Carth Onasi settled into his post on the bridge with a very large mug of the strongest caff he could find. Hopefully the first watch would be less eventful than the meeting that had preceded it. Astrogation was throwing a fit because Bastila Shan's party of Jedi were insisting on using a different track through the system than the one they'd plotted. Payload was up in arms because the stock of relief supplies the Jedi had brought aboard was five times larger than the inventory they'd submitted. No one liked their lofty disdain for the ship and the people tasked with keeping it running. And all of that paled in comparison to the problem of nothing about the mission making any kriffing sense.
They were supposed to be partying with a larger fleet with the ultimate objective of breaking the Sith blockade of Taris. Bastila, for all that she was inexperienced as a Jedi and insufferable as a person, had a mysterious, incredibly useful ability to influence the outcome of large battles. Sending her to the front was reasonable, sure, but sending her in a full-sized cruiser with a skeleton crew and an inadequate escort seemed ludicrous.
"Commander?"
Bastila's engineer materialized at his elbow. He suppressed a groan. The unprepossessing middle-aged woman, clad in the dove-gray coat of a tech officer had been an incongruous last-second addition to the passenger manifest, grounding them in port over an hour past their scheduled departure while the ship's administrators located a berth and waited for her credentials to be authenticated. Why would a pack of Jedi need an ordinary commtech anyway? By the intensity with which Bastila focused on her when she wasn't inventing ways to find fault with, misunderstand, or generally obstruct the day-to-day business of operating the vessel, he was ready to assume that the engineer was her pet, but as far as he knew, Jedi didn't take lovers.
Carth glowered at her from under his eyebrows.
"Pardon the interruption, sir, but I'm unsure of the protocol here...I've got a concern about the encryption on our outgoing transmissions and I don't know to whom I should address it."
"You mentioned it to your CO?"
One corner of her mouth pulled in an apologetic grimace. "She suggested I make any corrections I deem appropriate...without consulting anyone. With due respect to Jedi Shan, that's not sensible."
Now there was a surprise. "Good call, Officer..." he tried to recall her name from the manifest.
"Arirai."
"Officer Arirai. Commander Onasi. Congratulations on being the first of the Jedi entourage to consider working with, not against us. He offered his hand. She clasped it with a wry smile.
"Don't thank me yet, sir. Your Comms Chief is probably not going to like what I have to say. But I figure it's better that I raise the issue and offer my help than that he be accosted by someone outside of his field."
"I was wondering why the Jedi would need their own commtech. Now I see why they brought you along."
" Maybe you're right." She cast around as if to make sure no one else was listening. "Confidentially, though, I don't think they know exactly what I do either...My background's in infosec. They've had me fix four datapads and a holocom since this afternoon. I think they're under the impression that I'm a repair jockey."
"They're also under the impression that the crew are running a resort, not a military transport, so I wouldn't take it too personally." Carth punched a code into the viewscreen on his desk. A junior officer with a white-blond high-and-tight appeared in the doorway a scant few moments later.
"Commander?"
"Ensign Ulgo, Officer Arirai needs an escort to the comm center. If Grathan tries to give her hell, tell him I sent her."
"Yes sir. Officer Arirai?"
"Thank you Commander, Ensign. I need to make a brief stop at my quarters to grab a couple of datacards. Is that okay? Won't take long, I promise."
"Not a problem. Lead the way, Officer."