Eyes on the Horizon (Part 1 of 2)

Posted on 05 Feb 2025 @ 1:10am by Commander Morgan Tarin & Commander Allyndra illm Warraquim & Lieutenant JG Serran & Lieutenant JG Delainey Carlisle & Lieutenant JG Sofie Ullswater & Lieutenant JG Nusien & Lieutenant JG Selon Illialhlae & Ensign Mimi & Ensign S'Ers-a M'Lyr'Zor & Crewman Mateo Gardel & Lieutenant JG Hovar Kov & Ensign Tora Zalos & Chief Warrant Officer 2 Kalliste Bacri & Chief Petty Officer Afthinam Naime & Petty Officer 1st Class T'Lin & Petty Officer 3rd Class Jeysa Zeror & Petty Officer 3rd Class Yasmin Aquino

3,791 words; about a 19 minute read

Mission: Episode 20 - Reconstruction
Location: USS Galileo-A - All Decks
Timeline: MD 12, 0738 hrs

[ON]

Highlighted by the colorful purple and blue hues of Remidia's close orbital proximity, the Nova-class starship USS Galileo-A lazily floated in space around its home port - the small-yet-robust scientific research station known as Regula I. The tiny Federation survey vessel's soft dock orbit continually wrapped it around the compact starbase once per hour in a standard orbit at a safe multi-kilometer distance, but what had become a mutual symbiotic presence between the two entities over the course of the past two weeks was about to be broken. Orders had passed through the robust Starfleet network of subspace relays and eventually landed on the desks of those in command.

The port bridge entrance within Galileo swished open to present a tall and familiar red-collared presence within the vessel's primary command chamber. Morgan Tarin's uniform jacket and pants looked immaculate as ever and was complimented by a rare display of her dark brown hair tightly pulled back into a high ponytail. It had grown longer throughout the course of shore leave and to leave it unbridled would be to violate Starfleet regulations, which required no more than two inches of encroachment beyond the shoulder line. This was a compromise. A sign of potentially more future deviation from the established fleet standards? Only time could reveal as much.

Tarin professionally clasped her wrists behind her back while entering the bridge and silently surveying its stations and personnel. She traversed her way down several small steps into the command well where the ship's first officer was situated in waiting. A quick glance up and down the lithe Akkadian's uniform produced a satisfied nod from the captain. "Red suits you well, Number One. Ready to begin our new journey?"

Serran was already at his station eyes flickering across the screen as he checked the readouts and power flows looking for anything that stood out or was remotely out of alignment.

Fortunately, everything was green across the board.

It was just another routine day at the office. That meant he could relax, at least as relaxed as a Vulcan could be. That didn't mean he was letting down his guard, however.

"The Captain is right, the new look does reflect positively on your appearance."

Allyndra was standing while the rest were at their stations. Like the captain as she came on the bridge, her black hair with the metallic blue streaks was tied back. "Thank you. It is a different look. I almost ended up going toward sickbay for a few seconds."

"Make sure that doesn't happen again," jested Tarin with a subtle softening of her eyes toward the former chief medical officer. "Sickbay is in good hands with Mister Nusien. Remember your new duty and tell me our operational prelim status."

"Captain, preliminary indicates full green across the board," Allyndra's voice took on a neutral professional tone.

"Acknowledged. Now let's ascertain a full report." Tarin's hazel eyes flicked to the XO's chair then back up to Warraquim's striking compound irises. "Take your new station and settle in."

"Aye, aye, captain." Allyndra made a quick attention and then did as asked. After she took the seat, she listed to each of the reports coming in.

Kalliste Bacri, Chief Warrant Officer 2, and pilot somewhat extraordinaire listened to the banter on the bridge as she casually glanced down at the board, noting that all systems were reading 'green.' It was a joy to fly such a finely tuned ship; it spoke to the abilities of those who kept the great Goliaths running. She all but bristled with excitement; she was gonna fly this ship.

Meanwhile, Ensign Sera was already well settled into her shift on the bridge. All diagnostics had been completed well before the ship was due to leave, and the last minute adjustments being performed were more minutiae than anything else. It kept the team--and herself--busy before the captain gave the order and Galileo went back on patrol.

Standing next to an auxilliary station facing toward the viewscreen, Delainey took a moment to take in her surroundings. Her eyes were naturally first drawn to the beings around her beyond the images on the viewscreen, her professional instincts inclined to take the temperature of the room. All seemed focused and professional, an understandable feeling of apprehension mixed with anticipation filling the space.

The crew had been through too much not be apprehensive, but the spirit of scientific curiosity was still strong here, and it was times like this she was reminded why she wanted to serve this ship and this crew. It was home, a ship meant for finding answers to the larger questions in science, a pursuit the scientist-practitioner in her appreciated. It wouldn't be unusual for her as chief counselor to be don the bridge as a command advisor, but it wasn't often she got to just take in the view. She allowed herself to enjoy it now, getting lost in the void.

"Sensors report nominal." Tora quipped from her console. Not that she wanted anomalies to pop up on their sensors every other minute, of course.

While the Bridge became a buzz of pre-launch operations, the ship's Chaplain entered and silently stood out of the way of everyone in both body and tongue. This was his first mission, his first official outing as a Star Fleet officer, regardless of his rank and position. He had no idea what was going on, where they were going, or what they were expected to do. However, the Chaplain's job was to minister to them and to be that check valve to prevent burn out. Spotting his boss standing next to the auxiliary station, he approached her and stood at a comfortable position behind her. For some, it was strange watching a Klingon to stand behind a much smaller human. In the back of his mind, Hovar hoped that wherever they were going, his species had not already left their mark.

Seeing Hovar approach, Delainey offered a nod and a smile. She was still getting to know him, but thus far, she knew him to be dedicated to his profession and strong in character as well as in body. Carlisle also knew him to be instinctually protective of her and she found herself as his colleague and mentor feeling the same way, particularly in light of the Mount Tarrin debacle. Hovar had acquitted himself well under the circumstances, but nearly being murdered by a crewmate at the direction of the CO represented a capital T trauma in her book, not to mention the picking of scabs concerning his heritage. She wanted to make sure he had all the support he needed, being no less deserving of it simply because he was also responsible for tending to the emotional and spiritual needs of others.

Jeysa milled about the bridge helping where she could with whatever she could even if it was just a second set of eyes on what they were doing. Eventually she worked her way over to Mimi. "So Mrs Hollenday." She said with a jovial tone, she knew Nekomi didn't take the names of their husbands. "Did you enjoy your wedding night?"

"I did," Mimi replied, she looked across at Jeysa for a few moments before returning to the mission ops console. "We had a lot of fun."

A short purview of the nearby chronometer displayed within the command consoles prompted Tarin to tug the bottom of her uniform jacket down to eliminate any wrinkles in the garment which might have been developing. She inhaled a large breath before silently exhaling through her nostrils then moved into action. Once more, into the expanse. The clock was ticking. Her gaze snapped across all primary stations before reaching down to thumb the intraship comm channel. A soft chirp sounded indicating an open communication between the bridge and the rest of the vessel's compartments.

"All hands, this is the captain. We're ten minutes out from departure from Regula I; our new orders are to travel to the Enus system located in Sector 189 Block 457 to perform detailed survey and analysis of a notable Class O planet. Estimated arrival time at warp 7 will be approximately six days and we could remain on station for several weeks or months. I hope you all enjoyed your leave because it's time to get back to work. Department heads, report status."

Having spent the last day readying for this Ullswater was sure that all of the preparations in her department had been made to her high standards. The readout in front of her seemed to agree. With a tap of her badge she called down for the final confirmation "Astrometrics, this is Ullswater. I'm seeing here that all experiments are operating on onboard power. Could you confirm all labs prepared for departure?"

"Confirmed Lieutenant all labs report ready." Selon's characteristically accented voice rang out from the console.

T'Lin responded, "As reported."

"Thank you." Good, everything as Ullswater as expected. She tapped her badge again closing the channel and turned to address Tarin. "Sciences are ready for departure Captain."

Sera reached out to Chief Naime who currently resided in Main Engineering to inquire on ship status. Sera determined everything on the board was operating within acceptable parameters, but that did not mean all was well. "Confirm, Chief Naime, that ships' systems are fully operational."

"So far so good, ensign. We are fully operating on internal power, green across the board. Hold for warp core status." Came the response over the comms. After a few second it was followed up with "Ensign, we confirm fully operational and ready for departure."

"Ship systems fully operational, captain." Sera offered once confirmation was received.

On the surface, the engineer was correct. Everything was running smoothly and fully operational.

However, Serran considered making assumptions as both dangerous and illogical. Therefore, he was constantly trying to think four or five steps ahead and plan for contingencies.

So at 0600 hours, he had initiated a Level Four diagnostic.

/=\ Mr. Aquino,/=\ he intoned with a tap of his badge, /=\ How is everything going down there? How is the diagnostic coming along?/=\

It took a moment or so, but Yasmin's voice came through the communicator.

/=\ So far so good, Sir. We had an error in the Secondary Deflector Control Bay but it was an isolinear chip that failed. It got replaced and the error was cleared. /=\

The Vulcan didn't smile, not even a hint of one. But his shoulders fell and his posture relaxed.

/=\ Very good Petty Officer. Inform me if there are any further fluctuations, anomalies, or issues. Serran out. /=\


Deck 7, Sickbay

Nusien stepped out of his office and surveyed Sick Bay as a whole. He checked in with the duty nurses and doctors. All patients that were in Sick Bay were not emergencies and everything seemed to be business as usual. He tapped his comm badge. "Bridge, Sick Bay reports ready. Nothing out of the ordinary here."

Allyndra couldn't help herself. "All supplies fully stocked and up to date?"

"Yes Commander. The Sick Bay is ready for any and all comers. But if you wouldn't mind I would prefer to have nothing to do for the foreseeable future." Nusien's almost robotic voice could be heard through the comm channel. It may have not sounded like it but this was the Edosian's version of a joke.

"Things are never that way, but I share your hope," Allyndra out.


Deck 3, Operations Office

PO3 Yasmin Aquino was a very busy woman, contrary to her life aboard the much larger ships. Her duties were much broader simply because there were only six of them, and each of them had a very specific job to do. Specifically, they were ordered to run a Level IV diagnostic, which meant that long before launch, every system was checked. Due to the nature of the diagnostic practically every system from the Computer Core to the interaction with the subspace relays were checked. For over an hour and a half, each system gradually gave the green light.

This was also not a simple "sit and wait" diagnostic as there were other duties. The cargo bays had to be secured and verified secured. Every manifest had to be reconciled so that everything was accounted for. Everyone in the department had to make sure that everything was good to go and report anything that was wrong. There was one error that needed to be addressed. Yasmin, being the smallest of the department (if not the crew) went into the Jeffries tubes to investigate the problem. Mercifully, it was just a bad isolinear chip that needed to be replaced. By the time she got back to the office, she got the call from her department head, and it was a simple reply.


Deck 7, Astrometrics Lab

After the Captain's announcement and Lieutenant Ullswater's ritual confirmation that everything and everyone was prepared for departure in the labs, Selon continued his combing over the Galileo's flight plan on the sweeping Astrometrics display. It was not the most direct course at the most rapid speed but the Pleiades made it so that certain considerations had to be taken into account. Or, so Selon assumed. While cosmology was a passion of his he made no pretense that he understood the interplay between the ship's engines and warp-core and various interstellar phenomena. Sensors themselves though, that he understood, and something was interfering with the long range scans of the last third of the Galileo's charted course.

"Is one of you running a competing scan using the Astrometric sensors?" Selon's head turned over his shoulder to address his coworkers, his fellow blonde Vulcan and the Human lab technician. "Our long range sensor resolution is dropping and I'm not seeing anything in real-time that could be effecting at the source. At least not in interstellar space..." Selon pulled up the section of the sector that was giving him trouble, the draw distance on the image resolution of it now much lower than it was when he had initially checked it.

"I have nothing," T'Lin responded.

Mateo hovered near the console he’d been assigned, glancing up at Selon's inquiry. A flicker of hesitation passed over his face—this wasn’t his wheelhouse. Hematology and histology didn’t exactly prepare you for astrometric sensor glitches. Still, his fingers tapped a few commands into the nearby interface, pulling up the telemetry logs for the last half hour.

"Not me," he said finally, his Argentine lilt softening the edges of his voice. He shifted his weight slightly, keeping his eyes on the telemetry display as if it might yield more answers the longer he stared. "My console shows no other active scans running."

He gestured toward his display. "If it’s interference, it might be external—background radiation or a stellar event bleeding in, maybe?" He shrugged, keeping his tone even. This wasn’t his expertise, but he wasn’t about to let that show too much.

"And yet there's no reading on such an event." Selon shook his head as he continued typing away at the LCARS, fumbling a bit as he tried to focus in on the Enus System, making the image rotate a few times in disparate directions. "Whatever's causing it might be causing lag in the sensor readings but I'd like to think if Kalliste was seeing the same thing she'd have asked us to confirm..." Selon pondered aloud. "We'll keep an eye on it as we get underway, maybe it's just a temporary problem."

"Aye," T'Lin responded in her usual cool self.

Mateo exhaled softly through his nose, letting his gaze drift between the rotating image on Selon's console and his own display. Temporary or not, unexplained anomalies always left a trace somewhere. He tapped a few more commands, cycling through sensor diagnostics in case something had been overlooked.

"Well, if it's temporary, it’s a real overachiever," Mateo murmured under his breath, the comment more for himself than anyone else. He straightened slightly and glanced toward Selon. "Diagnostics aren’t throwing any flags on my end either. Might be worth running a system recalibration, just to rule out a glitch before we chalk it up to space being, you know, weird."

His words were measured, his tone light, and his focus remained on the data in front of him, deliberately avoiding any impression of overstepping. He knew his input was peripheral here—more a ripple than a wave.

"We are near the Pleiades star cluster. Since that is a stellar nursery we could be picking up a particularly active event in the nebula," T'Lin commented. It was a little outside her area of expertise, but so had been sitting in the command chair.

"Our systems are keyed for running in a stellar nursery why aren't we picking anything up..." Selon mused aloud, more out of habit than inviting any actual response. T'Lin had been on the Galileo the longest but astrometrics wasn't her specialty, nor was it his or Mateo's if he was being intellectually honest. Cosmology and stellar cartography were passions of his to be sure but the nature of his 'expertise' was dubious. "We'll schedule a reboot once we're under way, if the error isn't technical in nature let's have Bross or Vala take a look at it." Selon left implied the notion that the Galileo's two competing astrophysicists should be consulted separately.

"The only Class-O Planet I've ever been to is Pacifica, what about the rest of you?" Selon asked aloud to his colleagues as he made note of the anomaly in his report.

Mateo’s fingers hovered over his console as he processed the exchange, his gaze flicking between Selon’s rotating star map and his own display. A reboot made sense—if it was a software hiccup, that would clear it up. If not, that was someone else’s problem. Either way, it wasn’t his field, and the last thing he wanted was to look like he was pretending otherwise.

At Selon’s question, Mateo glanced up, one brow lifting slightly. “Pacifica? No.” He shook his head, tapping a few idle commands as if the movement might jog a memory. “Closest I’ve been is Risa, and even that was barely a stopover.” His mouth twitched in the ghost of a smirk. “Didn’t exactly have time for the beaches—tragic, really, considering I had a brand-new speedo I never got to show off.”

He kept his tone light, but this time there was no need to feign interest. A Class-O planet? That was an opportunity he’d kill for. The sheer microbial diversity of an oceanic world, the unknown extremophiles lurking beneath the waves—just the thought of it made his fingers twitch with the urge to take samples.

“No way,” he said, his usual guarded demeanor cracking just enough to reveal a flicker of excitement. “We’re really going to Enus V?” He let out a quiet, breathy chuckle, shaking his head. “I mean, I knew the mission brief said marine biology, but I didn’t think we’d get a whole oceanic world to work with.”

He exhaled, fingers drumming against the display as his mind ran through the implications. A whole planet’s worth of microbial life, untouched, unclassified. The sheer possibility of new strains, extremophiles, biochemical adaptations—things no one had ever seen before.

“I’m calling dibs on first access to the water samples,” he added, only half-joking. His brown eyes flicked between Selon and T’Lin, gauging their reactions. “Seriously, if there’s even a hint of unique microbial adaptations, we could be looking at a major breakthrough. Some of the stuff they’ve already cataloged—” He shook his head again, the scientist in him fully engaged now.

Mateo wasn’t about to pretend he was an astrometrics expert, but this? This was something he actually knew. And, for once, it felt like he was exactly where he was supposed to be.

Selon smiled at Mateo's enthusiasm as he typed away at the LCARS interface. It seemed he had woken up quite nicely. He could remember his own enthusiasm when he was assigned to Vilmor II and an active dig on the Progenitor civilization. While the implications of studying and discovering the technology they used to seed the galaxy with humanoid life were of course astounding, it was discovering more about the... well, Progenitors, of life in the galaxy that intrigued him most. He had written entire papers, and published as a collection, his translations of Progenitor marginalia and epigraphs. Little bits, tiny scraps, of lives that could be used to tell not just individual stories but those of an entire culture, of a time eons ago.

"Fine, fine, I'll put in a word for you with Zalloah and that will mean I'll just have to fight with Owen for rock samples." A geologist he was not, but Selon knew more than enough about sediment, chemistry and composition from his archaeometry classes and guessed that was where his expertise as a scientist would be put to use on the upcoming mission.

Mateo let out a quiet breath, lips twitching at the edges. “See? Negotiation. This is how we avoid workplace violence.”

He glanced back at his console, tapping idly through Enus V’s biosphere reports. “With an entire ocean planet to pick apart, I think we’ll all get our turn.” His brown eyes flicked to Selon, a smirk still ghosting on his lips. “Guess we’re all fighting for something.”

To Be Continued...

[OFF]

--

CMDR Morgan Tarin
Commanding Officer
USS Galileo-A

CMDR Allyndra illm Warraquim
First Officer
USS Galileo-A

LTJG Serran
Operations Manager
USS Galileo-A

LTJG Delainey Carlisle
Chief Counselor
USS Galileo-A

LTJG Sofie Ullswater
Chief Science Officer
USS Galileo-A

LTJG Nusien
Chief Medical Officer
USS Galileo-A

LTJG Selon Illialhlae
Anthropologist
USS Galileo-A

ENS Mimi
Deputy Operations Manager
USS Galileo-A

ENS S'Ers-a M'Lyr'Zor
Chief Engineer
USS Galileo-A

CN Mateo Gardel
Laboratory Technician
USS Galileo-A

LTJG Hovar Kov
Chaplain
USS Galileo-A

ENS Tora Zalos
Science Officer
USS Galileo-A
[PNPC Juventus]

CWO2 Kalliste Bacri
Conn Officer
USS Galileo-A
[PNPC M'Lyr'Zor]

CPO Afthinam Naime
Engineering Officer
USS Galileo-A
[PNPC Ullswater]

PO1 T'Lin
Science Officer
USS Galileo-A
[PNPC Warraquim]

PO3 Jeysa Zeror
Yeoman
USS Galileo-A
[PNPC Mimi]

PO3 Yasmin Aquino
Operations Officer
USS Galileo-A
[PNPC Kov]

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