Things that drive a man to drink...

Posted on 02 Oct 2016 @ 10:45pm by Captain Nathan Cowell MD

Mission: Prelude; Breakfast at Curmudgeon's
Location: Various, Ending on Deck 9, "Backwater Gulch"
Timeline: MD -2: 1950 Hours

The incessant chirping that signaled an incoming communication was the first thing Captain Nathan Cowell heard when he finally struggled up from the void of a rather blissful nap. Nathan stretched a little as he gave himself a bit of time to fully rouse from his slumber. The aggravating chirp of his desk mounted display doing its level best to prod him into answering the call. Nathan pushed his chair away from the desk in the general direction of the replicator and ordered his customary sweet tea, ice, no fruit, before grudgingly pulling himself back in front of the desk.

Capt. Cowell hit the respond command after the display screen had looped through the alert tone more times than Nathan had bothered to count. The face on the other end was that of Admiral Gregory White, who had only days before told him that he had been demoted and placed back where he never should have been pulled away from. Regardless of this, Nathan took a long drag of tea before finally acknowledging the man’s existence.

“What do you want, Greg?” was all the Old Man said.

“Nice to see you too…” Adm. White chuckled, “How are you settling in?”

“It’s about as good as I can expect it to be,” Nathan shrugged the question off, “We done jerking each other around?”

Greg could only shake his head at the man and how blunt he was, “I need you to look into something for me, Doc.”

“You get the clap or something?” the Old Man grunted sarcastically.

“No,” Greg replied in a flat tone, “And if I had, I sure the hell wouldn’t call you about it. You’re a lousy damn doctor with the bedside manner of someone’s mother-in-law.”

“Well you just aren’t good enough for my daughter, what can I say?” Nathan rebuffed the comment.

“Anyway,” Greg chuckled before he grew somber again, “I need you to head back out to the Delta Quadrant.”

“Why the f…” Nathan began before he was cut short.

“I know you’re in no hurry to head back out there after what happened the last time, but you’re about the only one I know of who has any experience with the place that isn’t already stuck out there,” Adm. White explained.

“Wait… stuck? How the hell do you get stuck?” Cowell quirked an eyebrow at the comment.

“When you have to destroy a transwarp conduit to stop an invasion,” Greg replied.

Nathan grunted, “That’d do it…”

“Yes, it would,” Adm. White nodded, “Which is why I need you to head out there.”

Capt. Cowell eased back into his chair and pondered it for a moment. Greg had hit the nail on the head when he said it wasn’t on Nathan’s top ten list of places to go rushing back to. The fact that there was, potentially, thousands of people still left behind with no way to get back to the Federation made it almost worth considering. Only problem there was, if the transwarp conduit on the Delta Quadrant side had been compromised and destroyed…

“How do you plan to get us there? Unless you snuck a Quantum Slip Stream drive on this ship, we’re a few dozen decades away,” Nathan pointed out.

“You and I both know there’s a way back in there. One that not a whole lot of other people know is still up and running… and for good reason. That’s how you’re going to get back there,” Adm. White explained.

“You know I hate those damn things…” Nathan grumbled.

Greg just shrugged, “It can’t be helped. You’re the only one left on this side of the galaxy that even knows it’s still there… and the only person out of them that ever got the thing to work. So whether you like it or not…”

“I hear ya,” Nathan stopped the man before he actually had to make the order, “I’ll leave as soon as we get everyone on board. I’m not leaving this dock without every man accounted for or a damn good excuse for not being here. No more of this ‘next Tuesday’ horseshit…”

“That will have to do. A few days or a few months probably won’t change anything. But until you have a clear idea of what has happened over there, keep the method of your arrival under wraps,” Adm. White instructed.

“Might come down to it and I have no choice… But I’ll keep ‘em in the dark as long as I can,” Nathan said.

“Best I can hope for. Good luck out there…” Greg said before the screen went blank.

“You send me to the ass end of nowhere through a damn demon’s portal and you’re wishing me luck? And they think I’m the crazy one…” Nathan muttered to thin air.

Captain Cowell began to drum his fingers against his deck again. He didn’t like where things were going already and they hadn’t even left space dock. Worse yet, he was going to have to pull recon duty and somehow manage to keep a big damn secret like how to open an Iconian gateway from people who were essentially stranded without hope of reinforcements. And to top it all off… they’d have to navigate one of the least friendly plasmatic nebulas ever discovered to make it happen. If it didn’t rain…

Nathan pushed himself out of his chair and began to amble to the replicator. He needed a drink… a very stiff drink… and as he got closer to the device in question, he realized it wouldn’t come close to having the same kick as a regular glass of actual booze. The Captain abandoned the idea of a replicator and instead took to storming out of the Ready Room.

The bridge was unmanned at the hour that Nathan had been disturbed, dry dock rotations being far laxer than they were during mission operations. It was somewhat eerie to walk through the compartment when no one was manning it, but somewhere in the back of his mind he knew that it probably wasn’t a sight he would ever see again unless something went horribly wrong. Capt. Cowell boarded the turbolift near his Ready Room and ordered it to the nearest watering hole on Deck 9.

When the turbolift eased to a halt, Capt. Cowell stepped onto a deck that was teaming with far more life than the bridge had. Not only were a large number of living quarters on Deck 9, but many of the holodecks resided there as well. Adding in the fact that one of the docking ports used to bring crew aboard sat none too far from the lounge in question meant that foot traffic was unavoidable. A few nods of recognition from a few people who passed by Nathan was about all he got for his travels, which meant that most of the people coming aboard hadn’t been on the first ship. Nathan wasn’t entirely sure just how he felt about that as he walked into the ship’s central drinking establishment, the “Backwater Gulch”.

The bartender hanging out behind the bar, as Nathan remembered it, had been with them since the last ship, which meant among other things that at least he would know generally what he wanted. Nathan flopped into one of the stools by the bar and was promptly greeted by the man whose name the Old Man couldn’t begin to remember.

“What are you having today, Doc?” the bartender asked with a grin.

“Whatever’s wet and has an alcohol content above 80 percent,” Nathan responded.

The bartender nodded and reached down under the bar to produce a green liquid from the confines of his stock. The man poured the drink and slid it in front of the Captain with a friendly smile. Nathan eyeballed the man for several second before he looked up at the bartender.

“What the hell is this?”

“It’s green,” the man replied bluntly.

Nathan looked at the man, then back to the glass before shrugging, “Good enough for me.” The Old Man took the glass and shot gunned the drink about as fast as any normal person might have downed a much smaller shot, and did it in just about the same time. The after burn from the booze was extremely potent, forcing several large coughs out of Nathan before he could set the glass back down without fear of dropping it on the deck instead.

“Damn that stuff is potent. What did you call it?” Nathan asked.

The bartender picked up the bottle, gave it some scrutiny before replying, “It’s green.”

Capt. Cowell pushed the glass toward the man, “Well, give me more green.”

“Coming right up,” the man grinned and refilled the glass for Nathan. The El-Aurian took another deep gulp of the stuff and made the same hacking noise as the last time. The bartender set the bottle next to Nathan’s glass and gave him a wink before moving down the bar to serve what was most likely a couple fresh off duty. Nathan grabbed the bottle he’d been left and topped off his glass one more time, just for good measure. Cowell wasn’t entirely sure when he’d get to get shitfaced again…