====== Senior officers briefing room, USS Chimera ===== Shane looked up from the PADD he was reading and looked at Ens. Dexter who was sitting patiently in the seat oposite to him. Handing over the PADD to him Shane said: "Good work ensign, you can save the changes in the beta set. I dont think we could do much better there". Dexter noded glad that at last some of his work was praised by the XO. Since the departure of their former CTAC MCpt Acheson ... Dexter's life went clearly downhill's. Not that he had to act as ACTAC and lead the small crew of the tactical department but to add pain to injury ... the XO decided to take a look at tactical. The trouble was plainly the fact that the XO acted as tactical officer for some years prior to coming to the Chimera and his expectations for that depertment were very high. First the XO and he checked the torpedo storage rooms, then run a level 2 diagnostics on all weapons systems and now they were checking the tactical maneuvers. Dexter noded and replied a bit weary: "Thank you sir." Now finally the alpha and beta sets were all right ... but well, there were still gama, delta and omega sets to check. Now he looked at the XO with some fear what will he say next. He wasnt dissapointed ... "Well, the gama set needs some more of your attention ensign, according your own simulations we would loose the ship in one third of all battles. There is a LOT space to improve. Dont you think so?" Shane asked. {No!} Dexter thought but noded: "Aye, sir. I'll do that imediately". ===== 5 mins later ====== Shane stared blank out of the widnow into the blackness of the space. Quite luckily it was the other side of the ship that was turned (and connected) to the starbase, so his way was not disturbed with it. He took a sip from his green tea and shivered a bit. He remebered the replicator accident just some time ago. He was quite busy reading some of the reports and quite mind absently he ordered a cup of his favourite Golden Ceylon tea. The soft humming of the replicator announced the tea to be done and Shane (without looking at the cup) took the cup out of the replicator and moved it to his lips to take a sip. It was his nose that saved him that time. It was his nose that warned him that the stench coming from the cup signalised something not all right ... and well, the cup was not full of tasty green tea ... but of human waste! Shane got almost to vomit there and from this moment he was quite unease when he should drink something replicated. He immediately contacted Engineering and reported about the replicator failure and the DCEO himself appeared to take a look at the problem. It seemed to be something more serious then a local trouble cause the whole replicator network was shut down for a certain time and from Rangi Shane learned that in sickbay appeared a similar problem as well. Later, when asking the DCEO about the issue he was told that the cause was the instalation of the new temporal technology. Shane found the answer a bit strange, but cause there was no reason not to trust the DCEO he accepted his explanation. But now, when reading some personell related reports, he began to realise that there was something odd going on. First there was no exact explanation given about the replicator issue, just a short report that the source of the problem was removed and the failure fixed. Then there was a personell report from the DCEO about a punishment for an ODA engineering specialist called Lynch. That alone was nothing to be concerned about, but the same Spc. Lynch was reported to pay visit to Jack Walsh who was at the time on his waste disposal duty. Considering the fact that Walsh was reported beeing under the slight influence of alcohol at the time ... it took not much beeing a paranoid to create some sort of an theory of what happened. To be honest, he did expect Walsh to do some mischief to pay him back ... but at first he did not thought of connecting the replicator issue with Walsh's punishment. But an another interesting and rather surprising point was the fact that General Bretam rewoked all Walsh's security codes ... something that was extremly rare to happen to a Chief of Security. There surely was a strong and clear reason for Bretam doing that. Anyway, Shane decided to find more about the whole matter as soon as possible. There were several reports about strong rivality between Bragg's engineers and Chimera's ones and between Chimera's marines and naval personel. This time there was a bit more going on then the usual "I am a marine, who's more?" and "Naval prevales". Some rivality between the crew was usually a good thing but not when the rivality grew to this extend. Now it already started to affect the crew's performance ... and that was untolerable. Shane did an another mental note ... {talk to the General about this}. For a moment Shane thought if even he himself was not adding 'wood to fire' in this rivality. His attitude towards marines on board was not entirely unknown and even if trying to handle all crew the same ... he was not every time 100% sucessfull. And well, you know the saying ... 'the fish stinks from the head' ... and when the XO should be known for not liking marine personel, why should other naval officers handle otherwise? If Shane should be honest to himself, he couldnt say that he thought best about the marine corps as a whole. Archetyping marines as a group was influenced by individuals like 1LT. Richards, Maj Walsh or some SSF marine personel he had trouble with caused Shane to instinctively distrust every woman or man wearing a green collar. Shane knew of course that every marine was a unique personality and had the same qualities and disqualities like every naval officer or NCO, but old habbits are hard to break. Anyway, Shane promised himself to try harder not to prejudice ppls just cause they wear a green collar. Afterall ... they all were SSF members and Starfleet officers. No matter if naval or marine ... all were mates against the same enemies. Taking an another PADD from the little heap on the table Shane learned that the former CEO, LtCmdr. Quayle was confirned to be assigned to the Chimera again. Shane shook his head about Nick's new position ... AEO ... and thought that it might become a bit odd for McTaggert to command a higher ranking officer. Siping his tea (after quick looking down into the cup) Shane smiled slighty. He recalled his first days on board the Chimera. He was only a LT then and assigned as XO he was expected to command higher ranking officers as well ... and to be honest ... it wasnt an easy task. Sighing Shane took an another PADD from the table and began to read. ====== End of log ===== Cmdr. Shane Guzman XO USS Chimera