Lieutenant Bojan Markovic pressed the announce button next to the door to the Ready Room. He straightened his uniform again, as he waited for a reply, knowing that it had rung the captain inside. He still harbored a few regrets about the fact that it was blue, not the red that it had been when he graduated from the Academy. He did not attempt to straighten his once dark hair that was graying at the edges.
“Come!” the Captain’s voice echoed from the door. He wondered if she knew that she spoke it with the same note as her adopted father, though a octave higher. The door opened and he enter the Ready Room.
There was quite a bit of difference between Marrissa of the first time he’d seen her and the now Captain Picard he served under. He still recalled the first time he’d seen her in his class on the Enterprise-D, with that long pony tail and pink jumpsuit. She’d barely had any sign of her development, and had been a good couple decimeters shorter than him. Even seated, Markovic could tell that she was still shorter than him, but she wasn’t the preteen that had sat in the center seat anymore. She was the Captain, and he would have to remember that.
The pony tail was gone, replaced with shoulder length hair, not quite perfectly arranged, with almost no bangs at all. The Captain was no little girl anymore, though it appeared that her favorite juice, strawberry, still had it’s place on her desk. Her soft smile had not changed, nor had the particular sigh she made as she put down a PADD and looked up. “Lieutenant Markovic, it has been a long time,” she said.
“It has, Captain,” Markovic acknowledged.
“I have to admit that I expected you to be in red the next time I saw you after the Enterprise crashed,” the Captain said, picking up another PADD. “I certainly didn’t expect you to still be a Lieutenant. Not with this record. Fortunately, there is good reason to rectify that today.”
“Sir?” Markovic asked.
“Lieutenant Commander Ursel has asked to be relieved of his post as Chief Science Officer,” the Captain said. “I’ve chosen to grant his request, and promote you, as his current second in command, into that post. Furthermore, after reviewing your record, I am promoting you, effective immediately, to the rank of Lieutenant Commander. While I don’t recommend it until you’ve settled into your new post, I would highly suggest that once you do settle in, you offer yourself for a limited number of shifts as Officer of the Deck. I have no idea why you stopped doing that.”
“Captain Katsuragi didn’t let anyone outside of the command and operations divisions work as Officer of the Deck,” Markovic responded.
“Well, that is going to change,” the Captain said. “I am a big believer in a regular rotation of Officers of the Deck. There were a total of thirty-five of them on the Stargazer in a crew half the size. Now there is a couple things you should know as my Chief Science Officer. I consider you as an integral part of my command team, this is a science vessel, so you can expect Jay to make sure you’re attending key meetings. I’m not yet sure on the cadence of those meetings, but I’m also not quite sure of my whole team yet. Outside of that, you can expect me to draw some lab time myself. A recent visit to Stellar Cartography has brought a few of my old projects to mind, and the new data is fascinating. That being said, do something about Doctors Danner and Faust. I’m so tempted to lock them in a room until one or both of them dies.”
“I’ll see what I can do, sir,” Markovic said. He’d heard about the fight, and their mutually cancelling sensor requests were legend. “Personally, I’m in favor of quantum torpedic evacuation as the extreme solution.”
“That is a favorite,” the Captain said with a big smile. “I’ve even figured out how to make them land successfully on the front lawn of the C and C’s residence.” There was even a twinkle in her deep amethyst eyes. “Not that I personally am responsible for any such case you may have heard of.”
“Of course not Captain,” Markovic said. He’d heard about two officers who had left the Stargazer that way. He’d also heard that the C and C had been amused.
“I am a big fan of a more collegial command team, and given this vessel’s designation as a diversified science vessel, I think it is appropriate that I have semi regular meetings with the various Science team’s head, but I do not want to step on your position,” the Captain said. “So, I need to know a bit about how you intend to organize and work with your fellow Scientists before I add my twist to the Science Sections.”
Markovic took a moment to think, and it appeared that his new Captain was willing to let him do so. That was an improvement on the little girl he’d once taught, who once she got over her shyness was unable to let there be that silence. “I expect to have a daily status update at the beginning of Alpha Shift, which should catch the late night Delta shift group. There are always a few night owls in Science, Lieutenant Marshall in Gaseous Anomalies is one of them. I do have a regular poker night with several of them, as a sort of informal way. No uniforms allowed.”
“That sounds like a good mix of formal and informal, something that took me quite some time to learn when I took over Security. In fact I’m not quite sure I really ever got it right when I was a department chief,” the Captain said.
“I understand you are a fair poker player,” Markovic offered, letting himself break out of what he had just realized was a self-imposed limitation on the conversation. “Leave the uniform behind, but don’t go either princess or whatever that was that you wore at that dance back before you were adopted.”
“It was a silk camiknicker, and you know I had no idea that it was supposed to be something you slept in, not danced in,” Marrissa shot back. “I was ten at the time and Jay has always had a poker face that can’t be broken. That being said, I think I can find something that doesn’t scream Captain or Princess.”
“Then I extend an invitation to my Probability Studies at 1700 hours in two days,” Markovic said.
Marrissa looked at her PADD, tapped it a couple times, before replying. “I should be able to make that, unless something comes up. Since we’re charting gaseous anomalies away from any known border by a considerable distance, I’m not expecting a sudden red alert. Tell me, Lieutenant, have you always listed your poker night as Probability Studies on your schedule.”
“Since I was at the academy,” Markovic replied.