Commander Samaritan Bowers, Aventine's first officer, nodded as the captain left the bridge, stood from his chair, and placed himself slowly in the command seat toward the center of the room.

Commander Kymberli Rzepka's head also nodded at the Captain before she retreated to her office. The former Deep Space Nine Chief Engineer hadn't been aboard more than two weeks, yet she continually found herself watching battle after battle unfold around her and Aventine nearly every other day. She desperately wanted to go home. Or at least, back to the Bajoran Sector with her friends.

Captain Dax had been in her ready room for about 20 minutes when Commander Bowers turned to look at Rzepka with a glimmer in his eye. "Commander, are you heading in to that ready room soon?"

She turned and looked at him with a crooked glance and deep ebony eyes. "Why?"

Bowers looked away, down at his lap, up at the viewscreen, and around at the other stations. He turned to Rzepka and dropped his grin. "I think you might need to go talk her off the ledge."

"What?!" she replied almost a little too loudly. Rzepka and Bowers had a long time working relationship that went back several years, back to when Bowers worked aboard Deep Space Nine as Tactical officer. With his twenty years in the fleet, his experience sometimes forced Rzepka feel like a child. He was smart. And funny. And sometimes very mean. She always had a good time picking on him. "Why do I always have to be the one to smooth her feathers?!"

"Because you're so darn good at it," he replied quietly. He faced back to the screen with a grin, leaving the argument without another word.

"Fine," Rzepka sighed. She gazed down at her station's panel. One remaining damage report blinked unfulfilled on the screen. "I just need five more minutes to get these reports in."

Once the final report came through to her screen, she quickly compiled them to one PADD, put her thumbprint signature on it, and gathered up all of her courage to walk into the ready room to smooth down the tired, irate captain.

"I'm going in," she announced to the first officer. "Cover me if I don't come out in twenty minutes."

Commander Bowers chuckled along with a few other officers around the bridge. "Aww, you're tougher than that. I'll give you thirty."

Once Commander Rzepka heard the captain's tired voice beckon her to enter the ready room, she drew a deep breath and stepped through the opening doors. The doors whispered closed behind her as she briefly thought about how loud the doors on Deep Space Nine used to be. Seems like everything reminds me of that place, she thought to herself. The captain's disdain and frustration seeped into the commander's consciousness. She slowly ambled to the desk and handed over the PADD.

"Damage report, sir."

Dax slowly took the pad, briefly looked over it and set it down on the desk. "How long until the warp drive is back online?"

"Judging from the reports, the containment field is damaged. The actual engine itself is fine. I haven't seen it for myself yet, but four hours maybe?" she questioned herself in her head on how she could get it done sooner, anticipating the captain's next question.

Dax looked up at the engineer with a slight disapproval in her eye. Her short black hair glimmered in the ambient light. Her eyes lacked their normal sparkle. "How about three?"

Rzepka forced the irritation aside because she understood why it needed to be back online sooner. "I can probably make it happen in three, but I'll have to extend Alpha shift."

"That's fine. We need to get back online as soon as we can. We're the only ones out here who can defend the fleet. I'm not sure when Starfleet will respond, with subspace down." Dax replied with a nod.

"I understand," Rzepka replied quickly. "We'll work as quickly as we can."

"I hate this," Dax said, leaning back in her chair with a sigh. She motioned for the commander to have a seat, which she took slowly. "We've only been out here for two weeks and I already hate this."

"I know you do, but I think you're doing a fantastic job. Really." Rzepka softened her voice, sensing the captain's sadness and self-doubt with the situation.

Dax scoffed quietly and regarded her hands. They folded together tightly in her lap, attempting to squeeze away the tension in her body. "Yeah, okay. I swear every time I step on this bridge, I feel like I don't know what I'm doing. I feel like everyone else around me feels like I don't know what I'm doing. Maybe I'm just not meant to be in command."

"Nope," Rzepka replied quickly, letting a tiny grin come over her face as she thought her very brief tour with Starfleet Intelligence. Once she passed the starship bridge test and took her promotion to Commander, she felt like she screwed everything up. She eventually left Intelligence to return back to her first love – engineering. "Pretty sure I'm not meant to be in command, that's why I'm not still there. But you? No, you were meant to do this. You were born to do this."

Dax looked up at her friend with a small grin on her face. "Thanks."

That captain sighed again and stood, stretching her arms and legs and tried to force the fatigue from her limbs. The day, like many others, drudged on forever and Dax wanted nothing more than to turn her ship around to go back to the Bajoran system. She stepped to the replicator and ordered two cups of hot tea and brought them both back to her desk. She sat one down in front of the commander and one in front of her own chair before sitting back down. "I bet you're already dying to go home. I'm so sorry. I didn't mean for it to be like this."

Rzepka picked up her tea. The heat from the cup warmed her cold fingertips. She pushed back stinging tears at the captain's statement. She found it difficult not to frequently think about Defiant – the starship all of her friends served on and the only piece of her home that lingered - or Starbase 23 – where her boyfriend remained under psychological care for Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.

"No," she replied. "I don't feel that way. I don't have a home to go back to."

Dax looked up at her friend. She remembered pleading with Starfleet for assigning Rzepka to come aboard to train her new chief engineer for the next six months. Nothing permanent. She felt so thankful that Captain Ro, the commander of Deep Space Nine and Defiant, didn't hate her for the way in which Dax "stole" the engineer away from her crew, but the captain felt even more thankful that Rzepka took the assignment.

"I'm sorry," Dax said quietly with a hint of sympathy in her voice. "I didn't mean it like that."

"It's okay. It's just… that I haven't served on a starship in a really long time," Rzepka replied equally as quiet. "And even longer since I was out in the Neutral Zone. I'm still adjusting. It's a bit… different."

"If we can keep the Breen off our backs for the next five minutes, I promise, it's going to get better. For both of us."

The captain wondered to herself if she could keep that promise. She desperately hoped she could.