Disclaimer: JMS has all the rights to all the characters. In addition, I have to apologize for this. It's fangirly. I mean, really. This is the sort of thing I just shouldn't be writing. It just feeds my addiction. I'm getting treatments, really I am, but I can't help myself sometimes, and... yeah. I'm okay. I'll be okay.

(June, 2251)

Being the civillian relay between the military command and a group of archaeologists was a hard job. Richard Aspen told himself that the stress was worth it, that the accomidations were much better than they would be at any comparable civillian posting, that at least the military was willing to shell out resources and not worry about profit. Technology, yes, but not profit. The New Technologies division had to come up with some new blaster every once in a while to show the joint chiefs that digging around on alien worlds was worth the time and the effort, but they never had to worry about a bottom line.

Of course, when he had to ride herd on the archaeologists in the department, sometimes he wondered if he should just take himself out back and put a PPG to his head. So it was with very little ceremony that he walked over to Morden's desk and dropped the thick stack of photos from Ikaara with a resounding thump.

Morden looked at the stack, then up at Richard. "You're kidding me."

"Nope."

Morden put down his data pad and picked the first picture off the stack, reorienting it a couple times. "You know, I'm not the only qualified linguist in the department. Other people have PhDs."

"Yep. But you're better than they are."

"God, this is grad student quality," Morden muttered, staring at the next photograph on the stack. "This was a team of grad students, right?"

"Dr. Kim was leading them."

"That's still a yes." He flipped quickly through the next few photos. "Can't we afford some filters? Don't answer that. Get me the original crystals; I'm going to have to do some serious cleanup before I start picking useful sentences off these."

"Sure." Richard set the crystal down beside the stack. Morden picked it up and stuck it in a second data pad. It was interesting, Richard briefly thought, that Dr. Morden was the only archaeologist in the department with two data pads and no personal tool set.

"Okay, I can work with this." Morden put the pad on top of the hardcopy and picked up his other project again. "I'm almost finished with the final translations from the Balos dig. They'll be on your desk by the end of the week. Then I can get started on this."

"Good." Richard hesitated before going back to his office. "Say, you look a little harried. Your kid sleeping through the night yet?"

"No," Morden replied, "but with this workload you're dumping on me, neither am I, so it all works out."

Three weeks later, Morden handed over a very thick printout. "First run of translations from Ikaara," he said in explanation. "And as per General Slenhart's last memo, I took the time to write a summary of the interesting bits and highlight the relevant sections. With footnotes. Lots of footnotes."

Richard grunted, ignored the sarcasm, and started reading the summary. Halfway down the page he looked up into Morden's grin.

"Organic weapons?"

"I'm almost totally sure."

"Organic technology?"

"Worth another look, isn't it?"

"Worth a raise." Richard paused. "Don't quote me on that."

"Hey, I have to send Sarah to college someday, don't I?"

Richard waved Morden on his way and started a memo to General Slenhart. The department had bread and butter for the next few months, or years, and that made all the stresses of the job worth it for Richard Aspen.