Supply Run
Posted on 17 Oct 2021 @ 1:28pm by Admiral Zavareh Sepandiyar & Lieutenant JG Rhiannon Hokir
Mission:
M2 - Sanctuary
Location: USS Alexander
Timeline: MD07 - 1321HRS
2262 words - 4.5 OF Standard Post Measure
Naomi stood helplessly to the side of Arrow Runabout Corinth watching the engineering crew load the crates into the rear hatch of the runabout. She felt helpless because, as much as she wanted to be the one finishing this project, she wasn't cleared to use the loading racks. Apparently, Master Chief Barmeadow had banned anyone else on the Alexander from using the equipment after a science Ensign with far too much energy nearly took her leg off when she tried to move a pair of crates of science equipment. Rumor was you could hear Master Chief Barmeadow's reprimand from the Bridge, eight decks up and a thousand meters forward. She wasn't keen to get on that side of their new chief.
The Alexander's new Chief Engineer had not even been aboard a week and already she had rocked the proverbial boat. The new Officer's hated her ruthless efficiency, and the NCO's were struggling with their own love/hate relationship with her. They loved that she so easily handled the Officers in the department, walking circles around their understanding of everything from power management to warp theory. But they had made no secret of hating her work ethic, or rather, the work ethic she was enforcing on them. They'd gotten used to the relatively lax and generally passive nature of Lieutenant Commander Miller. Now they were working heavy rotations, longer shifts and were expected to produce far more results in way shorter of an amount of time. She'd heard more than one Engineering crewman in the Solar Flairs lounge longing for the days when the worst they had to deal with was the occasional efficiency meeting with Command Chief Smith.
Left with nothing else to do but watch them work, Naomi sighed and consulted her PaDD for the umpteenth time. Lieutenant JG Hokir, from the Starbase, was due to meet her on the deck any minute now. All of the supplies that the station had to offer for this supply run had been slated for departure from Obsidian Command, but a last minute change in the composition of those supplies had meant a small delay. On top of that, the supplies had been mistakenly delivered to the Alexander instead of OC leaving them in a predicament. St. John had tried to rectify that by asking OC to transport the supplies off the station, but someone in OC's engineering department had seen fit to take down transporters for a systems upgrade slated to take three days with intermittent availability (aka, only the important people got to use the transporters). Frustrated and nearly at wits end to get this job done for the Admiral as timely as he'd requested, Naomi had arranged to have the OC supplies transported by their own transporter Chief and was now loading them up for delivery to the planet.
PaDD in hand, Rhiannon made her way toward the shuttlebay where Lieutenant St. John was supposed to be awaiting her with an update on the supplies she had requested. Upon arrival, she was redirected to the Alexander. Maybe she is still negotiating, she told herself, flashing her credentials and making her way to the new rendezvous point. As she drew near the ship's loading bay and caught sight of the red-headed yeoman, her bright hair nearly fizzing with the frantic energy consuming her, Rhian felt a wry smile quirk at her mouth. Something had happened to cast the woman out of sorts; if she was lucky, it would be something Rhian could help settle and put the woman in a calmer state of mind. "How are things going, Lieutenant?"
Naomi let out a burst of nervous laughter, "Well, where do you want to start?" she asked.
Rhian hesitated, a bit taken aback by the greeting. She knew St. John to be intense, but there was an almost quivering panic underlying the usual tone. "Ah ... I take it something happened with the shipment?"
"I have all the supplies here," Naomi said, gesturing to the shuttle and the men still loading it. "It took everything I had just to get it here."
The moment the question had left her mouth Rhian had known it was a bad idea, but she'd thought the extent would be setting off another wave of fret. This ... "Ah ... okay. So, what are our options for transferring the rest of the gear from the Alexander? Is there a way of manually getting the supplies here? I could probably requisition a group from Operations to help out. Or are they headed for the planet as well?" The latter might be ideal, as it would be less back and forth with some of the potentially fragile equipment.
"I managed to call in some favors to get what was on OC here, and another to get this shuttle," Naomi sighed, then shrugged with frustration. "Assuming it ever gets loaded," she added with exasperation.
"Well, we've gotten this far at least." To be honest, she wasn't sure if that was encouraging or not. "Is there anyone I could talk to to maybe ease things along?" Granted, Rhian had been the one to go to Naomi first for assistance, but from the looks of things, calm negotiation might be slightly out of the yeoman's realm of capability just now.
"I think. If you can just help me get the last of this settled, we can be on our way. I'd really like to be able to tell the Admiral that is all done," Naomis sighed, trying to find a little glimmer of hope in all of this. There were only a few boxes left to load.
She was starting to feel a little better about it all, standing there with Rhian. Just about to let herself be convinced that this was going to work out. That she could get these supplies down, earn some goodwill and report back to the admiral that she'd done the job right. That she, a Junior Grade Yeoman, had managed something well beyond his expectations. That she really was an asset to the Admiral. Maybe he'd see that for real, and take her off the regular bridge rotations at the CoNN he'd be inflicting on her lately. She knew they were just short-staffed, but she wanted to prove she was capable of so much more.
Naomi let out a slow breath, turning to Rhian with a hopeful smile. She'd opened her mouth halfway to speak when a commotion to her left turned her attention. She stared in disbelief as four security officers approached the shuttle, stopping the engineering crew loading the supplies and taking their data pad's. Behind them all, a fifth man in science blues joined the group and immediately went aboard the shuttle and began to open crates. The security staff all deferred to this new face, a Lieutenant Commander no less, and let him do as he wished. Naomi wasn't sure she knew his face, but that didn't mean he could just go through the things she'd been meticulously collecting for the Admiral.
"Wait, what are you doing?!" Naomi exclaimed.
"Making a nuisance of himself from the looks of it." Rhian had a feeling this had something to do with Calli's concerns on the equipment she had requested. To Naomi, she offered, "I'll handle this," before drawing herself up to her own not-insignificant height and making her way over to the offending officers. "Commander," She stated, side-eying a security officer coming to stop her. "Excuse me, Commander, but we were not informed there was any inspection due here."
"Ma'am, I'm going to need you to step back," one of the Security Officers declared, putting his hand out to stop her from entering the shuttle.
"This one," the Commander declared, stepping back out. "This one. Take it out," he ordered.
"No. No!" Naomi pleaded, "You don't understand how hard it was to get these supplies aboard!"
"I'm sure it was," the Commander nodded, "Getting it aboard the Alexander, after hiding it from the Obsidian Command crew and then taking down their transporters so that they couldn't see that the items were gone. It's quite clever actually," he deadpanned. "Yes, that one," he said, waving for the security guys to make the engineering ones use the hover lift to get it out.
"What?!" Naomi pleaded. "That's... are you crazy?"
"What gives you the opinion we took measures to hid anything?" Rhian thrust her PaDD out to him. "You can check that - Every SINGLE Item you're pawing over there is itemized and approved by Obsidian Command. I personally assembled that list from reports planetside, and confirmed everything before we even started loading. As to transporters being down? That's been a pain in our collective asses all afternoon, seeing as we've had to allocate additional assistance, pulling others away from their work and devouring our own time, just to ensure everything was properly loaded and accounted for. And now you're ruining hours of labor because you can't bother to research the real reasons behind a power outage? Who authorized you to come in here like this?"
"Watch your tone, Lieutenant," the Commander rounded on her, wagging a finger in warning. "I have been watching. Are you aware that the First Officer of Obsidian Command was brought up on disciplinary charges for 'authorizing' resources for the planet? Resources she made a deal with the planet-based Physicians to acquire in exchange for something she required? No? I expected not," he shook his head, gesturing to the crate being brought out. "Do you even understand the application of these medical sequencer machines? What they could do if not utilized properly?"
"Absolutely," Rhian countered without hesitation. "Which is why I have personally arranged for a regular oversite rotation between my department and Medical - which you would have realized, had you fully read through my manifest notes which - Commander - I again stress was approved by the station Commander. Regardless of what the First Officer may or may not have done, that does not change the fact that the materials are of need on the planet. We have them to spare, and with the major overhaul of repairs on the backside of our scheduling and new personnel coming in, we have the manpower to ensure the equipment is used as intended. "
"I read the notes. They don't match Medical's, and I've heard from Doctor Al Havash on the surface. They don't match her requests either. So here we are," Llywd declared with an air of finality, watching as the men unloaded the crate and then un-boxed the materials. He checked the data PaDD and then personally inspected the equipment. He then checked it again, left it in place and began rummaging through the rest of the crates.
Naomi just stood there, speechless. What the hell had they just walked into? This clearly involved more than their little slice of the job; had she unknowingly stepped into support something illegal. Things on the Galapagos had taken a nasty turn right out the gate and caused her no end of trouble for her duration there. Things had been going so well here. The sudden chasm in her stomach was her realization that her tenure here might be about to make the same turn.
"I... I have approvals from Admiral Sepandiyar," Naomi offered somewhat sheepishly, approaching the Commander. It couldn't derail like this. She couldn't handle another cruise like she had on the Galapagos. Going against her comfort zone, she pressed. "Everything I've done here has been with the Admiral's approval. I... I can show you the logs. I can even call the Admiral if you like."
Llwyd looked up from his crate with an odd expression. "You have it there?" he asked, gesturing to the PaDD she was holding.
She nodded fervently and came forward with it. "Y-yes. He said it was a matter of some urgency. That there were promises made and that I had to deliver. When I told him about our issues early on, he just told me to get it done. That it was important. S-s-so, we did what we had to."
He perused the data PaDD silently, then began walking about the shuttlecraft, taking stock of the individual crates against the one Rhian had given him as well as the one St. John had just put in his hands. It was a nasty, pregnant silence as he walked about never saying a word to indicate his opinion either way. Security continued to stand watch, even going so far as to usher St. John out of the way as she was lurking too close for their taste.
Finally, the Commander came out of the shuttle and pointed to the unpacked crate. "Please put that back," he said, giving Rhian her PaDD back. "There's enough medically questionable material here that I'm uncomfortable leaving untended. The Security detail and I will accompany you down to the planet. I will be there to personally put it all in Doctor Al Havash's hands.
"We can go? Now?" St. John asked hopefully, looking to Rhian before looking back to the Commander.
Tamping her emotions down into a neat, tidy little corner, Rhian offered the woman a reassuring grin. "Of course we can. We even get our own personal escort to boot." While not ideal in her way of thinking, the ends certainly justified the means. They would get where they were needed with what was needed, and that's all that mattered to her.
