Ready to Explode - Part I
Posted on Wed Aug 12th, 2015 @ 10:51am by Commander Jordan Gunning & Commander Titus Livius Drusus PhD
Mission:
By Dawn's Early Light
Location: Holodeck 12, Deck 44
Commander Titus Livius Drusus strode purposefully through the corridors of Deck 44 with a passive expression on his face that expertly masked the tempest of frustration inside him. He wasn’t one to get angry – particularly with a superior officer – but frustrated, slightly ticked off or even deeply irritated were fair game.
He had waited twenty minutes outside the XO’s office for their meeting until a timid little yeoman had gently informed him that Commander Gunning wasn’t in his office. To compound the nuisance, Drusus was then informed that the yeoman wasn’t exactly sure where he was.
Drusus had glared at the hapless yeoman and sniffed in his haughtiest of Roman manners and slapped his commbadge. “Drusus to Gunning.”
Silence.
The Magna Roman cocked his head to the side and clenched his jaw, still glaring at the yeoman. He tried again.
More silence.
“Computer, locate Commander Gunning,” he had grumbled at that point, his irritation under threat by a growing concern for his fellow officer’s welfare – it wouldn’t have been the first time something untoward happened to one of the Starbase’s officers.
“Commander Gunning is in Holodeck Twelve,” the computer replied with no apparent concern for the XO’s welfare or the chief science officer’s wasted twenty minutes.
Now Drusus approached the holodeck in question, having once again tried to raise the XO on the commbadge without success. It was a social faux pas to intrude on somebody’s holodeck program, but dammit, I’ve tried calling him and there’s no answer. He could be in trouble!
Every Starfleet officer knew that sometimes accidents happened on the holodeck, so it was in the spirit of concern for his comrade that Drusus overrode the lockout and entered the holodeck. It had nothing at all to do with his irritation, his frustration or him being slightly ticked off.
The door gave way to an oppressive heat coming from the violent yellow of the sun which pierced through some thin cloud and bore down with fury on the scorched earth below. On a ridge, peering through a rather complicated pair of binoculars and wearing a rather peculiar, dusty, black duster coat which gave way to thick, plodding combat boots around the ankles stood Commander Jordan Gunning.
Shielding his eyes to the elements and feeling suddenly, awkwardly out of place in his crisp uniform, he walked over in the commander's direction. As he got close, he announced his presence with a curt, "Commander?"
Gunning turned with a start and produced a particularly nasty looking pistol which he pointed upward into the Magna Roman's neck, designed to do the maximum damage from the shortest range. His bright green eyes, which had been knitted into a furious expression, relaxed instantly as he recognised the station's Chief Science Officer. "Christ, sorry Titus." Had he ever used the massive man's first name before? Probably not - hopefully he wouldn't snap his neck. "You gave me a fright. What's up?"
Drusus eyed the pistol, instantly recognising it as being an artifact from an earlier age, but not able to place it exactly. "Pardon the intrusion, Commander," he said after a moment, barely noticing his colleague's familial use of his praenomen. "We had a meeting."
Gunning was holstering the pistol while his eyes darted back and forth, seemingly looking at something over his colleague's shoulder. "Fantastic. Well, not fantastic." He didn't see Drusus taking sarcasm too well. "Sounds like the handiwork of Crewman McKinley." He said, removing a small revolver from his coat and handing it over. "The Captain suggested I take a shift off as leave - it's been a difficult few weeks - and it seems that the Crewman hasn't bothered his sizeable arse to notify my appointments."
Jordan's eyes narrowed, still seemingly preoccupied with whatever was over Drusus' shoulder. "You're going to need that." He pulled out the pistol he had been holding just seconds before and firmly moved Drusus out of the way. He raised it to shoulder height, cradling the grip in his left hand while his right index finger felt its way to the trigger.
A shot cracked out over the desolate landscape which looked for all the world like some kind of imagined wasteland. Then another shot, and another until the two men heard a yelp in the distance, through some malformed underbrush.
"We're going to have to get you something more subtle to wear too."
Drusus looked down at his uniform and then at what Gunning was wearing and found he couldn't argue. But he didn't come here to play a holonovel. He grumbled, "McKinley would be that yeoman who waited twenty minutes to tell me you weren't there?" he asked.
"Probably. Sniveling little runt with a stammer to hide his superiority complex?" Gunning asked as he pulled himself back to the top of the ridge where he had originally been standing and raised the binoculars back to his eyes.
The Magna Roman's irritation by this stage was gone and his curiosity kicked in. He enjoyed a good holonovel and had no idea what the XO was running, but he was curious. A filthy brown coat shimmered into existence at his feet and he started to pull it on as he said, "That would be him," before following Gunning.
"See that?" Gunning asked, handing the binoculars to Drusus. In the distance, about a mile away, lay a little town walled off from the supposed dangers of the outside world by an incredible amount of debris which seemed to have been salvaged from anything conceivable. It looked as though there were bits of infantry tanks scattered among sheet metal, huge planks of wood, and even old guns which had been lashed together to form a rudimentary defensive wall. "That's Enola Gay."
He peered through the binoculars at the junk-strewn settlement and found himself instinctively assessing the strategic situation, as though he were a besieging commander wanting to take the town. But he wasn't aware of this particular town. "What's Enola Gay?" he asked, still peering through the binoculars.
"In this context? That little town," Jordan said with a wry smile, "in a historical sense it's the name of the B-29 bomber which dropped the first nuclear bomb on Japan." The Commander pulled on a tattered pair of sunglasses, attempting to negate the glare coming from the sun reflecting on the water. "We're currently two hundred miles North of San Francisco in Humboldt County. Eureka's," he motioned off into the middle distance, "about twenty miles that way, all things being equal."
None of that made much sense to Drusus; he wasn't overly familiar with Terran history, but Enola Gay did ring a bell now that Gunning gave it the context. The bomber context, though, not the town north of San Francisco. "Doesn't look like the North America I've seen," he said as he handed the binoculars back.
"It's 2162. Or at least, it's 2162 the way that Victoria Hughes saw it. She was an English author who was writing around the time of the first bombs in 2053 - they called it the May Day Horror of '53 - before First Contact was even a remote possibility. She laid out this grand plan for the world - fictional, of course - and had it not been for First Contact, it might have been how things turned out."
"We managed to avoid this kind of devastation," Drusus said, referring to his homeworld, which had a remarkably similar development to Earth, even a shared geography. "It helps when you've established a single global empire before nuclear weapons are even invented."
"That'll do for you." Gunning replied, pre-occupied by the looming walls of the town. Enola Gay hadn't always been here but had grown up from the refugees and displaced people fleeing the destroyed population hubs of California. Why they'd want to live out here with the stifling heat, he wasn't sure. "Come on, we're almost there."
Commander Jordan Gunning
Executive Officer
Commander Titus Livius Drusus
Chief Science Officer
Starbase 332
