Commander Nix, aboard the turbolift, was staring intently Doctor Stollan, who stood next to her with a med kit strapped across his chest. He was a fair amount taller than her, despite her being of average height, and seemed to be trying unsuccessfully to pretend not to notice the science chief's severe gaze.
"I've never seen you before, who are you?"
Nix's blunt question was met with a raised eyebrow from the doctor.
"I am chief medical officer Stollan," they responded, and after a moment extended their hand towards Nix. Nix raised an eyebrow at their response and slowly took their hand to shake it.
"I thought Doctor Vela was chief medical officer."
"She was called away to a family emergency back on earth."
"Oh." Nix seemed to contemplate this, then dismissively added, "never liked her anyway."
Stollan gave Nix a strange look and opened his mouth to speak, only to be cut off by the turbolift opening. Ajano entered the lift. She looked irritated as her back met the wall with a thud. Stollan noticed the engineers hands were covered with various scrapes and minor looking burn marks. She made to order the turbolift, but seeing it was already headed towards her destination— the transporter room— looked at her two companions in the lift and nodded briefly in greeting at them.
"What's eating you Ajano?" Nix questioned, grimacing at the chief engineer's ruffled appearance.
"A power coupling blew out on the bridge," Ajano grumbled as the doctor came over to her and took one of her hands, rummaging around the med kit across his chest with the other. She didn't seem to notice this as she spoke, "a couple of juniors in operations got into an argument over whether or not it was misaligned and design specs and yadda yadda yadda and the thing blew out while I was trying to fix their mess."
As she was speaking the doctor—dermal regenerator in hand—treated the burns and scrapes.
"Thank you doctor I… I haven't seen you before."
"Doctor Stollan. chief medical officer." He took her healed hand and shook it briefly. Ajano frowned.
"I thought Doctor Vela was—"
"Family emergency." Nix interrupted. Ajano raised her eyebrows and then looked back up to Stollan with a warm smile.
"Well it's good to have you aboard doctor, I'm Ena Ajano, chief of engineering. Once we get things running properly I'm sure you'll see it's not always such a disaster around here— ah, Captain."
The turbolift opened it's doors. Captain T'kel and Commander Howell stepped in promptly.
He gave them a puzzled look as the doors closed and no one left the lift.
"Bridge, please."
It was quite was starting to become somewhat crowded now. This turbolift was not meant to hold large groups of people and out of the five officers, three struggled to face the captain, meeting shoulders as they did.
"Captain T'kel I assume? I am Stollan, Doctor Vela's replacement—"
"Sir the crewmen in the dock are refusing to release my equipment," Nix interrupted.
"Apologies Commander, I have a matter of some urgency—" Stollan attempted, his voice even and polite, to make Nix aware he had spoken to the Captain first.
"Look I've seen the datapads there's nothing urgent about a couple of inactive dermal regenerators. I need my lab equipment set up by the end of the day so I can start making use of my field samples as soon as possible."
T'kel looked from Nix to Stollan wordlessly as they argued between themselves. Commander Howell, at a loss, only looked at the turbolift's monitor to watch their progress through the ship.
Meanwhile, Ajano patiently waited for T'kel to look over to her, and when he did, gave him a courteous smile.
"Captain there's been a complication on the bridge, I could fix it myself but if you could approve a repair crew from DS9 operations over here within the next hour I think we'd save a lot of time."
As T'kel opened his mouth to respond to the chief engineer he was interrupted.
"My equipment, Captain." Nix fumed.
"It's not just the dermal regenerators, Captain, one of the—"
"I've been waiting all day and I—"
The two seemed to forget the captain was there, instead bickering with each other as the turbolift opened to the bridge. T'kel edged around them as best he could and strode into the bridge. A group of engineers appeared to have generated a shield around a section of open panelling, the air bubble inside of it filling with thick swirling smoke.
The officers, noting the captain's arrival stood at attention. He bade them a dismissive hand and they returned to their work. Gul Makar, who also appeared to working at an individual station gave him a side glance, to which the captain responded with a smile of a greeting as he went into his ready room. The senior officers following after him seemed more interested in whose issue was more important rather than the captain's attention.
He was only gone for a few moments before he returned, repinning his comm badge onto his uniform as he did.
"Gul Makar, Doctor Stollan, I believe some introductions are in order." T'kel's voice penetrated above the noise, which almost immediately lowered to a hum as bridge officers bade their superiors their curious attention.
Makar hesitated for a moment before straightening up and walking over to the captain— who stood with his fingers interlinked in front of him self— and the faced the senior officers.
"Please come along, let's not distract the crew." T'kel smiled as he led them to the observation lounge. Once inside each officer sat down, with T'kel at the head of the table.
"As you know I am Captain Rhydian T'kel. You've met Commander Howell and Lieutenant Commander Ajano, these are chief medical officer Doctor Stollan and chief science officer Leda Nix."
"We've spoken." said Makar, curtly eyeing Nix. Nix— leaned back in her seat with an impatient expression— raised an eyebrow, apparently not recognizing him.
"Doctor Stollan is here to replace Doctor Vela," T'kel told the group pointedly, gesturing an open hand toward the doctor. Stollan, who had been eyeing the captain with some measure of disconcertment, snapped back to attention and looked back at the officers around the table.
"I specifically requested you doctor, I've found the time to read some of your journals on adaptive molecular genetics and I find myself quite astounded."
"You flatter me, captain, when I received your transmission last week I was honoured at the opportunity." Stollan responded quite graciously and bowed his head.
"I'm confident we're safe in the hands of you and your staff, doctor. You're having problems down in the med bay?"
"It appears there are some clerical errors in the system and some of the equipment appears to be non-functioning…"
"Ajano, can you get a group of your men down to sick bay?"
Ajano sat up and looked from the captain to the doctor weighing her thoughts.
"The entire engineering staff are on active duties at the moment, I don't even have enough officers free to help me repair that coupling on the bridge…"
"Send down crewmen doing low-priority system calibrations," Makar interjected.
"And I'll see about contacting DS9 for additional support from their operations division for that blown coupling on the bridge." T'kel nodded.
"My equipment, Captain." Came the sour voice of the science chief.
"Is there any reason your equipment would be held on to?"
"The equipment the Commander is referring to is being retained because it was not registered on the requisitions manifesto." Makar announced to the Captain.
"There wasn't any time to put in a requisitions request— it would have taken days to process and we'd be gone by then." Nix seemed indignant.
"It is standard procedure, Commander." Makar responded curtly.
"Gul Makar is right Commander. We need to document everything we bring aboard. I'll talk to the requisitions officer and see what we can do about speeding up the process."
Nix, quite obviously dissatisfied, sighed, but gave an acquiescing nod. Then she started up again, her tone rather non-committal this time.
"Oh and… some of my officers are finding it difficult to move around the equipment themselves. I'd rather they do it but at the rate they're going at I'll be lucky to have even that equipment today."
"Use a transporter." Makar stated, his voice again dry.
T'kel shook his head, "No, by the looks of the transporter rooms when we boarded the ship they'll be transporting personnel around and onboard for at least the next few hours. Commander Howell."
"Captain."
"Get a detachment of your team to go down to the port and help move Commander Nix's equipment."
"Understood sir."
The captain looked around at each of his senior officers.
"Is there anything else I need to know about? Alright. Dismissed. Let's try have the ship ready to leave within the next four hours."
They stood and gave the captain a short nod before filing out of the observation lounge.
"Gul Makar."
Makar stopped and turned to face the Captain slowly, clasping his hands behind him as he did.
"Captain T'kel."
"I noticed there seems to have been a dramatic decrease in panicked ensigns running about, I'm assuming that's your doing." T'kel gave the cardassian a warm smile.
"Most of them were being complete nuisances running about. I assigned them minor duties and created a communal update channel for each division, which senior officers can now access via comm link or the computer interface."
"Excellent," responded the captain, quite pleased.
Gul Makar didn't seem satisfied at T'kels gratitude and made to leave.
"It is adequate. If you have no more need of me, I have some other system adjustments to make—"
"Wait, Gul Makar."
Makar—very quietly inhaling deeply with some impatience— faced the Captain again.
"I just want to say I'm glad to see our cultures banding together in the spirit of exploration. I look forward to working with you during our time together and I'm certain given enough time the crew will come to see the best Cardassia has to offer through you."
There was a beat of silence while Makar weighed the Captain.
"You… certainly have a way with words."
"So I'm told." T'kel gave him a sheepish grin and walked over to him. He held out his hand to Makar. Frowning uncertainly as he removed a hand from behind himself, Makar cautiously took it and was a little taken aback when the captain gave it a vigorous shake.
"I also wanted to apologize, I must have given you a bad impression back on the station."
"It… certainly was not a good impression, no." Makar pulled his hand quickly back behind himself.
"I imagine this must all be very different from a Cardassian operation."
"Quite so."
"A bit of a culture shock if you will."
"More than a bit, captain." Makar said dryly.
"Really? I'd be interested in discussing the subject further sometime, when things calm down. Perhaps over a drink?"
Makar thought back to Attiel's suggestion of reacquainting himself with the captain.
"...Perhaps." Makar said briefly. T'kel gave him a wide smile and a forceful pat on the shoulder as he began to leave the observational area.
"Let's get underway then, shall we Gul Makar?"
Makar turned to follow.
"...Yes, Captain T'kel."
Some hours later the USS Beyond, approved for departure, had cleared DS9 and was well on it's way to the wormhole that would take them more than halfway across the galaxy and into the Gamma quadrant
Captain T'kel had taken his place upon the Captain's chair of the bridge, which was now a hub of lowly buzzing activity. Beside him stood Makar, looking over the crew's work with a stony expression. T'kel watched him for a few moments, glancing between him and the First Officer's seat.
"You may have a seat, Gul Makar." T'kel told him jokingly.
"I prefer to stand, Captain."
T'kel threw up his hands in a non-committal gesture.
"Time to wormhole approximately four minutes, 30 seconds Captain." Called a ensign from one of the forward interfaces.
"Excellent. Call all senior officers to the bridge, ensign."
As they ensign carried out the order T'kel leaned forward in his seat, eyes glimmering with excitement.
"Have you ever been to the Gamma quadrant Gul Makar?" he asked, voice almost a whisper.
"I have, on several occasions." Makar responded, eyes now focused resolutely on the viewing screen.
"I envy you. I was stationed near Betazed during the war. I've seen the vids but I've never actually travelled the inside of the wormhole myself. I've been told it's an amazing experience."
"It is… quite impressive." Makar offered, recalling the few times he himself had carried out scouting missions that required passage through.
The turbolifts doors opened and officers filed through Among them, Nix sauntered in with a brooding expression and stood on the overhead level.
The Captain, apparently unable to hold in his excitement, stood up and walked a few paces forward closer to the view screen.
"Isn't it exhilarating? We're about to jump a half a galaxy away."
Gul Makar kept his stony gaze steadily ahead, and said nothing. He certainly did not feel exhilarated. He felt utterly horrified at the idea of being so far from Cardassia, from his friends, from his people. Today he would be leaving his homeland for the foreseeable future, and from what he had gathered about the Federation's famed long-term, deep space missions is that more often than not the ship didn't make it back in one piece, if it made it back at all.
"With the state of this ship's crew we'll probably be dead within the first few months." The science chief noted sullenly.
T'kel laughed loudly, "Oh please, chief, if you really had no hope you wouldn't need so much equipment. Out of all of us you're probably the most thrilled to be here."
Nix allowed a small smile to curve up her lip as she leaned onto the bridge's banister.
"10 seconds and closing Captain."
T'kel swerved around and fell back into the Captain's chair. He leaned back and placed his hands along the arms.
"Half-impulse ahead, ensign, on my order."
Before them appeared what looked like a distortion, then a fissure which loomed beyond them and seemed to burn. In less than a fraction of a second, the wormholes arms, great bodies of light and colour crashing and swirling like the great waves of an ocean opened right before their eyes. For more than a few moments the entire bridge was stunned into silence. T'kel— his eyes reflecting the light of the awesome phenomenon before him— leaned forward in his seat.
Then, smiling, said in a quiet but clear voice ,"Engage."