A Hurried Arrival
Posted on Sat Aug 30th, 2014 @ 5:48am by Captain Enalia Telvan & Lieutenant Richard Lockheart
Mission:
Something Amiss
Location: Shuttle Bay
Timeline: MD2 1025
Exiting his transport shuttle, Lieutenant Richard Lockheart pulled his backpack over one of his shoulders. The tired officer wiped a bead of sweat from his brow. "This has been one hell of a morning," he muttered to himself. And indeed it was.
Lockheart's day started only 40 minutes ago, at 8:30, a matter of fact. Checking the time on his watch upon awakening, Richard's eyes widened. The shuttle he was scheduled for had left an hour ago. Richard quickly pulled out a PADD and pulled up the shuttle schedule There was only 10 minutes until the last shuttle left for the USS Hera! Last night, when Richard arrived on the station, he set his guest room's alarm for seven o'clock. But no, it seemed that Richard was too heavy a sleeper for any alarm clock. So upon waking up, Richard started grabbing his belongings, and stuffing them into his backpack. Hoping he had packed everything he needed, Richard raced out into the hallway, pulling a PADD from a backpack pocket. He pinpointed the shuttle bay of the station, and started running down the hallway.
What a peculiar sight that would be for an observer; a stout, portly fellow with a backpack half slung over his shoulder, sweating profusely as he runs as fast as his out of shape legs can carry him. Finally, Richard reached the shuttle bay, just as his shuttle's doors were closing. He rushed over to the shuttle, and banged against the door, yelling "Let me on, I'm very important!" The shuttle doors opened, and Richard hopped on, and took a seat. The shuttle shot off into the atmosphere, and reached the Hera at 8:58, just as the ship started preparing to leave orbit.
And so, leaning against the shuttle bay wall, Richard pulled another PADD from his pack, and downloaded the Hera's map. In silence, Richard started scrolling through the map, trying to memorize the layout of the ship.
Finally, Richard started down the hallway, and onto a turbolift. "Deck 7," Richard announced, and the lift shot up through the ship. The lift stopped, and Richard stepped out. Richard walked down the hallway, until he stopped at a door. Looking down at his PADD to verify his location, Richard opened the door and stepped in.
Four people were sitting down at a table meant for eight, at the center of the room. A large chart was laid out on the table, and a large screen stood right behind the head of the table, on the left side of the room. Two doors stood in the back of the room. All four people glanced up at Richard, but quickly returned to their planning. Out of the left door, walked a female Vulcan, who looked at Richard and said "Who might you be?". Richard looked back at the woman, a quizzical look on his face. "Err... I'm Lieutenant Lockheart, the Chief Strategic Operations Officer here. A better question to ask would be, who are you?". The lady was a bit taken aback, but quickly regained her composure. "My most sincere apologies, sir. I didn't recognize you. I'm Ensign Frall, your assistant." She gestured towards the men at the table. "These are your Strategic Operations Officers. We also have a Strategist's Mate, who's working in the back."
"This is the conference room. This is where we meet to discuss department related matters. The left door leads to the work room, where we, errr... work. The right door leads to your personal office." Richard nodded to the Ensign, and gave her a weak smile. "Thank you, Ensign. Now if you'll excuse me, I have some work to do." Richard opened the door on the right, and took in the scene of his office.
In the center of the room, stood a desk with a computer on it. A chair lay on either side of the desk, the simple guest chair much less luxurious than Richard's fancy, leather rotating chair. Behind the desk, in the back, a large screen was built into the wall. On the left side of the room, there was a replicator. "Nice place," Richard muttered to himself. Placing down his backpack right next to his desk, Richard sat down. He pulled up some files from the quadrant strat ops database, and got to work. For the next hour, Richard stufied all of the files we to current military operations. He hadn't worked in that or even the quadrant before, and it would help him to get his bearings. At about 10:20, Richard realized he had something else to take care of. Getting up from his chair and moving around his desk, Richard turned and walked out of his office, and the conference room. "You keep up the good work," Richard said to his officers as he strolled out into the halls.
Now, Richard decided to go see his commanding officer. Richard wasn't looking forward to this, as he was extremely late, and almost didn't make it onto the ship before it left orbit. However, Richard needed to get his assignment, so he could start working. And so, a few minutes later, Richard was parked outside the captain's ready room. Richard rang the door chime, and waited nervously outside for an answer.
Enalia had just gotten back to her ready room and settled in to work on some reports when the door chime went off. Turning her computer off, she looked to the door and composed herself, not knowing who it could be. "Come in," she called, hoping wasn't more drama on the other side of the door. She had had her fill last night thanks to her Chief Engineer.
Richard opened the door, and stepped into the doorway. "Excuse me, Commander," Richard said, looking at her rank pips. "I'm Lieutenant Richard Lockheart, this ship's Chief Strategic Ops Officer. I arrived a bit late, and I'm hoping I could receive some information regarding our mission." Richard straightened his uniform. It wouldn't do him well to make a bad impression on his CO.
Leaning forward and motioning to the chair across from her, Enalia smiled at the Lieutenant. "Ah, my almost missing officer. I'm the Captain of this ship, Commander Telvan. Glad you could make it." Sliding a spare mission data PaDD across her desk, she continued. "There's as much information as we have for now. Basically, we're stopping behind a pulsar, a team of 4 are taking a stealth modified runabout to a Romulan prison colony, and we're retrieving an operative. Once we have the operative, we act on her data. We have reason to believe she has information on a new bio weapon of some sort that may kill millions if not more. That's the summary, anyway."
Richard took a seat in the offered chair, and read his PADD. He mulled over the information for a few seconds. This mission seemed to have very high stakes. "A Romulan prison, captain? Do we know if there are any ships guarding it? We may be walking into a trap, with cloaked Romulan vessels hidden in the prison vicinity. We can't fire any antiproton beams, or set up a tachyon net without alerting the prison. Well, Captain, the point I may be trying to get at here, is that we don't seem to have enough information." Richard tapped his PADD with is finger. "There's quite a few variables unaccounted for here."
"Oh yeah, tons of them. That's why we're scanning the place when we get there. Our sensors are technically the best in the fleet and supposedly far ahead of theirs. Either way, we can detect most of their cloaks using that new subspace tachyon array. This is an Intel ops mission. I don't expect it to go well or smoothly. I can only hope for success." Enalia said, leaning back in her chair. "maybe you can fill in some other variables for me though. What exactly does a Strategic Operations Officer do and how is it you have a full team when every other department is understaffed? We've been sent on this top secret mission with over 200 crew not even assigned, let alone aboard."
Richard chuckled a bit, but wasn't very surprised. Most didn't know what strategic operations was, so he didn't expect her to know very much. "What strategic operations does, is all of the behind the scenes planning for all of the military operations, and keeping the ship's crew informed of what's going on in the big picture. We advise flag officers on what ships go where, what enemy targets are the highest priority, and so on."
" And staff wise, strategic ops isn't a very large department. My department has only seven members, me included. It's not very hard to get a full department. The great things about strategic ops is that officers of all backgrounds can work for strategic operations. Since strategic ops is mostly planning, we need a diverse group of people. Anyone, with a bit of training, can be a half decent strat ops officer."
Thinking on what he had said, Enalia furrowed her brow in contemplation. "So you're saying anyone can plan a life or death mission in your department with a little training? I hope that training is really good. I already assigned Commander Edomar the task of planning this first part of our mission so I guess you'll have to work closely with him. Good luck though - he's a restless sort and I think he's pushing himself too hard."
Richard gave the commander a small smile. "That isn't exactly what I meant. I mean that it's relatively easy to transfer to Strategic Ops from another department. Since a well rounded advisory team is very important to planning, anyone with a good deal of knowledge in any department can be a helpful strategic operations officer, with some amount of training. Also, I think you may be able to help me fill in one of my unknown variables. You see, I've worked my whole career planet-side, at Starfleet HQ. I was caught unawares when I received my transfer to the Hera. Do you have any information onto why I, specifically, have been given this position? I figured that if anyone could help me with that question, it would be you."
"The same reason everyone else is here, I guess. You were seen as the best person for the mission set we've been assigned. Why you specifically? Odds are someone thought you would be a good match for all the rogues we've collected here. The practical experience would help your career as well. On top of that, I assume you were in a position where they could easily make you disappear like the rest of us at the very least." Enalia explained as best she could. These were only educated guesses she was throwing out, but they were the most sensible, she thought.
Richard nodded in agreement. "Indeed, those were some of the conclusions I reached, also. Well, I should probably get back to work, soon. Is there anything else you'd wish to discuss?"
"I can't think of anything. Welcome aboard." Enalia said with a warm smile.
"Thank you, Commander. I will do my best to assure that our mission succeeds." Richard smiled back, and got up from his chair. Giving the captain a crisp salute, Lieutenant Lockheart headed to the door.