A 24th Century Cruiser

Posted on Sun Feb 14th, 2016 @ 3:43pm by Lieutenant Commander Le Austin & Commander Jordan Gunning & Master Chief Petty Officer Arathenar ch’Darnath
Edited on on Fri Mar 25th, 2016 @ 12:42am

Mission: Brave New World
Location: Chief Engineer's Office [Deck 1896]

"If you don't ask, you don't get." Commander Jordan Gunning had told his Master-at-Arms at least five times during the long turbolift ride to the office of the chief engineer, Lieutenant Commander Le Austin.

"He'll never go for the idea," ch'Darnath grumbled, shaking his head in the pessimistic way only a seasoned veteran of professional disappointment could. "We shouldn't expect an operations officer to know the value to security of an asset like this."

"Commander Austin is a reasonable man - I'm sure he'll see sense." Gunning replied with a smile. "There's twenty Talons on the station and I'm sure losing one isn't going to hurt them. It's whether he's going to agree to loading it up with what we need."

They had reached the door to Austin's office and pressed the chime. "After all - he's a busy man."

"Come on in," Austin called from inside his new Operations office. It felt odd being away from the central hubbub of Engineering, but having his hands in both Operations and Engineering felt very, very right. Still, getting used to the additional work load was something new entirely.

"Austin," The doors parted meaning that Gunning could pop his head round, "you got a minute?"

"Absolutely, my friend. Just shuffling through some paper work trying to get my head around everything," Austin said, grinning a bit.

"Great stuff. You've met ch'Darnath here, right? He's our Master-at-Arms." Gunning took a seat and took in the organised chaos of the engineer's office. With everything that had been going on, it wasn't much of a surprise that there were parts, reports and even pieces of warped alloy all over the place. He balanced the PADD on one of the precarious piles. "I've got a requisition and modification request I'm hoping you might take a glance at."

"Okay," Austin said, taking the Padd and looking at it.

Gunning watched Austin look it over. "Basically we'd need the interior updated. It would need a holding cell - two ideally - and a weapons locker of some kind. Nothing major but if we need to get involved in a pursuit, any engine upgrades you can squeeze into it would be ideal. The major thing would be the tractor beam upgrade."

"Oh man..." Austin said, running a hand over his mouth. "This is a hell of a request," He said, moving to look over a his terminal, "With the damage we took from the Sojourners, I'm not sure I can reassign a Talon just yet," He said, scouring the information to see what he had available.

"We need to make sure we're across incoming and outgoing threats." Gunning shot back quickly. He'd seen this coming, the damage inflicted by the Sojourners was vast and a shuttle refit was probably the last thing the base's Chief of Operations needed. "As it stands at the moment we don't have any rapid response craft for bringing criminals in."

Austin looked up at the Security Chief with a slight grin, "You expecting some sort of criminal syndicate to try and set up operations here or something?" He asked, only half-joking.

"You've seen the way those Akiashiros conduct their business." Gunning said gravely. "The criminal syndicate's been here longer than we have."

Austin's grin faltered as he nodded slowly. It was easy to get lost in the plasma conduits and circuitry of the station, and lose sight of the other, bigger issues at hand. Now that he was Chief of Operations, he'd have to change.

He went back to his screen, looking over everything again, "No... there's really nothing that I can--," He cut himself off and sat up a little straighter, "Well... wait... there may be one option..." He said, then looked over at Gunning seriously, "It's not... a great option, but it's an option."

The word hung in the air for a moment as Gunning began to dread the rusting hulk he was inevitably going to end up with. "Go on." He said eventually.

"We have a Talon available," Austin explained, "But it was damaged fairly heavily during the attack. It's fixable, but it'll be a lot of work. The plus side is that it's in a bad enough state that you can do a lot of custom work on it... the downside is, I really can't spare any of my people to help repair it right now, so you'd have to manage the repairs yourselves," He explained. Then added after a beat, "And... I might be willing to pitch in for giggles off hours," He said with a hint of a grin on his face.

Gunning sighed at the thought of nights spent in an engineering bay. "I'll take what I can get. Sign me up."

---

Commander Jordan Gunning
Chief of Security

Lieutenant Commander Le Austin
Chief of Operations

Master Chief Petty Officer Arathenar ch'Darnath
Master-at-Arms
Starbase 332