Sumati pulled her uniform jacket taut over her body, glancing down briefly to confirm that she looked suitably smart. It really shouldn't matter, she thought to herself, as she flicked aside a few stray hairs from her jet black fringe. Here, just beyond the borders of Federation space, nobody was going to care that much.
Except that the senior officers might very well care, especially with the Captain being such a stickler for rules. The Captain always looked immaculate, almost infuriatingly calm and polished. And Sumati knew exactly what the Captain would say: today she was representing Starfleet, and couldn't afford to let the side down.
The last thing Sumati wanted right now was to turn up at the transporter room and be sent back to tidy herself up. Perhaps it wasn't very likely β it rather depended who was on duty β but she wasn't going to take the risk.
As an ensign, she didn't have a window in her room; only senior officers were lucky enough to get that privilege. Instead, her brown eyes flicked up to the monitor screen above the fold-away dresser. The space station hung there, a clunky collection of habitat modules around a central hub and power pylon. It was matt grey, the insignia scuffed by micrometeorite impacts that suggested a somewhat erratic shield system. It was an old design, too, hardly a match for modern Starfleet facilities, and in orbit around a nondescript, uninhabitable ball of rock.
It looked, in short, little better than junk. But, to Sumati, at this moment, it seemed a golden haven of opportunity. She actually had to steady her breathing for a moment, before picking up the chip, and securely pocketing it inside her uniform. It wouldn't do to leave without that!
She opened the door to her cabin, and stepped out into the corridor, her long braid swishing behind her as she turned to head towards the transporters...
---***---
When Sumati had first been assigned to the USS Endeavour, one thing she hadn't expected was a protracted period of celibacy.
Although, as a newly graduated Ensign, this was her first real assignment on a Starfleet ship, much of the rest of her life on board had been more or less what she expected. Life in Starfleet wasn't always as glamorous as the stories made out, but it certainly wasn't bad.
True, as a lowly engineer, she rarely got to leave the ship, to physically explore all the 'strange new worlds' that the recruitment ads talked about. They were certainly there β she could see them through the windows β but she rarely had the opportunity to set her feet on alien soil. But she didn't mind that too much. There was plenty to keep her busy on the Endeavour, a state-of-the-art research vessel, with several sophisticated features.
And, of course, she had to prove herself and work her way up through the ranks in order to get the best opportunities. She understood all that; Starfleet had a rank structure for good reason. There were even some benefits to being an engineer on a research vessel; around half the crew were scientists, and they always needed someone to keep their equipment working. It meant that she β or at least her department β was often in demand, and her skills were appreciated, as they might not be, for example, on a space dock.
No, none of that was the problem. It was definitely the celibacy thing.
One of the first things she had discovered on receiving her berth on the ship was that the USS Endeavour didn't have a particularly large human complement on its crew. She didn't really have much to compare it to, from her own personal experience, but the impression that most people had about Starfleet ships was that they were, by and large, crewed by humans, with just the odd Vulcan or Betazoid here and there.
Not so the Endeavour. A modern research vessel and one of the best of its kind, it seemed to attract science officers from across the Federation. She wasn't sure how many of them had been personally picked by the Captain or senior crew, but they were among the best in their respective fields. And, naturally enough, that meant that they were a diverse bunch. After all, Andoria and Benzar, to name but two worlds, surely produced just as many top quality scientists as Earth. Humans couldn't have it all their own way.
So, there were a lot of alien races on the Endeavour. It made some of the discussions in the lounges and rest rooms fascinating, a blend of different cultural perspectives that Sumati quite enjoyed. But it did rather leave one short of romantic opportunities.
Of course, even on the Endeavour, she was far from the only human present. What with the physical requirements of Starfleet training, many of the younger men were pretty good-looking, too. They were also all either dull science nerds that really weren't her type, or else already in a committed relationship by the time she'd embarked. A larger ship, or one with a more Earth-centric crew, would surely have had more exceptions... but not this one.
It wasn't that she was obsessed about sex, or anything. It really was, in the grand scheme of things, a minor inconvenience. At least she was here, on a starship, exploring the galaxy. It made up for a lot. But still, celibacy hadn't been on the brochure.
After a few months, she had hit upon the obvious solution: the Endeavour had holodecks. It wasn't really the same thing, but it beat the alternative β which was to say, nothing. So she had booked some leisure time, obtained a suitably erotic program, and had looked forward to trying it out.
It was when she had tried to feed the program into the holodeck that she had found out that the Captain's idea of relaxation wasn't quite the same as her own. The holodeck rejected the program, and left her in no doubt as to why it had done so; the Captain had evidently put a lock on it to prevent just this kind of use. Why, she wasn't entirely sure, although the fact that the ship's commanding officer was a Vulcan probably had something to do with it.
She was positive that the red flag that the program had raised had gone straight to the Chief Engineer. But, to his credit, he had never said a word about it to her. Perhaps he was used to it happening, at least among the new recruits. They didn't even have to be human; presumably the Ktarians, and all the rest, became equally frustrated about the lack of available singles of their own species.
She was equally confident that she could override the lock. But she wasn't going to do that. For one thing, it had doubtless occurred to the Chief Engineer, at the very least, that this was possible, and there would be countermeasures in place. Sooner or later, no matter how careful she was, she was going to be found out, and unauthorised tampering wasn't going to go down well.
But there was also the fact that she was, at the end of the day, a Starfleet officer. By tampering with the lock, she would be disobeying an order, even if only an implicit one. She wasn't going to do that; she wasn't that desperate, and she would be betraying her new family... even if she disagreed with them on this one point.
So, celibacy; that had been the remaining option. She could live with it, but, at times, it was rather frustrating.
But not today, Sumati had promised herself. Today was going to be different!
---***---