The Complication

The Distraction

Author's Note: Thank you for sticking with this story and for all of your support!

We're back in the swing of things as our crew heads across the Alpha Quadrant to reach the Jarada sector for an important diplomatic mission. 

Chapter specific CW: this chapter does contain a scene with one of our characters experiencing a physical injury. Some hurt/comfort. 

But this is the Starship Enterprise. And 'routine' missions so rarely go according to plan...

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Data and Geordi were down in the Engineering cargo bay when their combadges pinged.

"Transporter room two to Lieutenant Commander Data," Miles's voice rang out.

"Data here," he responded as he tapped his combadge.

"Are you ready for the next shipment? Security is waiting to beam aboard another weapons shipment," Miles explained. "So I can do it now or you'll have to wait until after we complete the weapons check-in protocols."

Whenever a weapons shipment was transported aboard the ship, there was a detailed check-in procedure. Completion of that process would require locking down the transporter functions for at least thirty minutes while Security completed their sweep and logs.

"You may proceed with sending the next shipment," Data instructed.

"Yeah, go ahead, Chief," Geordi added. "We're looking good down here."

There was no telling when the next time would be that the Enterprise would get back to a resupply station like McKinley – or what may occur between then and now.

While she was certainly well-stocked and capable of traversing long distances without the need to stop for fuel, medical, or operational stocks, it was important to take advantage of resupply opportunities whenever they were available.

McKinley Station in Earth's orbit was one of the main starbases designed specifically to conduct maintenance, repair, and resupply for Starfleet vessels.

Opportunities like this were rare and all of the department heads were keen to see to it that they were fully prepared for the months ahead. That meant Medical was bringing on extra supplies, Operations was loading in engineering equipment and resources for repairs, and Security was restocking its depleted armaments.

It was 11:00 hours and the crew of the Enterprise had been up since early that morning working to oversee their final resupply.

As Chief Operations Officer, Data had his hands full working to monitor the progress and coordinating a schedule to ensure all departments had equal access to transporter usage, cargo bay storage space, and personnel to make it all happen.

They'd already had an anti-grav unit go down in ship's stores which meant Operations team Alpha was sharing with the Medical team.

Data was with Geordi, physically shifting crates of spare coil to try and speed up the process so that they could lend their anti-grav unit to help with the backlog in ship's stores.

The Captain wanted to be underway to the Jarada system by 18:00 hours and that would mean working overtime to complete their tasks.

"Hey, Data," Geordi said as he loaded another crate. "You want to talk about what happened last night?"

"I am feeling better now, Geordi," Data replied.

To Geordi's dismay, he did not elaborate.

"That's great. You certainly seem better," Geordi said. "But that wasn't an answer to my question."