Chief Engineer's Personal Log, Stardate 51080.7

Posted on Sun May 22nd, 2016 @ 8:58pm by Lieutenant Samantha Winters

So I've just come off shift, and the ship's computer has "notified" me that I've failed to record a personal log for the past month. It seems the programmers at Starfleet's yards have decided to add that little feature into the computer's core programming; I may have to dig my way through to find that little tid bit and excise it. Nevertheless, I suppose Starfleet wants us to pour our thoughts into their databank, so now's as good a time as any.

Anyway, the Manoora - have I recorded a log since I transferred here? It doesn't feel like it's been a month since I came onboard, but then again it doesn't feel like this war started three months ago. Anyway, I'm assigned as the Manoora's chief engineer now, have been for some time, blah blah blah, etcetera etcetera. We've just left Starbase 375 for the Faidon system. Starfleet wants us to evacuate some colonists that don't seem to want to have anything to do with them, or us. Seems like one hell of a backbreaker to try and convince them to come willingly, but that's mostly the Captain's job, and not mine thankfully. I just have to make sure the ship works properly and that any of the equipment they may need to bring with them is safely shut down, detached and brought back up to the ship. Shouldn't be too much of an issue, at least as long as the colonists don't get territorial about their kit. The ship went to warp smoothly enough, and the Captain was even able to get me the new control panels that we needed from the Admiral, so no consoles blew up in anybody's faces, and I could tell my stealth team to stand down from having to 'appropriate' the components we needed. I wouldn't put it past he station's quartermaster to try and come after them, but he'll have a harder time of doing that now we're escaping at warp speed.

I mean, of course I didn't have an actual stealth team on standby. That would just be silly. But it's nice to come up with silly things like that, amongst all of this mess that we have going on around us. It helps keep me from spending too long looking through the casualty lists. The corridor on the way to the mess hall is bad enough; all of the faces of people that the crew knew who are now gone... I can't stand to look up at it most days. Most of my friends have been engineers like me, so we're lucky enough not to be sent to the front lines as often as the combat guys are, but that doesn't mean I haven't lost people. Lost friends. We've all lost people over the last three months; whole ships have been lost as we've retreated again and again from the Dominion. It's too much loss to take in sometimes; I much prefer thinking about my engines, the ship's power flow, shuttlecraft schematics, and all of the other little things that can keep me occupied during the day. And planning stealth attack missions to get the equipment I need from stubborn, stuck-up starbase quartermasters.

Ah, dammit. This is why I hate doing these logs. At least one of the reasons. You've got me talking about the glum stuff and this war again, Computer. I'd rather keep that stuff at the back of my mind as much as I can, thank you very much, and not end up dredging it up every month when you start pinging reminders at me. Surely a brain scan would be a far more efficient way at getting this stuff out of my head rather than recording it verbally. I just want to focus on keeping the ship running, keeping everyone safe inside its shell, until all of this is over, and we can go back to how things were before; blissfully exploring space and the limits of how far we can push each of our new developments in ship design. Back to peace. I know things will never quite the same again, but dammit that's what I'm fighting for. Or rather, keeping the ship in order so that I can enable others to fight for. That's me; the warmaker-enabler.

Happy you've gotten me to open up now, Computer? Good. At least you won't bug me about this again for another month.