Post 128: The Reports of my Death Have Been Greatly Exaggerated

Posted on Wed Oct 23rd, 2024 @ 9:31pm by Master Chief Petty Officer K'Ral De Bruinhiena
Edited on on Wed Oct 23rd, 2024 @ 11:21pm

770 words; about a 4 minute read

Mission: Obsidian

OOC: I'm still very much alive... it's just been... insane lately.

ON:

There were many things Master Chief De Bruinhiena was good at, however, in the past few months, three stood out. One was making sure the ship and station burn down around the senior officers as they were off dealing with Command by shielding them from dealing with some of the more mundane parts of leadership. Two was being able to mentor the few junior officers, especially when Command dumped assignments like getting the promenade up and running upon them. And finally, three was his ability to generally be able to fade into the background when needed to let everything play out. Honestly, the past several (insert time period here) had mostly been doing a mix of all three, but mostly the first and last thing.

Getting the promenade up and running had been fairly straight forward. Once that had been done and dusted, it was fairly easy to send the J-O back to being mentored by their section Senior Chief. Which meant that K'Ral went back to doing his usual job of running interference for the Command Staff. Yes, he was a liason between the Enlisted and the Officers, but most of his "liasoning" was keeping often bad ideas from jumping the chain of command.

However, right now he was standing in front of the airlock waiting for his third wife to arrive. One thing they always seem to gloss over when it comes to StarFleet was the divorce rate. Specifically the divorce rate for enlisted personnel. The overwhelming majority of enlisted didn't get to bring their families on board starships since they lived in bunks. Where the bunks were located varied between ship classes, ranging from barracks or bays to corridors. At least until they made Junior Non-Com, then they'd usually ended up with a shared room, until they eventually became Senior Non-Com at Chief Petty Officer. Then they might get their own room that was about the size of a walk-in closet. This generally meant that married enlisted personnel wouldn't get much in the way of family time unless they were in port or they were rotated from ship duty back to shore duty.

Of course, all of this didn't happen if the stars magically aligned and the Ghost of Delbert D. Black, the first ever Master Chief Petty Officer of the Navy, granted his blessing upon you by getting you a posting to a Nebula or a Galaxy Class. But even then, the divorce rates were still fairly high. It wasn't uncommon for someone to get posted to ship duty, be gone for a year (or five) just to come home to divorce papers. In fact, that had happened to K'Ral twice. His first wife, a Caitian, had met him with their five year old daughter in tow as he'd disembarked only for her to give him their divorce papers before she left to go back home to Cait. His second wife, an Aurelian, had packed all her things up and gone to Earth just to leave him with a data pad on the kitchen table with divorce papers pulled up.

So far, his current and third wife, a Cainian (or more specifically the sub-species of Cainians known as Lupulella) that was only three years older than his estranged daughter, hadn't started any kind of divorce proceedings. Yet. Then again, she had divorced her good for nothing husband to be with the Hienian five years ago since he never seemed able to hold a job while she had to deal with raising their two children. And now after five years, they were finally going to be back together on the same station.

Master Chief's ears twitched in anticipation as he watched the airlock unseal, air hissing as the pressure equalized. As expected, the first person off the commercial vessel was Rei, his wife. She was grinning at him in that way only her sub-species of Cainian could while her two children followed in behind her.

A few hugs and kisses later, the quatro found their way back to the Master Chief's quarters on the station; a quaint and quiet little three bedroom two bath apartment unit that the hienian had managed to claim for himself. Being the top of the Enlisted Charts did come with a few advantages. With his wife and step-kids getting settled in, it was high time he went back to dealing with whatever new issue had arisen in the 45 minutes he'd been away, but not before he gave his wife a hug and a kiss.

OFF:

OCC: This should be fun.

 

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