Keys To The Car

Posted on Thu Oct 4th, 2018 @ 4:17pm by Commander Rita Paris & Lieutenant Commander Mnhei'sahe Dox

Mission: Hera v Hera
Location: USS Hera, Deck 4, Flight Control Operations
Timeline: 2395, en route to Meroset 347

It was 18:00 hours, and the alpha shift was done for the day. 12 hour shifts with relief, but a 12 hour bridge shift was definitely not that interesting for the pilot while the starship was at warp and all was well. As she went to log out of the helm station, an message came through to report to the flight control office immediately.

Tapping her combadge, Lt. Junior Grade Melanie Dox responded. "On my way." She finished logging out of the helm and swapped places with her duty relief and made her way to the turbolift.

"Deck 4, please." She yawned slightly as she instructed the computer as to her destination. As the turbolift began it's quick trip, Dox scrunched her eyebrows slightly, lifted her arm.and took a quick sniff. It had been a long shift and she was feeling slightly less then crisp but couldn't notice any odor. Nevertheless, she shook out her arms a bit to help knock off the proverbial dust of a long shift.

It was a quick walk from the turbolift to the flight control office, but Dox couldn't help wonder what was wrong. Assuming the worst was her default mental state but she put her concerns aside as the door to the office automatically slid open with a woosh as she arrived at her destination and announced herself. "Reporting as ordered."

The fulsome first officer seated at the desk glanced up at the opening of the door, then smiled, one of those high-wattage smiles that people often claimed could light up a room. In the case of Lieutenant Commander Rita Paris, it happened to be true. Standing, she gestured to one of the chairs in front of the desk. “Excellent. Come in, Lieutenant, and have a seat, if you will. Let’s have a chat, you and I.”

“No, you are not in trouble,” Paris began as she made her way around to the front of the desk, to lean her rounded rear against it as she spoke, a habit Melanie had already noticed about the leggy lieutenant commander. “No, this is nothing negative. This is also somewhat unofficial since you aren’t on duty right now and I may or may not be. First Officer means you are never truly off duty- remember that when they offer you the promotion one day.”

Lowing her shoulders to droop slightly, Melanie was relieved that nothing was overtly wrong. She took the seat that had been gestured to and crossed her feet in front of her, sitting somewhat more relaxed then she was used to in the presence of a commanding officer. "Thank you, Commander," she said with a smile.

“So. This is off the record, Dox,” the chief flight control officer indicated. “I’m going to be shipping out shortly for an away mission to the planet. I’m sure I’ll be back, as Sonak has often pointed out that I’ve come back from far too many dangerous missions that I should never have survived, yet here I am, case in point.” Paris cocked her head quizzically, then rolled her eyes skyward. “Ah, right. Pointless discussion because you have no idea who I am or how I got here. I keep forgetting I don’t have much of a service record in these parts. Sorry.”

“Point being, I’m going to have to leave the Hera in your hands. This is an incredibly hazardous system to navigate- computer, please give me a realtime projection of the Merkoset system one meter square in front of me.” As the projection brought up the densely populated system of 347 planetoids orbiting the blue giant star. “And you will be in combat. Those wacky chariots of hHera’s can give a ship like ours a run for our money, and you will be taking on multiples. So I’m afraid that your trial by fire is going to be rather literal. No chief at the helm to take the big job- this one is going to fall on your shoulders, Miss Dox.”

“Permission to speak freely- this is just us, and this is unofficial, as I mentioned,” Paris added, eyeing the reactions of the junior officer intently.

Suddenly, Dox found herself wide awake as she stared at the projection of the system and processed everything that Rita Paris had just said. This was beyond any simulations she had ever perpared for and two quadrants away from her time piloting Runabouts on uneventful cargo runs from Starbase to Starbase. This was much more akin to her piloting the smuggling ship she grew up on in and out of asteroids, ducking Romulan scout ships cranked up to eleven. Maybe twenty.

Narrowing her gaze on the projection, Dox began mentally plotting the visible paths between the tightly spaced planetoids realizing just how tricky maneuvering the massive Nebula Class Starship was going to be. Sitting back hard in her seat, her eyes widened slightly and she let out a slight nervous chuckle. "Damn."

"We had a saying back in my day," the gold-clad commander gripped the edge of the desk as she leaned into the junior officer. "It was, 'Fire tests gold'. It's an old Earth saying about how fire would melt the impurities out of the precious metal, burning away the dross and excess material until only the purest, best of it remained."

"In Starfleet," the anachronistic astronaut continued her yarn, "it had a somewhat different meaning. If you were command track, you wore gold. And fire was out there in the galaxy aplenty, and it would test in so many ways."

"Miss Dox, you don't wear gold, but you are about to enter the fire."

"Having given you permission to speak freely, I have deliberately told you this in advance, because I am giving you the full range of reaction to this news, here and now. In short, you have my full permission to freak out now." While she might have made it sound sarcastic, somehow Rita Paris managed to make her statement come across as an indulgence.

Chewing the inside of her cheek nervously, Dox fidgeted in her chair. Freaking out was a form of emotional outburst that was not well received growing up and so she tended to internalize such feelings. After a lifetime of doing so, she bristled at the thought of losing her cool again in front of her new First Officer like she did in their first meeting. But the situation she had just been presented with was overwhelming to say the least and she struggled to form a reaction that encapsulated the moment properly.

"This is about as freaked out as I know how to get, Commander." Dox replied. "This is... terrifying. I'd be full of... I'd be lying if I said It wasn't and I don't see any point in doing that. A waste of both our time. But..." The tense pilot felt like Paris was looking for some specific reaction, but she had no clue what that expectation was so she just let out what she was thinking. "I'm scared. I am. But it's not going to stop me from doing my job."

The more she talked, the more the nerves in her stomach turned into a kind of anger. It was the kind of anger she didn't like to admit that she LIKED. It was the kind of anger that helped her focus and see past obstacles. The kind of anger that kept her alive as a 13 year old piloting smuggling ships across the neutral zone. Dox leaned forward in her chair, her nerves gone. "Whatever I have to give here, it's going to this ship. Whatever I can do I'll do."

"All right then. I didn't want you ambushed by this assignment, which is why I am telling you here and now. I'm not going to tell you how to fly this one- I've seen your skills and I know you can do this. You're taking the big girl into dogfights, evasive maneuvers around erratic orbits.... I mean, look at the axis wobble on this one?" Paris pointed to a large jagged planetoid that spun at a surprising speed one a very broken axis orbit.

"I have utmost confidence in you. For this mission it's primary bridge duty, under the direct command of the captain. Remember, don't call her sir, whatever you do. Out there tomorrow I'll bet she fights like a pirate, so be prepared for some interesting dirty tricks." The big blonde straightened up and eyed the junior grade lieutenant archly. "This will be your moment, Miss Dox. The one you've been preparing for your entire life. Your one moment in time, when you're racing with destiny."

The serious expression couldn't hold, and Paris grinned. "Make me proud tomorrow, okay?"

"You'll have a ship to come back to, Commander." Dox replied with the Stern look still on her face and her mind racing. "What do we have on these Chariot things? I should review whatever we know before tomorrow."

Producing a PaDD from her desktop, the commander flipped it around in a practiced motion to hand it to Dox. "This is the telemetry from the third decoy probe- the ones with warp signatures and lifeform bluffs, to see what the response time was. Which was surprisingly fast. The last one got some good scans of weaponry and firing rates, so this is what we've got."

"All right, Dox. I apologize for assuming you'd shit yourself like I would have in your shoes. Apparently I shouldn't have bothered you with it. You're free to go do what you do." The first officer levered herself back off the edge of the desk and moved back around it so take a seat again.

"Thank you, Commander." Dox took the PaDD and brought it close to her chest, pausing Midway through standing up only to sit back down. "I don't... I don't know what's going to happen tomorrow. And I'm going to do my best to keep her flying. But... This is your ship." Dox but her lip slightly fighting back a desire to lock back down. "What would you do?"

The expression on the face of the out-of-time officer softened as she looked over the desk at the untested lieutenant. "Evade. Use the orbit paths and surf the gravitates for slingshots and tight turns. Use the multitude of obstacles not as a hindrance for you, but a hazard to them as they pursue. Drop your torpedoes for effect. Laying them in the path of a starship works far better than at them unless you are charging them, riding in the receding shockwaves like I showed you. Use your sensors to jam theirs, coordinate with science for telemetries on the fly, hide you while you run to their flank..."

Cocking her head, Rita Paris leaned onto her desk, clasping her hands before her. "I wasn't going to tell you how to fly out there, yet here we are. For the record, you are incorrect, Lieutenant Junior Grade Dox. This is NOT my ship. I'm just a pilot like you who stepped up for the next rung in my career. This is Captain Telvan's ship. And she knows her better than anyone. You're going to be on her bridge tomorrow, and she will likely have a few ideas. But don't be shy, trust your instincts, communicate and always remember those four magic words."

"With the captain's indulgence."

"Say that and pull it off and all will most will likely be forgiven," the seasoned officer advised the rookie. "Besides, I've only been CFCO form a month and a half maybe? Stupid stardate calendar I still can't get the hang of. But she's hardly my lady. I got to dock her. Once."

The expression on the face of the junior officer had journeyed from tired to anxious to stern and back to anxious and was now settling back to just being tired. With the adrenaline of learning what mission was ahead of her starting to wear off, Dox felt herself begin to relax a little. "Thanks, Commander." She said casually.

"I've lived our here most of my life, but I've never... I've only ever read about missions like this at the academy." Dox gestured slightly with the PaDD in her hand. "And you're right, I don't really know much about your life other then what's in your public personnel file. But your experience with encounters like this... For lack of a better descriptor... is..." She paused briefly, trying to encapsulate a scenario she had only ever imagined, and shifted the subject slightly.

"My father... he's human. And has a kinda obsession with the frontier expansion period of history. The Old West. He thought of himself in those terms and would go on about these old contests called rodeos." She stood up and began walking around the back of her chair, partly acting out the motion of horseback riding.

"I don't know if you've ever read about it. But these people would try and ride these completely crazy aggressive horses and bulls, desperately trying to just hang on for a few seconds. Like, 10 seconds or something." Dox turned back towards Paris, a bit more animated. "And it was never NOT dangerous... but the best riders learned how to hang on through all the bucking anyway and..." She trailed off slightly realizing she was rambling. "Sorry. I guess that's a long way to go to say that it feels like you know how to hang on. So, thank you." Dox looked down at the PaDD in her hand. "I'm trying to learn whatever I can about that, and I appreciate your patience with me."

The smile on the face of the first officer was genuine, and not unkind. “Yes, I know about the old west… kinda been there once… and I know what a rodeo is, so I understand what you’re saying. They still taught horseback riding as an elective at the Academy back in my day, and I was actually on the Equestrian Team. So I’ve been thrown from a horse plenty of times, and I’ve got the broken bones to prove it.”

“Hanging on is important, yes- but you will get thrown. Since we’re running with this analogy, the trick is to get back on the horse again. You won’t dodge every incoming and you won’t make that close scrape every time. The trick is to get back on and keep telling that crazy bucking bronco where to go.” Somehow in that moment is was not that difficult to picture the blonde bombshell astride a mythical animal of old earth, with a straw hat perched on her head.

“As for my patience, once upon a time I was not unlike you Miss Dox- a junior officer waiting for her chance to prove herself, and terrified that all those years of hearing I wasn’t good enough and that I wasn’t the officer for the job and that I should just stay close to home were right. And I’m here today to tell you that voice is a liar.” Paris opened her hands and spoke with them as she explained.

“You’re good, Dox. On sheer skill alone you’re a better pilot than me, and I don’t mind saying so,” the anachronistic astronaut admitted. Which, in Melanie’s experience, was unheard of- no pilot ever admitted to someone else, particularly a junior officer, that their skills surpassed their own. Yet here sat Rita Paris, larger than life, doing just exactly that. “I believe in you not because I have to- Ensign Gonadie is a remarkable pilot, and she could handle this mission. But this is your time, and I know that if I put you on that bridge tomorrow, you’re probably going to get a medal for what you do for the Hera. That’s the confidence I have in you, and frankly I think you need to hear it.”

Accepting praise of any kind was extremely difficult for Dox, but she was working at trying to change how she thinks. In particular, how she thinks about herself, and she was learning that Rita Paris did not hand out praise of any kind lightly. Nevertheless, she blushed and hoped the eagle-eyed First Officer hadn't noticed, even though her limited experience on the USS Hera was quickly demonstrating to her that was a futile hope. Something she smiled about realizing that she was becoming okay with that.

"Thanks. I'm..." Dox paused for a slight moment thinking strongly on her words and speaking from the heart. "I really appreciate it." She thought about rambling further, but decided to not try and overcompensate and just stay with what she felt.

“You’re welcome. As for me and getting to know me, I’ll tell you what. A little game one of my old CO’s used to play was 20 questions. You ask me, I ask you and we get to know one another better. Builds bridges when you can see another officer as a person with a history, hopes and dreams farther than just a rankest above yours that you don’t always understand because you can’t predict anything about an anomaly. So,” Paris rapped the desktop twice, gently. “When I get back from this away mission and we’re settled down a bit, you and I will exchange a little information and get to know one another a bit better. Not a requirement, not an order, just a suggestion. Aye?”

Six years stationed on remote and lonely Starbases, and Melanie Dox had rarely tried to engage personally with her other crewmates, as they were even more rarely found reaching in her direction. But she was quickly learning that the Hera was something special. As was her crew. "That would be really nice, Commander." Dox said with a wide and open smile as she ran her fingers back across a loose strand of hair that had popped out. "And all the more reason to keep the Hera in one piece."

That got a peal of laughter and a cheery grin as a response. “Well, hopefully there are plenty of other reasons, Lieutenant. But yes, I’d like that. You’re going to go far in Starfleet if you aren’t careful, Miss Dox. Part of my job is to prepare you for it, just as the officers in my career did for me.”

“So, anything else before I hand you the keys to the car, as they say?” The exact statement made very little sense, but the spirit of the statement still shone through.

"No, Commander." Dox replied, thinking about the anachronistic comments that the friendly First Officer peppered into almost everything she said, realizing that she was certain to learn far more on this ship then she had ever imagined. "Thank you."

“You are welcome, Miss Dox,” the old-school officer offered. “Go eat, drink and be merry, and get yourself a good night’s sleep. You’re part of the crew of the Hera, and tomorrow we’ll make history… that most folks will never know or read about. But we’ll do our part to make the galaxy a better place. And you are a part of that. Now go on, go have a little fun tonight.”

Fun wasn't even sort of on Dox's mind, but she considered the First Officers words for the briefest of moment. She knew it wasn't an order but it was a suggestion she felt it was a smart idea to take. She still had plenty of time to review the PaDD before the mission and being exhausted and tense wouldn't be good at the helm. "Thank you commander, I think I will. Good evening."