Bridge Duty

Posted on Mon Nov 23rd, 2015 @ 7:13pm by Captain Charybdis MacGregor
Edited on on Sat Apr 28th, 2018 @ 9:52pm

0 words; about a 1 minute read

Mission: Taking Chances
Location: USS Bonne Chance, Deck One, the Bridge
Timeline: 2265
Tags: Bridge,Duty,Ak'Ahar,O'Neil,Dover

Her internal process had run and she had debriefed herself on the experience, so she should have been fine. Study a few more hours in case she really was taking that Chief Engineer's exam tomorrow, get some sleep, get up bright and early to take in a jog or something and then off to the Bridge for that 0800 date with destiny... for whatever Suval had in mind for her.

Complaint typed up and prepared to file, backup created.

Engineering files opened, but she found she wasn't really that interested, so that only occupied a couple of hours.

Deck 6 paced for an extra hour, but it didn't help her unwind.

She took a 'Hollywood shower', but that didn't help either, surprisingly.

Charybdis was beginning to come to the suspicion that she was nervous. Which was insane... she never got nervous. She was in control of herself, of her fate. She made her choices, she knew what she was doing, and the Vulcan Chief Science Officer wanted to rattle her was all. So she couldn't let him- it was that simple. She didn't get nervous... she made other people nervous.

Then why couldn't she sleep?

Not that she needed sleep, per se. She could operate at considerably efficiency with much less sleep than the Starfleet schedule allowed, and she was well rested from the day before. So it wasn't that she needed the sleep; she just wanted to be fresh for the day was all.

Briefly she considered going to look up Commander Ak'Ahar about this... he was bound to be asleep at this hour, she imagined, and besides, this wasn't something to bring to him. He could definitely help her work off some nervous energy though... no, dammit, she was not nervous! But contemplation of the idea did give way to another 'Hollywood shower'.

Just. Couldn't. Sleep.

Sickbay might have something to put her down for a few hours or relieve the anxiety... now that was downright ridiculous, because she most definitely was not suffering from anxiety; that was absolutely preposterous. And besides, she really very much wanted to avoid the... thing that lived in Sickbay. Thinking about it made her shudder involuntarily.

A late-night jog in the gymnasium worked up a sweat and got her blood pumping, but afterwards when she had showered and tossed herself down on her luxuriant bed, she just tossed from side to side and ended up lying on her back, staring at the ceiling.

Still couldn't sleep.

At 0400 she gave up, dropped herself into her desk chair and designed a simple clip-on magnifier for the tiny monitors that should be simple to manufacture while they were refitting at the Starbase. She inspected the duty manuals for all eleven separate posts on the Bridge, familiarizing herself with the basics, memorizing their locations and committing an overview of their operations to memory. It would take more in-depth study for her to be proficient with any of the stations other than Science and Engineering, but she at least had some idea now what was where... enough to not look incompetent, certainly.

She studied the Science Officer Bridge duty operations manual, and committed it to memory so that she could spout it back if need be to anyone who quizzed her... because it was highly likely that Suval would do just that.

Donning her uniform Char inspected herself to insure that she was flawless... and she was. She brushed out her hair, sprayed on a little Pon Farr and headed to breakfast. Staying up all night may not have been the wisest of choices, but at least she could start her day with coffee, scrambled eggs, biscuits and gravy with bacon.

At 0740, Charybdis tossed what was left on her breakfast plate into the recycler. She wasn't hungry, and had only picked at her food. That was never a good sign... food was one of the things she rather took delight in, and being off it was a sign of just how far off her personal equilibrium was today.

She couldn't help it, though. Bridge duty, 0800, it had even been on the duty roster... not 0700 for the first shift as one would presume, but 0800.

Being on the Bridge didn't faze her... she was familiar with the systems and controls of the both the Science and Engineering stations from previous investigations, and she had at least a passing familiarity with all of the stations now. In fact, she could probably serve a shift on any of them given a few moments of research. Duty wasn't that difficult, after all; it was performing the more in-depth tasks associated with any of the stations that made the officer. Aboard the Antares she had occasionally been short-handed enough to have to essentially run the entire bridge, at times with only one other officer on deck, and it had not been much of a chore.

Although in battle that would be something else entirely. And the Bonne Chance was not the Antares. This was the top of the line, most technologically advanced starship in the known galaxy. She somehow doubted that she could do the same with this vessel, even orbiting a Starbase, forget about in a battle. Though now that she thought about it, all of the ship's systems could be rerouted to helm or engineering control, and in theory...

She was ready for her confrontation with Suval today. She was a bridge officer... she would be cool, calm, collected, she would give as good as she got, she wouldn't take his sneering condescension... well, that wasn't really fair. It would be more fun if he actually sneered instead of just staring blankly while being a jackass and claiming that he felt nothing.

Stop it.. stop it right now. Do NOT get yourself fired up and prepare for a fight with him, because that's exactly what he wants. If he can show the command that you are this insane emotional feral child then he wins, so today you will be the ultimate professional. You will show them what you can do and follow the rules and not go above and beyond and just do what you are supposed to do, nothing else. No drawing undue attention, just blend in with the Bridge crew, nothing to see here, just another boring blue skirt.

She sucked in a long sharp breath and let it out slowly, drawing the unwitting attention of the Commander also waiting for the turbolift beside her.

"Nervous?" asked a deep rich baritone from above her, and for the first time she noticed Commander Ak'Ahar standing next to her... she wondered how long he had been there while she had been lost in thought. She nodded slightly, embarrassed that it was the XO and that he had caught her like this, and she was saved from more commentary by the arrival of the turbolift.

"Don't be," said the huge Capellan as he stepped into the turbolift and took hold of the control handle. "Deck one. First shift on the Bridge can be a little daunting, but you'll do fine. Captain's off the ship at the moment in meetings with the Admiralty, and we're basically running on autopilot here, so your greatest opponent will most likely be boredom."

That and my immediate superior, she thought to herself. He was bound to be up there already and have Janus knew what lined up for her to do, but she would deal with it. She briefly flirted with the idea of stopping the turbolift, overpowering the hulking Executive Officer, having her way with him and then continuing on to to bridge, but it would take far too long, and she really wasn't that sure she could take the big man down and still leave him in sufficient health to enjoy him. Plus there was the minor detail that he had a wife and child back on Vulcan, but details didn't enter into her fantasies of the moment.

Besides, she already had one hostile work environment... no need to create another.

She's giving me that look again... is she wearing perfume? Mac thought to himself as he coughed slightly and exited the turbolift onto the Bridge.

The sights and sounds of the Bridge were amazing and new to her, and she stepped out slowly, taking it all in. She was still early for her shift, of course- no way was she about to arrive late and give Suval more ammunition. So she looked and listened and started identifying the beeps and percussions and whirrs and whines associated with the control panels of the Bridge of the USS Bonne Chance.

Mac strode confidently out onto the bridge, nodding at the navigator and pilot who, aside from an anonymous pair of legs sticking out from beneath the Navigation subsystems console, were the only ones on the bridge when they arrived. The main viewscreen was set to show Starbase 4 in the lower left hand corner as they orbited it, and all seemed well. He was surprised that there was no one on Communications duty, but that could well have been that anonymous pair of legs down there.

He turned and noticed the vivacious Vulcan slowly prowling onto the bridge like a cat cautiously stalking into a new jungle. She really is a bit like a Capellan Power-Cat, isn't she, he mused. Ferocious, dangerous, untamable, electric... yet graceful and beautiful at the same time. Mac shook his head- no good was going to come from thoughts like that. She was an officer under his command as XO, so that made her completely off-limits, and that was that. Give her a moment to prowl and sniff and she'd be less of a distraction when she was finished.



For her part, Charybdis was taking it all in. The viewscreen was huge! Why they couldn't manage better screens for the computers was beyond her if they could manage proper screens like that. She observed how sparsely the Bridge was populated, and was analyzing why when she realized that there was one distinct personage in absentia.

Suval was nowhere to be seen.

It may have been that he was away or just doing something somewhere else, she imagined, so since she still had a few moments she took the time to look over the stations and match what she'd read to what was actually installed.

"First time on the bridge?" asked a friendly voice behind her, and Charybdis turned to see the navigator and the pilot both smiling at her.

"First time on this bridge, actually. Hello... I'm Lieutenant Charybdis. I'm a new Science officer, just came aboard last week." She stepped down and extended her hand to greet the two enlisted personnel.

"Gunnery Sergeant Tara O'Neil, and this is Chief Petty Officer Mandy Dover. Welcome aboard, Lieutenant. Sounds like you've had a few adventures already, from what we hear." The two women laughed gently at that, and it was obvious to see that they were very good friends who spent a lot of time together. The Gunnery Sergeant was blonde, while the Chief was a redhead. Both were of average height and slender with athletic builds and similar rakish haircuts that almost gave the impression of a hint of masculinity in both of them to Charybdis' mind.

"I guess my reputation precedes me?" she said with a rounding of her sharp eyebrows and a bit of a suffering grin. "I promise, no shenanigans on the Bridge. I'm just here to work and do my job, really. I've learned the hard way what's expected of me onboard this ship."

The duo exchanged odd glances at that, then looked at her with curiosity. "Okay..." said the Chief. "Maybe we can talk about that later, when we get off duty, huh?"

Genuinely befuddled by the context, Charybdis shrugged, a motion often described as seismic. "If you like, certainly. I've been spending most of my time studying to catch up on all of these systems, but I'd love to have a chance to talk with some shipmates and make some friends."

"Then it's a date after duty, Lieutenant," added the Gunny.

Charybdis smiled and nodded, then asked a few relevant questions about the controls and operating systems of the navigator panel. Her curiosity satisfied for the moment, she proceeded to her station when there was a clang from under the navigation subsystem console, and muffled cursing. As she approached she could see a masculine hand groping on the ground for a tool, fingers splayed and palm open, and she guessed that he was looking for the duotronic coil spanner. She crouched down to grab it, took his hand, turned it over and placed the tool in it, then closed his fingers around it. His fingers scooted up to grab the head of the tool, then identified it by touch, and the hand withdrew into the console with a muffled note of thanks.

At that she stood and checked the chronometer on the Science station... 0758. She didn't know where Suval was or what sort of game he was playing, but she was not giving him the opportunity to get her in trouble for this. She logged into the Science station, and began the first task of the shift, which was generating reports. She spent the requisite time to get them started in the queue, then she stood and bent over to look into the blue-tinted magnifying viewer so that she could visually scan them.

Mac was busy with his own reports and morning duties when he happened to glance at the Science station, and damned if he did. The new lieutenant was leaned over the viewer, back arched, clearly demonstrating that while her uniform appeared to fit appropriately when she was upright, it was woefully insignificant when she was bent over the Science station scope. As he forcibly looked away, he noticed that the Gunny Sergeant was also similarly entranced, until a slap on the arm and a cross look from the Chief seemingly broke the spell.

He'd have to have a chat with her about that, but short of putting her in pants, he wasn't sure just what he could do. The uniform was regulation standard issue; it was her rather generously endowed figure that was not, and he knew that while she might be curvaceous, she was composed almost entirely of reasonably firm and fit muscle.

A bit later, a muffled voice came from beneath the Navigation subsystem console. Charybdis cocked an ear to it, then got up from her station, stepped over to the engineer beneath the console and grasped him by the boots. "Ready?" she asked, and a muffled sound was heard in reply. With slowly increasing pressure, she pulled the red-shirted engineer out from under the console, a large disconnected power supply in his hands. She stepped over him and offered her hand to help him up, and he took it with a smile.

"Thanks... ah, Lieutenant! I couldn't get any leverage to wriggle back out without putting this down, and there was nowhere to put it down. I need to go calibrate this and get it cycling at the right speed... be back in a flash. Oh..." he had started toward the turbolift but stopped and half-turned, holding out the earpiece he had been wearing. "Can you mind the comm panel for me Lieutenant? We're a little stretched down in Engineering right now triple-checking the long range sensors, so I'm kinda doing double duty today."

A quirked eyebrow and Charybdis nodded. Triple checked? He hadn't found anything wrong with her work the first two times so he was wasting manpower on triple checking it? She sighed, then remembered that Suval still wasn't here. She had fully expected him to come to the Bridge to berate her for beginning her shift without his authority or something similarly preposterous, but he was nowhere to be found. She checked the duty roster, and realized that he was not on the duty roster. She checked the roll for the Science department to determine where he might be working at the moment, and he wasn't listed there, either. She checked the crew manifest, and he wasn't to be found there either.

She scanned the Bonne Chance with the internal scanners after confirming that they were online. Three Vulcans in Sickbay, along with a number of other races with which she was unfamiliar. A pair of Tellurides, one Andorian, a Capellan and a Vulcan on the Bridge... and that was it. According to the internal sensors, Lieutenant Suval was not aboard the Bonne Chance. Since she was already employing them, she pinged Starbase 4 to let it know that a friendly was preparing to scan them, then she turned the scanners on the Starbase and scanned it as well. While there were a number of lifeforms of considerable variety, none of them matched up with the errant Lieutenant.

Debate rose within her... should she bring this to the Executive Officer's attention? On the one hand, she was oddly relieved that Suval was so very absent. But absent from her sight was one thing- absent from the command was another. She weighed her options. Logic said to just be patient and the answer would present itself in time... but instinct told her not to wait around, but instead to act. She decided to go with instinct, unsurprisingly... so she stepped lightly down to the command deck and stood next to the Captain's chair until Commander Ak'Ahar acknowledged her, then spoke in quiet tones.

"Commander? I've a bit of a mystery I was wondering if you could help me with. I can't seem to find Chief Science Officer Suval on the duty roster for the Science department... or on the crew manifest, or onboard the Bonne Chance or even Starbase 4, in fact. Am I missing something here?"

Instinctively Mac looked back toward the communication station, which was still unoccupied at the moment. "Well, when Lieutenant... uh... "

"Corben, sir."

The Capellan shot the Vulcan a surprised look, then corrected himself. She may run hot and cold, but she's still a Vulcan. I wouldn't be surprised if she could list off the entire current active duty roster as well as the crew registry, their departments, specialties and levels of education. She has been aboard the ship a few days now, and the Vulcans tend not to waste time...

"Well, if there have been any orders to that effect they would have gone through Communications. Since you're monitoring for Lieutenant Corben, why don't you take a look through the past 24 hour's orders and see if there's an answer in there?" The blue-clad lieutenant nodded, then returned to the Science station.

Mac's brow furrowed in confusion. He'd told her to check Communications, but she appeared to be accessing the ship's library from the Science console instead. He rubbed his rough, calloused hand across his slightly stubbly jaw and watched with interest... what was she doing over there, using the ship's library to familiarize herself with the Communications station function? That was usually a training course that required around a week for familiarity, and at least six months to qualify. She couldn't possibly hope to be skimming an overview... except that comm arrays were all similar in their basic function. The Bonne Chance's was just more complex with a great deal more power than most vessels, so the underlying principles could be skipped, if you were just looking for specific locations of button and control placements to access systems.

Just as he was realizing how she could do it, the statuesque science officer rose and took a few steps to port to flip a few switches at the console. She had to reflip a few and 'tsked' over doing something wrong, but in short order she had the receiver in her ear and was apparently scanning through the previous day's communications.

It took a few moments for her to process it all, and she rose to continue reviewing the Science station reports in the scope while she listened. Multitasking was an excellent skill for a Bridge officer, and Mac was pleased that she could accomplish it. He continued about his duties until she appeared on his starboard elbow again, hands folded behind her and patiently waiting.

"I have the answer, sir."

"Then don't keep me in suspense, Lieutenant. Let's hear it," he replied with a voice of easy command.

"At 1642 yesterday, Lieutenant Suval contacted Admiral Selar, deputy chief of StarFleet Science and asked for an immediate transfer to a new posting. Admiral Selar then contacted Captain Le Baron with orders notifying of him of Lieutenant Suval's immediate transfer to Earth. He then issued orders to the USS Oberth, which is returning to Earth from a research assignment, to send a shuttle to rendezvous with Lt. Suval on Starbase 4. Lieutenant Suval then checked out of the command on a transfer checklist by 1729 yesterday."

Mac hadn't known Suval... since assuming the XO position he had not gotten to meet with most of the senior staff as yet- the Captain, and indeed the entire ship was still in a state of transition since the Bonne Chance had limped out of port, somewhat ready to fly but certainly not fully up and operational. It certainly seemed like an abrupt departure though, and the Chief Science Officer had requested it. McCoy was wondering why when he noticed the expression on the lovely lieutenant's face.

"You know something about this, Lieutenant?"

The Vulcan girl's head snapped up and her violet eyes looked up to meet the Capellan commander's. "I... believe that I do, sir."

His first response was to ask for the explanation, but then he hesitated... this looked like it might possibly be a bit more complex than he wanted to get into on the bridge, while on duty. He was just considering just how to handle when she summed it up in short order.

"Lieutenant Suval and I had rather opposing ideologies, sir, and apparently his solution to the issue was to not deal with the problem which he saw as insurmountable, but to ru- uh, remove himself from the situation. So informing me to report for what had been his duty shift this morning was his way of giving me what was required, as he put it."

Solved that, Mac thought to himself. Not a solution he would have chosen, but he didn't know the particulars of the situation, either. He searched face of the Science officer, trying to see if she was all right. She looked back up at him and smiled... it wasn't the most genuine smile he'd seen out of her, but it was better than a number of other possibilities. This didn't look like anything that required further investigation on his part, to his mind.

"Mystery solved, Lieutenant. Is the Science department duty roster updated?"

The Vulcan vixen stepped back up to the Science station with a ratcheting of her hips, and reviewed. "Well, not without Lt. Suval, sir, but I am free and unattached, so I can just fill his void."

It took considerable willpower for Mac not to react to that particular turn of phrase, even as the pilot and navigators both turned in unison to regard the scene with amused expressions.

"That... sounds fine, Lieutenant, until such time as we can consult with the Captain about what we're going to do next."

Definitely not going to be a boring moment with that one aboard indeed, he thought to himself with a grin.

 

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