“To Lieutenant T’winn N’Dir, who upon arrival at Starbase K-8 will be taking up a new post as Chief Operations Officer aboard the USS Aquarius, and Commander Dietlinde, who will be heading off to a well deserved retirement!”

“Hear Hear!” came the chorus.

T’winn was certain that the science department’s cheers seemed louder than the rest of the crews.  Lately, they had seemed bothered by his thesis on Tachyonic reversion and worn down parts.  Not that he’d had a chance to test the theory, as the Engineering department was adamant that they wouldn’t allow such testing to take place on an active starship.  Something about Tachyonic radiation and warp fields causing issues with the Temporal Directive.

The Captain was speaking again “Now, the good doctor says we can’t stay up too late, and unfortunately some of us have to be on the bridge in [checks clock] 30 minutes, but the rest of you get to party until bedtime. Meanwhile, Lieutenant, follow me!” 

T’Winn followed the captain to the bridge and, not that he’d admit it, he was glad to be away from the rowdiness of the party.  It was, to be sure, more for the retiring commander than for himself, and Commander Detlinde had indeed earned it, serving aboard the USS T’Paal since its launch day many years before.

Luckily, the Captain stopped on the bridge, as T’Winn wasn’t sure whether his latest question’s thesis on Cloaking Technology and its use in small-scale endeavors was technically legal.  If the Captain had discovered the experiment currently running in his quarters, things might have become more complicated than he was willing to deal with today.  With his mind on the experiment, T’Winn failed to notice the Captain speaking to him (again), and had to ask for a repeat.

“I said Lieutenant, I’ve informed your new captain of your… tendencies… and she seems to accept them without much of an issue, though I think she thinks I was exaggerating.  Goodness knows I did when I received the same report from Captain Yonshire.”

“I do not understand what is so hard to believe, Captain.  I merely ask questions.”

“If all you did was ask the questions, it wouldn’t be so prevalent in your record.  I still have nightmares about your experiment with the Holodeck and the Dreamscape scanner.”

That one had been one of the more… interesting… experiments to date.  T’Winn had hooked the holodeck up to a brain scanner to see if you could replicate dreams as holo-scenarios.  Unfortunately, the volunteer he had used for the system had dreams that were… absolutely terrifying.  That and the system accidentally hooked into the shipwide EMS hologram matrix, filling the ship with holographic spiders ranging from the size of Tribbles to the size of Targs.  That incident had made the ship’s counsellors to have a very long day with the traumatized crew.

“I understand Captain.”

“I’m not really sure you do.” she sighed “anyways, we should be arriving at K-8 in the next 2 hours.  Until then, you’re on duty here on the bridge.” the tired Captain slinked off to her ready room, fully expecting a missive from the new captain within the week.

In the end, T’winn did not manage to shut down the experiment in his quarters, as the small-scale cloaking device worked a little too well.  Hopefully whoever gets these quarters next doesn’t get in too much trouble for having a functional mini cloaking device hiding a model version of the NX-01 Enterprise somewhere in the room.  Maybe making the model float around the room was a bad idea.

(Some weeks later, the model would ‘escape’ the room to wander the hallways, leading to a legend of a ghost on board)

Disembarking on station K8 alongside Commander Detlinde, T’Winn didn’t make it 20 meters before running into the next question to plague his mind. Unfortunately, the exact resonation difference between the Station’s generators and the T’Paal’s Warp Core will have to remain unknown.  Commander Detlinde, now a veteran at keeping T’Winn on track, practically dragged him away from the nearest engineer before he could even get started.

“I swear if you delay my retirement by even one more ******** hour I will throw you out the airlock myself” Detlinde grumbled under her breath.  She had always been this… direct with T’Winn.  This was probably the reason Captain had kept the two together on so many projects.  This was also probably the reason Commander Detlinde was retiring when she could have easily ended up captain of her own vessel.

“My asking of a question would not have delayed your retirement.  Your transportation back to Luna colony does not arrive for another three days.” T’Winn was confused, had the USS Zababa arrived early?

“I don’t get to formally retire until I complete my last orders from the Captain, to make sure you don’t get lost or annoy K8 personnel until you’re somebody else’s problem.”

T’Winn was fairly certain Commander Detlinde meant that in a light-hearted manner.  Andorian emotions can be so confusing.

Finally, they arrived at the docking port for the USS Aquarius, where Commander Detlinde flagged down a passing Ensign, said “he’s your problem now” and left.