The Beginning
Posted on Tue Sep 20, 2022 @ 10:03pm by Lieutenant Commander Koolie & Captain Toron Pax & Ensign Jak Summers & Crewman Myrah Zolar
Mission:
NW 1: Dry-Docked, The Lighthouse
Location: Starbase 364
Timeline: The Lighthouse - 1
Tags: Night Watch, The Lighthouse
Location: Starbase 364, Koolie's Guest Quarters
Koolie stepped out of the quarters that had been assigned to him and yawned. He was still getting used to daytime running hours after a long time as the third shift commander on the Potemkin. He looked down at the padd in his hand to make sure he'd grabbed the right one.
Behind him, his wife and daughter walked out as well. His daughter was playing with a padd, moving it back and forth in some sort of game. He captured her head and kissed her on the top before she wrestled away. His wife was holding a large bag and offered her head to be kissed before handing him the bag.
"Remember these are for everyone," she said, before directing their daughter in the opposite direction by the shoulders.
Koolie checked inside the bag, counted, and smiled.
Location: Starbase 364, Visiting Captain's Quarters
Toron Pax was somewhat uncomfortable in the quarters he had been assigned while the Potemkin underwent the massive repair and refit. They were massive, even by the standards of large ships like the Galaxy. He had his bedroom, living space, office and shower room. This wasn't the issue, the issue was that he also had a second bedroom and a home gym as well as a gallery on a half floor above the living space. He expected he could come to like the space in the year it was expecting the repairs to take.
With a slight sigh he grabbed a coffee and headed out the door and towards the conference Room, Much of the crew was either invested in the repairs or had been reassigned but Pax had managed to keep hold of a few small teams that he could assign to away missions using the vast array of support craft the station had. This was one of those times he could utilise a team.
Location: Starbase 364, Myrah's Guest Quarters
Myrah Zolar spent the morning pacing back and forth between her closet an her travel bag, debating how many pairs of socks to bring, should the replicator malfunction and not be able to supply them. It was Andorian wisdom that good socks were life and dry feet were always an advantage. To that end she always favored compression socks from her homeworld, and rarely wore the regulation types provided with the uniform replications. No one had yet made her lift her trouser cuff to inspect the eclectic patterns of her homeworld's antiquated and traditional colorways and designs. Ultimately she decided to take as many of her socks as would reasonably fit.
"If nothing else, for luck." She said out loud as she forcibly latched the hard shell case closed.
She had, after all, never been on an away mission of any significance. And while she had yet to know what exactly she was being sent out to do, it was probably for the best to take all of her socks.
Location: Starbase 364, Conference Room 8
Koolie was coordinating his padd with the conference room display as people started filtering in. There were two piles of delicious smelling white packages in the center of the table. One wrapper was already empty in front of his seat, with another as-yet-unopened package next to it.
He repeated the same speech to everyone who came in, "I'll be ready in a minute. My wife made sandwiches. Full Federation are this pile, dietary restrictions are in the back," he indicated the separation between the pile of sandwiches stacked with corned Andorian akharrad, melted Earth cheese, fried Ktarian egg, and Vulcan gespar relish, and the pile where you could choose to skip any of the ingredients.
Captain Pax strode through the door immersed in a padd, the Station commander had been kind enough to allow Pax to read the daily reports that were coming through the station. Much of it was boring standard stuff but every now and then there was an interesting discovery or event that caught his attention. This was one of those days, so he could surely be forgiven for not noticing the rich array of aromas coming from the table until he had already sat down. He had taken a deep breath, or rather a deep breath that was not filled with the smell of his coffee. His head snapped up and he looked around taking the room in for the first time.
"Oh" he said realizing that he was hungry after all.
Koolie nodded politely to acknowledge the unexpected arrival of the Captain. Probably checking in to make sure Koolie knew what he was doing. Or, possibly, just here for the free food. Their pilot certainly seemed to be enjoying it.
Jak Summers was a brand new officer, only having gotten his commission a few months before. The Potemkin had been his first assignment and while he had been offered a transfer when the ship, and her crew were waylaid but he had decided to remain with the crew. As the Captain had come through the door Jak was in the middle of his second plate of food. He was not one to pass up free food... as it were.
The Andorian woman entered a little cautiously, her eyes a little low, while her antenna did more of the exploring and expressing. The Captain was in the room! She combed her hair with her fingers, suddenly uncertain about being properly dressed and self conscious about the non-standard socks she was hiding. Myrah watched as others seemed to help themselves to an array of food and nodded as the Lt. Cmdr indicated she was meant to help herself. "Corned Akharrad?" She couldn't help but be impressed, picking up one of the wrapped sandwiches and feeling it likely that Mrs. Koolie had had her in mind specifically. The Koolies loved one another, and they loved food. Myrah felt included in all that love by the little gesture and took a seat at the far end of the table from the officers, hoping not to be underfoot.
Koolie cleared his throat and took a position by the display, "Alright, to the task at hand. As you know, we are gathered here today to mourn our unexpected vacations."
There was an involuntary but repressed repressed chuckle from the Andorian sector at the far end of the table, but it ended as abruptly as it began, Myrah trying to look more intent, her shoulders raised in apology.
"Starfleet has decided that we can't just sit on our butts for a year while they fix up the Potemkin. As usual, it rolls downhill and we've got our first assignment," Koolie clicked the presentation on to a cover page with exciting fonts and bright colors, "Navigational Buoy Repair".
Ensign Summers was following, he had no question as of yet but he was checking the area of space for any known hazards and realized that it was the expanse, it was all one big problem!
Myrah blinked. She wasn't sure if she was missing something, but a little part of her felt relieved. It didn't sound like a very scary task. And even she knew how to adjust the settings on a signal buoy. Maybe she wasn't going to need all of her lucky socks after all. "A broken buoy?"
"I know. Apparently there's a wonky buoy that's supposed to be flagging traffic away from some strong gravitational currents around some binary pulsars and providing updated charts to anyone who can't avoid the area," Koolie clicked the presentation forward to a star chart indicating their target near the edge of an area labelled "Griffith-Howell Wash", "it has has been experiencing intermittent failures and Starfleet has had fixing it on the back burner for a while."
Jak frowned, "How long has it been on the back burner?" before hastily adding "Sir."
Koolie checked his notes, "Fourteen months, apparently. Really far back burner. So we're taking a shuttle, we're going to rip off the duct tape and baling wire, and we're going to fix it up nice so it'll run for a while. Questions?" Koolie opened his other sandwich and started munching.
Myrah raised her hand, then paused and wiped some food off her palm before re-raising it.
Koolie pointed to the Andorian with his sandwich, "Yep?"
"May I ask, how long is the shuttle ride? Sir?"
Koolie glanced sideways at Captain Pax as he slowly answered, "Going the approved standard cruising speed, which is, of course, the speed we'll be going, twelve hours. So we'll bring some games along. The area of space near the buoy experiences something akin to 'heavy tides' as a result of the pulsar systems, so as we get closer we'll have to slow down. Docking might be a little bumpy. That shouldn't be a problem, though, right?" Koolie looked at their pilot for the mission.
Jak considered the question, he took his time to look at the navigational readings. He frowned but shock his head "No, it will be like flying through a storm but nothing that the runabout or I can't handle." He was concerned, it would be a test for him for sure but he was pretty sure he could manage the docking without killing them all.
"Once we're in we need to check the systems to find whatever short-circuit is causing the beacon to fade in and out, while confirming the sensors are feeding to the computers and out to the communications array correctly. That's where the technical expertise comes in. Make sense?" Koolie looked to the Andorian.
"It seems easy enough," Myrah agreed. She wasn't the most highly trained scientist or technician, but she had always studied and read a lot on Andor, and had very much enjoyed her lab and field technician training for Starfleet. She was more than a little eager to put it to the test.
"Other questions?" Koolie asked the room.
"I love games. Myrah confessed. Then she realized something. "I guess that's not a question though."
Jak raised his hand then blushed and put it back down again. "If we were able to take one of those new Arrow Class runabouts our chances for survival would be much higher" he hoped the joke had come across as a joke, but he never knew for sure he was expressing himself the way he intended!
"I'm certainly in favor of survival, not to mention they're more comfortable," Koolie again glanced toward the Captain while finishing his answer, "but we'll just say the survival bit when making our case. If anyone has anything last minute they need to do, go ahead and do it. We'll meet at the shuttle in 30 minutes, along with a few more people coming along with us," Koolie closed the meeting, "Don't worry, I'll bring the rest of the sandwiches."
