[snip]

“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.

“Really?” Xavier raised his eyebrows. “Did the ship run into some trouble on her last run?”

“A kind of symbiotic protobacteria that gave you superpowers. Senses were improved. My tail became super-strong. It had us all stumped for a while!” replied Cara.

“I heard the Merrimack was one of the first ships in the area though when that Bolay thing 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 might be harsh.”

“No criticism intended here,” Xavier raised one hand in an innocent gesture. The other was holding his drink. “I’ve known plenty of people who took offence at anything and everything simply because they felt that being offended gives them more rights or power over others. Or because they were always looking for a fight or an argument. Or because they were simply douchebags.” He smirked and shrugged one shoulder.

“No, not criticism by you,” replied Cara. “But it did happen. It’s easy to criticise when you aren’t there, or only in hindsight. The Bolay are an incredibly xenophobic race.”

“I’m surprised an entire species of them survived long enough to develop the technology to get off their planet, honestly, or that they were able to form a cohesive force that didn’t self-destruct the moment someone’s feelings got hurt. Anyway that’s over now and I’m sure the Starfleet Diplomatic department will come out with extensive guidelines on how, what, when and in what tone to say things, and what not to say soon enough. How about yourself, you’re a Xenobiologist on the Merrimack and you said you had only been on the ship a short time then? What did you do before you joined the ship?”

“I guess it is a tribal thing,” replied Clara, then added, “they will have a strong sense of loyalty to their own species, they just hate everyone else. But you are right, tribal politics can be divisive and counterproductive, and we use the Bolay as a classic example of that now when teaching sociology. Before the Merrimack, I was split, working between the two Caitian crewed training ships, the USS Felix and the USS Oscar. It is unusual to find Caitians working in mixed crews, I guess we Caitians are quite tribal ourselves. Before Starfleet, I was at the Vulcan Institute of Science but I wanted to get out into space.”

Kate was still lingering around them simply listening on the ongoing conversation .On hearing about the Bolay race she chirped in ‘’I was a junior nurse back then , where they the ones who’s ship was all water ‘’ she asked ‘’If so they took offense when Cmdr Kord said something about similar mammals we have on Earth the …dolphins ‘’ scratching her head she went on ‘’ Or maybe ......’’ .

“No, I think that’s correct,” Cara said. “From what I’ve read, DNA analysis shows that they share ancestors with Earth’s Bottlenose Dolphins, and the suggestion was made that some earlier alien visitors to Earth took a colony away. Of course, the truth often hurts, and while that may be true, it isn’t always necessary to tell the truth… much in the same way that Captain Glen has just had to weigh up whether to disclose everything we discovered about EP19.”

From the station commander. =/\= Attention USS Merrimack, all senior staff report to Lieutenant Commander Grafton in briefing room 2 in 20 minutes. =/\=

Kate N.O

• Cara Meow.