Lieutenant Mercedes Carpenter stepped off the transporter pad onto the starbase and looked around her. The transporter room was like any other 6-person transporter room in Starfleet; there was maybe a slight difference in layout, but all in all, most transporter rooms tended to look alike. The only way to tell them apart was the era in which they were built, and from the style of this one, it was fairly up-to-date and state of the art.
Mercedes had done a lot of travelling around the Federation the last few months, and she was still decided where she was happy with it or not. In fact, being back in Starfleet wasn't much of a choice for her. She was happy living her life, retired from Starfleet, as a xenophysiology specialist at a public hospital on Luna, but when the war with the Romulans broke out, Starfleet basically "drafted" her; and since there were no real medical grounds on which she could object, she found herself back in uniform again the next week.
But, this time around things were different and not as bad as Mercedes had expected they would be. Perhaps she'd also grown up a little more over the years and learned to handle situations better. Being Chimera's CMO was a stressful position, being on the front lines all the time in dangerous situations and being responsible for the survival of a crew of over 1,000... It was just too much.
Her new position was quite different, however. She was recruited back into SSF Medical, but assigned to the Department of Medical Research Intelligence, a joint sub-department of Medical and Intelligence. She would become an agent of the department, travelling to wherever the SSF needed sensitive or classified medical information analysed. At first she hadn't expected to do well in the position, but after she completed her brief field training she was soon promoted to senior agent and found the work fulfilling for the most part. Besides the travelling which she didn't like, her work had a strong investigative and scientific slant to it that she found very satisfying. And there were at least no triage situations which required her to delegate six cargo bays full of injured marines between three AMO's.
"Dr Carpenter?" an enlisted crewman wearing a red uniform greeted her, his voice pulling her from her thoughts.
"Yes, that's me," she nodded and held out her hand towards him. "Mercedes Carpenter, Medical Research Intelligence." The title didn't sound as strange to her ears anymore as when she first started using it.
"Major Kinn regrets she's unable to meet you herself; she has urgent business to attend to," he conveyed. "In the meantime, I can give you a quick tour of the starbase and show you to your quarters?"
Mercedes nodded. "That would be nice, thank you."
She followed the yeoman out of the transporter room and down a generic looking corridor until they came to a plaza, areas of the starbase where decks intersected via walkways and escalators. Walking closer to the rail, she looked up and could see at least ten decks up through the oval cutaways in the centre of the deck plaza and she realized just how vast the starbase was.
= End Log =
Lieutenant Mercedes Carpenter
Senior Field Agent
Medical Research Intelligence, SSF
