=Admiral’s Office: 0820=
“Is the coffee agreeable, Admiral?”
Looking up from her desk with a smile, she responded, “It’s delightful and delicious, Sovalek. Thank you for going on that little fetch quest for me. The rumors of just how good Beans’d It’s coffee tastes are well-founded. Sit and have some with me, let’s chat for a few minutes.”
The young Vulcan man sat down at the desk across from Tondro, and served himself a cup of the strong black liquid. It had been explained to him that Admiral Tondro was familiar with her underlings, but over the last few days, he had come to realize this was a severe under-selling of the situation. Sovalek had seen her use the same friendly camaraderie with both Commodores and Chiefs alike.
“I understand you have some studies today?”
“Yes Admiral. This morning I will listen to an Advanced Particle Physics lecture, before assisting Captain Callahan with assigning incoming crew to the appropriate quarters. The latter at his request, and only if I had the time, which I do.”
Tondro nodded, taking another sip of the coffee with a satisfied sigh. “I don’t mind you helping out the command staff, Cadet. In fact, I’m glad you’re putting yourself out there as someone who wants to be of service. It looks great on your jacket for your midshipman’s cruise. But as a word of caution, none of the Squadron, except perhaps Commodore Boyle, know what a yeoman does. So they’re going to…”
Sovalek picked up where she trailed off, “I assume that they will begin to believe that I may be counted on to do the administrative tasks that none of them wish to do, as the…I believe the human phrase is ‘low man on the pole.’ I have noticed this, Admiral.”
“Yes, that. And bluntly Sovalek, that’s not your job. Help the senior staff, yes. If you have time and don’t have anything else you’re assisting me with. You’re my yeoman, not yeoman to the entire ship. We have a quartermaster, and a chief of operations. Anything not falling to them is supposed to fall to the Executive Officer to complete.”
“I have familiarized myself with the various departments, as well as what areas they oversee, ma’am,” Sovalek responded.
“Good! I’m glad to hear it. What do you think of the coffee?”
Sovalek took another sip and pondered for a moment. “It is better than the coffee that is served at the Academy.”
~*~
=Liftoff Lounge: 0900=
“Cadet, do you have a moment?”
Sovalek turned from the table where he’d been setting out the coffee carafes and various mugs. He’d been instructed to grab the mugs that had the Ride’s ship patch on them, but had taken the liberty of replicating several with the various patches/insignias of all of the ships in the Squadron.
“Did you need assistance, captain Nushif?”
She smiled at him. Most new cadets wouldn’t do their homework enough to know to call a Bajoran by their first name, and not their last name. She liked him already.
“It’s a minor thing. Does the Ride have a Cetacean Operations department?”
“No, sir. The Ganymede does though.”
“Thanks Cadet,” Nushif said with a smile. Turning to take her seat next to Julian, she added, “You owe me ten credits.”
Sovalek exhaled and returned to setting the coffee up.
“Don’t let them rile you up, cadet. Ribbing cadets is a time-honored tradition. And you may be the new kid, but you’ve got the Admiral’s ear.”
Sovalek looked up at the woman with an arched brow. “Thank you for the advice, Lieutenant Gutierrez. I will admit that your presence at this meeting has me perplexed, as you are not a commanding officer of one of the Squadron’s starships.”
“Wow you don’t pull punches do you kid? I’m just as confused as you are. And probably much more hungover. But I suspect it’s because I had a lot of dealings with the Cardassians when I was stationed on the Mumbai. I’m not exactly an anthropological expert, but I know how to get them off your tail when needed.”
“Interesting,” Sovalek said as he continued his setup. “The Cardassians are not the only potential antagonists within the Thomar Expanse however. Do you have experience with Breen or Tzenkethi diplomacy, Lieutenant?”
“A little,” she smiled, taking a sip from her mug. “Probably not nearly as much as the Admiral. To be frank Cadet, I think Admiral Tondro asked me here because the science chiefs on the other ships were busy getting their labs set up. We were lucky that our last mission had a lot of travel time, so I was able to get that taken care of a week ago.”
Nodding, but not looking at her, Sovalek responded, “Understood.”
The table stood as Admiral Tondro walked into the Lounge.
“Sit, please. I haven’t stood on ceremony in a hundred years, let’s not start now.” She sat at the table, smiling at Sovalek as he placed a mug of coffee in front of her, and began handing them out to the assembled crew.
“So. The Thomar Expanse. Cardassians, Breen, Tzenkethi, probably a few Ferengi thrown in the mix just for some added spice. Then we’ve got the Rolor Nebula, and Free Haven. If the fact that this area is dangerous comes as a surprise to any of you, then…I guess read your mission briefs better.”
She pressed the console in the middle of the table, and a large starchart popped up as a holographic display.
“The immediate area of the Expanse is pretty tight, but we won’t be spending much time there. Our goal as it stands now is to go out past Ultima Thule, and explore the actual Expanse itself, not the narrower Breen-Tzenkethi Corridor, or this little bit past the Badlands.”
“Do we have any sense of what’s beyond Ultima Thule?” Captain Callahan asked.
“No, and in fact we’re calling them the Unknown Regions at this point,” Tondro responded. “Or at least a bunch of officers are. I don’t know if it will stick or not.”
“Eliot comes to mind,” Julian said, taking a sip of his coffee.
“A lot of things come to mind, Julian. What should be first and foremost though is the potential for discovery. We are a squadron of four ships with a science-leaning crew roster. Over the next week while we’re here at Deep Space 47, I want your science teams to start ensuring that you have the bandwidth to not only do generalist work, but to do detailed scientific research.”
She looked directly at Tabitha, and continued, “You, Lieutenant Gutierrez, will be the exception. Largely because as the smallest ship in the Squadron, I’ve got other ideas for you. So. Captains, talk amongst yourselves and figure out how to work together to facilitate this order. Tabitha, let’s chat in the booth over there.”
As the two sat in the nearby booth, mugs of coffee in hand, Tabitha could only be thankful that she’d stopped to see T’Vel before heading to this meeting, to get something for her splitting hangover. She had a feeling it was about to return.
Tondro gave the woman a conspiratorial grin, pulled out a small silver flask with the Starfleet Delta on it, and tipped some of the contents into her mug, before handing it over.
“A little hair of the dog that bit you, as the saying goes, Lieutenant.” Tondro watched as Tabitha cautiously accepted the flask, and only followed suit when she took a sip.
“Atta girl. So…the Sevastopol is a pretty small ship, she doesn’t have the decks on decks of science capacity the Ganymede and the Ride do, but she’s fairly good at scouting ahead for trouble, as well as generalist science work, would you agree?”
“I…actually yes ma’am, I would agree. That’s a fairly succinct description of the way a Rhode Island class goes about its business. We scout out ahead, bring information back, study what we can and report when more teeth are needed from a tactical or scientific standpoint.”
Tondro nodded, taking another sip of her coffee. “You were aboard the Mumbai when she was studying the Typhon Expanse, yes?”
“Well, some of the scientists were. I was mostly filling out reports and doing…other administrative duties, Admiral.”
“Tabitha, it’s fine. You can say you were running the department because Commander Lacey wanted to go on every away mission, and Admiral Sorin had effectively shelved you. I ask because the Ganymede and Santa Fe have their own assignment. They’re to be the advanced scientific platform of our squadron. I want the Sevastopol, and more specifically you, to be the front man. I want you to go out and find the weird things, the stellar anomalies, the odd nebulae, the things that you maybe can’t research in depth, but by God aren’t they so fascinating that someone should be looking into them?”
Tabitha closed her eyes for a moment, and said, “So…you want the Sevastopol to start searching for the unknown, in the unknown, studying what we can, and logging what we can’t for further study? Sorry, I think I caught the gist ma’am.”
With a more boisterous laugh than Tabitha was expecting, Tondro responded, “You did! I don’t get to be a young scientist anymore, Tabitha. I have reports to file, people to lead, a squadron to manage. You though…this is the beginning of your career, and you’re floating out into the Pacific Ocean on a dinghy. Doesn’t that sound exciting?!”
“Sounds a little suicidal. Uh, sorry ma’am.”
“Don’t apologize for wit. Anyway, finish your coffee, get back to your ship with Julian, and let’s start making waves.”
=Main Engineering, USS Sevastopol: 1300=
“So run this by me one more time, Tabi. You want to do what with the long-range sensors?”
“Increase throughput,” she responded, as she punched commands into the console. “Right now they’re doing the work we need them to do, but if we’re going to be the ones flying ahead of the Ride, and cataloguing every weird thing we find out there, we need to be actively searching for weird things. So we’re going -”
“Right,” Jon interrupted. “I gotcha. Okay, so right now we’re wasting about forty percent of the array’s available bandwidth resampling baseline stellar emissions. I can build a dynamic spectral map, so we stop asking the same questions we already have answers to. Or, I can move the first-pass spectral analysis out of the long-range sensor processors. That way, we could compress the data after extraction, instead of sending the entire raw sweep through the iso bus.”
Tabitha thought for a moment, and responded, “What if we use the secondary deflector array as a phase controller? It should have enough power to establish a coherent subspace reference field out to several light-minutes. If we can synchronize the sensor array to it, we can use it as a carrier for the sensor pulses.”
“Yeah…yeah actually, that’s a good call! Then we can use the secondary deflector as a giant sensor amplifier. We could even try to have it generate a controlled subspace gradient, and then collimate the long-range sensor carrier. We just can’t run the thing at full power while we’re doing it.”
“Jon, this might actually work…”
Smiling at the young woman with a friendly clap on the back, he responded, “Not might. It’s gonna work. Let’s go.”
