Topic: Star Trek: The Scales of Eternity Subject: Curiosity...
Stardate: 2365.05.14
USS Peregrine, Deck 5: Shuttle Bay 2 – Section M-13 – 9:00
Everyone’s watching, to see what you will do
Everyone’s looking at you, oh
Everyone’s wondering, will you come out tonight
Everybody’s working for the weekend
The song blared loudly in the headphones that Callie Kennedy wore as she padded down the corridor, nodding slightly at anyone who passed her. It was Friday and Callie had Friday’s off, there were definite advantages to being the commander. She was dressed in a pair of black cargo pants, a faded ‘Purple Floyd’ t-shirt from the cover band’s reunion tour back in 2350, and a grey cardigan sweater. She had not bothered with putting on any makeup or jewelry, she had a personal mission today. As she walked she paid close attention to the PADD in her hands, flipping through various schematics and blueprints that came up on it. A little treasure she had run across on the computer in her office the other day.
When she got to the shuttle bay doors she paused long enough to key her way into the bay. The overhead lights came on automatically as she moved into the room, her destination was the far corner of the room where a large shape sat hunkered under a massive canvas tarp.
Taking a final look at her PADD she finally set it down on a crate that was near the hidden shape. She crossed her arms and took a long look at the shape.
“So… how far did they get on you?” A bit of a smile touched her lips as she moved forward and started to tug on an edge of the canvas.
The last three weeks had been grueling. There had been enough small problems arising that she had kept busy while on duty. The turbo lifts were still being touchy at times; Adler had figured out that the errors with the memory banks were due to a faulty relay, but fixing them had only caused more errors to pop up in the memory banks of other systems. Off duty, though, there simply wasn’t enough to keep her occupied and the eerie quiet of the ship and her haunted crew was getting to her. Which was why her interest was piqued when she accidentally found, while investigating the memory errors, a file on Thorson’s computer about something called the Aurora Angel. A little reading, and a little probing around with her staff led her to the shuttle bay, where under the canvas lay a ship unlike anything she had ever seen before, a pet project of Cmdr. Zai and Thorson before his untimely death.
Curiosity was getting the better of her.
She tugged hard on the canvas and it began to give, slowly inch by inch it pulled away from the grey hull of the Angel until finally the canvas piled up at the nose of the ship and she could finally take her first look at it. From out here it wasn’t much to look at.
Lightly she walked around the ship, letting her fingers trace over the edges finding every rivet and seam.
Revvin’ up your engine
Listen to her howlin’ roar
Metal under tension
Beggin’ you to touch and go
Highway to the danger zone
On her headphones a new song had come up and she smiled at the perfect timing.
“Oh she’s begging me to touch and go indeed…” she muttered to herself.
Eventually her trail around the ship led to the cargo bay doors where she let herself in. The first few compartments were interesting due to their modular design, they had been designed so that they could be swapped out for other modules easily depending on the mission. But other than that they were not overly stunning. It was when she stepped into the bridge that she stopped in her tracks and simply stared at the view before her. For a moment she actually felt her breath get caught in her chest and she had to put her hand on the nearest console to steady herself.
“Well **** me…” was all she could manage in a wispy breath.
She had read about Trill ship design, but had never seen it in person, and this was stunning. To think that they had made this in their spare time in a shuttle bay...
“Impressive.”
But after a few moments of gawking over the free-flowing space, her excitement took over and she began inspecting everything. Occasionally she pulled out the PADD and referred to the plans for this ship and made some notations, but mostly she just drank it all in.
Stardate: 2356.05.14
USS Peregrine, Shuttle Bay 2 – Aurora Angel – 10:30
=^=Commander Kennedy=^= her comm badge chimed up with Lt. Sa’eridon’s voice.
Kennedy at that moment was crouched under one of the consoles and sat up suddenly at the voice bashing her head into the edge. She winced and put a hand to her head and then hit her comm badge with her other hand.
=^=Go ahead Lieutenant=^=
=^=Sorry to bother you on your day off Commander. I just thought that you would like to know that I was just contacted by the bridge. Starfleet has a mission for us, finally.=^=
=^=It’s alright Lieutenant. What are our orders?=^=
=^=We are heading to the Calican system in order to repair a navigation beacon at Gamma Four-Seven Sir.=^=
Kennedy stood still a moment and reconnected herself with the Peregrine, indeed they had moved into Warp. She was a little amused that she had been so focused on the Angel that she had not felt the difference in the performance of the Peregrine earlier.
=^=Is that all?=^=
=^=That’s all I have right now sir. I’ll forward the full mission brief to you, but that’s the important bits.=^=
=^= Alright then. Start pulling up specs for the beacon, make sure Toporov and McGivern get copies, they will be your best hands in helping out with this. Get someone to clear some space in the shuttle bay or cargo hold, wherever, in case we need to bring it aboard to fix. When will be arriving?=^=
=^=We should be arriving sometime tomorrow afternoon. I’ll get on those specs sir.=^=
=^=You’ll be on duty then. You should be able to handle it, but if something comes up don’t hesitate to get me.=^=
=^=Yes sir.=^=
The comm went silent and Kennedy mused a moment over her assistant Chief of Engineering. The woman was a great engineer from what Kennedy had seen and had performed everything that had been asked of her. However, there was a coolness to her, and their relationship had not gone beyond anything professional yet.
A mission was good though, even if it was a rather simple task. Kennedy suspected that the mission was more a test from Starfleet than anything else.
Let’s see if the Peregrine is still up to doing actual work… well we’ll show them…
She took a look around the cockpit that she stood in, considered the upcoming mission and smiled.
“I think it’s time to have a real talk with that spotted XO…”
Posted on 2021-02-10 at 23:32:50.
Edited on 2021-02-10 at 23:41:48 by Merideth
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