I really do not understand the Bastard's tendency to try to get into private conversations with me. He does it all the jay' time. It's enough to drive a sane woman mad. That said, I have to at least make a pretense of trying to pretend to be civil, as regardless of what I think of him, he still outranks me, and it creates awkward questions when one disposes of or abuses superior officers too much.

I had assumed he was going to harass me about his contingency plans, in case we got stuck here for any length of time, or if he died. He'd already been hinting about such concerns already. If he knew me better, he'd know that he doesn't have to actually talk to me about such things, I will just take care of them. Problems with authority or not, I did get the same education in Starfleet Academy he did, and despite whatever assumptions he made about my skills, I did get pretty good marks in my courses. Thankfully, that didn't turn into a discussion we had to have right now, as he was trying to get the gossip about Noelle instead.

It's painfully obvious to anyone with a lick of sense watching those two that they want each other. They keep making excuses around it, claiming they just want to be friends, that there's this family/social reason, or that work reason, why they can't be together. I have to give the bastard points, when I did call him on the dancing around his desire for her and how it was plain as day to everyone, he admitted he's never been any good at hiding things.

The meat of the matter that he wanted to harass me about is what happened to Noelle in the mirror universe. He didn't mentioned the mirror universe, I'm not even sure if he knows the mirror universe is involved, but I don't care what he does and doesn't know. He clearly didn't get any of the juicy tidbits, and he seemed perplexed as to how I could understand the sort of loss I told him is justification for never holding back and never wasting time. When he admitted he didn't have access to the report, I told him that I couldn't tell him, he'd have to talk to her. He hadn't even been sure that anything had happened to Noelle, he really is clueless about people, as watching Noelle makes it clear something happened.

He did claim that he's suffered a great loss, implied it was something on par with what I went through losing Travis, without actually knowing the details of my loss. I can't say what he went through, but it probably isn't his broken marriage with Thil and the two who were absent when we were at his family's keep on the Andor mission. It wasn't a discussion I wanted to get into with him. He doesn't need to know about my past, I don't need to know about his. He just needs to understand that if he has interest in my friend, he needs to handle it correctly, or it's just going to stack on top of the other things he's done to piss me off.

I curled up in the hay loft to steal a little sleep after that. The Brian kid has a pretty nice, given the time period, amateur rocket lab set up in the hay loft. Where normally such a loft would be filled with loose hay, there are only a couple of bails along the edge to serve as a reminder that there's an edge there and keep one from falling off from absentmindedness. He has a couple of solid work tables that look to have seen their fair share of spills, and are cluttered with a whole collection of bottles, beakers and the occasional mason jar, all carefully labeled in a block print that speaks of someone who realizes that messy and hard to read handwriting can literally blow up in his face. If it came down to a need for it, it wouldn't be hard to get creative with what he has here, but I'd rather not take supplies when there are so many ways to earn them in this time period.

Someone who had access to my full record, not that unclassified list of reprimands and ships I've served on mess, but the real deal that pretty much no one outside of Temporal Investigations or Section 31 can read the whole of, and there's probably bits that either group can read that the other can't... well, anyone reading the full record would know this isn't the first time I've traveled through time, not even the first time I've ended up in the 20th century and on Earth. The last time really doesn't count in the grander scheme of things, we just mucked around on a Nazi airbase, killing a bunch of Nazis as we went, and came home after only a couple hours there.

Already, I get the feeling that this trip is going to be much different from that one. I wasn't there for more than a minute before there was a gun leveled at me, half my crew mates on that away mission just started running around and killing anything with a swastika armband. Temporal Investigations really didn't like us when we came back. The good news is that base didn't seem to be very important, and as far as any of the team could tell, we didn't change anything noticeable by killing those Nazis. The declassified Nazi reports about it were an interesting read when I took the time to dig them up one evening a few months afterwards. Zane seemed to have gotten the focus of the reports of the pilots who lived to tell the tale of their encounter with me and the Fuzzball.

Here, the first person we met was a teenage kid. It feels like so long ago that I was that young. It's such a stark contrast that here the first action from a local was to hand back something our group had dropped. When I claimed we were seeking somewhere to stay the night, in hopes of getting an answer and satisfying his curiosity enough that he'd go on his way... he instead offers his parents barn to us to sleep in for the night.

From the way that the rest of the team didn't seem to be reacting at all, I got the impression that I was the only one who'd done the time travel thing before. Regardless of if I was more or less experienced on the topic than my fellow officers, all of which outrank me, I was the one who started reacting to what was going on the quickest. As the lowest ranking officer in the bunch, it feels odd that I am pretty much leading the team. It's a good thing that between survival instincts beaten into me at a young age, where survival depends upon quick reaction not waiting for the authority figures to step in and control the situation, and my minor in 20th century earth history, I've been able to keep this situation under control.

I can already tell that the rest of the team is afraid of letting this Brian kid hang around, but between what I experienced on the Nazi base and what I've read in other reports I've been able to get my hands on, once a person native to the local time line notices you and starts interacting with you, it's usually better to keep them involved and under your influence. They're going to stick around, like it or not, so you might as well have a hand in shaping their impressions of you, guiding their reactions, and hopefully keeping damage to a minimum. V seems to have adjusted the best of the three, and she may yet prove to be a good partner in crime when we start going out to gather supplies in order to survive while stuck here. I get the impression that there's more to this woman than is visible on the surface. She's already shown a knack for changing her accent and helping weave up cover stories that I haven't seen so much outside of SI or theater geeks. She doesn't grate on my nerves like most SI folk, but she doesn't hit me as a theater geek either. I'll just have to keep an eye on her.

In worse news, the Blue Bastard's at it again. He and the Romulan Bitch, a title she just earned, almost got into a fight. In front of Brian just as he bumbled into our conversation and started putting pieces together quicker than I could work to throw doubt onto. My money is on the Romulan bitch, if the fighting turns into anything other than talk and posturing, but the evil part of me thinks I should let the two be paired off on information gathering and wait to see if one kills the other off. Might solve the bastard infestation on the Shingen without my having to get my hands dirty. She's bound to have diplomatic immunity or some shit, as an exchange officer, so it would work out for her. Also, cultural differences, she could cry! It has possibility.

Right now, Bastard's on watch, and I ferreted up a scrap of paper to jot this onto until we get back home and I can put it into my journal proper... or I end up getting a journal here if we get stuck for any length of time. If we get stuck for any length of time, I will have to see what I can do about getting a job doing something flying. I don't think I could handle being land locked for too long.

V's talked about being able to make us fake ID papers, and the team has all adopted human sounding names.. at least first names. V will probably either assign full names to each of us, or she'll ask us if we have anything in mind. I think I'll use Travis' family name if she gives me a choice. Desiree Foster doesn't sound half bad.

When out shopping for supplies in the morning, I should also keep an eye out for any goodies that could safely come home with me. Like records in mint condition of bands that we only have copies of digital recordings made from analog medium as the media was starting to die of old age. I'd only be inclined to ferret away booze, if I could find a way to let it pass through time and find its way to me some time after we get back. Probably not likely on that one... but there are bound to be other goodies that would be worth bringing home.