Chapter 2
The Starbase
 
The Backwash of Confusion
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Damien Sherman, Ensign, with dark hair and baby-blue eyes whistled as he finished dressing himself. He was in a good mood, and with good reason, for it was the first day as an honest-to-goodness Ensign, putting behind him all the cadet nonsense forever. Well, the nonsense he had to deal with, perhaps not the nonsense he would give the seasoned officers. A slight bit of nerves came into play as he realized he'd be serving alongside seasoned career officers now, alongside them, and as one of them.

It didn't even really matter to him that the Isannah was undergoing a refit, he viewed it as more of an opportunity to get to know the crew before they were put in a crunch situation. He had heard this ship was known for those crunch situations. But he found that possibility being all the more exciting, as he was still filled with some sense of cadet invincibility, and didn't realize it.

First order of the day was to locate his department head. Pausing in the mirror, Damien checked his uniform for anything out of order. 'Perfect, always did love science blue,' he thought, smiling at his reflection. Then he promptly left his quarters, taking his question to the nearest interface. "Computer, please locate Lieutenant James Levin, assigned to the USS Isannah."

"An Ensign James Levin is in mess hall ten gamma, deck ten," the computer responded, in the same voice that every federation computer had, whether it was on a starbase or a ship.

'When I get my own ship, I'll change that voice,' Sherman thought to himself. He had every intention of achieving that goal.

'Maybe a Klingon male?' he thought, then rejected that idea. 'No, that won't work, Klingons always sound like they are enraged or in battle.'

Damien began walking with a carefree gate to the nearest turbolift, still pondering the question. 'It wouldn't be very good to have a visiting Admiral order a meal and have the computer bark back, 'that meal has not been programmed into this unit' in a surly Klingon voice with perhaps some explicatives added for emphasis.'

The ensign barked a laugh out of the blue at the statement, but then realized he drew stares and gave a muttered apology. Still, he could barely restrain the laugh to a soft snicker. Of course, that kind of action might make the Admiral decide to court-martial him on the spot!

He punched the call button for the lift, and waited. 'Maybe a different human female... one with a little more... personality. No more bland answers, with the same tone every time.' Damien had been in a training simulation once where the Captain ordered self-destruct. The computer had calmly replied, "This ship will self destruct in five minutes, have a pleasant day." It actually said have a pleasant day, even though it was about to explode---in the simulation at least.

As the turbolift arrived, Damien stood aside to make way for an attractive young woman in a blue dress, well, it wasn't all blue, but the middle part was blue, so he decided to just call it blue. "Excuse me," he mumbled. She smiled and walked by, but followed her with his eyes. Feeling his gaze, she very slightly turned her head to she could confirm the feeling. As she turned the corner, Damien made a mental picture of her face. 'Someone to get to know,' he thought.

Then he remembered he was going somewhere and stepped into the lift. "Deck ten."

The lift began to move and he went back to his original line of pondering. 'Anyway, not just any voice will do. The computer needs a subtle ring to it. But with a bit of perkiness.' Then it hit him. "Just like Nancy's..." he said aloud in thought. That's the voice he had been missing. She had been gone for over a year now, but he still thought of her every day.

Arriving at the mess hall, he stopped someone passing and asked who was Lieutenant Levin. The officer, who happened to be a Lieutenant junior grade just shrugged, so Damien was forced to make a cursory look around the room to try and find a person in science uniform.

Thankfully there was only one man who fit that description at this moment. Science officers weren't precisely known for being social butterflies and Sherman walked up to him. "Lieutenant Levin?" he queried softly.

The man looked up, "Yes?"

He felt a brief surge of relief, found the right person after all. "I'm Ensign Sherman, your new ASO." He assumed a formal posture and handed a padd with his orders on it to Levin.

"Have a seat, Ensign Sherman," he said, taking a cursory glance at the orders. There wasn't anything surprising about them, but he just wanted to check to see they were in order.

The Ensign sat down and spoke, "I'm sorry to disturb your breakfast, but I am eager to get started and I was hoping you and I would be able to speak about what my responsibilities would be." Sherman had done his homework and knew approximately what Levin would probably expect of him, but seeing as each department head had a different way of doing things, he wanted to show his eagerness, not end up stepping on Levin's toes.

"Well," Levin began, "Since the Isannah is being refitted right now, there's not much for the Science Department to do. We have a few samples that are still being analyzed, but everything's been so jumbled in the transfer I'm not certain if we'll get to it until we're back on the Isannah herself. But, if a JAG officer comes to you with an arrest warrant for me, tell them I'm on Talos four. Got it? Talos four. And then find me and tell me to avoid every MP in the Federation."

Damien blinked, not entirely sure if Levin was joking or not. Watching the man for a moment didn't give him any better idea, so he cleared his throat and decided to continue as normal. "Well, sir, I can either get up to speed with you, use a little more R&R time, or volunteer to help with the refit of the Isannah, the science portions at least." He gave a slight smile, even though the thought of taking even more R&R time was enough to make him sick. He was going crazy and waiting for something interesting to happen. "Your thoughts?" he queried after Levin didn't say anything.

"You're up to speed with me," the somewhat older man replied. "All that's happening in my life is that my wife's pregnant, and I've either got JAG corps on the warpath, or I've brought them to their knees. So, if you want to help with the refit of the Isannah, you'd have to talk with Lieutenant Johnson as he's the CEO, or perhaps Lieutenant Commander Lysander, our XO, he's been trying to keep track of the crew. I don't know where either one of them are right now, but if I were to hazard a guess I'd say you'd find Johnson up to his elbows in isolinear chips and debris, and Lysander running between the base Engineering offices and Johnson's office here on 118." Stopping his speech, he pointed at his collar, "Oh, and Sherman, I'm only an ensign."

Not giving the new ensign a chance to say anything, Levin got up and left, heading back to his temporary quarters. Taking a deep breath he checked to see if JAG had decided to surrender yet. "Nope, no threatening letters or anything about giving up from the corps yet."

His wife looked up from what she had been working on, "What?"

"I think I got every Starfleet lawyer mad at me yesterday when I started yelling at a high ranking JAG Officer, Rachell."

Her expression turned puzzled, "What were you yelling about?"

"A JAG investigation conducted by someone who doesn't exist." Levin said, sounding annoyed, "And then he came to me and yelled at me, and admitted to having authorized the investigation, which he had denied earlier. And I didn't even manage to get it recorded." He blew out an annoyed breath while his wife considered stringing him up to get her questions answered for once.

Loaded: 04.29.2004

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