Zuorn did not want to be a diplomat.

	She [i]was[/i] not a diplomat, not officially, technically. Maybe she had some skill. It wasn't professional skill. It wasn't enough, she felt. She wished she were the one taking pictures of their manifest and sending them across radio frequencies for the Earth government to decrypt. She even wished she'd been just another person huddling in the hallway. The [i]sickbay[/i] would have been a better place, some [i]sick[/i] (ironic, eh?) part of her mused. Was this another punishment then, she thought, in a continued line of punishments for what she had done? No. It sure felt like it, but no. Commander Obnimar wouldn't risk the crew's lives like that.

	The chair was her only comfort. She was thankful the Earth shuttle's ceiling wasn't obscenely low; it tended to be that way with other species' ships and buildings. Her head, as she rolled it back, touched the top edge of the window. Eyes closed. Breaths deep. She hadn't felt much trust suspended between her and Obnimar when he ordained her as his primary diplomat. If there was any, it was a rickety old bridge held aloft by rotten rope. Perhaps fear, then, but she hadn't scried any deeper. Everyone had been drowning in one another's dread, anyways. She wouldn't have been able to tell whether his fear of sending an even less qualified "diplomat" outweighed his distrust for her.

	Surely he distrusted her. She wasn't just imagining it.

	She laid down on a leftover tarp, one flap over her body as a blanket, and tried to sleep. All those hours had stolen precious designated-shuteye-time from her, and she intended to steal some back.



	The shuttle was so e m p t y. No waves of fear... but that sparked a sort of fear in and of itself. Total isolation. Her dreams were nightmares.