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

Posted by Lieutenant Junior Grade Alex Winters (Chief Engineer) in Winters reporting for duty

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.”

Myqian smirked at that comment, imagining what that exchange might have been like.

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

She nodded, digesting what Alex had offered as an answer to her open ended question. There was a reason she asked it and how someone went about answering it and what was shared or not shared said her a great deal about the person before her. “We all have our ‘why’, the reason we do what we do. For some, like yourself, it’s more clear because it’s been woven int the very fabric of your life. I think you’ll find others here who maybe don’t have a similar situation that promoted them, but who came here and found the work we do to be fulfilling in a way they either had been looking for or hadn’t expected.

Dira sipped her coffee, taking her time, unhurried as she sought the right words. “One of our more recent missions was to a refugee colony in Romulan space. Despite all the awkwardness between our governments, this place asked for help taking care of the people who had been displaced by tragedy. Our assignments aren’t always like that, but it is a big part of what we do. We go where other starship might not, and sometimes that means crossing borders into conflict zones. You have a big job before you. We rely on our engineers to not only keep this ship running, but to anticipate disasters and have workarounds ready. It’s hard to triage patients and get them all treated if we don’t have power. Intuitively, we know this, but it’s different when you’re in the thick of it.”

Captain Myqian, CO

Alex nodded. “I understand the importance of the job I have here. You’re the Captain, Captain. But if the Chief Engineer says we don’t go, we don’t go. That can’t happen when there are people in need waiting for us.”

She smiled a small smile as her grandfather popped into her mind’s eye unbidden. He had been a healer and a tinkerer. He used to say anyone with a good head on their shoulders could be both. ‘Humans are just very complicated meat machines who happen to have a mind of their own.’

“You know”, she said, looking at Dira, “I actually joined the Fleet thinking I would be a Doctor some day. But you know what they say about Cadets who flunk out of Engineering 101? They become Deck officers. In my case, something similar happened. I find machines are far more predictable, and less temperamental, than living organisms. But no less essential to the mission.”

~ Alex Winters, CE