Milk Run: Storm Warning
Posted on 06 Feb 2022 @ 10:46am by Commander Calliope Zahn & Commander Bruce Kensforth
Mission:
M2 - Sanctuary
Location: Kalara City, north quarter, cantina
Timeline: MD11 1450HRS
1098 words - 2.2 OF Standard Post Measure
Still grinning after a couple of hours of raucous music-making with her new friends , Calliope had become less and less coherent, tripping over the keys, mixing and matching songs in odd medleys.
“Well, I’ve had fun, but it’s probably time we moved on,” Bruce smirked, not at all phased by the alcohol. Sometimes he really took for granted just how desensitized he was to alcohol. He might have left his alcoholic days behind but it was nights like this that really tired on his inhibitions. He knew that he was at that cusp. Any longer here and he’d backslide with no chance of recovery. They had to leave. Or else.
Stumbling over, she gathered her variety of pocket things from the bar where she'd left them. "They said you was all thieves and liars this end of town, but it ain't a lick true." She told the barkeep, returning his glass. "Keep your ivories dusted, imma be back."
"It's too dangerous." The man said. Calliope recognized tender concern in his voice. "Not for the reasons you think. You should keep far away from here." He up nodded toward the door, his sharp chin forming an arrow. Outside sand laden winds were whistling past. "There's a big storm coming. You can't stay here, Commander."
Calliope wasn't sure what to make of that non-invitation. Didn’t they like her? She frowned. "C'mon Bruce. Lessgo," she slurred.
Bruce had stuck his head out the front door, well aware of how far he was from relapse. “Yeah. I think he’s mostly right. You should stay put. There’s space just out there for me to land the shuttle. It’s not protocol but given the weather.. I’m sure it’ll be ok.”
“M’kay. I’ll wait in the square.” She tried to put things back in her pockets but several items missed and fell around the floor. She didn’t seem to notice. “…s’got a back beat you can’t lose it… any ol times ya use it…” Calliope sang to herself as she leaned into Bruce for help through the door. She wasn’t sure where her cane had gotten to.
“Yeah, I can already hear Doctor Mazur now,” Bruce complained as he most of the way carried her through the square. It was hard enough to do since she was a wiggling dead weight, but the storm kicking up in the square was not making it any easier. If it hadn’t been picking up and already making him shield his eyes he would have carried Calli piggy back back to the shuttle or, depending on her disposition, flung her over his shoulder. Either way, he was going to hear it from Mazur and potentially DeHavilland about having her down here, and letting her get this far into it. Of course, neither of those paled in comparison to what he was going to get from Hawthorne once he got wind of it. Not because he’d let a fellow Starfleet officer go down that rabbit, but because he was there with her, risking his own relapse.
“Alright, Calli. I think this is about where I’ll come down. It’ll piss off some locals, but it’ll be no more wind than’s already kicking up. You just wait right here, ok. Don’t move. Right. Here,” he said, setting her down on a barrel of some sorts and forcing her to look at him.
“Okay!” She yelled over the wind, patting him reassuringly on the cheek. She was sure he was saying something and he wanted her to agree and she was feeling pretty agreeable so she said, “Will do!”
After having set her out of the wind, between some pillars to one side of the Palatial atrium, Bruce seemed to Calliope to have vanished. Completely unconcerned by that, or by much of anything, she kept singing to herself while she sifted her pockets looking for the detoxing hypo she’d managed to bring along for just this very possibility.
Kensforth was glad he was so good with directions. With the wind kicking up and the dust making an already mostly bleak and unmemorable cityscape that much more so he was relying on his innate sense of direction to get himself back to the shuttlebay. He threw himself through the doors, heaving for a breath of un-sand-filled air and then shook the excess off of him and instantly felt two stone lighter.
He went quickly to the Delta Flyer shuttle, got in and powered her up only to frown immediately at the readings on the display. The storm was not just wind and dust, it was some kind of electromagnetic event. The instruments were sending all sorts of wild readings, some showing that they were in orbit, others that they were inverted ten thousand feet up. One even showed that they were currently six miles beneath the surface, nose up. He tried resetting them all, but the calibration couldn’t catch with all the interference.
“Great. We’re doing this the old fashioned way,” he complained to himself. He powered off all the squirrely readings and forced the computer to show only their orientation to the center of gravity on the planet. That popped up and held stable. “Right. Just like flight school,” he said, powering up the engines and carefully checking that he had full attitude controls before getting too far off the ground. He was going to need everything perfectly functional to handle the wind.
“Computer. Can you use the shuttle’s holo-emitter’s to display the exterior view under my feet?” Bruce asked aloud.
”Please specify display area,” the computer’s feminine voice replied.
“Uhm,” he glanced back, “How about from the forward viewport to the back of my chair,” he ordered. He’d had an idea as a flash to replicate something he’d been toying with in the holodecks - a mid-twentieth century helicopter. You could see the ground beneath your feet for better visualization on landing. Assuming the interference didn’t mess with it, it would be a godsend and so far, the only things going haywire were the things reading outside the ship.
The holo pixelized into life beneath his feet and was definitely not perfect, but it wasn’t going completely haywire. He could see his way through the static as he lifted up, realizing about two hundred feet up that the static wasn’t static - it was the sand that was currently buffeting the shuttle like mad.