A Lot Of Mileage

Posted on 25 Feb 2019 @ 4:07pm by Ensign Callin Mastrel
Edited on 27 Feb 2019 @ 8:34pm

874 words; about a 4 minute read

Location: Transport Vessel en route to convoy
Timeline: 2 days before rendezvous

"The United Federation of Planets. It's big, really big. How big you ask? It's so big, filled with so many people, different kinds of people, with different needs, expectations, rules, regulations, quirks, habits, mannerisms, rituals, obligations, pressures, systems of honor...it's a wonder that the whole thing didn't collapse under it's own impossible weight into the largest singularity the galaxy - no, the whole universe has ever seen! Especially when one petty little man's ego seems to try and go and blow the whole thing up every so often. Let me tell you about it..."

Callin didn't seem to hear, or sense, his transport companion's mumbled, "Must you?"

"So, obviously I'm Starfleet, by the uniform, ensign if you don't know the rank pips. The blue means sciences, and that's what I'm about. Graduated a few months back, right. You think I'd be at the top of the world, right? That's what you humans say, a good expression I think. And you'd be right, to say that, at lest at first. I had an assignment, a mission was coming up, and then - poof!"

"How was I supposed to know that Admiral Urovvo would hold a grudge still and go and pull me for courier duty? Divines, courier duty. They used to tell us horror stories about it at the Academy, and they should have embellished more. I had a posting, on a science vessel just like I'd always dreamed, and there I was sent off to colony, to station, to outpost, to ship, to shipyard, to manned sensor array, through a wormhole and back, through a Gorn swamp and back. Always one more message that could only be hand delivered, couldn't possibly be transmitted via subspace, and always right away too. Never a chance to catch my breath!"

"You don't seem to need to once you get going," was a lost, sardonic reply on Callin. He really did seem to have impressive lung capacity.

"Months I've spent delivering people's messages. I don't think I've even gotten to scan a protozoa with a tricorder, let alone do anything approaching science. And you know what the worst thing is?"

"I suspect I'm about to..."

"The worst thing is, I know it was all just an elaborate punishment! I hacked one of the PADDs, you see? And it was just an audio recipe for something called peek and duck. Seemed really strange to call it that too, I didn't hear anything in there that suggested the fowl was going either high or low at any point. Anyways, who knew that Urovvo was such a sore loser with poker?"

"Who knew?"

"Right. So, sent out among the stars, yes, but never getting to actually do anything, before I even got to settle into my first crew, and my new orders were always 'just about to come through'. You know what? If they had kept it going for just two more weeks, bouncing me from captain to commander to governor to ambassador to scow skippy that owed a certain whiny Starfleet Admiral a favor, just two more weeks and I would have broken the known galactic records for light years actually traveled in a year! I looked it up, did the math, worked the statistics. I had the time."

"Speaking of, look at the time," there was more enthusiasm now from the man that shared the small cabin in the little transport they rode in as he glanced at at chronometer on the wall. "We should be arriving soon-"

"Finally! I guess it isn't all bad in the end. I am catching a shuttle from here to rendezvous with a starship, and that ship is going to be meeting up with, no lie, the original crew I was supposed to start with months ago. I mean, it's going to make for some awkward conversations, I'm sure, getting hauled out of one mission and dropped back into another, but I guess that's the bureaucracy of the system for you. They still insist it was all a mixup in orders, lost paperwork, that sort of thing, but I remember the stories from the Academy..."

Callin turned from the small porthole that showed the station they were quickly approaching to see the door to the little cabin slide shut, leaving him alone in there. The human man that had been a doctor of some sort, on his way to a frontier clinic Callin thought he'd said, was gone along with his luggage. "Hmm, must like to be the first off the boat," he said, shook his head and stood up to gather his own things. "Almost there, going to finally have a real post on a ship I can stay on. I won't even mind having a roommate, I swear, or if I have to take a rotation cleaning coolant injectors, honest."

He wasn't really sure who he was promising these things to as he walked off the transport, but Callin would have bargained away the universe itself at this point to be done with bouncing around the galaxy faster than the speed of light - at least too fast to get to see anything of it.

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