sat on her haunches panting a bit looking about as if waiting her next set of orders.

Rick checked his chrono. The shift was wearing on and by now Sasha should have finished off the survey in the storage bay. He supposed there should be some reconnection there to get set up on his next duties. But first he should get back to sickbay and collect the food and other things to take back to his quarters. He was bunked with Mark who likely had more time in space than half the engineering crew put together, having grown up on a boomer transport. He didn’t even know if Mark had seen a dog much less ever had a pet. THAT should be interesting. Not that Rick was any way the wiser himself. He needed to send a letter to Barb for advice. But first things first.

“Right, come on Nessa. We need to collect your things and drop them off in our home, at least temporarily.” Standing, Rick dropped the ‘remains’ that he had collected in a small composter that science had set up. Idly he wondered whether Nessa could learn important engineering things, like what tool was what to fetch them while he was working on shuttle pods and the like. Or whether he’d get in trouble for ‘corrupting’ a dog like that so trained in military things.

OOC: So Rick’s objective here is to collect all the various Nessa things, drop them in his quarters on C Deck then take her along with him on the remainder of his shift which, I’m guessing, isn’t too much longer after all of this. There was the crate. Was there a kind of dog bed there too? .. Gene

Nessa stood and came over dutifully to Rick’s side. Once he got going back to the cargo bay where the dog had worked its way out of he would indeed find a storage crate nearby with quite a bit of various dog food, treats, training aides and such for about a month or two. And yes there was indeed a fairly comfortable dog bed for Nessa to use. To be honest Rick might reflect upon feeling it and the padding it was probably as comfortable as a higher officer’s bed, vs his own bed in his quarters.......lucky dog?

Once he would get back to his quarters on C deck and sort through everything he would find there was a feeding dish that was setup on a timer for dispense food once eaten, a water dispenser that could be filled with about a gallon of water at a time for free drinking. And most useful was a harness probably used for the dog to have equipment satchel on its side for squad mates to use in a pinch. The whole getup was light but well made and while not the most protective was a step up from just raw fur and muscle/tissue to protect the dog from simpler forms of harm if it was needed. All MACO standard issue of course.

Quizzically Nessa looked around the quarters as if pacing out the room and outlines and while Rick setup things sat off to the left of the door to his quarters keeping out of the way sitting on her haunches.

GM CockRoach