LtCmdr Connor Dewitt - Night Shift
Tim
((USS Khitomer, First Officer’s Officer, 0300))
Night shift. Somebody had to do it. Night shift during a visit to the dry dock was particularly boring. Still, every bridge officer had done it once or twice in his career. It was those kinds of shifts that not even Gamma shift was looking forward to. One of the more dubious honors of his job was writing the duty roster for these kinds of nights. A senior officer always needed to be available if something went wrong. Tonight, this was Connor.
He put down the roster and rubbed the bridge of his nose. He had read over it three times now. Although he knew the young officers, he had never pulled them up for bridge duty before. Ensign Morda and Ensign Melville-Killpatrick. He had deliberately put them together on gamma, and not by accident of the alphabet.
Morda had made sense; he’s a young officer in Security. His performance on the bridge had been remarkable before. He might be angling for the chair one time, and he needed hours in the chair. And there was no better place to earn those than a shift where nothing was expected to happen. It might have been the other name that would have raised eyebrows if anyone had been awake to raise them. Melville-Kilpatrick was medical. Sickbay, not the bridge. On most ships, nobody would ever think to hand a doctor the conn.
Connor thought the exact opposite.
What if the Ensign was on the bridge one day during his career, treating an unconscious Captain while the first officer was in sickbay? Suddenly, he could become the ranking officer on a deck he could not read. Connor had promised himself that no officer under his command would ever be caught that way. A doctor who understood how the bridge worked was a doctor who would not freeze when the quiet broke. And something in Connor made him wonder if he could use some of that treatment, too.
So. Gamma shift. Dry dock. The most boring night on the most boring watch. He stood up, pulling on his uniform jacket and straightening it.
((USS Khitomer, Bridge, 0303))
The bridge at three in the morning was a different thing from the bridge at midday. Half the stations were dimmed to standby and the main viewer showed nothing but the inside of the dry dock’s scaffolding. A cathedral stillness filled the deck that Connor hesitated to break.
Dewitt: Ensigns. ::nodding:: Don’t get up, I’m not here to take the watch. It’s yours tonight, both of you. And I intend to leave it that way. ::beat:: I’m just the senior officer they make stay awake in case the ship decides to do something interesting. Which, in dry dock, it won’t.
Melville-Kilpatrick/Morda: Response
He came to a stop between the two stations, close enough to see their displays without leaning over them.
Dewitt: Status report.
Melville-Kilpatrick/Morda: Response
Connor nodded, as expected.
Dewitt: Where are we on the dorsal hull repairs? Has the dry dock crew completed the installation of the armor plating?
Melville-Kilpatrick/Morda: Response
And just as the two officers had finished their reports an alarm sounded off several consoles on the bridge. Connor was instantly awake again and only now noticed how sleepy he had become before.
Executive Officer
USS Khitomer
A239901CD3