Danny had invited a few of the senior staff for dinner on the station. He had ordered the crew of the April to stand down, and cancelled all duty shifts after their detainees and passengers had been disembarked. Mostly to allow his overworked crew to have at least a day and a half of downtime, and to allow them to pack their things and prepare to board the Trenton when it arrived.

Around the table at the chic Bajoran cookhouse was his Beluga XO, the senior helmsman Lasage, and Cdr’s Ingram, Fields and Aruin. He wanted to get his most senior ‘redshirts’ together so they could discuss how best to hit the ground running with their new assignment, but also to surprise them with a chance to see their new ship in action.

After one of the wait staff had taken their orders and delivered the first round of drinks to the table, Wong cleared his throat, “So I figured since I lured you all here under the guise of a simple dinner, when you all probably know I wanna talk shop, why don’t we get that out of the way first. Has everyone reviewed the info packet I sent out last night,” after noting the nods in the affirmative he continued, “great, so first thing I guess we should discuss is the staffing situation, we’ll be merging with a newly formed crew, and by the sounds of things we won’t have a whole lot of time to work together before we’re given a mission. Does anyone have any objection to the XO and I sending out a duty roster with prospective senior staff members all assigned to shift lead roles within their departments for the first week or so, to allow us to evaluate our new team and put the right people in the right jobs?”

All except Lasage signaled they didn’t object, “High do not h’object to the premise mon capitan, but for safety h’raisons I find hit ‘ard to h’accept the lack of a designated Chief Navigator, h’and heim h’also curious has too dee plan foor co’hordinating dee h’efforts of da Flight Control department hand dee fighter h’wing, sar.”

“That’s a reasonable concern Lt. Until we identify how best to organize the Flight Con and Nav sections, the XO can look after the command and safety aspects of helming the ship.” Wong paused to take a sip of his drink.

“You’ll find I’m a firm but fair boss, my flying francophone friend.” Mee IH chided.

“You’re not firm at all, about anything, or in any way. Don’t even ever with that.” Aruin added, as she began to tickle him un his fin.

“Oh, so you think can insult me and just make up for it with tickles eh?” The genetically pudgy Beluga and the El-Aurian withdrew her hand.

“Hey, I didn’t say stop.” The XO squeaked.

Danny, who knew that Lasage had never served on a carrier before, used the Lieutenants second concern as a segway,  “As for the coordination with our wing, the common procedure and protocol on fleet carriers is to have the on duty helm watchstander be responsible for liaising with the hangar control center about launch timing and authorizations, and for the the hangar to directly coordinate and authorize landings and recovery, in coordination with your department. Vaughn, how’s our wing looking?”

“A bit on the light side, currently the Trenton has about a dozen shuttles, five runabouts, and six of the Block 3 C-Model Peregrines embarked. We’ll have our shuttle complement filled out and a full squadron of Valkyries transferred to us when we arrive at Starbase 84. The Peregrines and the Tactical Transport Squadrons are fully staffed, and we have another dozen or so unassigned flight crew. I’d like to use all the runabouts aside from the Irrawaddy to form an adhoc group to support the wing as command or motherships, scouts, CSAR birds, and even light bombers, but that will leave only a small pool of pilots for general duties.” Vaughn shrugged.

“We’ll be receiving additional crew when we arrive at Starbase 84 along with the birds, until then, what do you think Mee IH, backfill with some of the excess from flight control and volunteers?” The Captain asked the nearly 600 pound ‘little’ Beluga.

“Yeah that works, we can get you some help down in the hangar. Between the Trentons current crew and ours, we’ve got eleven Navigators. We don’t lack for fly guys so far.” Mee IH slapped Vaughn on the shoulder with a flipper.

“H’only rilly need five h’or six wit a tree shift rotation.” Lasage added.

“Perfect. Berthing and duty rosters working out otherwise Number One?”

Mee IH sipped his drink from a long flexible straw, “Mostly. Quarters are easy, big ship, plenty of room. With us added to the manifest it’s enough for a fully operational staff. I mean a few blueshirts will be working as technicians in engineering, and some redshirt ensigns will be assigned to operations and maintenance teams, but nothing wildly outside of anyone’s specialties, it’s not like we need to steal nurses from the Doc’s staff to run the computer core or anything. Trenton will have 429 crew and 34 cadets out of an authorized strength of 650. That’s not counting Jake’s team though.”

Wong, recognized that this was actually the first time that he’d heard Mee IH refer to Cdr Jake Fields as anything other than ‘Commander’ or ‘That intel goof’. It was progress, and Wong continued to hope that the unpleasantness between them had ended.

“We can expect another 40 with the Valkyrie squadron, and another 80 or so, mostly Medical staff and engineers at Starbase 84.” Wong turned to Fields.

“So, I guess congratulations are in order Commander. I’m not an expert on the Intelligence Directorate hierarchy, but I assume a Special Mission Unit Commander ranks a Team Leader?”

Fields took the jest in stride as always, “Thanks. But apparently some high falutin staffer in the Head of Operations’ office liked Intel’s In Extremis Team idea, was impressed by the results from a few of them, including mine, and decided to play his trump card, brought the whole kit and kabooble under the auspices of Starfleet’s Joint Operations Command. I’m still the one in charge, but I don’t work for Intel directly anymore. We’ll be attached to the Trenton, receive transport and tactical support from your wing, and continue to serve as a forward deployed, all-domain contingency force.”

“Can’t say I’m sad you aren’t taking orders from the blackshirts anymore, but your teams three times the size and looks fairly high speed, some serious star power there.” Mee IH rubbed his white furry chin against the backrest of the chair. He had read the bios on Fields additional team members, some highly decorated combat veterans, several ‘special forces’ types, some top tier medics(one was literally trauma surgeon), a quasi-famous warp field theorist in his science element, and 2 officers Starfleet Diplomatic Corps, one of whom also carried the title of ‘Ambassador-At-Large for Interstellar Trade’.

“It’s basically me, two diplomats, two scientists, 2 doctors, and a small platoon of door kickers and bodyguards, truth be told. But we’ll need it where we’re going.” Fields said he took a sip from his mug, but slowly put it down as he noticed everyone’s eyes on him, “What?.”

“Wait, what do you know about where we’re going? We haven’t even been assigned a mission, or even a homeport. What are you holding out on us chump?” Mee IH harangued his fellow Commander. Having a home port was common for carrier groups, and almost necessary for the Alita’s one due to their resupply limitations.

“You’re right, we don’t have those partner, but what we do have is our roles. The Trenton has been named the Crisis Response Vessel, Coreward? Right? My team has been told that we will be the Forward Deploy Team, Coreward. I think we know where we’re going.” Fields replied in his country twang.

It dawned on Ingram first, as he followed the news almost daily as a part of his morning routine.

“You think we’re going to the Latinum Rush? I heard a Starfleet ship got ambushed, captured, and is now being used by pirates preying on the miners.” Ingram remembered reading a story from the week before.

“Stop reading tabloids, there’s been no confirmation that it’s been captured and being used by the pirates. And it’s not just latinum, those star systems have also had big tritanium, neodymium and dilithium strikes too. But that whole area is getting pretty sporty, from Freecloud all the way to the Hodian Belt where the resource rush is happening is seeing a flood of prospectors, minors, surveyors, pirates, mercenaries, Ferengi, Kzinti, you name it, all wanting their piece of it.

“That’s not what Lizzy’s guest said last on her show last week. He’s the first mate on a freighter and said that they were attacked by a ‘beat up looking Norway Class’ ship. Jeez, I thought you intel types always watched the tabloids for leads, or new ideas” Ingram winked at Fields.

“I prefer evidence over testimony. But that whole area is getting pretty sporty, from Freecloud all the way to the Hodian Belt where the resource rush is happening is seeing a flood of prospectors, minors, surveyors, con artists, pirates, mercenaries, Ferengi, Kzinti, you name it, all wanting their piece of it. Betcha a silver dollar that’s where they send us.”

“Decent deductive speculation I’ll give you that.” Wong wasn’t much of a newsy, but even he had heard of the mini resource rush in a string of relatively young stars that were still in the process of separating from their parent nebula, that had brought tens of thousands of people and countless starships and businesses(legitimate or otherwise) to the survivors that was roughly 50 lightyears Rimward of Coppelius.

“So what were you saying about getting a look at our new ship boss?” Mee IH asked.

“Well, in about 5 minutes, the bartender has agreed to put the camera footage from the training range on that display over there. The Solvang and our new ship are going to perform some tactical training as a part of her final yard certification. And get to watch.” Wong pointed at a large six foot by eight foot display on the wall a few metres to the right of their table.