Surgeon General of Starfleet, Dr. Matthew T. Brennan was annoyed.
He found that happening a lot lately, but today, the annoyance was one that had been with him for some time. He was in the lower reaches of Spacedock, way down in the central cavern where ships of lower priority were assembled. He stood at the railing of the inner circle and stared down into that cavern, at the large starship below him. This starship was different than most, because it wasn't an exploratory vessel. It wasn't a battleship. It wasn't a scout. It was a hospital. The USS Chimborazo (he'd named it himself, for the largest military hospital ever, one he'd worked in and helped set up in Richmond, VA during the Americal Civil War) sat below, almost entirely assembled. It even had the detachable hospital huts attached onto it's dorsal hull, waiting to be deployed somewhere. What it lacked, however, was warp nacelles. Another two months, he'd been told. This was after the 'another two months' he'd been told last time, and the 'another four months' he'd been told the time before. Soon, very soon, he'd lost most of the crew he'd assembled. Some had already been taken off for other assignments, pulled away for fresher billets. Starfleet wasn't so physician laden that they could simply hold a hospital's worth of physicians in wait for a ship that was beginning to look like it would never be spaceworthy. The concept was simple: a mobil hospital starship that could be sent on a moment's notice to anyplace within the Federation (and several places without). It would carry no weapons, because that was the time-honored tradition, which was supposed to make it a non-target. That was more theory than practice, but still.... she would need an escort. And Starfleet had escorts galore. those escorts, in facdt, had been getting the Chimborazo's warp nacelles. But there was a meeting tomorrow. And at that meeting, Matt was going to get his warp nacelles. Even if he had to strangle someone to get them. ********************************************************* RJ Ferrance, DC, MD Combined Internal Medicine-Pediatrics Chief Resident Medical College of Virginia Hospitals Richmond, VA 23298 [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://views.vcu.edu/~medtoast/anvil.html
