SD 03/29/03 "Full Contact Fine Arts" - It's been some time since we left New California. We had stayed a few days, transporting over replicated food, fishing and farming tools they would need, helping to reactivate the power plants and restart some old manufacturing plants. I would have prefered to hang around until at least the temporary governor from Starfleet arrived. He would have served for a few months, possibly several, until the locals had firmly established a truly democratic government. But then we got new orders from Starfleet. An incident in the Rommulan Neutral Zone is leading to rising tensions, so a number of ships were sent to the border. We in turn are being diverted from our planned course to a new patrol route. I had sent a request for a special trip for shore leave, a trip to Risa, but that will have to wait.
In contrast to the well-noticed death of Flare Strife, we've had a few redshirts go AWOL. Possibly taking shoreleave like the bridge crew and dissappearing in the midst of the chaos. This includes the one appointed as our new Security Chief and Mr. Redforde. Such is life on the Freedom. As for Mr. Strife, the nursery in Neo-Berkley was renamed in his honor, a suggestion of K'Lynxyl.
Speaking of K'Lynxyl, she was involved in a couple minor incidents. One was something caused her to get irritated at Dammers, and she decided to blow off some steam by making a diary entry. Unfortunetly, instead of saving it to memory, she accidentally mailed it to the entire bridge crew! Deciding that a cover story was in order, I mailed the bridge crew saying that last letter was caused by a leftover subroutine from the old "Compy" master computer program that had since been identified and eliminated. As we now have a new Counselor, thanks to Brundle voulenteering, maybe I should have sent them to him. But I got the impression both K'Lynxyl and Dammers have issues with him. So I called them both to my office. K'Lynxyl was apologetic, Dammers wondered if one of them should transfer, but dropped the issue when K'Lynxyl suggested she could move her hours to the third shift. It was more-or-less settled, though Dammers was still seemed a bit peeved at the end.
K'Lynxyl brought up another problem. A crewman had been nearby when she asked for a new uniform in the nursery, so I asked him to get it. Maybe I never should have done it. He apparently took advantage of the opportunity to save the info to a file, and back on the ship devoted a website on the ship's Intranet devoted to the measurments of the "Love Doctor," even going as far as to show a printout of that letter! It turned out the website was made by the very crewman I asked to get the uniform. I gave him a choice of punishments: 30 days in the brig, or an hour a day for several days as a nude model for an art class. I figured that would be a fitting punishment for portraying the doctor like that. Oh he whinned and begged, but in the end he took the art class modeling punishment.
Maybe I should tell K'Lynxyl, or rather "Lynx" as she invited me to call her in informal moments saying that's what her friends in her earlier positions called her, about this "revenge punishment." Oh well, she'll find out on her own.
There is one other thing that concerns the good doctor. I never saw Demian Tempres activate the self-destruct on the space station, but given his history, he's the top suspect. K'Lynxyl judged him stable after a few days in sickbay, but I still can only trust him so far. And it can no longer be enough to be Lera's XO should something happen to me. A round of promotions has made K'Lynxyl equal in rank to him now, so although Tempres would normally have senority I can arrange it so the doctor does instead. She will be the new "third in line for command." The problem, Lynx and Lera have bickered in the past. I'm going to need to talk to Lera to make sure she will take her advice.
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Addition: Oh bloody great! Lera dismissed the crewman from his modeling punishment and took his place! Males then began taking the place of the women who had obviously left, including Demian and Brundle. *sigh* I should have seen this coming.
A comm from Brundle. He says Demian and one of the other artists are throwing paint at one another. *sigh* it never ends ...