Day 1, Gamma shift - Fear and insecurity.

Posted on Tue Aug 13th, 2024 @ 10:10pm by Commander Jennifer Baldric

Mission: Lost in Space
Location: Borg Space

The rest of the first day of travel had passed without incident and in relative quiet. The crew had used the buzzard collectors to harvest as much of the whale's preferred energy as they could safely store in one stasis field before the pod had moved off again.

Alpha shift was replaced by beta shift, and in turn by the gamma shift. Baldric relinquished the Commander chair at the start of the graveyard shift, her body and mind jangling from pent up anxiety. Had they dodged a bullet in getting home without drama? Where the whales going to be true to their word for the next two days? Before she left the bridge she looked at the map overlaid on the viewscreen, showing the Sunfire deep within Borg space, space known to be infested with Species 8472 and their rifts into fluidic space. The thought of it made her cringe and reawakened her sluggish mind yet again with thr fear of being assimilated. But this time it wasn't just her, it was the crew she was responsible for.

Shaking her head as though to rid her mind of unwanted visions she handed the bridge over to the night watch officer, with strict instructions to wake her should anything happen.

The walk back to her quarters was faster than she would have liked and not nearly long enough to calm her mind. She passed Rhenora's quarters, still the official Captain's quarters and paused. The Bajoran would no doubt be asleep at this hour and it would be inappropriate to wake her for a pep talk or a nerve soother.

Commander Savar's quarters were across the way, but he had also worked both alpha and beta shifts. Her quarters were next in the row of identical doors, almost like a nightmare hallway of doors that won't open. It yielded to her thumbprint and she stepped inside, kicking off her boots and grabbing a glass from the sideboard next to the whisky. A few cubes of ice and a solid finger of whisky was added. The couch was comfortable as she sank into it, the liquor burning mildly as it went down. It wasn't the good stuff, that was kept hidden from eyes that may enter.
She gazed at the bulk of the whales, obscuring the stars from sight and prayed to anything that would listen that she wouldn't kill everyone on her first command.

At some point her eyes slipped closed, finger still wrapped around the glass, and she drifted into a restless slumber.