Morning Huddle

Posted on Wed May 6, 2015 @ 4:48pm by Captain Maritza Soran & Commander Caden Aldrex

1,904 words; about a 10 minute read

Mission: Eye of the Beholder
Location: OPS
Timeline: MD03 0745

::ON::
Maritza was on 28 hours without sleep, but not unduly worried. She would sleep at the end of her shift, and until then a careful mixture of Cordrazine with inaprovaline would keep her bright eyed and bushy tailed. Not that she ever came across as anything other than professionally alert. "Perky" wasn't in her personal vocabulary, even if she could say it in six languages. Padd in hand, she entered OPS ready for the usual daily briefing held between her and Caden Aldrex to make sure he knew which of the minutiae of her job would be most likely to affect his.

She found Aldrex standing behind three controllers with a cup of raktajino in his hand. The three controllers were seated line-abreast and focused intently on their consoles, issuing terse commands over the subspace frequency when necessary. Their job was to control the traffic in the docking harbor, and at the moment it was very busy with two vessels departing, another one arriving, and a runabout being ferried from one maintenance hangar to another. In addition to all that there was the usual assortment of workpods and EVA-suited crewmen moving about in there. It was a delicate choreography of people and machines, and very unforgiving of mistakes. The three controllers made it look easy.

"Good morning, Commander Soran," Aldrex said, having seen her approach from the corner of his eye.

"Sir." she nodded a head to acknowledge his greeting. "Today's notable movements, if you're ready?"

"Yes, of course," Aldrex replied. He led the way to the briefing table in the middle of Ops. It had a scrolling galactic map of their sector along with holographic display capabilities. Aldrex set his mug down on one corner and took one of the stools surrounding it. Soran took another across from him.

"Okay, what does it look like out there today?" Aldrex asked, studying the electronic map.

"Deliveries of trilithium and pergium are due to lower docking bays at 1500. Our fighters will taking over the escort at point four parsecs, the rendez-vous sheduled for 1400 our time." She kept the fact she found such arrangements at shift change very frustrating to herself. Dyson shipyards is expecting deliveries of Silithium at 1030am, Fortanium at 1200 and Kelbonite at 1900. These are large deliveries in automated convoys.

"Plenty of work for everyone, eh? Good." Using his fingers he scrolled the map over until it displayed the Romulan border. A line of blinking markers denoted where their automated listening outposts were located. "What are the neighbors up to?"

"The Romulans have a training exercise on their side of the neutral zone - a drill for a breen invasion they say. Its all been arranged and scheduled. Starfleet command have informed me that they have no concerns."

"Oh? I didn't know the Breen had any interest in this particular region of space. How big of a training exercise is this?"

"The Romulan's have been having training exercises where we can see them all along the neutral zone for the last 18 months. Different scenarios against differing opponents, according to what they tell us. They get out some war birds, we have six scheduled for today, plus automated drones to act as opposition. I think they just like to remind us now and again that they have Thalaron weapons, but prefer peace to war." She mentally added Then again, we have no idea what the other hand is doing

The XO nodded. "Fair enough. The USS Aurora was supposed to be out that way but she's delayed by the disaster relief mission on Tarandi VII. Maybe we'll send one of our own ships to observe the exercise." He glanced up at her. "How about you? Feel like taking the Ararat for a ride?"

"If the Captain says they won't see it as provocation." The Wallace class ship wasn't quite a starship, wasn't quite a shuttlecraft, and was overgunned for its rating. Maritza had no intention of upsetting the delicate balance that had beet struck between the Federation and Stelam Shi'ar. There were bigger things at stake "I suspect it would be interesting to watch them rattle their Scimitars."

"Indeed it would; and don't worry about provocation. If they didn't want us to see their exercise then they wouldn't be conducting it in a place where we could easily watch. As long as we stay on our side of the Neutral Zone we're okay. So how soon do you think you can get out there?"

She calculated. "If I leave after the end of Alpha shift and we do warp 4 we'll be there a good hour before anything interesting happens. I just need to pick an XO." She stared at the interactive surface and the red-black snake of the neutral zone blinking from the LCARS display.

Aldrex leaned back and crossed his arms. "Well, if you don't object I'd like you to give Lieutenant Carter a shot. He's smart and capable but he needs more deep-draught command experience." He flashed a wry grin. "Not that a Wallace-class has a very deep draught but we all have to start somewhere, right?" He reached to where his mug was sitting and picked it up.

Maritza considered it. "I have read his file, sir. Its...far too interesting. And he needs more than a deep draught. He needs a..." The phrase came to her, something her commander on the Onedin used to say. "Percussive Gluteal realignment." She could hear Captain Mohedavan saying it now.

That provoked a laugh from the XO. "Yeah, Kyle has the typical fighter pilot's arrogance. I believe in him, though, and I think he could be a great officer with the right kind of guidance, gluteal or otherwise." He waved it away. "It's your command team. Your decision." He sipped from his mug, put it back down, and began writing up the mission profile for the Ararat. He changed the subject to something they had in common. "I understand you did an exchange tour on a Klingon vessel. I was on the IKS Shakra for thirteen months."

Maritza stiffened. her time with the klingons had been unexpected, but welcome. "It wasn't an exchange tour sir. They attacked a Kzinti war ship where I was held. They rescued me."

Aldrex looked up in surprise. "Oh. I didn't know that." He tried to recall what he had read in her service record. Apparently some details were omitted. "Was that related to the attack on the USS Onedin?"

"Yes." Maritza's answer was clipped. "I don't really like to talk about it, sir." "Of course you don't," Anna's voice came from over her shoulder, but Maritza wouldn't turn round "You never like hearing about your crushing failures."

"I understand," the XO replied with a respectful smile. He wanted to understand Soran better, having heard that she possessed a corrosive personality, and hoping to prove that judgment wrong. "I once lost a ship too. The USS Prevail. Got transferred off just one day before she was lost with all hands. I carried the weight around for a while but learned eventually not to blame myself." He returned his attention to the sector map, indicating that he would let the subject drop now. As he did so he heard a whisper. "You should have been there." His body stiffened.

"I didn't get transferred off sir." She tried to keep her tone neutral, but she found his attempt to compare his experience to hers entirely spurious. At least he wasn't muttering about his previous lives. "I was taken prisoner. I was the ranking officer and I had to watch whilst the Kzinti vivisected them one by one." "Practically pushed us forward to save yourself." Anna's shade spat.

"I'm very sorry. I know that must a horrible experience," Cade said quietly. Somewhere in the back of his mind he was aware of her derisive attitude, but it wasn't his focus. His thoughts were awash with the faces of his shipmates from the Prevail. People he hadn't thought of in quite some time. "You left us to die," they accused him. "So where on the homeworld did you grow up?" He asked, wishing to change the subject.

"The Old city. My father was an archivist at the libraries." She paused. "Sir. how many ships have you lost?"

He raised an eyebrow and thought about it for a moment. "I suppose the Prevail wasn't mine to lose, since I wasn't the one in command. Why do you ask?"

"What about Aldrex. Has it lost any?"

Cade Aldrex thought about his response for a beat. Then simply answered, "Yes," although he didn't elaborate. His memories rushed back to Zendra Aldrex, his second host whose five-year-old son drowned in a river. The dull ache of that centuries-old tragedy suddenly felt sharper and more immediate to him. Why weren't you watching the boy? He dropped his PADD and it clattered on the deck below. He leaned down to pick it up, feeling somewhat like he had been slapped.

"carting around the experience of a dozen lifetimes doesn't stop shit happenening does it?" Maritza bent down at the same time and got to the padd a fraction before him. She flinched as his hand brushed hers. "Do you suffer for a dozen lifetimes too?" If it was meant to be be bitchy it didn't quite come across as such, there wasn't enough venom, more of a hunger. And not for his suffering, but her own.

"Having the wisdom of ten lifetimes is a great gift. Unfortunately wisdom often comes through pain. So yes, one takes the good and the bad when being joined," he said with a somber smile.

"A thousand lifetimes wouldn't be punishment enough." Anna's shade told her. Maritza ignored her. "You take the good and the bad whether you are joined or not," she told Caden. "Its called living."

"Yes, that's true," Aldrex responded patiently. "My point is that being joined gives one the additional 'good and bad' of people long gone." It was something that he had learned to live at peace with after the initial disorientation of the joining. Today, however, he was feeling such a heaviness in his heart about it. It was a great weight bearing down on him. Who are you to continue living while others you allegedly love die away? It's sickening.

"I've had my fair share of bad experiences. I've lost two ships. Seen my crew butchered, and dodged a butchering of my own, and I know this. If you can 'put it down'. If you can 'learn to live with it' then you never carried it, never lived with it, in the first place, and pretending otherwise is narcissism." She didn't want to listen to whatever he had to say after that. "Can I go, commander? I have a new XO to break in."

Aldrex kept his eyes locked on the plot. He, too, was ready for the conversation to be over. He needed to be alone now and his patience with Soran was exhausted. "Go," he said, not looking at her. "I'm not interested in your evaluation of what you think I feel. We'll discuss your miserable attitude some other day."


::OFF::

Lt. Commander Caden Aldrex
Executive Officer

Lt Commander Maritza Soran
2XO/Cheif Strategic Operations
DS5

 

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