Late Start (backpost)

Posted on Tue Dec 15th, 2015 @ 4:02am by Lieutenant Mikela Reyes MD & Captain Julius Whitlam

Mission: First Strike
Location: CO's Ready Room
Timeline: Before leaving the Starbase

Mikela Reyes dropped her bag on her new bed in her new quarters with a sigh of relief. Her new place looked nice. Chief Counselor on a starship, even a cute little ship like this one, apparently merited significantly better living conditions than an intern, and just having a bedroom with only one bed in it was absolute luxury for a rank-and-file Marine.

She hadn't been expecting a high-ranking officer to greet her, but she was a little surprised that she'd gotten all the way to her new quarters without so much as seeing a person with a matching rank. Still, it seemed as if everyone was getting ready for something big and dangerous, and she didn't really need anybody fancy to show her around. Mikela was quite able to show herself around. First step, she figured, was to go find the CO and make sure that he knew she was aboard. If he wasn't going to ask for her any time soon, though...

After taking a half hour to shower off the travel grime, change into a fresh dress, and have a small snack, Mikela strapped on her brace and took her polished oak cane. She set out for the CO's Ready Room. After traveling all day, she found the trip tiring, but she had to take a moment to be grateful that she had been assigned to a small starship. She paused in front of the Ready Room door, and tapped the chime.

Inside, Captain Julius Whitlam was sitting back in his chair and rubbing his eyes. He had just finished a fifteen minute supplemental intelligence briefing that was conducted via secure channel and felt like it went on for hours. The analyst conducting the briefing was a particularly dry Vulcan who drawled away in a grating monotone. Whitlam had just rested his head back to start processing the information when the chime of the door interrupted him.

He sighed and steeled himself against whatever the next thing was to come across his desk. "Enter," he called.

Mikela really did look like the picture of a counselor as she entered, limping slightly despite her best efforts, her dress and hair softening her appearance. When she reached the captain, though, training kicked in, and she gave him a salute that was crisp even for a Marine. "Lieutenant Reyes, Chief Counselor, on board and reporting for duty, sir," she said with a bright smile. Meanwhile, she took a look at him, at his appearance and his face, noting the tiredness and filing the information away behind her eyes.

The captain furrowed his brow and cocked his head to the side. This was perhaps the last thing he was expecting at a time like this. As his mind changed gears from intelligence analyses, ordnance orders and action reports, he recalled that they had, in fact, left Earth without a chief counselor. He remembered Drake saying something about the counselor coming aboard at 310.

"Ah yes," he said, his expression softening. Although it wasn't expected, the counselor reporting for duty would actually give him a short break from his more martial responsibilities. He stood up and extended his hand. "Welcome aboard the Manoora, Counselor," he said. "Take a seat."

"Thank you, sir," Mikela responded, abandoning her salute and reaching to shake hands. She then gratefully sank into the seat, slowly, setting her braced leg out in front of her. "And thank you. It's been a long trip. My transport arrived late, and I wondered for a moment if I'd catch the ship before it left."

"Well, you got here with a couple of hours to spare at least," Whitlam replied, affecting a smile as he started to recall some details from a personnel file he glanced at who knows how long ago. "You were also a medic at one point, is that right?"

"You could say that, sir." Mikela quirked an amused smile of her own. "I did take medic training as my secondary specialty, and I used it 'in my former life'. But I also earned my MD afterwards, so..." She shrugged slightly. "My residency was psychiatric, so I don't have a lot of hands-on experience opening people up, but I can play sawbones if I need to."

"Well, I think you'll need to sooner rather than later," the captain replied seriously. "I always keep an eye out for people with multiple specialties, Counselor. Your 'former life' makes you invaluable to this crew. Tell me about your combat experience."

At that, Mikela faltered. For just a moment, pain showed clearly in her eyes. Then she took a moment to relax, recenter, and refocus, just as she'd been taught, just as it was her job now to teach to others. "I'm not fit for combat anymore, sir, since my injury. I was a sniper, but you may already know how it is in the Marines... a specialization comes *after* all the regular training. I'm not worth much on the battlefield now, but if I was put to it, yeah, I could fight." She cleared her throat slightly, embarrassed. "Being a Marine isn't really something you stop doing, even if you, well, aren't officially one anymore."

Whitlam listened intently, his fingers steepled in front of his lips. When the counselor had finished, he let the silence linger a moment before he dropped his hands and said, "Don't worry, Counselor, I have no intention of throwing you into a ground battle. I was more interested in any shipboard combat experience you have. This cold war is about to turn hot and that means we'll be in ship-to-ship combat before too long. I need to know that I can put you into combat triage and you'll be able to handle it. There will be a lot of frightened crewmen when bulkheads start exploding around them and if they see their counselor unable to keep it together they will falter."

Mikela quirked a half-smile. "I'll be able to hold it together, sir," she said, and thought, *Let it be so.*

"Excellent," the captain replied, tapping the desk as if to punctuate his approval. He stood up and extended his hand across the desk. "Now, if you'll excuse me Counselor, I've got quite a lot of work to get done. As do you, I'm sure. Welcome aboard."

Mikela pulled herself to her feet and shook her new captain's hand in a firm grip, then nodded. Straightforward. She liked that. "Plenty to do, sir. Thank you."

Then, taking his statement as a dismissal, she stepped neatly out of his office... and her limp redoubled only after the door had closed and hidden her from view.