Captain on the Bridge (Part I)

Posted on Mon Jul 21st, 2014 @ 5:54am by Lieutenant JG Allison Price & Commander Jordan Gunning & Lieutenant Augustus Deakin
Edited on on Tue Jul 22nd, 2014 @ 11:22pm

Mission: Fate of the Angels
Location: Main Bridge - USS Seraphim
Timeline: 2261

[ON]

The turbolift was packed with relief officers as the interlopers made their way up to the bridge. The chatter was cordial, as though no-one was overly familiar with one another. "Where did you come in from?" One would ask the other, receiving a reply of ships which neither Gunning, Deakin, or Price were familiar with. It seemed that a number of the reliefs had been reassigned from the USS Farragut.

Gunning began to whistle gently under his breath before attention began to turn on them. A pale, lanky kid piped up. "What about you three?"

They hadn't discussed it and a cursory glance at Price saw all of the colour drain out of her face. "The Enterprise." Gunning found himself saying.

"Wowee," came the response from the bag of bones Lieutenant, "they didn't give you guys much layover time did they? Just back from another five yearer and thrown straight out here with us."

Gunning shrugged, falling into his role with relative ease. "You know what they say; desperate times..."

"I hear that." The Lieutenant agreed as the lift reached its destination. The doors sighed aside, revealing the living, breathing bridge of a Constitution-class starship. Gunning tried not to let a 'wow' slip from his lips as he moved inside and made a bee-line for the helm.

Deakin shot out of the lift right after Gunning and marched to communications with his fiercest 'don't argue' expression plastered across his face. The young red-shirted ensign with the silver earpiece shooting up behind his slick, black sideburns looked up with a start as Gus said, "You're relieved, sir."

The astonished ensign barely vacated the seat before Gus sat in it and swiveled to the console. He didn't have much time, so he quickly accessed the internal comm system. It had been a long time since he had studied starship computer systems back at the Academy, but he did complete a few modules on duotronic computer systems. It wasn't required for those on the operations track, but Gus, being an old starship enthusiast, couldn't resist. And, as it happened, those skills proved ... useful ... during his time away from the service.

He quickly bypassed the security locks (easy) and overrode the bridge duty roster to replace three of the actual crew names with three new names (a little harder). If he had time, he would have quickly created manifest records for them as well, but there was only so much he could do in a short time. The altered rosters would stand up to cursory scrutiny and hopefully that would be all they need.

When he was done, he turned and caught the eye of Gunning and Price, giving them both a subtle nod.

Allie found herself constantly looking over her shoulder when she sat down at the engineering console. She had never had to act like a spy before, and she was pretty sure if anyone was going to mess this up, it was going to be her. Simply telling the captain what had happened would have been the simplest way to handle the situation, but she had enough lectures dealing with temporal mechanics and the temporal prime directive that she knew that wasn't an option. They had to blend in as much as possible and not let the Seraphim's crew know who they really were. Fortunately the engineering console was currently unoccupied, so she took a seat and got to work.

Gunning found himself locked in a dirty staring competition with the helm's proper replacement officer. "Hey, look on the bright side. You get an extra day to yourself until they work out the problems with the roster." Gunning told the younger officer. "I wouldn't sniff at it- you get two shifts in a row off- it's had me working doubles!"

"I- I suppose you're right." The Ensign hesitated at the logic of taking a day off when a superior officer had been doing double the work but he knew better than to argue.

Gunning took a seat and, after a few seconds of idle button pressing, managed to key into the system. "Standard position check, Navigator." He said quietly, not wishing to be overheard in case a standard position check wasn't quite as standard as he thought.

"Standard position check, aye." Came the response from the navigator. "We are at two-eight-nine-six-mark-seven-three."

"Estimated time of arrival?" Gunning asked- pushing his luck.

"Ee-tee-ay at Cestus Three, thirty one hours and three minutes, provided we don't run into any distortions in the Lembatta Nebula."

"Thank you, Lieutenant." Gunning replied, keeping his act up. "Correcting course point three degrees on mark. Mark."

He quickly glanced over his shoulder to check that his colleagues had heard the course and location. At this point in history, they were worryingly close to the Klingon border and passing through an unpredictable nebula like the Lembatta Cluster only opened them up to more dangers.

Deakin heard the report from the navigator at about the same time that he read a similar account in the ship's log. But there was nothing unusual about that, nothing that obviously jumped out as a reason for a temporal shift. He plugged the ridiculous earpiece into his ear and started flicking through channels while he got the computer sifting through comm. records for any reports of anomalies or unusual activity.

The current course heading didn't really through up any flags in Price's mind, though she did find it interesting that they were heading for Cestus III. But she didn't know enough about history to know how if Cestus III was already a Federation outpost. She did, however, know a lot about engines and a ship's power grid. Technology had changed a lot in the past century, but the basic ideas were still in place. She did a thorough status check, looking for any anomalies. There was some notable flaws in the engine efficiency, but that appeared to be more of a factor of decades of engine improvements in her timeline that hadn't been developed in this time. She kept looking.

The turbolift doors sighed apart once again and the sound of two domineering pairs of boots filled the bridge. "Captain on the bridge!" Came the call from the navigator who was suddenly standing bolt upright as though someone had electrified his chair. Gunning followed the lead and snapped to attention- there was no point getting caught out now.

"At ease." The Captain's reply was terse. "Commander Anto- run a full system check before we enter the nebula."

"Yes, Ma'am." The giant blue-shirted Commander made his way to the science console. Gunning, Deakin and Price kept their heads down.

The clicking of the ship's instruments grated on Gunning, the whining and chirruping of modern bridge systems had long since become background noise to him. He triple-checked their course and took a glance round at the Captain. She had much the same demeanour as her huge First Officer. There looked to be no joy in her eyes as she kept a steely glare on the viewscreen.

"Is there a problem, Lieutenant?" She asked, her eyes still fixed on the viewscreen.

Gunning gulped and his attention immediately snapped back to the gaudy console. "No sir."

To be continued...

[OFF]

Commander Jordan Gunning
Strategic Operations

Lieutenant Augustus Deakin
Chief of Operations

Ensign Allison Price [NPC: Captain Von]
Engineering Officer