Electric Storm

Getting Used to It

Julian spent the next couple of days being upset about Samantha's leaving. The next day, he received her first letter detailing her experiences on the ship.

Hey Jules,

I miss you a great deal, but I have learned so much on this ship in just the past couple of days. The ship is brand new which means it has all of the latest upgrades that any ship could have. That means I have so many tech manuals to read just to catch up with it all. Some of the tech here would make Chief O'Brien swoon.

The crew has been amazing and welcoming to me. They are also strangers to each other, but they did spend the most of their time before reaching DS9. Soon, I will be joining in their weekly poker night as it happens every Monday night. Strange night for it, but it works out alright. The size of the ship is one of the most daunting things about it. You'd think after being on a space station, it would feel small but someone it manages to feel much bigger.

One of the things that I wasn't prepared for when accepting the promotion was the amount of paperwork I would be doing every night after my shift. Some of the older engineers at first didn't respect me but once I took apart a tricorder and put it back together in under five minutes, they were on board.

Captain Kirk allowed me to prepare for the bridge officer's test. He is well aware of how it can feel being so young and in charge of so many people. That will be next month when I've had more time to adjust to the ship. I think he sees in me a chance for someone else to be captain of a Starship at a young age like him.

The work in engineering has been satisfying because I'm not trying to get systems to talk to one another that were never designed to do so. Instead, I'm just learning about the systems one by one with everyone else. The new warp core design is fascinating, definitely an improvement on the older design.

I've also made some other friends with the other engineers who were more welcoming from the beginning. Scotty 2.0 is amazing. He's the chief engineer on board. The only difference I can see from him and his grandfather is that he doesn't multiply the time it takes by three. We work closely together to keep everything in perfect shape. It would be quite embarrassing for him if the ship stopped working, barely out of space dock.

I think that's it for news. I had an eventful couple of days,

Love

Samantha

Dear Samantha,

I'm glad that you are fitting in so well with your new crew. I should have warned you about the sheer amount of paperwork being in the top jobs means for you. It will get easier as time passes. I remember in the beginning, I too, found it almost overwhelming. But after doing it for six months, I found it much more bearable.

Things have changed slightly on DS9 without your presence. Mostly things tend to break more, which drives the Chief up the wall. He is keeping to his scheduled work time as the other engineers have stepped up. Apparently, you taught them a great deal about getting the two systems to talk together.

Miles dislocated his shoulder again to no one's surprise. I popped it back into its socket and all is well. I think he was just waiting for you to leave, because he knew that you would pop it back into place for him.

Personally, I've been spending my free time doing more research. Once my paperwork is done of course. There is one problem in particular that is proving tough to solve. I think I've just about got it, so in the next letter, I'll tell you about it more along with the solution I came up with.

Love,

Julian

Hey Jules,

Sorry for not responding sooner. I was injured during one of the away missions on a class M planet. Kirk and I were on planet side doing the proper diplomatic things. The first officer was back on the ship like they should be. The discussion got quite violent as it can happen. We were in a rock cavern which when one of the delegates got super angry, fired up at the ceiling causing a bit of a cave in.