initiis novis

Posted on Sun Apr 28th, 2024 @ 9:09pm by Commander Rupert Tyree

673 words; about a 3 minute read

Mission: Prelude to War
Location: Bridge, USS Valiant. Trivas System, Alpha Quadrant
Timeline: One Month after Here there be Pirates

Rhu glanced through the viewport as he sat, for a change, at Valiant’s helm. They’d dropped to impulse well outside of the station’s sensor net and were cruising in as the crew prepped for port of call. He had meetings aboard the station and still wasn’t sure to make of his latest set of orders.

The flimsy, before it had disappeared had said, Dock Valiant at Station Emopok Nor and be met by person or persons known to you. Fleet Orders had indeed arrived. After Val had dropped from warp, he’d ordered the crew to ready for an extended shore leave, (per orders) and wondered what was going to come from that. The flimsy had said to keep a few of his people rained in for whatever this person or persons known to him would have to say, even though shore leave was on the official docket.

He drummed his fingers idly on the console and shut his eyes for a moment. Valiant’s environmental controls were working well. The ship smelled clean and had that faint ozone quality that let him know Lieutenant Thibideaux was on top of things. His Dayna and Jayden were finishing up their own tasks and he, like any good Captain, was doing as little as possible while making it look like he was busy. He’d even gotten a chance to pilot Valiant by assigning Paul to go over the Ambassador’s shuttle and come up with some ideas of how to make it useful.

Rhu scratched the back of his head and let his eyes pop open again. Then there was Ms. Gordon. He had an idea she’d be assigned to whatever was coming up next. His console chimed and he turned his attention back to the Controls. The station’s sensors would be picking them up soon and he readied the automatic protocols, including their orders.

The stations automated systems reached out a few minutes later as he began cutting power to the engines and set course for the pattern proscribed by Empok’s Command and Control.

They were officially fifth in the queue for docking. Rhu was kind of glad he didn’t’ have to land the ship. Docking, even as automated as the procedure was, would be stressing enough. Easing his fingers into the controls, he indexed the ship, checking her pitch and yaw rates while keeping her overall flight path the same. Basically, Valiiant’s hull was disc shaped like most Federation starship primary hulls. She just had more pointy bits and an oversized power source, which could get you into trouble quick if you weren’t paying attention.

Twenty minutes later he wasting Valiant’s forward airlock into docking port Iv. At half a kilometer he surrendered control to the station’s automatics and watched as the docking ports tractor beams snapped out and then reeled Valiant in.

That always reminded him of the giant squids in vids from Earth. For a moment his mind had the image of a giant space kraken grabbing ahold of Valiant and he chuckled. Then he was busying himself with shutting down Valiant’s impulse engines and issuing orders for Engineering to put the power plant on standby as they’d soon be running on shore power. He stood then as he shut down flight control and looked around his bridge. For the next month or so, Valiant would only have a fire watch aboard. Crew spaces would be accessible but the rest of the compartments (bridge, engineering, medical) would be fully locked down. The kitchen would be shut down as the cook and steward took leave and Valiant would be very quiet indeed.

Taking one last look at the view screen’s view of the station, he shut that down too and dimmed the lights aboard the bridge and cycled the door, securing the blast doors.

“Well, person or person’s known to me,” he thought, “Lets see what you’ve got.”

 

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