—- Starbase 260, Quark’s Pub —-

“They have a Quark’s here,” Lieutenant William Hume observed gesturing to the bustling Ferengi style bar and restaurant on the promenade of Starbase 260.

His sister made a face and then shrugged, “I’ve been to one of them before, I imagine either the original was better or…”

Relenting she followed her younger brother over and joined the line that had formed. The promenade was bustling with activity, not the least because the crew of the USS Falcon was being allowed to take rotating visits to the base. The Falcon’s crew was five times larger than the crew assigned to the station, and twice as big as the station’s entire population. One of these Vision-class stations were not meant to handle the full compliment of a modern starship.

Hume figured his sister could have pulled rank. As a Lieutenant Commander she outranked most on the station, and the Falcon, but they waited in line like everyone else. He supposed pulling rank was a good way to get hated.

Lieutenant Commander Victoria Hume made her way into the pub when their name was called. She did not much care for Ferengi cooking, but as they saying went ‘when in New Rome do as the New Romans do’. She had not chosen to be on the ship that her brother had been transferred to, but things had moved fast with the formation. Captain Radak had grown more ill recently, leaving her to fill in his shoes, a daunting task given that she was outranked by the commanding officers of both ships. She knew that the Falcon’s commanding officer Captain Aike in particular was not a fan of this whole new division arrangement. He seemed to view both herself and Captain Radak with suspicion, intruding upon his command.

Her brother William was also somewhat old fashioned in his view of a captain being in charge of a ship and nothing really coming ahead of that. Despite his relative youth William took after their father, and was a traditionalist in many respects. It had made his connection with his previous commanding officer and their current Task Force commanding officer Captain Hawthorne end up more like a father son arrangement.

William had still been quite young when their father had died during the Dominion War, a father figure was something he might have needed. Victoria had been a bit older, and had adjusted as she’d progressed.

“So you got anything exciting or dangerous up your sleeve for this mission,” William asked as he waited for his root beer, a feature menu item at this Quark’s.

“It’s not magic,” Victoria said, as she took her own carbonated water, lime flavored, “We don’t just pull missions out of a hat and assign them to you guys. After last one the Falcon is getting a milk run, doing this show the flag exercise and the Selene is being restocked and having a new sensor suite added.”

William nodded, “Just figured you’d tell me, but I get it top secret and stuff.”

“Top secret? It is what I’m telling you,” Victoria said realizing the pointlessness of this conversation. If there had been something top secret they’d be having exactly the same conversation.

William grinned, unconvinced but not pressing it, “You think starbase life gets boring?”

“My last two assignments were Avalon Fleet-yards and Starbase 86, so I know what starbase life is like,” Victoria said, “I also lived with mom on starbase 12 for a bit before the academy.”

“But those are massive bases, this is like a Reliant-class ship that doesn’t go anywhere,” William said.

It was bigger than that, with a more dynamic mix of non-Federation citizens and Starfleet personnel, but his point was relatively accurate. Certainly a Vision-class was different than anything either Hume had been assigned to before.

“Mom’s moved back to Point Grey,” William said of their mother who had retired as a captain in Starfleet Operations that year. She had moved back to the exclusive neighborhood in Vancouver that they had grown up.

“I’ll see if I can arrange some time off for us both to go see her,” Victoria said, getting both a ship’s chief of security and the division’s first officer on leave at the same time might be tricky.

A woman dressed as a Dabo Girl dropped off their drinks, though she was not Bajoran the way they both knew that the women who worked at the original Quark’s aboard Deep Space Nine had been.

“We should go to the original,” William said watching the woman walk away from the table.

“I don’t know if we need to, this is skeevy enough,” his sister said.