Muster (Part 2 of 2)

Posted on 02 Feb 2022 @ 4:02pm by Chief Warrant Officer 3 Lamar Darius & Commander Allyndra illm Warraquim & Commander Marisa Wyatt & Lieutenant Aria Rice & Lieutenant JG Tris Shizn & Ensign Mimi & Lieutenant JG Sofie Ullswater & Chief Warrant Officer 2 Kala Gorvel & Petty Officer 1st Class Gabriel Stark & Petty Officer 2nd Class Donald Andrews & Petty Officer 2nd Class Leon Inaros & Petty Officer 3rd Class John Hollenday & Petty Officer 3rd Class Helliun 'Hel' Inant & Verity Thorne & Nesh Saalm & Petra Varelli Ph.D.
Edited on on 02 Feb 2022 @ 4:04pm

2,265 words; about a 11 minute read

Mission: Episode 18 - Cold Station 31
Location: USS Galileo-A - Deck 4, Main Shuttlebay
Timeline: MD 05, 0354 hrs

Previously, on Muster (Part 1)...

Blake stepped forward, taking a moment to just look over the gathered crew. Her features were as stoic as ever, making sure to keep her misgivings to herself. What did it serve anyway? It didn't change the reality they were facing. There would be time for her to talk as she wanted or needed later. For now, quite enough had been said already. "Report to your stations, I want status reports from department heads in an hour. Dismissed."

And Now, the Conclusion...


[ON]

Allyndra lead the very small medical contingent off, but she was still thinking. After she had heard Commander Tarin's explanation, she felt a bit better and decided that benefit of the doubt. Still she would as the humans would say, 'got my eye on you.' Perhaps more might be revealed if there was going to be a senior command briefing. "We are not supplied as well as I had hoped," she turned and actually flew backwards so they could keep moving. "Lieutenant Karras, if you would, unless called upon, I would like you to be more familiar with the sickbay. If there are rescues we will probably need all the hands we can get."

She did not wait for an answer but just dropped and easily turned as the flying space became extremely limited. The hallways without people maybe but people going everywhere it would not be a good idea.

"Of course," Karras replied, admiring her aerial grace. He would make it his priority first thing in the morning after attempting to catch a few more hours of sleep. If he could get back to sleep... the secrecy attached to this mission was troubling. Secrecy was never good.

The contents of the briefing and the arrival of a new acting CO barely phased Chief Warrant Officer 3 Lamar Darius. Maybe it was because he was still half-asleep. Another classified mission seemed to be in the books with a high level of urgency. It resembled a similar briefing he'd received before Galileo's Latari expedition. He'd served as Saalm's COB for a year before moving in to flight ops, and though he regretted her absence, part of him liked the new commander. Marin? Tarin? He could tell she was from Earth from her accent. East coast. Her voice and speech patterns reminded him of his old cadre in the Marine Corps during the Dominion War. He was just a conn officer but strangely felt a sense of reassurance in having this new woman in command. She projected a confidence and direction which was enough for Lamar to get on board. At her command, he followed Shizn's lead and fell out from formation behind his department head.

Verity Thorne moved past a few people heading the other way, trying to catch a glance of Oliver over with the other pilots. He gave a weak, half smile when he managed to catch his eyes, holding his breath as he tried to give a reassuring look...but he wasn't sure whether he was trying to persuade him, or himself.

Jogging to get ahead, Gabriel Stark managed to get to Aria's side, dropping into pace next to her so he could lean in close and whisper. "You got rid of that old chair, right?" he asked, looking to her with dark eyes. He wasn't joking around though. Maybe there was a hint of dark, cynical humour somewhere in there, but not enough to reach his eyes.

Aria nodded before she looked at him, a quick smile coming to her. "I paid off some scientists to incinerate it," she confessed before she shook her head, the smile fading. "Whatever bad juju this might be, it's not coming from that chair. We make our of luck now."

Marisa was torn. She was curious about the research station and what they'd been working on. She wanted to get out there and see if they could help. At the same time, she wanted to spend more time with Luke. One of the drawbacks to being in Starfleet. She sighed and slowly followed the others out. She wished she could send him a message informing him they were being sent out again. Hopefully they'd come back here after and she'd still get to see him.

Ullswater followed close behind her department head, almost wanting to start up some speculative conversation. Sandoval seemed deep in thought though so the ensign thought perhaps the wiser thing would be not to. Her mind was racing though; comms blackouts and classified missions, this deep space mission was turning out to be perhaps a little too exciting for her tastes.

Following the order for dismissal, Shizn had turned on a heel and walked swiftly to the exit and passageway. With 40 plus personnel right behind him, he was pleased to see that the other conn officers were close behind. They all wouldn’t go to the bridge, but designated assignments for this type of situation. Tris stepped to the side suddenly, before entering the passageway, turning around and motioned for Lamar, “I need you to confirm the shuttle’s are locked down for flight. And run a quick diagnostic on each,” he added encouragingly. “Then checkout the Waverider. We might just need it this mission.”

Darius altered his pathway at the Andorian officer's beckoning then listened to his orders. "I'm on it, L-T," Darius replied before shaking his head. "But I don't think we have a Waverider yet. Vincenzo was destroyed at Latari and I don't think the station finished fabrication of the new one before we got our orders." Replacing a shuttlecraft was difficult under the best of circumstances - let alone out in the ass end of the quadrant. "I'll see what we have then let you know. 15 minutes?"

“Sounds acceptable,” Shizn replied with a nod. “Oh, that’s right.” Tris felt a bit confused. He wondered why he had forgotten the situation with the Waverider. “Well,” he began, “at least check the exterior seals since we will be flying with a hole in our underside.”

"We won't be leaking this trip. I promise you that." Lamar shuffled his feet then spun and ran towards the turbolift. He had a lot to inspect in a short period of time to meet their departure schedule. For now, his objective was to get to the primary hull one deck above then climb down the atmospheric shuttle's docking port. As he maneuvered through the crew to jockey for optimal turbolift position, he spotted a familiar drinking friend.

"How you feeling this morning, Aria?" he asked the security chief, now standing next to her in crowd queue. He looked over at her with a small grin knowing they'd been chugging hard liquor only a few hours ago.

"By morning...you mean the middle of the night," Aria said as she shook her head, but it was with a smile. It looked like she wore a little bit off make-up but truth was that it was what was left after the evening, the result of washing her face well and not getting rid of all the eyeliner. "Emergency sober-hypo, followed with some liquid and minor cursing...you?" she met his eyes, holding them before the smile became wider. "Let me guess...the Corps sorted you out so that you never feel under the weather?"

Darius shrugged and looked up to the ceiling, trying to play it off cool. "Something like that," he boasted to anyone who might be in earshot. Then he leaned down and spoke quietly into her ear to reveal his secret. "I puked right after we left the bar. Don't tell anyone. Then I got hungry and replicated some biscuits and eggs."

Aria's expression softened and she reached out, her hand touching his arm as she turned her head slightly, to whisper in his ear. "You're my hero, wish I had done that," she stated, her voice low and quiet. "I suppose we just have to hit the deck running on this one?"

"New capn's got orders," he concurred. "Time to get back into action. I just hope we don't find anymore proto-Tholians. I'm too stupid to be a scientist but a research station going dark can't be good..." He gave her hand a return touch.

Aria's face darkened at the mention of the mission and she gave a small nod. "One step at the time. Assess first. You...be safe," she said, and met his eyes in a way that did not leave any room for arguments.

"Yes, sir." He was tired and not quite one hundred percent, but didn't want Rice to worry. They didn't have time for that. "If you need extra hands on a phaser rifle, I'll be in the shuttlebay."

"I'll keep that in mind," she said and gave a small nod, letting out a soft breath.

John just shoved hands into pants pockets and trudged after the two warrant officers. He still thought it stupid that the ship still had not one really qualified engineering officer. "So Donald," he turned to his buddy. "Guess time to make miracles again. Have any fun time?"

Donald laughed slightly. "Oh yeah, me and Constantin somehow managed to wrangle a couple of Andorian women....... right into our beds."

John laughed long and hard earning more than a few looks and even a hush from one officer from the medical group. "Well damn good for you. At least if we blow up this time, you got a good memory and hey maybe a couple of half Andorian brats running around."

"It'll make for a good memory," Donald said laughing while shaking his head slightly "but half Andorians won't be on the table, I got my shot updated a couple of days ago, just in case."

Kala was quiet, she knew that the time would come that they would be going back out into space and she would have to lead the engineering department. She'd done it before but that was different she was 'officially' the chief engineer but now that had all changed she could feel the departments weight on her shoulder sucking in a breath she fell out and went back to what she was doing.

Hel looked at her new Chief for a moment as she walked, a spring to her step and her rust-coloured hair tied back. In uniform, she looked less...feral than she did in her off duty clothes. But she had noticed the distant look on Kala's face and hoped, briefly, it would not be an issue as she headed to Engineering.

Nurse Inaros exhaled as he started to head towards sickbay. The Acting CO's words of the War rang in his head and grimly he moved his fingers to the seam of his uniform trousers, feeling it, starting with the thumb all the way to the little finger. He repeated the motion two more times and exhaled, his blue eyes focusing again as he walked and felt settled back to the moment. It would be interesting, regardless, to see everyone in sickbay. He had not had the chance before. So that was something to focus on. He was briefly grateful that he had taken the time to look over the general set-up of the ship while on shoreleave.

After the dismiss was given Mimi held back till some of the crowd had left before starting to make her way towards the exit, she hoped beyond hope she wasn't required for bridge duty for at least a few hours so she could get some sleep.

Nesh followed Mimi, her eyes wide as she started to jog, going past her. "If Starfleet manages to mess with us or my sister while we investigate someone who forgot how to turn on their communication devices...I am going to make them pay," she said with anger to cover up her fear at Lirha not being there, but she knew her place well enough to go to the mess.

"The Captain will be fine Nesh." Miimi told her as the Orion slipped by her. "It is not the first time she has gone off to do something like this."

Petra wasn't sure how she felt about this new assignment. Latari was still too fresh, and she feared the worst. At the same time, she wanted to help and was pretty sure she would not be going on any away teams for this. But only time would tell.

[OFF]

--

PO1 Gabriel Stark
Security Officer
USS Galileo-A
[PNPC Blake]

Verity Thorne
Chaplain
USS Galileo-A
[PNPC Blake]

Lt. Aria Rice
Chief of Security
USS Galileo-A

Nesh Saalm
Sous Chef
USS Galileo-A
[PNPC Rice]

PO2 Leon Inaros
Nurse
USS Galileo-A
[PNPC Rice]

PO3 Helliun 'Hel' Inant
Engineering
USS Galileo-A
[PNPC Rice]

CWO3 Lamar Darius
Conn Officer
USS Galileo-A
[PNPC Saalm]

Lieutenant Commander Marisa Sandoval
Chief Science Officer
USS Galileo-A

Petra Varelli
Forensic Anthropologist
USS Galileo-A
[PNPC Sandoval]

Ensign Mimi
Assistant Operations Manager
USS Galileo-A

PO2 Donald Andrews
Engineering Officer
USS Galileo-A
[PNPC Mimi]

Cmdr Allyndra illm Warraquim
Second and Chief Medical Officer
USS Galileo-A

PO3 John Hollenday
Engineering Officer
USS Galileo-A
[PNPC Warraquim]

CWO3 Kala Gorvel
Chief Engineer
USS Galileo-A

LTJG Tris Shizn
Senior Conn Officer
USS Galileo-A

ENS Sofie Ullswater
Science Officer
USS Galileo-A

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