==Chief Engineer's Quarters, Deck 3==
==0600 Hours, launch day==
Jaein woke up in a strange bed, an alertness that hadn't really left him taking him in moments from lying prone on the bed to standing up beside it before he really registered what was happening. He stopped and sighed, sitting back down and stretching out his back and shoulders which were starting to protest being used so quickly. I thought that instinct had finally left, he thought; growing up a refugee from the Occupation had left him some scars, most of them mental. Many had healed, but every once in a while, something happened that made one rear it's head.
He finally stood, walking through the bare quarters towards where his bags had been dumped in the main living area. He hadn't bothered to unpack yet; there hadn't been enough time, for starters, but given the mission brief he figured there would be plenty of time while they were going back and forth and back and forth in the nebula. For now, then, he dug a uniform out of his bag along with his shaving kit and headed for the suite's bathroom.
A quick shower and shave later, he felt a little more alive than he had before. He looked at himself in the mirror, noticing a little more gray than had been there the day before, he felt. He debated for a minute whether he was imaging things, or whether that disastrous meeting the night before had really had that big of an effect. A sigh escaped him as he dismissed the thought; it wasn't worth worrying about. Mary Ellen would've scolded him if she knew that he was worrying about his hair, before simply laughing at her husband.
"Is it really that bad?" she had asked him over dinner last night. He'd finally met her half an hour after he was supposed to, at a little Human Italian restaurant she'd noticed tucked away on the promenade. She'd given him a glass of wine as soon as he sat down, reading his face.
He set the glass down, empty, with a sigh. "I don't know," he'd told her. "On the face of it, the place looks like a madhouse. A DH that basically has no emotional control and barely any restraint. A junior officer who seems to not have any filter and says whatever is on her mind. Another one that is - was? - dating the First Officer, who was also just arrested as an accessory to murder. And that's not even mentioning the political madness that seems to have resulted in two captains being aboard at once; one of them hired me, and she doesn't appear to be the one in command anymore."
She raised an eyebrow, having refilled both glasses and taken a sip of her own. "And you're still supposed to launch tomorrow morning?"
"0700, bright and early tomorrow." He didn't know how they were gonna do it, but he was determined Engineering wouldn't be the one slowing them down. He'd delegated to his shift leads to make sure everyone was back aboard or at least scheduled to report back no later than 0600, and he was late here because he'd been reviewing the manifest that LCdr Morgan had provided, making sure there wasn't anything he felt would still be needed. He had been impressed with her thoroughness, because he couldn't find anything they were missing or even just lacking enough of. "Of course," he said, "it's anyone's guess what the command staff will look like by that point."
She sighed and nodded as the waiter came up, and they had ordered and moved to happier conversations - about their children, her work on Bajor, and more.
He shook his head and combed his hair, coming back to the present, and moved back out to finish getting ready. Two boots, a jacket, tricorder on his hip, communicator on his jacket, and one final addition - a cup of coffee, double strong and black, fresh out of the replicator. He preferred to brew it from real beans, but as this was a temporary position he hadn't made any effort to get that set up. Replicated would do for now.
So fortified, he headed for the door and the lift.
