Flying from Home
Posted on 09 Aug 2020 @ 1:22pm by Captain Corvus DeHavilland
Mission:
M1 - Emergence
Location: USS Praetorian
Timeline: Immediately Following: On Raven's Wing's
1890 words - 3.8 OF Standard Post Measure
Corvus really hadn’t stopped to imagine life outside the Praetorian. Since she’d come aboard, all she’d ever really thought about was doing her job a little better today than she had yesterday and after a while had let the idea of being the Captain herself creep into her mind. She wouldn’t have traded Captain Dansby for any other skipper in the Fleet, but it had been her expectation that this would be her home for the near future. That one day, like Isfahani, Dandsy would move on and leave the command of Praetorian in her capable hands. It certainly was her dream - to have the run of her own Starship. It was what she’d been working for since day one in the Academy and she’d nearly gotten there. To her mind, she was a decade away from having what she wanted. A decade in which she had intended to try and settle her own personal life; something that had taken a beaten in the decade previous.
That was all on its head now. Corvus hadn’t put her name out in the fleet seeking a transfer or promotion. She hadn’t been hob-knobbing with Admiral’s and dignitaries that might be looking to throw her a promotion in the hopes of her help in the future. She wasn’t owed any favors anywhere, so the call from Admiral Sepandiyar telling her that the Joint Fleet Command had selected her for this command had taken her by complete and utter surprise. She hadn’t slept a wink after that, her mind now doing cartwheels trying to figure out all the lingering pieces of her job on the Praetorian as well as all the new, nebulous pieces of life on Obsidian Command. Coordinating the two thought processes was taking every bit of her sanity.
The hardest part had been the fact that she didn’t have a whole lot of time to get through this transition. Typically transfers of command had days at least, sometimes weeks, between the ending of the current duty rotation and the start of the next. But she’s been given nine hours. Nine hours in which to wrap up six years of her life. As much as she hadn’t wanted to, she knew she had no choice but to wake the Captain and tell him the news. He needed as much as time as she did to get things in order.
The Admiral’s feed had terminated fifteen minutes previous, and still she was sitting at her desk staring at the screen. Corvus took a deep breath and finally pushed away from the desk and stood up. She adjusted her uniform, zipped it up and sighed once more, telling herself she could do this and that she was ready. She headed for the door and as she walked, tapped her commbadge.
“DeHavilland to Captain Dansby.”
There was a few moments of silence, no doubt the Captain waking up and groggily taking stock of what was happening. She hated waking him up, knowing she was waking up Michelle as well.
“Go ahead, Commander,” Dansby replied groggily.
She took a breath to calm her own voice, “Sir, could you please meet me in your ready room. It’s a matter of some urgency,” she replied as she arrived at the lift, pressing the button to call it.
There was a moment of silence, “I’m on my way,” Dansby replied finally.
The lift doors opened and she stepped through, ordering it to Deck One. When she stepped out again it was onto the Bridge, sending a current of energy through the Gamma shift crew who weren’t expecting to see the ships First Officer this late on the duty shift. Ensign Parker, who had been sitting in the Captain’s chair, shot up at the sight of DeHavilland.
“Morning, Commander,” he said hastily, “Everything alright, ma’am?”
“Yes, Mr. Parker,” Corvus smiled, taking her station and immediately bringing up the long-range scans, looking to see where the Cosmos was. She found it quickly and confirmed that it was indeed on an intercept course to theirs. It was the proverbial nail in the coffin. The final confirmation that this wasn’t a dream, that she hadn’t imagined Sepandiyar’s call. This was happening. She accessed her secure file and found the orders the Admiral had sent, transferring them to a data PaDD that she set on her lap.
She made a quick pass through the list of tasks for the next forty-eight hours, confirming that there was nothing of significance that she had missed and was three-fourths of the way through that list when the lift doors hissed open and Captain Dansby stepped onto the bridge, nearly sending the Gamma shift Ensigns into fits. Parker was beside himself at the secondary conn station and started to stammer something.
Dansby flashed him a tired smile, brushing a hand through his slightly disheveled brown hair. “As you were, Ensign. Commander?” He said, gesturing to his Ready Room. Corvus nodded and got up, following him in.
Captain Dansby rubbed at his eyes as he walked to the replicator, “Coffee, black. Extra hot,” he ordered, looking back at Corvus who shook her head in answer. The computer responded with his drink and he took it, turning back to Corvus as he took a sip, wincing properly at the temperature. “Gamma shift looks ready to shit a brick, shields are offline, weapons are powered down, course is the same as it's been the last five hours. What’s going on, Amélie?” He asked with a shrug, taking another sip.
“I just received a call from Admiral Sepandiyar,” she replied, watching Jackson’s eyebrows go up in surprise over his cup of coffee.
He swallowed his sip, wincing more than normal as he’d taken it down quickly, “Of… Joint Fleet Command?” He asked in shock. She nodded. He put his cup down and went to his terminal to check if there was anything there, but as she had expected, there was nothing. “I don’t understand, why would the JFC reach out to us through you?”
She looked down, partially embarrassed and partially proud at the same time to have been chosen. Giving him as much of a smile as she could manage, she stepped a little closer to the desk and offered him the data PaDD. He stared at it, and her, confused. “Amélie?”
“Admiral Sepandiyar commed to tell me that I’ve been reassigned,” she explained, “Normally not something that I’d wake you up for, but, I’m supposed to leave in nine hours.”
“Nine hours!?” Dansby replied, “That’s ridiculous. You’re practically one of the bulkheads, I can’t replace you in nine flipping hours!” He replied, quickly turning his attention to the data PaDD to read the orders for himself.
She smiled at his reaction; it was one of the very few times she’d ever seen him have an emotional reaction to everything. On the whole, Jackson was a very meticulously put together man that never had outbursts like that. It made her feel good to see him so angry to lose her, and to confirm that like he felt she was a part of the fabric of this ship, the way she did. It was definitely a conflict for her as she loved this ship, its crew and her Captain. She hated to leave it, but then again, how often did any Starfleet Officer get an opportunity like that.
Jackson read through the data PaDD, then looked back at up her in incredulity. “They found Obsidian Command…” he said, returning to reading. Finished, he dropped the PaDD on the desk and looked at her, “Here I am worried about what I’m going to do without a First Officer, when I should be saying: Congratulations. Captain DeHavilland,” he smiled, stepping around the desk to offer her his hand. “I’ve always hoped I’d be the one to give that to you, and to give you command of this ship,” he smiled, “I guess Command has finally seen what I always have.”
She blushed slightly, “Thank you, Captain.”
“Jackson,” he replied, “We’re the same rank now, Amélie,” he grinned.
“You’ll always be my Captain, sir,” she replied genuinely. He chuckled and turned to go back behind his desk, grabbing his coffee as he went around, “Sir, I want you to know. I didn’t go looking for this. I was happy here. I thought I’d be here for another ten years, hopefully taking the center chair myself… when you were ready to move on,” she tried to explain, “I wan-.”
Jackson held up a hand, shaking his head as he sipped his coffee, silencing her. “Amélie you don’t call the JFC and ask for Command of their Starbase. They call you. I know you weren’t fishing for a new job,” he replied, smirking all the same. She just nodded, blushing slightly still. “That doesn’t mean you’ll be easily followed. Let’s be honest, no one’s going to replace you.”
She smiled widely. “So… Freyja?”
Jackson laughed out loud, but nodded in agreement, “Freyja,” he agreed. “I really don’t feel Chief Graan is ready. He only just passed his Commander’s boards and I just…” he sighed, “He’s an amazing Engineer, I just don’t think he’s quite ready.”
“Agreed,” she nodded, “I’d rather him in the Engineering deck than anyone else, but people management… he needs a lot of work on that.”
“Well let’s start there then, yeah?” Jackson replied, tapping his commbadge, “Dansby to Lieutenant Commander Hagen, please report to my ready room.”
There was a momentary delay, not unlike the one she’d gotten when she’d commed the Captain, then Freya’s heavy accent responded, “I’m on my way, Captain.”
“I can go through the pending list of diagnostics, go over any known personnel issues with her and otherwise get her set up on the duty rotation specifics she’ll need. I’ve already done the rotations for the next seventy-two hours so she won’t be right into the fire. I have three recalibration’s I’d scheduled this morning and a review of the Medical logs with Doctor Pendergrass. All in, I’d guess this is going to take every bit of the time I have left.”
Jackson sat back with his coffee in hand, sipping and thinking over all of that. “Well…” he began, “The tactical system’s recal-,” he started, interrupted by the door chime. “Come,” he ordered.
Lieutenant Commander Hagen stepped through the door, pulling her bright blonde hair that she’d already braided into a bun and stowing that on the back of her head as she walked in, looking a little surprised to see DeHavilland sitting there with the Captain. Dansby gestured to the empty chair and she hurried over and sat down.
“Morning,” Corvus smiled.
“Morning,” she replied, looking to the two of them. “Something bad’s happened hasn’t it?” She asked immediately, “Goodness, what’s gone wrong?”
