"You make it sound appealing" Solana said with a slight smile. Pembroke informed her that he'd spent twelve years developing his bedside manner, and she assured him that it showed.

He chose to ignore that and continued examining the kit. "You'll have considerable latitude in the field, more than you would on an ordinary Starfleet away mission" Pembroke said. He made it clear that the latitude was necessary rather than charitable; if Solana was thirty kilometers from extraction with somebody crashing in front of her, he would rather she treat the patient than spend five minutes trying to contact him so he could congratulate her on knowing what she was doing.

That part Solana liked, though Pembroke immediately followed it with a warning that latitude and enthusiasm were not synonymous. She gave him a knowing look and told him, "There it is. The part where you tell me I'm young and need supervision."

Pembroke's brow lifted slightly. He informed her that he'd met surgeons twice her age who required supervision while opening a ration pack and that age was a remarkably poor substitute for competence. Solana hadn't expected that answer, and apparently her expression showed it because he continued before she had the chance to respond.

"Your evaluations indicate that you're aggressive when circumstances require it, willing to improvise, and reasonably difficult to intimidate" Pembroke said. He considered those useful qualities for Blackwatch, although Solana immediately caught the word *reasonably* and questioned it. Pembroke explained that he didn't believe in giving anyone a perfect score, which was exactly the sort of answer she'd started expecting from him.

The humor faded when he gestured toward the Sustain cartridge again. Those same qualities created another problem, and he wanted her to understand the difference between preserving capability and merely delaying the inevitable. Sustain wasn't permission to keep everyone standing until they fell over dead. Sometimes the mission genuinely needed another twenty minutes from somebody; other times it needed that person alive tomorrow more than it needed them upright today.

"I know" Solana said, her expression becoming more serious. Pembroke answered that he expected she did, but he was going to say it anyway. Oddly enough, that didn't irritate her nearly as much as she'd expected.

His attention shifted toward the rolled recovery litter secured alongside her pack, and he asked about it. Solana explained that it was a compact recovery litter capable of rolling down small enough to carry externally, with eight handles, restraints, drag points, and medical attachment loops. Pembroke offered nothing more than a simple "Good," leaving Solana waiting a second before asking whether he really had no criticism.

"I'm sure I'll find something eventually" Pembroke assured her as he stood and brushed one knee of his field trousers. Solana smiled despite herself while he looked around the transport's mission bay.

"This is where your medicine becomes different from mine" he said eventually. When Solana asked what he meant, Pembroke explained that if things went well, he had lights, surgical support, diagnostics, equipment, and enough technology to make several centuries of physicians deeply resentful. Solana would have whatever fit inside her pack and whatever hadn't been destroyed yet.

"Comforting" she said, though Pembroke pointed out that comfort hadn't been the intention.

Solana closed one of the trauma cases and secured the latches before looking back toward him. "Then why are you here? Blackwatch, I mean. You could be doing surgery on a starbase somewhere with actual lighting and nurses who don't arrange drugs incorrectly."

"My nurses arrange things perfectly" Pembroke replied with enough seriousness that she wasn't entirely sure whether he believed it. Solana answered with an unsurprised "Naturally," and his mouth moved just enough that she thought she might have caught the beginning of a smile.

Pembroke leaned back against one of the storage cabinets and considered her question before answering. He'd spent years receiving patients from places like the ones Solana was about to enter. By the time they reached his operating room, almost every important decision had already been made by somebody else, sometimes well and occasionally very badly. Eventually he'd become tired of complaining about field medicine while remaining comfortably distant from the field.

"So you came closer" Solana said after a moment. Pembroke characterized it as an unfortunate lapse in judgment, which prompted her to point out that Blackwatch seemed to collect those. His agreement came with enough dryness that she suspected the observation wasn't new to him.

For a few moments neither of them spoke, and Solana found the silence surprisingly comfortable. Pembroke eventually looked back toward her pharmaceutical case and pointed toward one of the forward compartments. "Move the vascular support cartridges one position forward."

Solana frowned at him and reminded him that he'd just said he wasn't going to rearrange her kit. Pembroke maintained that he wasn't, even after she pointed out that he'd quite literally told her to move something. "I'm improving it" he explained. "Entirely different process."

She stared at him for several seconds before shaking her head and making the change. Pembroke watched until she'd finished, then gave the arrangement another look and declared it better with the satisfaction of a man who had apparently forgotten the case wasn't his.

"You've been aboard my transport five minutes and you're already annoying me" Solana told him as she closed the pharmaceutical module and secured the catches. Pembroke seemed entirely comfortable with that assessment and informed her that familiarity accelerated teamwork.

He turned toward the hatch and made it several steps before stopping. "One more thing, Lieutenant" Pembroke said, looking back toward her. Solana recognized immediately from the change in his expression that the sarcasm had been put away.

"If you're in the field and you think someone needs Sustain, don't ask yourself whether they can keep going" he told her. What mattered was whether whatever they still needed to accomplish justified what continuing might cost them. If the answer was yes, she should give it. If the answer was no, she should put them on the litter and bring them back to him.

Solana considered that for several seconds before nodding. "Understood." The faintest hint of approval crossed Pembroke's face before he resumed walking toward the hatch.

He had made it another few steps when Solana called after him. "Doctor?" Pembroke stopped and looked back, waiting while she glanced toward the pharmaceutical case. "You know I'm going to rearrange that cartridge the second you leave."

"I assumed as much" Pembroke replied, apparently unconcerned. When Solana asked why he was still leaving, he explained that he preferred to preserve the illusion that she occasionally followed instructions. She smiled and wished him luck with that before he gave her one last look and continued through the hatch.

The moment the door closed, Solana reopened the pharmaceutical module and looked at the vascular support cartridges. Her fingers hovered over them while she considered moving them back to their original position simply on principle.

After several seconds, she closed the case without touching them.

"Annoying bastard" she muttered, though the small smile still on her face ruined most of the complaint.