[snip]

Then she turned to Xavier. “Hi! I’m Cara!” Her whiskers twitched, and her tail beat twice.

“Pleased to meet you Cara, I’m Xavier,” the man replied and offered a hand in greeting. The X was pronounced as a Z, rather than the eX it was often heard as. “Seems like I wandered into a reunion of sorts,” he laughed lightly and turned to look at the Bartender and woman wrapped around him. “I take it most of you aren’t regulars on the Station then?”

“No, I’ve never been to this bar before,” Cara replied. “I’m not sure about the others, but I haven’t been aboard our ship quite as long. No, this is what passes for ‘shore leave’ for us folks out there at the edges of known space! You look like you’re waiting to ship out yourself? Are you.....”

At that moment a station announcement sounded which made it impossible to hear what anyone was saying. FINAL BOARDING CALL FOR PASSENGERS FOR THE SS ABRAHAM LINCOLN TO TELLAR PRIME. PLEASE GO TO GATE 5 IMMEDIATELY

Wincing from the volume of the announcement it took Xavier a moment to reply, having lost the rest of Cara’s words and pausing to pick up his drink and take a sip. “The edge of known space?” He asked, “That sounds exciting. What is it exactly that you do on your ship? Oh wait!” He put down his glass and looked around to see if the bartender was free. “You’re at a bar and haven’t got a drink yet, that situation needs to be fixed. What’s your poison?” He jokingly referred to Doctor Hunters behavior earlier towards the drink he had been served. “Did you want to get one for your friend that ran off to get her a moment ago?” With his free hand he motioned to the woman that had launched herself at the bartender, Joe.

“Oh! thanks, the poisoned whisky too, please!” Cara replied. “Like that cat in that old twentieth Century song ‘Ça Plane Pour Moi’!” She followed his hand. “Kate?? She’s not really a friend. She’s a Nurse on the ship. I don’t know what she’d drink… She went to get Doctor Cross. There are a lot of medics here aren’t there? Ha! …Me, myself, I’m a xenoanthropologist. I study the alien behaviours, cultures, and societies that we meet, and it usually is exciting, but the last mission has brought everyone down a bit. Joe, the barman, used to be our COS… long before I joined. Then he left. Then he came back as our XO, then he left again. He missed out on meeting the Ascended beings that are playing God with the natives… but let’s not talk about work anymore. Not when there’s Doctor Hunter’s dad-dancing to watch on the disco floor!”

{snip}

Meanwhile, elsewhere on the space station, Captain John Glen had handed in his mission reports to the hierarchy, but had been new given orders to leave within a few days, much earlier than he had expected. That would mean that the crew R+R would need to be cut short, yet again. He didn’t relish the task of having to give that news to his crew. They needed this break. He had also heard through the grapeline that Joe Milligan was not only recovered from his illness, but was working on the station. He knew most of his crew would already be there, and while he didn’t want to interrupt their party, he wanted to see his old XO again even more. Captain Glen made his way through the small back alleyways to find the sign of the Green Dragon. When he passed Doctor Hunter with a girl, he knew that he was getting close. After that he followed the music into the bar. His heart sunk a little when he entered. As he suspected, Joe was surrounded by people at the bar, and with Miriam hanging on his arm, John would never be able to have a quiet word with him. Now that he had entered, he could hardly back out again…

“Oh so your a science type then?” Xavier made a small motion of toasting with his glass as Cara’s arrived, then took a sip of the drink. “Backbone of Starfleet, don’t let them Engineers tell you otherwise.” He grinned, then casually looked around the room. More people had entered, including one in particular that was standing near the door.

“Yes, well… social sciences, but my boss is still the CSO… or it would be, but we don’t have a CSO at the moment. He’ll be joining us at this station,” Clara replied.

“Don’t look now,” his voice took on a semi whisper as if he was saying something conspiratorial. “Your Captain just walked in the door.” Technically Glen was his Captain as well, but Xavier had neither checked in, handed over transfer orders nor identified himself as a new member of the crew to anyone present, yet.

“Yes, that’s him, but how do you know him?” Cara’s mind was working overtime now. “I expect that he wants to see Joe, but is wondering how to prise away Miriam Cross.”

“Well, he looks the spitting image of the photo on his profile. Unless he has a twin, but I don’t think that was written anywhere so I’m pretty sure that is him,” Xavier said coyly, an ever so slight smirk on his face that he quickly covered with his drink.

Cara had already thought that Xavier was a Starfleet officer in civilian clothing, and he hadn’t answered her question earlier about ‘shipping out’. If he knew who Captain Glen was then that almost proved it. He could even be the new CSO himself.

“You don’t happen to be one of those science types; the backbone of Starfleet, yourself do you? And maybe about to take on a new position aboard one of the most decorated ships in the Black Fleet?” Cara asked Xavier.

“Who me?” he pointed to himself with a look of pure innocence on his face. That look broke a second later though.

“I might just be, yeah,” he admitted and held out his hand to Cara in a formal greeting. “Lieutenant Xavier Khauv at your service, previously of the Medical Corvette U.S.S. Leander, and about to transfer onto the U.S.S. Merrimack as her Chief Science type. It seems like I wandered into the very bar where the Merrimack crew is set to be congregating. I better watch what I drink.” He grinned at the reference to Hunter.

Her tail upright and quivering, she took his hand in her paw and shook it. She gave a firm, brief handshake, but there was a lot of hidden strength behind that shake.

“Hunter??” replied Cara, both her ears tilted forward, and her tail tip flicking up. “Don’t mind too much what that blow hard says. Joe would never poison even a tiny winged insect. He is one of the good guys in this galaxy.”

“Oh I have no concern that the man was poisoned,” Xavier put his drink down on the bar, “he had no physical symptoms. You know, pupils weren’t unusually large or small, his breathing was normal, no drooling, no confusion and all the rest. The working theory was he just drank something stronger than he expected.”

“I think we have a few days to recover… if you did happen to drink too much!” Cara added, swishing her tail, unaware that the Merrimack’s shore leave had just been cut short.

“Not tonight, my plan was a couple of easy drinks and maybe dinner before wandering around the rest of these shops. I had a few things to pick up after leaving the Leander.” He had to restock his collection of miniatures and models to work on while he was off duty. Some postings were months long and the chance to restock was sometimes slim.

“A Medical Corvette, huh?” Cara asked, “You must have seen action in the Bolay War?” She twitched her tail, and didn’t mention that the Bolay conflict had been started as a consequence of the USS Merrimack’s First Contact. However, that was before her time on the ship.

“Nothing directly,” he picked up his drink and sipped from it again. “The Leander was too small to be anywhere near a front line. Our role primarily was medical response on colony worlds with virus outbreaks or providing medical support in second-line operations for the fleet. We did some supply runs back and forth and ferried wounded away from the medical stations back to hospitals on Earth. It did encourage me to get my advanced first aid certification so I could do more than watch for Ion storms though.”

“You would have been useful on our last mission,” Cara said.

“I heard the Merrimack was one of the first ships in the area though when all that kicked off, any idea what started it all?” As he asked that question, he took a look around to take stock of who else was still around. The couple at the table were still there and the ships Captain and the bartender had wandered off to a secluded table of their own, the woman who had mounted Joe like a stallion had disappeared and there seemed to be a couple of extra people who had turned up.

“Long before I joined the ship,” Cara replied, “but it was a First Contact that went wrong. The Bolay are a belligerent race who took offence at something someone said. I got the impression they are so bellicose that they would have taken offence at anything that was said. I think criticism of the ship ,ight be harsh.”

• Cara Meow