Posted by Captain Dira Myqian (Commanding Officer) in Winters reporting for duty

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She sipped her coffee some more, her dark eyes taking in Alex with interest. “A service record can tell me a great deal, but it also doesn’t tell me all the things I’m curious about. I want to know about you, Lieutenant, the person, not the record. The Ogawa is a ship with a lot going on and we all rely on each other a great deal. Our role as a hospital ship means we have a lot of people who need care in various ways. Some outside of the health fields see an assignment like this as less exciting, but it actually means each crew member is supporting very important work, in addition to whatever else we might be engaged in. So yes, I want to know who my Chief Engineer is, because you are a member of the Senior Staff and I need to be able to rely on you. I find that best works when people get to know and trust each other, see each other beyond rank pips, division colours, and a list of previous assignments.” Her voice still had an easy flow to it, but there was something more deeply passionate under the surface. Conviction.

Captain Myqian, CO

Alex smiled. “If you’re worried I consider this nothing more than the next step on the career ladder, Captain, don’t be.”

She took another sip of coffee and sighed, cradling her cup in both hands as she pondered how much she should say. Where she should start. In the end, she chose the beginning.

“I grew up on a planet called NIOL. Stands for ‘not in our lifetimes’, as in: the original surveying team thought it might be suitable for terraforming by somebody with a lot of patience and resources, but ‘not in our lifetimes’. A rocket-building tech billionaire staked his claim on it in the early 2100’s, back before the UFP was even an idea. Before we stopped buying and selling everything to everyone and their dog for a profit.”

She put her cup on the table and leaned back. “Well, NIOL eventually did get terraformed, but it took … oh, close to 200 years. The universe had changed considerably in that time. The UFP came to exist, and then eventually did away with the idea that any one person could wholly own anything. But the NIOL claim stuck. And its owner, whose family had contributed considerably to humanity’s ability to even go to space in the first place, advertised it as a haven for people who wanted nothing to do with modern science and technology. Which is what it eventually became.”

Alex shook her head. “That is the place where I was born. Its backwardness has cost me and my family dearly. Three of the women closest to me, both of my grandmothers and my mother, died for lack of adequate medical care; two of them in childbirth. My father succumbed to a lumberjacking injury when I was three. My maternal grandfather ended up being the default parent, and lucky for me, he was something of a rebel. I never found out where he got them or why they were there, but in a community where children my age barely even learned to read for themselves anymore, and the universe out there had all but been forgotten, he had a house full of books and an ancient two-way radio. Thanks to him, I knew there were different ways of life, out there, and I dreamed of going to the stars from a young age. But even so, when I got out, it was almost by accident. I’d picked up a signal from a Ferengi ship looking for new trade opportunities. I promised them every bar of gold-pressed Latinum I would make in my life, in exchange for passage to Earth. They kept pestering me for a while, after that. But they eventually realized that, as a Starfleet Officer, I’d chosen a path for myself that didn’t involve monetary compensation.”

Alex looked at the Captain and smiled. “Given all of that, Captain, I’m sure you’ll understand when I say that sometimes, I dream of going back home on a ship like the Ogawa. To save innocent victims of a society that has, by its own doing, lost the art of healing people. Three of my closest family members died of injuries that I later learned would have been either entirely preventable, or at least very treatable, had my elders not consciously elected to eschew modern medicine. It didn’t have to be that way. And if I can play a small part in preventing pointless tragedies like that anywhere else, well … I’ll consider it a life well spent.”

Alex Winters, CE