Stowage

Posted on 02 Jan 2013 @ 8:15am by Chief Warrant Officer 2 Sergei Petrov

2,164 words; about a 11 minute read

Mission: Episode 02 - Resupply
Location: USS Galileo, Cargo Bay 3
Timeline: MD 15, 1230 hours

[ON]

With a PADD in his hand and a military-like march in his step, Staff Warrant Officer Sergei Andreyevich Petrov walked across the floor of the cargo bay toward the just powered down shuttlecraft. The cargo bay doors were open and the forcefield down, letting a warm afternoon breeze wisp at his full head of tan-coloured hair. His face was square, his features sharp. His athletic body was not disguised beneath his immaculately-pressed uniform, despite his cuffs being worn properly to his wrists. He looked more like a drill sergeant out of the the SFMC than a science officer, which he knew quite well. It had always bothered him that science officers were given an implicit leniency when it came to dress and protocol. That leniency particularly annoyed him when the officers failed to set the bar. The betting man that he was, he would bet that his boots were the only pair in all of science that could produce a reflection. Despite the attraction that he had for his chief, the abstruse erudite that was Maenad Panne, he resented that she wore the skirt with her uniform instead of the pants like everyone else and, much to his unspoken chagrin, he despised that she often rolled up her sleeves while she worked. He had never rolled up his sleeves. Nor would he for as long as her served in Starfleet.

The shuttlecraft was civilian, and was of a design that he had never seen before. There were two doors on either side of its cockpit module, and one large loading door on the back; he imagined that there was an access to the cargo hold from the cockpit. He stopped his march near the pilot's door and stood with his hands, one holding the PADD, behind his back, waiting for it to open. After a few more seconds there was a clicking noise, a quiet hiss, and the door snapped outward before sliding backward along a track. A single pilot stepped out down a three-stepped ladder and faced him, meanwhile a second pilot could be seen in the second seat going through what was probably a shutdown checklist.

"Welcome aboard the USS Galileo," announced Petrov with a business-like smile. His Russian accent was unmistakable.

"Thank you," the pilot said. He was almost as business-like as Petrov, but he hadn't shaven for a few days and he was half a head shorter than the 6'1'' science officer.

"I am Staff Warrant Officer Sergei Petrov," he continued, extending his hand for the crushing shake of the pilot's life. "I am currently overseeing the loading operations of the vessel's science equipment. My superior officer, Lieutenant Junior Grade Maenad Panne, regrets that she is not present to oversee the operation herself, however I can assure you that my team is well-equipped for the job."

The pilot frowned. "I don't doubt it, Pitrov,"

"Petrov," he corrected instantaneously. "I forgive you."

The pilot ignored him as he walked round to the aft of his shuttle, where several science and operations officers stood waiting. Petrov followed, hands still held behind his back, and he turned as though he were on parade, one foot moving behind to allow the other's heel to twist him right. The pilot opened a control panel beside the door and tapped a code onto the keys, reclining the cargo door upward into the shuttlecraft's roof. "There you go," the pilot said with a relieved grin.

Petrov nodded to his unloading crew to get started as he withdrew his PADD from behind his back. He pulled up the inventory display, which he began checking off as each crate was withdrawn. Each crewmember said which number it was as they exited the shuttle while Petrov verified on his PADD with a stylus. Most of the parts were materials for the bio-neural circuitry, of which many had been fried during the previous mission. There were also various scientific instruments for several of the finer elements of the department; bags of various types of soils for the arboretum, several species of plants and seeds, particular heating lambs and aeroponic equipment, sensor devices tuned to various types of spacial particles, components for the deflector array and shielding network, a supply of replacement isolinear chips, scientific replicator parts, and the list went on. He stood there beside the shuttle ramp like a robot, his posture unrelentingly straight.

"Keep it up, men," Petrov said with a smile as two operations officers carried a heavy crate of soil onto a pallet-jack.

"Couldn't we just beam this stuff to their departments?" WO Jaster complained, though she was hardly upset.

Petrov looked up, with eyes only, from his PADD while smirking. "Where would the fun be in that?"

"That's easy for you to say," she poked back at him, disappearing inside the shuttle.

Petrov chuckled quietly as he returned to his inventory. He had no sympathy for any of their complaints, but he was a friendly and jovial man whom everyone liked. Every morning he ran fifteen laps around deck four in addition to a full-body workout. He understood well-enough that not everyone could perform at his level, but he never demanded that they did, and the department knew it. Unloading a shuttlecraft and categorising its cargo took an hour at most, and the work was an inconvenience more than it was physically exhausting.

Thirty minutes had passed and most of the shuttle had been emptied. The two pilots even helped to unload some of it, passing jokes and a story about avoiding a Ferengi scam a few weeks ago. Apparently they had tried to get the pilot to sell his shuttle and all its contents for an old decommissioned Klingon Bird of Prey, but the shuttle didn't have any contents at all. The pilot had been playing around with a new sensor jamming device he had built. He had created a false reading of fifty thousand bars of gold-pressed latinum in his cargo hold, based on a piece of latinum jewelry that he had inherited from his mother. When he saw the Ferengi vessel approaching, he just scanned his ring, multiplied the reading until it reached the amplitude of fifty thousand bars of the stuff, and then projected it from his hold. "I just wanted to see if my jammer was any good," he had said. "You should have seen the faces on those Ferengi when the beamed aboard. It took me an hour to convince them that I was only joking." Everyone was laughing, including Petrov.

But it was then that the heavy cargo bay doors withdrew and everyone straightened up and stopped laughing. Lieutenant Maenad Panne strode in looking unhappy as always and like she were going to strike someone with the back of her PADD. Even the pilots seemed to steady themselves. "Report," she said to Petrov, stopping in front of him as the others returned to their work.

"The cargo will be unloaded within the next thirty minutes, sir," Petrov said, looking her in the eyes.

Panne pursed her reddened lips, then lowered her gloomy eyes to her PADD. Petrov noticed the purple beneath them, wondering if she were tired or ill or perhaps both. But she always looked sort of like this, he thought, and paid little attention to it. After a moment of studying her PADD, she brought her eyes to meet his. "The arboretum has been at me for its shipment of soils and fertilisers. Have we received them?"

"Yes sir," Petrov replied.

"Even the loess?" she asked.

"Two palettes, lieutenant," Petrov said, glancing at his PADD. "Nineteen A and B."

Maenad mouthed the numbers back to herself as she made the note on her screen.

"Podzol?"

"Twenty-one C."

"Spodosol?"

"Eleven D."

"Fertiliser; ammonium nitrate, sulphate, and sodium nitrate?"

"Yes, sir," Petrov said. "One moment," he scrolled through the inventory. "Palettes five through seven, sir."

Panne made several notes on her PADD, muttering to herself barely loud enough to be heard. She was speaking in French to herself, Petrov realised, which made him a little giddy inside. "We have also received the bio-neural components that you had requested, sir," Petrov added, feeling a little shaky but holding his stern composure.

"Oh really?" He heard the surprise in her voice, even if she tried to to seem less enthusiastic. The day before in her office when she had mentioned that they needed more than she had originally ordered , she expressed doubt that they would arrive in time. Petrov had pulled some strings to get them here in time, calling in some favours from some friends. "I'm pleased to hear that," she said, a hidden smile on her cheeks.

"Yes, sir," Petrov smiled. "They are on pallet four. I thought you would like that. I had to try extra hard to get them, but I got them."

"I do like that," she replied with a steady grin. "Well done, Mister Petrov." She tapped his upper arm with the back of her hand approvingly, then walked past him and up the ramp into the shuttle, probably to survey the work. He turned to watch her, preventing himself from looking at her hosed calves and knees. He didn't like that she dressed that way, he thought again. Why did she do it? He returned to his PADD, smiling at the personnel and edging them on with lame jokes and comments on their productivity.

Twenty minutes later, the last crate was removed, and Lieutenant Panne finally came down the ramp with the last of the receiving crew. Petrov noticed that one of her cheeks had dirtied in a charcoal grime, and her forearms had too. Of course, in order to have seen that, she had rolled up her tunic sleeves. She was smiling her funny white teeth and he welcomed her return with a closed smile of his own. She wiped the thin sheen of sweat from her forehead, smudging the grime from the crates. Shipping was dirty business, dirtier than people realised. "Is it all there?" she asked Petrov.

"Yes, sir," he replied; he had already consulted his PADD, anticipating the question.

"Good," she beamed. "That's good." She turned away from him. "Well done, everyone," she said to the crew. "Take fifteen, and begin the inventory." Lieutenant Panne spun back around to face Petrov, who had noticed that her skirt had caught some air. "Carry on," she said to him with a nod that might have also been the beginning of a bow. She then strode out of the cargo bay, pushing down her tunic sleeves as she disappeared into the corridor.

Petrov let out the breath that he hadn't noticed he'd been holding. One of these days he would tell her that she should behave more orderly around her staff, but he did not know when that day would come. She had snapped at him the day before about speaking out of turn, telling him to pass his many recommendations through the chain of command, which meant speaking to Lieutenant Cho first. He thought that she had said that for two reasons, and found it difficult for one; she probably didn't like an enlisted crewman five years older than her telling her how he thought she could do better and, second, Lieutenant Cho's temporary absence prevented him from using that chain of command that she wanted him to use - which she obviously knew. She just didn't want to hear from him anymore. But, he found it difficult to pass orders up through the chain of command because he thought that he could have been old enough to be the deputy chief's father. As such, he found himself more likely to keep his concerns to himself. That, or he would express them whenever he had the infrequent chance of speaking to Lieutenant Panne. Since Lieutenant Cho's medical leave had removed that 'middleman', Petrov had found himself suddenly thrust into Panne's magisterial presence much more often than usual, and he had taken advantage of it. But, clearly, Lieutenant Panne was getting frustrated with him.

He knew that when she had left the cargo bay she was going to her next task, but that she didn't announce where she was going he thought unprofessional. If she had said that she were heading to her office for review or to the labs for testing, anything, then she would have his full confidence. Her credentials were undeniably glowing, but actually serving with the woman was both frustrating and terrifying for him. He didn't gossip to the others about his problems with Lieutenant Panne, he liked her very much, but he wondered whether the others shared his concerns. The old adage Loose Lips Sink Ships came to mind, and he decided to keep the ship floating until he had a real reason to sink it.

[OFF]

SWO Sergei Petrov
Science Officer / Geologist
USS Galileo

Lieutenant (JG) Maenad Panne
Chief Science Officer
USS Galileo

RSS Feed