Leading the charge of the senior officers from the briefing room, Syrillian Lieutenant Morrek Shaal slipped his way past the command deck, beyond the science wall, heading down to the CONN at the forward most point of the bridge. He wasn’t even beside his station before Taren was on her feet and vacating for the Chief, knowing full well that this was his station now, and he had orders to fulfil. They shared a knowing and appreciative nod to each other, and then Shaal slipped into the seat. His fingers danced across the controls as he input his command codes and the console reconfigured to his own, familiar layout.

Pulling up the local star charts of the Breedlove’s last location, it didn’t take him long to work out the direction to point the ship in. “Heading one five seven mark six four,” he called out to anyone listening, but in truth, everyone but his assistant was engaged elsewhere in other matters to pay attention to his little idiosyncrasies. Using his knowledge of Noli, and the fact she had always trusted her people to act in their best interests, he didn’t wait for permission to engage. Shaal’s fingers moved across the controls, bringing the engines smoothly to full impulse. Now as a pilot he would normally pride himself on being able to feel the propulsion transitions of his ships, even beyond the stabilising forces of the inertial dampeners, but at first there felt like there was nothing, as if the ship hadn’t moved one iota, but then he remembered the response lag Taren had mentioned. Coming from smaller vessels that could ‘turn on a dime’ as he had been told, it was bound to feel different on a behemoth like Andromeda. There was no way she could turn in the manner Lakota or Cardenas could have. Despite what his display told him, it felt like forever, but was in fact mere seconds, before he could feel the ship turn as requested and pick up the momentum he wanted.

He glanced across at Taren who gave him a look that simply said ’See what I told you?’ And he could. Only once the ship had spun on its axis and was pointing in the right direction, picking up speed towards full impulse, did he input the commands to jump the ship to warp. In seconds, the leviathan jumped to faster-than-light speed and hurtled toward the Breedlove at last.

Nodding at the Lieutenant, the Hylaxian felt confident that the Lieutenant would be fine from now on, and bid farewell, surrendering her role as relief to the Aenar stood nearby, a last glimpse at the stars hurtling by.

Watching those same stars fly past at ludicrous speed led the Syrillian to a dream-like state for a while and he allowed his focus to drift as his thoughts travelled to the path they would take. Where would they go? What wonders would they see? Lush green planets? Ocean worlds teeming with new life? People with strange but intriguing new customs? To seek out new life and new civilisations was always the mandate of an explorer like Andromeda, and now he was here on that path for the first time. He’d be the one taking them there.

Eventually, anyway.

The turbo lift to starboard distracted him enough to bring him out of his warp-fuelled dream state as several people entered and the bridge seemed to clear. Why wouldn’t it? There was a substantial amount of time until they were due at the destination and people had things to do. Except him. On a starship as automated as his, there was literally nothing left for him to do right now. Even monitoring the ship’s course and heading took a minuscule amount of time, meaning he had little else to do but look back into the trance inducing warp stream ahead.

A voice to port had other ideas.

“I bet she’s nothing like the Lakota…”

Shaal turned his chair slightly to the left and locked eyes on the Klingon sat just feet away at the Operations station. “No, she isn’t,” he shook his head.

“You’ll get used to it eventually,” the Operations Chief spoke quietly, transfixed on his own work, not even looking up from his console in order to join the exchange.

“Get used to what exactly?” Morrek enquired, folding his arms across his chest and focusing on the Klingon in gold.

“The fact that the ship does all the heavy lifting,” K’Voran grunted, finally turning to lay eyes on his new neighbour. “Unless there is some crisis on the go, you’ll be bored out of your hairless cranium. Everything here is automated to such a degree that we could abandon the bridge and everything would still run until red alert kicked in,” the Klingon advised.

Morrek regarded the man closely. He certainly wasn’t a typical Klingon; if he was, he wouldn’t be sat at Operations on a Starfleet explorer.

“First time on an explorer?”

Morrek nodded slowly.

“Different walk of life out here, Lieutenant,” K’Voran continued. “We’ll go days without seeing anything, so you’ll get used to the boredom eventually.”

Shaal smiled faintly. “Eventually?”

“I’ve been aboard since she launched. I’m still waiting,” K’Voran shrugged, returning to his duties.

While Morrek watched with great curiosity, failing to understand what could have brought a Klingon to such a posting, Noli watched her pilot from the safety of the command chair. At first, she wasn’t sure what she was watching, but when it finally clicked, a smile crept across her face.

“You didn’t ask me…”

Shaal, confused for a moment, turned and glanced back to the Captain. “Me Captain?” He asked, drawing a nod. “For what, ma’am?”

“Permission to make it so.”

For a few seconds, the Syrillian pondered if he had made a mistake earlier, perhaps overestimating the level of trust and reliability the Captain felt for her team. Maybe he had been wrong?

Or perhaps he wasn’t.

“You told us to get there, Captain,” he told confidently, “and I’m getting us there.”

Noli’s smile turned into a full blown grin. “I did,” she nodded, “and you are, Lieutenant.”

And for the first time, she finally felt confident that she had someone not to replace her dear departed friend Henry, but to succeed him. Who knew it would be his often times grumpy Syrillian. She hadn’t, but she was glad it was.

Her thoughts were soon betrayed by the sounding of a chime from the tactical station to port, causing the Captain to plant her right foot and use the left to gently turn to the Orion tactician. Vaela Neris was already responding, hands operating the controls to work out where the disturbance had come from.

“Receiving a transmission from Breedlove, Captain,” Neris informed, glancing over her shoulder, “audio only.”

“Let’s hear it,” the Bajoran nodded, granting Vaela permission to play the message.

“Andromeda, this is USS Breedlove,” a deep voice began, “We’ve completed our scheduled patrol sweep of the Black Cluster. Nothing unusual to report at this time.”

Resting her left elbow on the arm of her chair, the Captain caressed her chin as the message passed briefly.

“We’ve begun the second sweep. Recommend you approach from the—”

Static disrupted the message, causing the Captain to sit up right once more, an urgent expression on her face.

“Odd.”

“That message was transmitted almost thirty minutes ago,” Neris turned in her chair.

Spinning away from the CONN, Morrek looked between the Captain and the Orion. “Why is that odd?”

“It took almost twenty-seven to reach us,” Neris revealed.

“Twenty-seven minutes?!” Noli inched forward in her chair, “it should have been nearly instantaneous.”

“Well that’s not good,” Morrek frowned, spinning in his chair and back to the CONN. And just like before, he pre-empted the Captain’s wishes.

“Increasing speed, warp 9.”