SIM:Blair Farewell

((Main Engineering, Deck 9, USS Tiger-A))

It had been ten days since Alex had returned to Deep Space 17 along with the other captives, West, Warwick and Braddock. Their arrival in shuttlebay 9 was met with a twenty four hour period of mandatory isolation followed by the most thorough medical investigation Alex had ever experienced.::

oO I didn’t think I was going to make it to the end of those tests! Oo

After passing the physical, Alex was allowed to return to duty which was a relief to him. The Tiger’s refit had been expedited and the engineering crew was tasked with completing a two month job in a couple of days. Not willing to waste any more time, Alex quickly dove into the task at hand. It didn’t take long for things to start going wrong.::

During their last mission, the Tiger crashed landed on a planet that was just one large ocean. As the Tiger sat on the bottom of the sea, she withstood a lot of damage and required quite a bit of emergency repair work. To make things worse, the crash had somehow activated a long dormant Iconian gateway. After a visit from the gateway’s guardian, the Tiger’s computer core became infected with an Iconian virus. After hours of work, and an ingenious idea to use the Holodeck to create a new core to run the ship, the crew thought that they had contained the virus.::

As the refit and repair teams worked on the Tiger signs of this virus started cropping back up. The ship’s computer kept registering systems that had just been repaired as defective causing lockouts to occur. It started to seem like every forward step was accompanied by two steps backward. Needless to say, Alex grew increasingly frustrated.::

Alex voiced his frustrations with the station’s Repair/Refit team who then passed them along to Starfleet Command. After an exhaustive investigation, the decisions was passed down, that the Tiger would be decommissioned and transferred to Starbase 118 for further inspection of the virus. That meant that the entire crew compliment of the Tiger, Alex included, were to be transferred.::

oO I’m really going to miss this place. Oo

Alex had only received the news a few hours ago. He now found himself wandering aimlessly around the Tiger. One of the perks of being the Chief Engineer meant that Alex had free reign to go just about anywhere on the ship and he was definitely taking advantage.::

oO I really thought I would have the chance to captain her one day. Oo

Alex continued walking around the ship for several more hours before he came to a stop at a set of double doors on Deck 7. Earlier in the day, Alex had pulled every string he could find and managed to get permission to hold one last crew gathering in the Tiger’s Den. He stepped through the doors to a room full of familiar faces that Alex would truly miss in the near future.::

Blair: I’m glad so many of you managed to make it here this evening. This crew has been through a lot together and I couldn’t imagine a better way for us to end our time together.

ANYONE: RESPONSE

Blair: If you ask me, the Tiger was still in her prime and I’m sad to see her being decommissioned. But let’s not let tonight be full of sadness, let’s remember the good times!

ANYONE: RESPONSE

Alex accepted a glass of champagne from a wandering waitress. With the glass in his hand, Alex held it to the air.::

Blair: To the Tiger and her crew. You have all been my family for the past two years and I wish you the best of luck in your new assignments. I want to leave you all with this thought, Moving on is simple. It's what we leave behind that's hard.

ANYONE: RESPONSE

With his speech done, Alex let everyone continue their celebration and began to walk around the room.::

TAG/TBC

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Lieutenant Commander Alex Blair

Chief Engineer

USS Tiger-A