First Officers Club
Posted on 11 Jun 2023 @ 1:25pm by Commander Calliope Zahn & Commander Faye Magnolia
Mission:
M3 - Into the Deep
Location: USS Pathfinder
Timeline: MD09 - 0912HRS
3143 words - 6.3 OF Standard Post Measure
With Lt. Haille properly manning the CONN, Calliope had given a last look around the bridge and felt certain it was in capable hands. Her request for a meeting with Commander Magnolia came through about the same time. In place of a call, Faye had suggested she visit directly, which led Calliope to the transporter room. With synced warp flight transport, there was generally no trouble, but the transporter to transporter was the most reliable protocol as opposed to site to site, the slightly higher risks involved being reserved for more emergency situations. The transporter room itself was so often underused during regular operations otherwise, that she had to get a deck and section location for it before making her way there.
There was no one manning the station, the small operations and engineering crew being directed on damage control tasks and the arrangement having come up so quickly, so Calliope waited at the board for the transport signal herself.
When the ready signal displayed from the Theseus, Calliope returned it and established the beam in, following the standard slider line in the control panel. She looked up as the shimmer was completing.
Eyes closed, Commander Faye Magnolia appeared as expected on the transporter pad of the Pathfinder. While not her favorite method of travel, she suffered it as needed to get from point A to point B. She opened her eyes to the transporter room on the other side of the transmission and smiled to see a somewhat familiar face.
“Commander Zahn, howdy,” she said as she stepped off the platform, putting the discomfort and outright distaste for transporting out of her mind.
“Welcome to the Pathfinder,” Calliope put out a hand in greeting. “I know I saw you just yesterday, but it feels like forever ago now.”
“Funny how that works,” Faye chuckled. “Ain’t been but a few hours and it feels like we’ve been through hell and back again. Complete with a visit by the smiling devil, himself!” she added, taking a look around. “Quite a bit to take in though, isn’t it?”
“I’m just getting fully up to speed myself,” Calliope admitted, as she started them walking out to the turbo lift. “But before anything gets away from us, I thought we should take this opportunity to match up on our reports. Everything considered.”
“No arguments here. Best case scenario no one asks too many questions. That’s if Captain Callum and DeHavilland do their reports just right. But just in case someone gets a little confused, or has one too many celebratory cocktails once we get back,” she smirked. “How about a quick update on how things are going on ‘round here?”
“I guess,” Calliope said as the lift picked up for bridge level, “I’ll start with the things already in progress. Doctor Corduke is supporting our Doctor Wagner, as they’re running surgery simultaneously right now. I don’t know what condition your sickbay is in, and if you can spare him for the rest of the ride? Until he can transfer his patients to the station?”
“We have walkin’ wounded on our side. Nothing serious. You have all the major cases, far as Corduke’s reported, so I think we’ll survive,” she answered. “We have the luxury of being a ship fully staffed, not a garrison vessel manned for a mission,” she added. “We’ve got more horses in the stable we’re fine to saddle up until our thoroughbreds are available. How about the rest of your team?”
“We’re also a little short on our helm officers. Our star Ensign is having a problem of conscience stemming from a situation on the planet. Gunnarsen had a fainting condition during a difficult operation, possibly exacerbated by conditions, and since he’s in recovery stasis under Corduke's care, I can’t return him to you. You’re probably going to want Brightwood back. Tahriik is in sickbay. Although we had to order him there to be seen. He was insistent about bleeding at his post.”
“That sounds right. Stubborn as a mule and strong as an ox. I’m impressed you got him to leave at all,” she harrumphed. While definitely her choice for Chief Tactical Officer he came with a large warning label. He wasn’t easy to manage. It wasn’t that he was insubordinate, ineffective and certainly not inefficient, he was just the sort of Officer that was always involved with his team. Not in a bad way either. He wasn’t micromanaging, or over-delegating. He had the right amount of the in between that he changed to suit the staff in need. He just was never not there. She had to actively pay attention to the department and order him to go home. It was the only time he bordered on the insubordinate. But she’d figured out very quickly that he wasn’t afraid of her; not even when she put on her sweetest ‘bless your heart I will beat your ass’ voice. The only person Tahriik was afraid of was Mrs. Tahriik and so Faye had learned, when in doubt: threaten to call her.
“Honestly, darlin’, right here is where Tahriik is needed. Y’all need a good steady hand on the tactical side. This little bath toy ain’t got much, and needs someone that knows their trade,” she smiled sweetly, “I do mean that from the heart,” she added, trying to take the edge of the simple observation that the Nova-class wasn’t meant for much more than quick survey work. Certainly not combat.
Having come off of the short lift ride, Calliope showed Faye into her office, the lights coming up as she did. “I know he secured a Pyrryx. I just… haven’t been to see it yet. All this mystery surrounding this vicious…” she hesitated but still called them, “People, and I’ve yet to see it with my own eyes.”
“Any indication from the team that was with him just what the hell happened?” Faye asked, walking to the replicator, “May I?” she asked.
“Be my guest.”
“Pitcher of sweet tea, ice cold, with ice cubes and two glasses,” she ordered. Faye took the objects that materialized and placed them on the table, smiling at her counterpart. “I haven’t stopped myself for more than the time it took to take a tinkle, so why don’t we use this excuse for a momentary break,” she chuckled, offering Calliope one of the glasses she’d filled and then sitting in one of the chairs before the desk in the tiny office. “To… the Alabama,” she chuckled.
“And her successful mission… whatever that is.” Calliope smirked and sipped. She took a moment to settle, coming back around to the last question. “The body still in most of its armor is secured in a science bay. I don’t think it was going to fit in the morgue. I don’t yet have the details on how the Pyrryx was taken. We have to start the debriefs yet, and Medical is otherwise occupied, but there will be an autopsy as well.”
“I’d recommend that Duke get on that sooner than later. Once we get back with that thing, it’s going to be gone faster than green grass through a goose,” she shook her head. “We may never see it again. Ever,” she mused. She knew how closely guarded Starfleet was about these Pyrryx so given that, and their lack of intel, it was going to be gone in a flash.
“It’s a priority. Although we’re just as likely to get hushed on whatever we learn from that as well. At least we’ll have operating knowledge between some of us, even if we can’t share it with our friends.” Calliope licked her teeth. The tea was… very sweet.
“That’s the thing about being hushed, you might not be able to speak it out loud, but you can sure remember it when the time comes. No telling where or when we might need that information,” she smiled wickedly, toasting her glass.
"So true." Calliope tilted her glass back. “So you thankfully took fewer serious injuries. How did Theseus do in the damages department?”
“Tertiary section took the heaviest beating, but nothing Chief Aker can’t handle. She might have to wait until we get back to OC for that coat of paint, though,” she chuckled. “How about y’all. Your mister keeping things in line?” she asked, taking another sip to finish the glass and then pouring another. She offered it to Calli but when she shook her head, she just set it down.
“Lance was relieved.” Calliope’s brow was furrowed and she looked down into her ice cubes to divine how to handle explaining the situation. Well, Faye would get to know it, even if it wasn’t going to make the record. They were working together after all. “He refused an order to prepare the warp core for ejection, to seal the rift. Now the junior officer in the department is overseeing repairs. The record will read that Commander Quinn is medically excused for his plasma burns. Which is a completely different episode.”
Faye looked back at Calli over her raised glass, three-quarters of the way to a sip. “DeHavilland relieved him? In the middle of the fire fight?” she asked, her normal sweetness still there but the volume of her voice belying the emotional reaction she’d had to that revelation.
“The long and short of it. Yes.” Calliope swirled the empty glass to watch the ice go around. “So. That’s where that stands for now.”
“How are… you with that?” Faye asked a bit more softly now, pushing her XO hat askew a bit to ask a more personal question. She wasn’t overly close to Calli, but a friend in need was a friend indeed, by her reckoning.
Looking a little asside, Calliope contemplated the perpetual motion figure swinging away beside them. “I feel like I’ve been living in a kind of denial about Lance and myself. For a long time. He’s not cut out for this aspect of service. But it goes deeper than just being poorly assigned, for us at least.”
Faye had never had a long-term relationship last long enough that they made anything permanent, but she certainly knew the feeling of having been in denial about the status of one. That soul-crushing feeling that you’ve known all along that this wasn’t going to work and yet you threw yourself into, head first.
“At this point, I can’t spare any more senior officers,” Faye smirked, trying to lighten it up. “But. I can ask Chief Aker if she has any she can spare. If you need them. Don’t hesitate to ask. We’re fully staffed, bar a few minor injuries. There’s support if you need it.”
“We have several experienced non comms in the engineering and Operations departments capable of picking up any slack, and Lt. Haille is making himself available to Ensign Tilmer. But I’ll certainly keep the offer in mind if the repair schedule falls behind.”
“Alright. Just don’t forget who your friends are,” she said, finishing her second glass and setting the empty on the desk. “Alright,” she said, patting her knee dramatically. “Alabama. What’d they take from your logs?” she asked, producing a data PaDD she’d neatly arranged to show what had been taken even if she didn’t have the ‘detail’ of it.
Calliope pulled up her own holographic display and started to link cast; the missing time blocks in the Pathfinder’s logs and the Theseus’ matched precisely between them. “I guess we have to fill in the gaps to prevent questions.” So. Fabricate. “It all is cleared from just before the isolytic torpedoes were fired.” There were various non essential systems and readings that remained, which would help lend credence to anything they created to match. Calliope shook her head. “I guess we can’t say we both caught the same exact computer glitch?”
“Well, we do know the Pyrryx weapons emit a wild array of radiations,” Faye mused. “Could we use that to our advantage?” she queried.
“A stripe of electromagnetic field pulse.'' Calliope snapped her fingers, recalling a part of an emitter she’d seen worked on in bay Alpha-nine. She still had the radiation readings on it too. “We’d still have to create a filler sensor log to then scramble and remove the insertion record in the files. But it would make the fabricated log less obviously… fabricated.”
“That doesn’t seem like it would be too hard, we have plenty of backup data on the Pyrryx. I …” she smirked, “I have the logs from the Ardeshir a while back. They ran into one of these ships. Nearly collapsed subspace around them. We should be able to pull that data, alter the ‘fingerprint’ of a bit and use that as a cover for the sensor loss. If I”m not mistaken, when Atlantic arrived to assist, they had a similar issue. Smaller ships, bigger fight,” she smirked. “I think that’s our answer.”
Remembering Stiener’s comment that he never lied, Calliope felt a pang of conscience about the required cover-up she was crafting. But they’d been put in this fix already as it was. The fewer questions they attracted, the less creative cover they’d have to run among all the rest of the crew. “I think so too. It sounds like we can create a strong matching signature fitting multiple points of data already on record. It shouldn’t invite too much scrutiny.”
“Alright. That’s settled. What about the crew. Do you have a plan on how you’re going to address them all? Make sure anyone who happened to be near a viewport doesn’t repeat what they saw?” Faye asked. She envied Calli on this one as she had crew spread across three ships which meant way more potential eyeballs ont he Alabama, not to mention the general size differential in that she had more crew.
“I’m going to have to question everyone in a preordered manner for debriefs, so we don’t say more than we need to. But it’s already been more than 30 minutes and you know that’s an eternity in ship scuttlebutt time.”
“If we had comms, it’d be halfway to Sol by now,” Faye agreed with a laugh. “I’d recommend we convince our Captain’s not to let comms come back online once we’re in range. Control the narrative leaving the ship. At least for the start.”
“I’ll lock outgoing calls out to senior staff.” She nodded. “And I’ll work with a few of the department heads to arrange the debriefs. What’s the simplest version of the story after the EM pulse scrambled our sensors and before we left the system?”
“That the Pyrryx were coming and we ran like hell,” Faye answered. “Those were the Admiral’s orders. The closer we stick to that, the better off we’ll be. Certainly the better off Captain Callum will be. He’s terrified that the Admiral’s going to find out and it’s going to be his head on the block.”
Calliope quirked her head. “Really? He doesn’t strike me as afraid of anything, let alone admirals.”
“He’s had a rough… well let’s just say that Lachlan doesn’t want to set so much as a toe off the line, for fear of losing this command,” she tried to explain. How did she explain to Calli that Callum had basically spent an entire career as a malcontent on the backend of Starfleet’s fringes only ever getting enough leeway for the next mission. He’d done good things, she’d read all about them, but he wasn’t even in the same ballfield as men like Bowdler. He was right, he was lucky to have this gig, but she didn’t agree with his fearfulness. The Admiral wouldn’t have put him in charge if he didn’t have faith in him, and he didn’t strike her as the kind of man that would take it back in a snap.
“Well, for his sake then. We’ll keep it simple. The sensors were scrambled, and we hightailed it while we still had navigational computers.”
“Simple is good,” she agreed. “I like the plan. How about your interviews, need a hand with those? Happy to lend a hand,” she offered. She hadn’t yet done the same for her crew, but then her crew wasn’t going to all disembark the minute they got back to the station. This was their home and duty station, so she had a little bit of time on her side. She was debating asking Captain Callum to disallow shoreleaves for this return just to be certain, but hadn’t quite made that decision yet.
“Yes. I’d prefer to work together on it. Especially sharing so many of your personnel.” Calliope stood. “Stay a bit, it shouldn’t be long until we’re ready to start the debriefs, we’ll set up in the conference room and run through them. Can you ask Aker for the sensor scramble protocol?” She would have just given it to Lance. It would have been childsplay, and he’d have given her a lecture on how truly random numbers were only a theory, technically, and some other reason why the mathematics behind it were as they were in the universe and she would have found it charming that he could both run algorithms and enlighten about it at the same time, but the idea wasn’t as endearing to her as it had been anymore. “And ask if she can make sure Ensign Tilmer can understand how to implement it. He actually has a good working understanding of ships computers.”
“Happy to do that,” Faye stood up as well. “I think I’ll stroll by Sick Bay, have a word with Mr. Tahriik. You can call me when you’re ready to start your chats. I’ll let Lachlan know I’ll be a while,” she smiled, collecting the cups and glasses she’d ordered from the replicator and walking them back to the pad to be un-replicated. Magnolia gestured towards the door and then led the way out.
With Faye's friendly cooperation, Calliope felt a little bit more like she had solid footing again. With any luck, by the time Corvus finished with her rounds, everything would be well in hand.
