Mwezi had a consistent schedule. Most of the time. He made sure his team was well rested when they had to be, had the same shifts each week (consistency was good for healthiness), and were well trained. But now he had five new crewmembers to integrate into the rotation and that was a definite pain. They had some bad habits, especially Petty Officer Farlie. That idiot had nearly broken a limb twice, and actually done it once and had to go to Sickbay for that stupid ladder sliding stunt. Mwezi had chewed out Farlie, and he knew Kane had as well, so hopefully the man would have learned his lesson but no. He did it again. Luckily he hadn’t actually broken anything the second and third times, but it was only a matter of time before his idiocy injured him again.

It was things like these that made Mwezi glad for the gym facilities. He generally took for himself the late night shifts, the zombie hours as NE Perry had been so eloquent as to name them. So his Gym visit was usually very early in the ‘morning.’ Not that there really was a real day-night cycle on a starship, but it was good to pretend. He liked to change it up a little, and named the shifts after different continents on Earth. There was the North-America shift, 600-1200. The Europe shift, 1200-1800. The Asia shift, 1800-000. And finally the Australian shift, 000-600. So, here he was at 600 hours, doing his stretches and warming up. He didn’t wear much. He’d put on shorts, but his chest was bare. Well, bare as a body covered in fur could be.

The room itself was set to a chilly 10 degrees Celsius, but that obviously didn’t bother him. It was nice, being chilly again instead of the near-constant heat of the starship, and only in his private quarters and during his exercise in the gym did he get to enjoy that. He finished up his stretches and stepped over to the punching bags, wrapping some strips of cloth around his fists, then going to town on the hanging sand-bag.

• Mwezi