Steady Hands

The transporter beam faded and T'Vara stepped off the pad with a single bag over one shoulder and her medical kit slung across the other. She had a brief moment to take in the transporter room before anyone spoke, small and functional and carrying the particular lived in quality of a ship that had been worked hard and maintained carefully. She approved of that combination more than she would have said out loud.

A woman was waiting just inside the door. Compact build, dark hair tied back, coveralls that had seen a recent shift in engineering by the look of them. She was looking at T'Vara with the direct and unhurried expression of someone taking an honest measure of a situation rather than performing a welcome.

"Mei-Lin Zhao," she said. "Engineering. I'll show you around."

"T'Vara," she said. "Medical." She stepped off the pad and shifted the strap of her medical kit to a more comfortable position. "Thank you for coming down."

Mei-Lin nodded and turned toward the corridor without making a production of it which T'Vara appreciated. She had been welcomed aboard ships before by people who felt the need to fill every available second with information and reassurance and she had always found it exhausting. Mei-Lin's version of hospitality was apparently to simply start moving and trust that T'Vara could keep up, which she could.

They walked for a minute in silence that was comfortable enough before Mei-Lin said, "Quarters are on Deck 4. You're with me."

"I know," T'Vara said. "I read the assignment before I beamed up."

Mei-Lin glanced at her sideways at that, something in her expression suggesting this was a point in T'Vara's favor without her saying so. "Medical bay is on Deck 3. Equipment is functional. Supplies are being worked on."

"I've worked with less," T'Vara said, and meant it the way she always meant it, as a fact rather than a complaint or a reassurance.

"Captain wants to meet you before you get settled," Mei-Lin said as they turned down the corridor toward the bridge. "His preference, not mine."

"That's fine," T'Vara said. She had expected as much.

The bridge was just down the corridor from the transporter room and Zedd was at the central console when they came through the door, something on the screen he was working through with the focused expression of someone mid problem. He looked up when they came in and his eyes went to T'Vara with the same brief calculating quality she had learned to let finish before she said anything.

"T'Vara," she said, before he could ask. "I sent a message about the medic posting."

"I got it." He stepped away from the console. "You're earlier than I expected."

"I was ready."

He looked her over in a way that was assessing without being rude about it. His version of the Romulan calculation was shorter than most people's and she noticed that without commenting on it.

"You trained on Verath IV," he said.

"Started there. Formalized later."

"How much later?"

"Two years after I started doing the job for real," she said. "The colony needed a medic and I was the one who had been paying attention."

Something shifted slightly in his expression. "How old were you?"

"Seventeen."

He nodded once and filed it somewhere. "We don't have a sickbay that would impress anyone. Equipment is functional. Supplies are adequate. I'm working on better."

"I've worked with less," she said again, and he seemed to understand that she was not going to keep saying it past this point because it was simply true and she did not need to defend it.

He studied her for another moment. "The crew is mixed. Some of them are going to have opinions about you that have nothing to do with your medical record."

"I know," she said. "They usually do."

"How do you handle it?"

T'Vara considered the question briefly. "I do the job well enough that the opinion stops mattering. It usually takes about two weeks."

Zedd laughed at that, short and genuine. "Two weeks." He leaned back against the console. "Terms then. Profit share, same as everyone else. Open ledgers. I'm offering one and a half percent to start. You prove you can keep this crew alive in the places we tend to end up and we revisit."

T'Vara looked at him for a moment. "Two percent," she said. "I didn't come to the Gamma Quadrant for a reduced rate and you didn't post the position because you wanted someone average. One and a half doesn't reflect either of those things."

Zedd studied her. She did not fill the pause with anything additional because she did not need to.

"Two percent," he said finally. "But the revisit still happens."

"That's fine," she said. "I intend to make it worth having."

He extended his hand. "Welcome aboard T'Vara."

She shook it. "Thank you."

"Zedd," he said. "Captain is for when something's on fire."

She filed that away. "Zedd."

He nodded toward Mei-Lin who was standing near the door with the patient expression of someone who had already decided to like whoever showed up as long as they were not an idiot about it. "She'll get you sorted."

T'Vara followed Mei-Lin back out into the Deck 2 corridor and they took the turbolift down to Deck 4 in the same comfortable silence they had managed on the way up. As they walked the corridor toward the quarters Mei-Lin said, without preamble, "Sickbay is on Deck 3. You're on 4 because engineering and the shuttlebay are here. Faster response time if something goes wrong in either place."

T'Vara nodded at that. It was a practical decision and she appreciated that someone had made it deliberately rather than just assigning her wherever there was space.

When they reached the quarters Mei-Lin keyed the door open and stepped aside to let her in first which T'Vara noted as a small and deliberate courtesy.

The room was compact but better laid out than she had expected. Two sleeping areas separated by a shared common space in the middle, enough division between them that two people could exist in the room without being constantly in each other's way. T'Vara had shared quarters on ships where that was not the case and the difference was not a small one.

She set her bag down in the sleeping area that was clearly unoccupied and her medical kit beside it and looked around for a moment.

"It's fine," she said, which was the most she usually said about quarters and which she meant genuinely.

Mei-Lin leaned against the doorframe. "Mess is on Deck 2. Shift schedules are posted. If you need anything ask me first. I know where everything is." She paused for a second. "The separation in the room is real. I keep my hours and you keep yours and neither of us has to make a thing of it."

T'Vara looked at her. "That works for me."

Mei-Lin nodded and pushed off the doorframe and left her to unpack, which was exactly the right amount of welcome as far as T'Vara was concerned.

She opened her bag and started putting things where they belonged and outside the viewport New Ferenginar turned slowly below and the Dutchman hummed around her in the particular way of a ship that was being looked after by someone who cared about it.

She had been on ships that were safer and quieter and she had always ended up leaving them for something that felt more like Verath IV.

This one might do.