Prologue

Posted on Mon Dec 16th, 2019 @ 1:19am by Crewman Thomas Jefferson

Thomas was neither surprised nor excited when he received notification that his application to Starfleet as a civilian contractor to work on a Federation starship as a chef. It was simply just another fact that he was not only qualified for the position, but, more likely, over qualified.

Leaving Earth to wander the stars was not an easy transition, considering the (very successful) restaurant that he is responsible for, but also the fact that he has a family that he is responsible for. Fortunately his wife agreed to join him on his new adventure which just left making arrangements for his business interests.

Fortunately he was able to arrange for his wife to join him, so he would have someone on board who could help him with the garden he would need in hydroponics.

He didn’t travel light to the starbase where the Independence was to be docked, in addition to his personal belongings there were two cargo containers containing all of his kitchen equipment.

Upon arrival Thomas found that the Independence was being refitted and empty. After getting his wife situated on the starbase he went to take a look at the captains ward room and the “kitchen”. As expected, the “kitchen” was just a bank of specialized replicators.

He immediately went to work. As the ship was swarming with engineering staff, nobody questioned his presence on the ship, the crates he brought in, or when he grabbed some of the engineers and put them to work remodeling the “kitchen”. Though, when he told them to tear out a wall to expand the space into an adjoining office, one of the engineers wanted to challenge the order, but Thomas can be very convincing when he is challenged by an employee. Speaking to the engineer like he would speak to a sou chef that challenged him on the amount of thyme to add to a recipe. The cowed engineer, assuming Thomas outranked him, complied without further comment.