Ride-Along: Roster Changes
Posted on 16 Dec 2022 @ 5:30pm by Chief Petty Officer Ozanna Isuri
Edited on on 06 Feb 2024 @ 8:16pm
Mission:
M3 - Into the Deep
Location: OC, Docking Bay
Timeline: MD 09 0700
2389 words - 4.8 OF Standard Post Measure
Rhythmically beating on the air, was the atmospheric ruckus of ice picks and grinding industrial metal— the team's usual mood music being piped through the USS Wasp's intercoms as the pre-flight checks were underway. CPO Ozanna Isuri's people were accustomed to being left to their own devices and the music was part of their norm. Ozzie hadn't wanted to disrupt that until absolutely necessary, but as the time approached she reached to her command console and wordlessly cut the sound on Caladriff's Seventh Ice Rock Ballad for an Avalanche.
"Hey!" Oswalt decried. "How am I supposed to focus?"
At Ops beside his young counterpart, Dylben chuckled. "Give me the readings from the impulse drive's port manifold again." He could still hear the lead balladeer reverberating in his nervous system. What was it with the Ice Rock fad everywhere, lately? He hadn't made too much of it, though Boltri and Oswalt seemed enthused by it the most and it did get the blood pumping.
Oswalt exhaled an exasperated sigh. "It's point oh six on the forward alignment."
"I can trim that," Dylben acknowledged.
The bridge doors opened and Ozzie stood, clearing her throat to signal the rest of her team to likewise come to their feet. Everyone was on the Bridge. Even Boltri who was usually hanging out around the engine. She'd asked him to come up and be ready to greet the Chief of Security.
But the Chief didn't arrive alone, she observed. In tow, he had a very intense, handsome looking fellow with dark hair and Chief Warrant Officer Pips. Isuri was thrown off by that, as well as a telepathically informed sense that he was a much older soul than his face betrayed.
"Commander Sikan. Chief..." She tried her best. "Welcome aboard the Wasp."
“Thank you,” Sikan said by way of greeting, giving the slightest of nods. His eyes ran quickly over the bridge of the ship, and he was surprised to find himself feeling at ease on the bridge. He’d spent almost his entire career on starships, and though he’d only been on a Starbase for a short time, he didn’t realize how he’d grown accustomed to the soft hum of a starship.
"This is the Crew of the Wasp. We're all security personnel with cross training." She began pointing everyone out by way of introductions. "PO2 Nerim Dylben at Operations, PO1 Rich Stillwell at the tactical station, PO2 Dave Boltri, usually in the engine room, CPO Roth serving as our medic, and Crewman Oswalt, our pilot..." Isuri trailed off as she sensed Sikan had an amendment to her introductions. It was the feeling she was about to be countered with something.
“This is Chief Warrant Officer Braedyn Tann,” Sikan said, looking at Tann. “I have requested his assistance with helm duties for the current mission.”
Oswalt's face fell and a protest immediately rose to the surface; Ozzie could sense the strong emotion and made a quick 'calm down' gesture minimally for him, with one hand to the side. "Oswalt's performance has been adequate. He's training well," she argued for the youngest of her crew, not completely understanding the last minute change.
Braedyn said nothing and kept his face and emotions neutral. Sikan had called him in for this because the commander was concerned that 'adequate' wasn't going to be enough in this instance. Braedyn felt bad for the kid he was replacing, but such was life. Sometimes you got passed over so more experienced hands could take the helm, figuratively, or in this case, literally. Regardless, it was the commander's place to do the explaining.
“Mr. Oswalt’s performance has been impressive, and Chief Warrant Officer Tann’s presence is by no means intended as a slight,” Sikan replied, laying down his thought process as logically as he knew how. “However, you said yourself that his training is going well. Training. I’ve reviewed your mission plan and search grid, and I’ve noted similarities with Object 0994, which nearly caused the destruction of one starship already. Mr. Tann’s flight experience is extensive, his ratings are exemplary, and he has flown in combat before. If we encounter a situation similar to the one that Commander Zahn encountered, I want the best we have available at the helm. That time, it was only skilled flying that prevented disaster. We simply do not know what we will encounter. The lives of this crew may very well depend on our pilot. That is why I selected Mr. Tann.”
Isuri had known Sikan's reasons were sound even before he had spelled them out. She'd had her own misgivings about relying on Crewman Oswalt, though not especially while they were doing fairly boring grid search routine. The bigger kids assigned to the Pathfinder and the Theseus had been taking on the more obvious searches in the flushing out of the ort cloud, leaving the Wasp to the grunt task of sweeping the rest of the rug where there was far more area to cover, but so much less to be found.
But it was the better part of a week since the heavy hitters had been called away on some secretive high-priority task. Meaning she now had her pick of the search grid. And she'd taken Boltri's advice, honing in on a very suspicious distant object which she had selected based on the refraction pattern Commander Zahn had reconstructed in her report. This particular rock looked a lot like Object 0994. It had a much longer fingerling potato shape to it, but was no less pitted and sizable enough to have a comparably sized hollow center. A scan at long range left a lot of ambiguity about the proportional mass to composition. She expected when they rode up on it, they would possibly find out. All that considered, she really had some trouble sleeping, considering Oswalt might be called on to react as quickly on the helm controls as he could with his smart mouth. Still, she felt she was letting him down. No crewman ever started out as big as the game he could talk.
"Understood, Sir." Ozzie folded her hands behind her, a gesture of respect, and yet a subconscious sign to her crew mates, as if demonstrating that her hands were tied in the decision. But she could still advocate in a small way, she considered, her head tilting a little, leading into her request. "Respectfully, Commander, may we have Crewman Oswalt remain on the bridge for the mission?" The tiny bridge space only afforded two support stations. One of them was already manned by Roth, who warmed the Sciences and Comms chair. "I feel it would a shame for him to miss the opportunity to learn from Chief Tann, should a demonstration of skills be necessary."
Ozzie's gaze panned over to meet Chief Tann's. He remained mysteriously quiet, and she continued to sense the presence of an older, more experienced mind. She felt diminished with the Chief and the Commander there. In person they were not especially large. Physically speaking, Stillwell could probably launch them together off the other side of a teeter-totter by stomping on his end. But to Ozzie, they felt like they filled the bridge with a weight of authority she couldn't match. She and her merry band had been largely unsupervised long enough that they were all somewhat frozen in place and there was a long awkward silence.
Ozzie cleared her throat. She'd come to the conclusion in the pause, that maybe they meant to replace her as well as Oswalt. That someone like Tann, with his rank and skills and well of life experience, was not possibly going to be answering her. Her confidence slipped. "Tann is probably better suited to, uh—" She straightened up a little more and lifted her chin. "I can give you the briefing I prepared, Sirs, and go below to the engine room to assist there." She volunteered.
Stillwell shifted uncomfortably, causing his seat tho whine on the pivot bolt. She felt Boltri barely holding back his own protest in her favor. Dylben turned around in his seat at ops to look at Ozzie in sympathy. Roth didn't know what to think, clearly willing to follow competence but suddenly finding he had a scrap of loyalty to Isuri. It was almost enough to warm her heart when she picked up on it. If her heart wasn't beating so hard as she was waiting to be excused from her too-good-to-be-true assignment.
Sikan cocked his head at Ozzie as she offered to relieve herself of command of the Wasp. He supposed he could understand why she saw it that way. From a logical standpoint, he was making the right choice in bringing Mr. Tann on board. However, Ozzie had staffed the crew herself. It was her team, her ship and now he was changing it. She was outranked both by himself and Chief Warrant Officer Tann. He’d seen that point of pride often enough in his career to understand it.
“You misunderstand me, Chief Isuri,” Sikan replied. “It is not my intention to take over command of the ship. You have all performed your duties admirably.” He looked around the bridge, at the crew assembled. “All of you. I simply see no reason to take chances on this particular expedition. Mr. Tann will be acting as the flight control officer, and I will be observing and assisting. Of course I would prefer Mr. Oswalt stay aboard as well, with Mr. Tann’s approval. Beyond that, you have command, Chief.”
Standing aside from his seat at CONN, Oswalt looked to Tann, uncertainly at first and then filling his chest up and rolling back his shoulders to appear confident.
Braedyn chuckled. "You cut an impressive figure, Oswalt," he said, taking the now vacated seat. "But you should probably take a deep breath and relax before you strain something. I was already going to ask that you stay on, even before the Commander said anything."
"Oh." Oswalts puffed chest deflated.
With limited operating space on the Hornet Class, the bridge doubled as a ready room and tripled as a conference room, so Isuri cleared her throat and opened the mission parameters she'd determined up on the main viewer. It was slightly translucent enough to continue to see the slow passage of workbees and shuttles in the background view, but a map of the Loki system popped up, rotated and then zoomed though the system to bring a section of the ort cloud into focus. The system was much much bigger and the portion of space the viewer had moved into was a very small fraction of the vast bubble of the entirety of the ort cloud. A grid then generated in volumetric boxes, A number of the boxes dimmed out.
"As everyone here is aware," Isuri began, "while Starfleet has recovered and secured Obsidian Command, securing the star system is a much more extensive task. This was the Wasp's assigned search area. We're going to break off from the regular pattern, so we can examine Distant object 6381."
The view screen veered to one side and came into an even closer focus, on a rock shaped like a fingerling potato and heavily pitted.
"Based on the data my team gathered in the active signal count down leading up to the attack on OC, there appears in the scan history to have been a similar reading from 6381. It also presents a similar potential opportunity for hidden infrastructure, like O994 demonstrated. It was on the Pathfinder's search list before she was reassigned, so I'm making it a priority today."
“Yes. From Commander Zahn’s report, it certainly seems as if this particular base shares a number of similarities to the one which surprised us before.” Sikan pursed his lips as he considered that, glancing at Tann. “We should be prepared for the possibility, even likelihood, of encountering a robust enemy contingent.”
Stillwell spoke up from his place at tactical, stroking his mustache thoughtfully with his thumb. “I’ve been analyzing the sensor logs from that last mission. The fighters had the advantage because of the element of surprise. Tactically and technologically, they should be manageable for the Wasp.”
“Agreed,” Sikan said. “Nonetheless, we should be prepared for any further surprises.”
Ozzie took one last look around the room. "If there are no questions..." No one took the opportunity. Ozzie swept an open hand around the bridge, "Then lets get to it." She took up the captain's chair and shifted in it, subconsciously uncertain if she was going to be able to keep the job, but somewhat hopeful. She began to forward the coordinates to Tann, knowing they would match the flight plan she had given Tower Control earlier.
Braedyn advised Tower Control that the Wasp was ready for depature. Receiving the all clear, he began to maneuver the Wasp out of the station and then out of the station's orbit.
"Ship is free and clear to maneuver, Captain," Braedyn replied. "We're cleared for a microwarp burst. If you'll give me the coordinates of our destination, I'll get us there in two shakes of a Denebian slime worm's tail, but without the resultant slime splatter, of course."
It was a little strange being called 'captain' out loud. She was, of course, afforded the honor of the position. just as anyone with authority of any old space junker, transport or barge might be. It was just that none of her compatriots ever felt the need to call her by it, preferring their more informal addresses between non-commissioned friends. Ozzie felt herself relaxing at Tann's introduction to the crew, feeling reassured by his encouragement of Oswalt and now respect towards herself. He wasn't of the ilk, she decided, who aimed to lord his rank and term of service over any of them.
Finishing her entry for the flight coordinates, she swiped and watched the update duplicate on Tann's console at helm. Giving him a moment to make his inputs, Ozzie put both hands on the armrests and shifted to lean back into her chair in anticipation of the microjump.
"Punch it, Chief..."
Braedyn grinned. "Aye, aye," he said. "Let's go see what we see. Microwarp in three... two... ONE!"
