Should I Stay or Should I Go? - Part I

Posted on Tue 17th Apr, 2018 @ 6:47pm by Commander Mikaela Locke

669 words; about a 3 minute read

Mission: Brushfires
Location: Mikaela Locke's Quarters
Timeline: 6.75 Days until Decision Day

Mikaela Locke returned to her quarters shortly after seventeen-hundred hours, following, what had turned out to be the most bizarre and, by far, the most confusing day she could remember - possibly ever.

She carefully detached her comm-badge and placed it on her desk, before removing her uniform jacket and throwing it, far less carefully, in the general direction of the replicator. It landed in a heap in the floor, but she ignored it as she slowly unfastened the three solid gold pips from her collar, and placed them gently next to her comm-badge.

In the space of about six hours, she had gone from attempting to resign her commission to being promoted.

‘It makes no difference,‘ she told herself. ‘You’ve decided to go and that’s that.‘

But something about the promotion was nagging at her. Obviously, Captain Suzuki hadn’t recommended her for it. Nothing got processed that quickly. Which meant it must have been Drake. She snorted.

‘One more mistake to add the list,‘ she thought cynically.

Suddenly she felt the overwhelming urge to talk to someone. But she had no idea who to talk to. Paul Graves would have been the obvious choice, as station counsellor, but, of late, they had begun to grow close and she wasn’t sure whether she would be able to be honest with him.

And she hated the idea of talking to one of the other counsellors even more.

‘Perhaps...‘ she wondered to herself as a new idea came to her.

“Computer,” she began, hesitantly, “Relay a transmission to Deep Space Five, for the attention of Lieutenant Jason Fisher.”

“Working...” the computer’s feminine monotine replied.

“On second thoughts, cancel that transmission,” Mikaela hurriedly said.

“Action cancelled,” the computer complied.

‘Too soon,’ she thought to herself.

It was almost a natural reflex - to share news, both good and bad, with Jason - and to discuss big life-decisions. They had known each other so long that, even when they weren’t ‘together’, they were pretty much each other’s best sounding board. But this time felt different somehow. The nature of their most recent break-up had an air of finality about it that Mikaela had not sensed before. Perhaps they would yet reconcile but it seemed that more time was required before she reached out.

‘Gonna have to sort this one out on your own,’ she chided herself.

She took off her undershirt, revealing a black tank top, and headed into through her bedroom, into the shower room. She splashed some water on her face and decided to lie on the bed for five minutes, before returning to her desk to catch up on her messages.

***

She woke with a start.

“Computer, time?” she groaned.

“The time is nineteen thirty-seven.”

She groaned again.

She sat on the edge of the bed and wiped her eyes, conscious that her head was throbbing. She scraped her long black hair back into a tight ponytail, but that just made her head feel worse, so she took it out again.

She stood, moved to the fresher and splashed some water on her face before grabbing a fresh red undershirt from her wardrobe and pulling it on.

She did up the shirt as she walked out of the bedroom, back to her desk, where she picked up and secured her three solid pips to its collar. She replicated a new jacket, put it on and zipped it up.

‘Well that was two-and-a-half hours well wasted.’ she thought, musing that she had the mother of all headaches, having just woken up, and she felt embarrassed that she had even contemplated calling Jason Fisher, given the way that had ended. All in all, she felt like shit, but she was no closer to any kind of decision about her future.

“I need a drink,” she concluded.

And with that, she left her quarters and headed for Orchids and Jazz.

 

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