Personal Log - Almar Dah'El

[Almar Dah el]

Personal Log

It's never the engineer who works hours-on-end next to an out-dated warp core with more leaks than you could plug with every finger of every crewman. It's never the freight hand, either, whose one functional equipment mishap from being crushed by a metric-ton of crap shipped from one tiny planet to another. Neither the captain nor his business liaison who, too often or not, negotiate with criminals and shady dealers who, if the wrong price is claimed, could revoke the deal - and their lives.

No, its always the chef. Or a passenger that you've come to enjoy sitting next to during dinner. Or, in this case, the nurse who was in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Starfleet is infinitely more organized than my Father's ship, and I enjoy the routine. Honestly. I even find myself missing playing traffic cop to hundreds of little ships trying to buzz into our Station. With that organization, though, comes a kind of sense of protection. Things won't go wrong. How can they? We're mighty Starfleet. Missions pose no real danger.

As a crewman my briefing on those missions often extend no further than my duty assignment - be at this station, from this hour to this hour, and take orders from these people and those people. That's my role and that's the level of knowledge I've earned with my rank. I honestly don't mind it. I actually, somehow, appreciate it. I'm not even sure how I ended up on the Gibson - but I certainly welcomed the chance to get back on a ship and fall asleep to the hum of an engine. Yes, we needed to don civilian clothes. Yes, we were pretending to be smugglers or whatever. But I doubt even the CO's read in their mission briefings that Romulan assassins - or whomever they were - were a possibility.

How can you prepare a contingency for that? What level of planning is needed?

The mission seemed to a success, our fallen comrade notwithstanding. We're heading home and soon I'll be stationary again. The hum of the engine forgotten in few days time.

I'm going to spend the coming hours reflecting on today. Thinking back, I wonder how my Father would have reacted. Would he have somehow intervened faster to save that woman? To prevent the murder-suicide of the Romulans? Would my Cardassian neck have snapped as quickly as her human one?

Hmm.

End Log