LtCmdr Salkath - Settling In For Reals Now

[Salkath]

((Personal Quarters, Deck 3 - USS Artemis))

The quarters were sparse, much as they should be. Inner peace did not manifest in outer chaos, as Salkath's father had been fond of saying. He raised an eyebrow at that thought, 'fond'. It was not a term that could ever be applied to his father's disposition. Salkath wondered if his extended time in Starfleet had subtly changed his vocabulary to the point where he assigned emotions even where there were none.

In fact, the few personal items in these new quarters on the Artemis - were these items he was 'fond' of? These limited edition leatherbound books of old Earth classic literature, his kal-toh set, the bottle of Saurian brandy he had received from a science officer he had a passing acquaintance with from another ship in the fleet. Why did he keep these, transport them from posting to posting, place them on prominent display? Was this 'fondness'? Illogical to apply that emotion to himself, but Salkath could not deny that he could simply replicate new copies of the books, the game, and the bottle if and when he needed to have it in his possession, yet kept these items with him all the same.

The recent misadventures in space and time had caused introspection in the Vulcan engineer, that was for certain. As far as he was aware (if the ship's chronometer was accurate), the Artemis crew had been restored to their rightful place in their timeline, but had been transported from orbit around Betazed to the Bajor system. When Salkath had recovered from the last temporal displacement, where a fist descending towards his jaw by fellow Artemite ((OOC: Artemisian? Artemisser?? Confounds!)) Savel gave way to the entirety of the senior crew on their ship's bridge, the source of their travails was obviously if only temporarily apparent. Details of the omnipotent beings that infrequently meddled in the affairs of Starfleet captains and their crews were hard to come by, stuck behind layers of security clearances and classified logs, but enough hearsay and conjecture abounded for the average Starfleet officer to make educated guesses when they saw one.

Whatever the lesson or trial or immature game had been, the details were not made privy by the being to Salkath at the least before they disappeared. Perhaps the captain and more senior officers had been made aware of why they had travelled through space and time, inhabited alternate realities, suffered and saw suffering at the creature's nebulous whim. Salkath had no regard for that info, it was immaterial to him. He had a duty to perform, he performed it, regardless of how outrageous the situation had been. That was Starfleet, that was service to the uniform and the organization which it represented.

There were tasks inherent to arriving at a new posting that an officer had to complete. Even if an omnipotent being had interrupted that flow of events. Salkath absently adjusted the PADD that contained his transfer orders to the Artemis where it lay on the desk. He had already reported to Captain MacKenzie, but that had been another time and place. Did it count? Unlikely. He had the computer send a message to the commanding officer requesting a formal appointment to report for duty. He also made the same request to Lieutenant Yellir, his direct reporting officer in Engineering. Same situation; they had met and made their acquaintances, but in circumstances that did not meet Salkath's threshold for rote procedure. Finally, he made his request to the medical bay for an onboarding physical examination.

Otherwise, the ship and its crew were officially on shore leave. Continuing on shore leave? The semantics of temporal mechanics were not a strong suit for this Vulcan. Give him a replicator that could do nothing but produce tacos, and he could fix it with aplomb, but ask him to decipher the syntax of a fractured timeline and he would have to defer to more knowledgeable experts. How would he spend his shore leave? Salkath had all the time to 'settle in' to his new home.

TBC

LtCmdr Salkath
Engineer
USS Artemis-A
A239111MT0